Photos in High Sierra Crashing when Editing

Maybe the common element is just that the CPU usage goes too high and it cuts out the app?

When I try to do too much at once, eg export 800 photos rather than 100 photos, it quits the app; too much editing it quits the app etc etc

It certainly felt like something was choking, overflowing, leaking, or whatever... I use large RAW files and Photos seemed to struggle to cope with them. Slowing right down appeared to help, but without doing very precise testing it's hard to distinguish what might have been just random failures or successes and achieve a consistent performance under certain circumstances. There are so many possible variables that testing at the amateur user level is difficult. For instance, Canon's RAW files have the same extension (.CR2) but can vary internally depending on which model camera you use. So just working through all the possible types and sizes of photo files to see if some are handled better than others could take weeks and weeks of experimenting. And most of us don't have the time for that. There seemed to be noticeable improvements when using the graphics drivers from Nvidia, rather than the default Apple ones, but I have no idea what aspect of them might or might not have been working better.

The strategy of continuing to send reports directly to Apple, and your working through it with Apple Care seem to be the the best bets if the sort of simple tests that we can do at home don't produce any clear answers. I hope that you can find an answer and that it can help others too. 🙂

OK, it MUST be a bug.

I've taken my last Sierra backup of my Photos system library and copied it onto my old 2010 iMac running 10.12 - Sierra with Photos v2.

WORKS perfectly! I've tried everything to make it crash and absolutely no problems! Photos that I thought were damaged (many with hundreds of retouches) are fine. Phew!

So something seriously went wrong during the upgrade to High Sierra with the Photos migration.

Great test!

Interesting to hear that the library file appears to be backwards compatible and runs OK on the earlier version. I had the same experience with the older version on Sierra - i.e. no problems whatever. The upgrade to High Sierra was a double whammy - an operating system upgrade and changes to the Photo program. All my crashes began immediately after the upgrade. So it doesn't seem too far fetched to think that there could be problems somewhere in the code, especially when dealing with with specific types of hardware, etc. Given the wide range of possible different specs, and combinations of hardware and software, it is certainly not inevitable that the problems are of our own making. Well out of my league to do any detailed teasing of the software, so I hope that the reports going in to Apple throw up something that they can fix.

Fair Dinkum. Loaded the recent update to High Sierra. Now I can't edit photos in Photos or PSE. Everything slows down to a time warp. I have to go out and borrow somebody's laptop, because I'm trying to do a project. Very humiliating. I guess one day Apple will fix this, and then life will go on. But it's a bit dramatic when it slows PSE down as well.

I really need to get out more. Mate of mine dropped by yesterday afternoon, and suggested a restart. I patiently explained that had happened when I installed the update. Nevertheless after two beers, he insisted, and we did it, and the problem has been resolved by about 80%. Still lots of strange pixellation, but usable. Will contact tech support.

Has anyone else noticed the blinking of the ".photoslibrary" while in the Finder window with Overflow active. Seemed strange to me. Also crashing out of PHOTOS like many others with doing any thing but reviewing photos. Lasts less than 15 seconds. Reports coming from many Graphics drivers as well. This has lasted over a month it seems. Waited until MACos 10.13.1 came out. PHOTOS will not recognize some iPad imports as well.

I've never signed into these forums for support EVER but I had to today. I love using Photo but after upgrading yesterday, it's barely workable. It slows down to a crawl, especially when you use the touch-up feature. It takes me 5 minutes or more to do what I could do in 30 seconds in a picture. I've got 16 GB of Ram and there aren't any other problems after this upgrade. I just want old Photos back or something free I can use until they sort this mess out. HELP US APPLE!

I have done every test that a AppleCare can think of , being guided throughout ,including loading a clean copy of H/S onto a h/d.

Then loading new photos doing the same procedure being watch by a 2nd level tech.Result the same.

Apple have now promised to call with a answer 3 times, still waiting.

When a 2nd level tech has the problem on their computer, it seems it's down to APPLE not us users, though

some might disagree.

The thing is Photos allows Raw images to be exported from the edit panel , when editing in Luminar and bringing the

adjusted images back to Photos they are still Raw files,Very Good, unfortunately Photos crashes, this did not happen with Sierra!

My update: After upgrading my top specced late 2014 iMac to High Sierra where Photos crashed, edits were slow or non existent I got on to Apple Support with my Apple Care. After trying all the usual stuff with them on the line including re-installing High Sierra, the problems persisted. I believe the Apple tech has submitted a report to the engineers about all this. In the mean time and we decided to upload my entire Photos Library to iCloud from a backup on my late 2009 iMac running Sierra. This is now complete and I've downloaded all photos to my late 2014 iMac, waited for everything to settle with the downloads; put both iMacs side by side - all 18345 photos and 1020 videos were there along with all the albums - identical.

Then I opened a photo on the newer iMac and it crashed immediately when entering EDIT mode!

The same photo edits fine on the old Sierra iMac. So all my data in iCloud is clearly acceptable in terms of image formats etc.

I'm waiting for tech support to ring back. Not sure they can do anything until the programmers fix it!!! PLEASE. Its been TWO MONTHS since this began when High Sierra was released....

Similar here. I have been unable to use the system library on my iMac since the day (September 29, I think) I upgraded to High Sierra. After a while my MacBook Pro exhibited exactly the same crashing pattern and that library became unusable. But, my wife has held off updating her iMac, having seen my issues. So, using an account on her iMac running Sierra, Photos works fine. It also works fine on iOS devices. That certainly suggests there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the photos, or the library and the problem is something in High Sierra.

Like you, I had good support from Apple Support with regular update phone calls. Then, about three weeks ago, they missed scheduled phone calls and stopped responding to phone calls and emails. My last contact suggested a fix should come in MacOS 10.13.2 which he thought would be likely four to six weeks after the 10.13.1 update.

The same thing happened to me ,but I am waiting for 3 call backs.

When I try to call them back and leave a message they never reply.

I think when the techs ask the engineers what is going on somebody at Apple stops them finding out.

Well mine just crashed whilst idle... 5 minutes earlier all I did was add a few Titles to some photos in Moments view and enhanced one Photo. I am using 10.13.2 top specced late 2014 iMac.

Everything working fine on my late 2009 Sierra iMac which works with the SAME Photo Library in iCloud.

Yesterday my 2014 MBP was working fine after the latest 10.13.2 update,TODAY back to usual, that is it crashes when

re importing images from Luminar.This did not happen when using Sierra!

In ten years, using various Macs as a professional, I cannot remember ever having such problems.

Cannot wait to see what the new Microsoft store in Oxford Circus has to store offer!

Same here. Any editing, especially cropping, the whole thing freezes up. Sometimes, if I wait long enough, it reboots itself and opens all the windows and puts me right back where I was. Very weird.

I have been using iPhotos and Photos since 2001 - I have 4 library with nearly 2T. This is pretty sad.