High Sierra photo editing slow

Downgrading to Sierra is only a viable solution IF you have a full backup of your photos library under Sierra and you are willing to loose all modifications since you did the High Sierra upgrade (photo edits, etc).

The High Sierra Photo Library will not work in Sierra and there is no way to "downgrade" the photos library.

I have only been having a problem editing raw photos from my Olympus OMD M5. Raw files from my Sony RX100 and jpegs from the rest of my cameras and iDevices can be edited and do not slow my iMac to a crawl. I have taken to shooting raw plus jpeg with my Olympus. I am basically putting off editing the raw files from the Olympus until this problem is fixed by Apple. I know others are having problems with jpegs as well as raw, so this work around is not for everyone. My problem goes back to the release of High Sierra and I am stunned by the lack of a fix from Apple. This issue is spread out in several lengthy discussions and appears to be widespread. It seems that Apple is having some serious quality control issues with MacOS and IOS lately. My iMac is from 2011 and I was grateful when I found out that it would be supported for High Sierra, but I get the feeling that none of the hard work was done to make sure all supported computers and cameras would work with Photos.

I have no referenced photos and most of my photos do not present a problem. For me it seems like the largest raw files from one specific camera slow my iMac to a crawl. Others are having problems even with jpegs. I'm just curious if the size of the file has anything to do with the problem. For those having problems even with jpegs, it might be worth opening a problem jpeg in preview, resizing it to 4 megapixels or smaller, import it into photos and see if it can be edited.

I have a late 2012 27"iMAC. My iPhotos issue started when it could not backup files to my ext-HD and sent me into a circle of death until the High Sierra upgrade; but after the upgrade, iPhoto was useless, as it was no longer connecting to Facebook so I had to import all the photos it PHOTOS.... then after a recent trip and some 20 GBs of new photos and videos, the computer completely went dead. I changed the original 3TB fusion drive to a new HD (now it works like new) and discovered this "referenced" photo as a cause by accident. It could've been a corrupted HD or SDD as well ... and standard apps, like DISK UTILITY and EtreCheck found nothing wrong with my previous dying HD. If your HD or SDD is over 5 years old, that maybe another source of problem especially when processing big RAW pics that's over 20 mgbs each.

I have the same issues as the rest of you. 10.13.3 did nothing to help. I reloaded iPhoto and will use that for editing as long as I can or until Apple fixes their mistake. Then I'll simply move the edited images to Photos to keep them all in one place. I wonder if this is a ruse on Apple's part to force us to pay for iCloud storage.

MacSales.com, which is Other World Computing (OWC). Here's a copy of my invoice with the relevant item number. Installation is so easy, even a caveman could do it (apologies to any cavemen reading this).

Here's a YouTube video of the installation. ifixit.com is also a good place to look:

Macbook late 2009 Memory upgrade from 2gb to 8gb of ram! Big Improvements! - YouTube

I just want to add me to the thread. Same problem here since I upgraded to High Sierra. Starting the edit function take a long time, while in Sierra this was very fast. I have the iCloud photo library turned on, and I can reproduce the problem on two systems, an 2012 iMac with Fusion Drive (which was a fast Mac before upgrading as well), and a new 15inch MBP from 2017 (the top model with the fastest CPU available). For RAW Images it can take up to 20 seconds, for JPEGs it is faster, but still slow. I have the feeling it got a little bit faster with 10.13.3 but the problem is not solved.

So for me the fastest way to edit pictures is to do this on my 2013 iPad Air, where editing works without any delay.

After installing 10.13.4 I see no change. I got the spinning beachball for over a minute trying to edit a raw file from my Olympus OMD E-M5. It has been six months since this problem emerged with High Sierra. A few months ago, I spoke with a Photos specialist at Apple Support and she indicated she had the same problem on her own Mac and that they were working on a solution. Something is very wrong with Apple software quality control these days.

There are probably a number of issues that cause slowness in Photos. It sounds like you were having a general slowness with your Fusion Drive. With a 120GB library, Photos would have to be storing your photos on the hard drive and I could see how that would lead to a general slowdown. Many in this conversation, are having problems using specific tools while editing. In my case Photos is quite fast when using tools other that DxO Optics Extension and the Retouch tool and even those tools work with jpegs and raw files from my Sony RX100. Everything slows to a crawl when I use those tools on raw files from my Olympus OMD M5 mark I. My 85GB photos library is on the same fast SSD as my system and Photos application, so not a hard drive problem in my case. My wife's MacBook Air has the same specific problem and it has a very fast 512GB SSD. Both of our drives are formatted APFS since High Sierra. It is my understanding Fusion drives do not support APFS yet, but that's probably not relevant. Until High Sierra, my experience was that Photos was faster than either iPhoto and Aperture. That all changed with version 3.0 of Photos.

Same issue. Contacted Apple Support and they confirmed that this is a know issue, however, I feel they are really taking their time to fix it. Also looking into alternative software.

Same... Photo retouching VERY slow. My library all on top spec 2014 iMac (Fusion drive). Nothing in iCloud. Only happened after High Sierra upgrade - all background processes completed as far as I can tell.

My MBP from early 2015 is having this same issue. It didn't happen when using Sierra - only once I upgraded to High Sierra did the Photos.app editing become almost unusable. It's on when editing .NEF RAW files that it goes haywire tho. If it's a normal photo from my iPhone it's fine. It just seems like it can't handle the higher resolution files like it used too.

I'm having the same problem on my 2014 Mac mini since upgrading to "High Sierra." I used to adjust the light slider and watch the photo change, but now I move it and wait for seconds before any change takes place. Really poor performance.

In Sierra Photos I had an issue with cropping edits not taking. The picture would pop back to its original uncropped state unexpectedly. This issue still happens occasionally, but now with the entire editing process ground to a halt, it seems like a minor issue comparatively.

I have the same issue.

I have recently upgraded my MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011) with 8GB RAM and over 300GB free space on SSD to High Sierra. i started to load some images on Finder and found that it was taking really long so I decided to use Photo app, but had the same problem.

I went on to use Preview and run into the same problem. I even noticed that some of the images load incorrectly, parts of the image are distorted as if they were corrupt. I leave it for about a minute or two and the image corrects itself. I am loading Raw files of about 30MB per image which is quite heavy, so I converted the images to 5mb JPGs and still have the same problem.

It takes about 20 seconds to load each JPG image and editing is near impossible. I have had to stop editing pictures and wait till I am back home to use my iMac, which has El Capitan. Will not be upgrading any time soon.

Please Apple any light on the issue would be great. Also don't make it so hard to downgrade after updating OS, just really infuriating. I cant do anything at the moment, but wait and complain in forums about this.

That's very interesting! I've been trying to see if this works for me - connected to power and then unconnected - and it seems to be the same for me.

Unconnected from power, Photos.app speeds up. Not as fast as Sierra, but a noticeable improvement from being connected to power.