High Sierra photo editing slow

About two weeks ago I had discussions about this with two Applecare techs, one of whom was a senior tech. They both expressed surprise when I told them of this issue, which I find incredulous. IMO, it's more likely they were instructed to feign ignorance and blow off trouble calls. Apple must know about this. It's logical to conclude they don't care. Again, my opinion.

I suppose most Photos users are doing jpeg files, regarding which I've not heard any concerns. Given crash reports, Apple must know about this. For many of us serious about our photo work, a non-response is more than a minor inconvenience. It might be time to give YouTubers something to talk about.

Yes, same here. It's ruining my business as I entirely rely on the quality of my pictures! I cannot understand that this has been going on for half a year and nothing has been done... I am now looking buying photoshop, which I hate to do because of the cost and resources needed to run it (I have a MacAir with a very little brain - but it was just right until I stupidly upgraded). Argh.

My hope is that if we keep up the chatter, someone at Apple will notice. They certainly get the crash reports. It's difficult to not take personally since the typical Apple consumer is pretty loyal, but since the departure of Aperture, Apple has not been too caring of those of us who have a serious photography "habit."

One thing that I have discovered that seems to result in far less crashing is to individually save each photo after editing ("Done") and do nothing else until the "pie" in the header indicates it's saved. This is slow, but if it avoids crashes and re-starts, at least it's something. Given the age of digital photography, I am puzzled as to why Apple does not give Adobe a run for its money by providing a serious Lightroom competitor that does not include cobbling together apps as extensions with Photos.

I went through the same. Reinstalled operating system, recover run on photos file, connected to iCloud, crashes every time after 50 second or less. Took iMac to Palo Alto Apple Store, they keep it for 2 days, but couldn't fix it. Using m iPad now.

Yeah, top "top" AppleCare supervisor I worked with quit responding to me as well. I'm losing faith with Apple, and I've been a life-long Apple consumer (going all the way back to Apple IIgs). I'm tired of this lack of acknowledgement by Apple knowing that professional photographers can't adequately do their job when everything crashes when even trying to import the photos from the camera. I've been forced to go back and use the old iPhotos application. I don't like it all that well, but at least it doesn't crash.

Do you think that Apple thinks we have "done something" with our photos and that it isn't an Apple problem?

Yeah I've got my old Mac Plus (stopped working now but I won't complain about that!)

And I'm a lifelong supporter and advocate of Apple - many friends and family switched to Apple because of my sales pitch for Apple products.

The only major issue I've had with Apple until now is when they completely changed iMovie about 5 years ago and sound was out of sync and other problems BUT THEY FIXED IT VERY QUICKLY... unlike this problem with Photos.

In the mean time I'm resigned to editing photos in Sierra on older iMac and everything else in High Sierra on newer iMac.

Adding my voice to the conversation. I'm having the same issues. Once I upgraded to High Sierra, not only is Photos almost unusable...but when Photos is open my whole computer freezes up. iMac with fusion drive 8gb ram. Not a new computer but it runs like slower than my 12 year old MacBook (yes it still runs!)

I'm going to take back what I said about saving each photo edited prior to moving on to the next photo helping to avoid crashes. In the past two evenings I've had two crashes while keeping my SLOW processing rate and saving as I went along.

I shoot nearly exclusively in RAW format. For others reporting this problem, are you working with RAW files, jpeg, or both?

Regarding Apple's lack of response, I should note that yesterday I fired off a question regarding Luminar to Skylum (formerly Macphun), and heard back the same day. I'm confused as to why photo processing capabilities would be so unimportant to Apple.

Actually I did save every photo carefully after I read your post, and it does seem to help, so thank you, I do think it helps!

These are my other findings, for anyone trying to work this out (and it doesn't look like Apple is going to do anything):

Don't even think of using the new editing features (the lower part of the left hand bar) - just stick with the original features, they just about work, IF you don't use the cropping tool at the same time. If you want to crop, save and close first, then go in again and do the cropping.

Mixing up editing light/colour and cropping results in freeze and crash...

DO NOT use the retouching feature, it messes everything up and make the program crash!

I have bought Lightroom and now do the colour and light editing in photos, then move it over to Lightroom and do the cropping and retouching, then move it back in order to keep one library.

What used to take me about 4 minutes per photo series of 10 can now take up to 20 minutes... but at least I can function again thanks to Lightroom. And I'll have to consider how to run my business from here onwards.

It does all remind me of the days when I was a student in the 1990s and worked in a lawyers office typing out letters on MS Dos, having to second guess what I was doing and reading a book while my document was being processed. Not what I ever thought Apple would return to!!

I also shoot exclusively in RAW. As I said previously, I re-loaded iPhotos and process there. Then I move the images to Photos. I found not all the images transfer, however. Another benefit to using Apple.

I found using Photos so frustrating I decided to buy Lightroom.

It's great of course and apart from taking ages to open in High Sierra once in use it's workable quick.

I'll not be going back to Photos. Very poor show from Apple.

Since installing High Sierra, my Photos hasn’t been the same. I use Photos on my iMac in conjunction with iCloud as a mechanism to backup my Nikon RAW pics and share them with all of my other IOS devices, MacBooks & AppleTVs. While I am able to “import” into Photos - the background processes, uploading to iCloud, stall after an hour or so of initial sluggish progress. Speaking directly to Apple Support, we have launched in safe mode and toggle the iCloud setting in Photos off and on. The process restarts and shows some life, but still stalls and I stare at the CPU memory resources top out, and network traffic at a minimum. I am keeping Apple Support on the hook, hoping to find an expert on this app and supporting services. A couple of thousand down and 50,000plus to go... argh. Life before High Sierra - fond memories.

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.