Very slow processing of raw pictures by Photos

Referenced images are not uploaded to iCloud, only managed images. If you make your referenced library your system photo library, only the photos you consolidate into the library will upload to iCloud.

One last thing: aperture had activity tool to make visible what was going on. Can I see if Photos is working in background in faces recognition or geotagging or something else?

Not directly. Photos is giving you occasionally status information, like "uploading 100 photos, updated just now, or scanning for faces (Check the status of your library in Photos for macOS - Apple Support). But this does not tell you, if the process is currently active, only that work needs to be done.

There are two utilities to look for background processes.

• The Activity Monitor in Applications > Utilities (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201464)
• The Console, also in Applications > Utilities

In the Activity Monitor enter "Photo" in the search field and you will see plenty of processes (daemons) listed. Some of the photos daemons are:

• Photos Agent: That is the parent process handling all other Photos processes, like iCloud synchronisation
• photoanalysisd: This is the artificial intelligence tool to recognize objects and faces in your photos and to classify the photo according to categories. It is needing a lot of processing power.
• com.apple.photos.videoconversionservice: Some videos need to be converted for syncing with iCloud; I'm seeing these conversion services since I started to use HEIC and HEVC codecs
• com.apple.photos.imageconversionservice:
• com.apple.photomoments: organizing the library into moments
• com.apple.photomodel: This process seems to be creating new memories
• com.apple.photoingestservice: I'm seeing this process running, after I import new photos or use editing extensions
• cloudphotosd: updating the iCloud Photo Library
• photolibraryd: This also will be active after using photo editing extensions or external editors

The Console window will give a little more information on the currently running daemons. If you click an item, you will see a brief description of theist action. And the Console will show you error messages and diagnostic messages, that might indicate a problem.

This Console screenshot is showing photolibraryd asking the external editor to release the edited image (I think):

Has someone found some documentation on the process? So far, I could not find any support document explaining the purpose of the different background processes. I just watched them in the Console. And the behavior changed a lot after the upgrade from Sierra to High Sierra,

Thanks léonie. I hope you find out more. FWIW I'm the one with the 63k Aperture conversion. I'm at 644 "Photos Scanned." Not much change after several days. I've restarted Photos a couple of time, just to make sure it wasn't hung up—although I don't think it was.

A snapshot. Over a 30 second observation, Photos was typically around 60% and the next three never more than 3%. The rest consistently zero.

Memory is about the same several minutes later except for Photos itself which I've seen rise to about 500MB

Good luck with finding more about the processes. photolibraryd is doing more than your current estimate as I haven't done any editing since bringing into Photos, unless it's reapplying edits from Aperture which seems possible; how else are Previews going to be generated?

I looked at Console and read about 50 messages. They seemed to be low level. Many create and release session for Photos. Takes about five events.

In my case I'm assuming Henrik is right and that previews are being generated, but three days is a slow process. Most of my photos are geotagged before importing. Not my Photo System Library and no editing while this goes on. CurrentlyI have another library (just 2017) that is my Photo System Library. I don't have either of the Memories items checked in Preferences.

Another data point. I looked at the library for changed files in the last 1 day and found nothing. Still active CPU, memory and disk (and since it's an external drive I can feel and hear it being active and the library is the only thing on the drive).

Going back to 6 days day-by-day, I found the only files or folders changed were in the "Masters" folder and they appear to be image files, both Raw and jpg. The image files are two-year old photos. Jumping back 1 month (the conversion to Photos from Aperture was a week or so ago), still only images in the Masters folder are changed. No other kind of files. Either I'm doing the search wrong or something is amiss. Some kind of plist or database file should be changing.

Raw original files are in a 3 Tb external drive.

What format is this drive and how is it connected? If your Photos library on the drive or are you using a referenced library to access them ? (Note that using a referenced library with Photos is not a good idea and is very likely to cause future problems -- :Disadvantages of a Referenced Library in Photos ) What are your iCloud settings?

LN

A bit off topic.

Actually it has nothing to do with this thread - For new topics it is rude and not productive to threadjack other's threads - having multiple people post totally different questions in the same thread is very confusing for everyone - please start your own thread for you totally different question -- Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question

LN

"classify the images according to the objects in them"

I forgot, if I ever knew, that Photos did that; that would be time consuming, particularly on my four-year old MBP. Just tested it, using sunsets and found 6 (this is on my 64k photos with 644 faces [who knows how many images processed?]). Impressive.

(But I'm holding out for a real keyboard. One can hope that face recognition will make it to the Mac which will then give Apple an excuse to abandon the touch bar.)

Filed a bug report: https://bugreport.apple.com/web/?problemID=36066851. Not sure if everyone can see it, but the Sign In - Apple part will get you to the reported. Had to use Other; they had iWorks and iLIfe, but not current apps; almost seemed like the wrong place to report.

As you can see at this topic High Sierra photo editing slow the Photos app in new Mac OS 10.13 is just crappy and slow. I mean, it's toooooo slow, taking 10, 20, 30... seconds to process one sliding at some bar if you have a 30MB RAW picture.

Sometimes it gets frozen and you and to die and hard reset your Mac.

Raw original files are in a 3 Tb external drive.

How is this drive connected?

And how much free storage is on your system drive?

Are other processes hogging the CPU? If you just moved from Aperture to Photos, the photosanalysisd process will be using most of the CPU cycles to analyze your photos and to classify them according to categories.I would keep the Mac up and running during the night, so the initial analysis will be finished quickly. This can take more than a week for a large library.

A bit off topic. I just migrated from Aperture and one library with 60k photos is taking forever to scan the photos for faces. In the last 12 hours, 100 photos scanned. 644 total in several days (not on all the time, but most).

2015 MacBook Pro 16B. Drive is 8GB Seagate Expansion Desktop connected via USB3. Drive was reformatted and the only thing on the drive is the Photos library. Memory Pressure is green. Over about one minute, CPU jumps around between 27 and 128%. In past three days, Photos has been off maybe 10 hours while the MBP was being used off-site. This is not the system library; it's a library with older photos. System drive (500GB SSD) has 130GB free. A mix of jpg and RAW.

I had the same issue and I was abut to give up, then I saw what was causing all the problems

i also came from Aperture, Photos needs first to generate new previews then faces then geotagging it takes a llooooooonnngg time some of the function is done when photos is closed some are when you have it running.

for me it took 48 hrs before it came back to speed

i have done some tested with 40 Raw files it took under 2 minutes to auto enhance in photo and in aperture more less the same time

So give it time and keep a look at the active monitor to see what is taking up most of power from you mac

Henrik

Yes, sure, the previews are also necessary, but the initial scan to classify the images according to the objects in them, requires even more processing power than rendering previews.

I don't have either of the Memories items checked in Preferences.

Photos will scan for memories nevertheless. You will just not get any notifications "You have a new memory". And photos will not create memories for the holiday events.

Hi her sewell I spend the day testing

if you start from zero and re import your photos then it will not slow down, but if you import lets say 5000 photos and once then it dies and gets very slow

I guess if you come from Aperture with 20K plus phots it will take forever to make preview if you use the Mac for other stuff