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(i)Photo help

R

Ruffian829

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
319
2
I have a lot of photos in iPhoto and it is so unbearably slow to load/scroll/just use in general. I'm assuming that it is because of all the photos. Other than deleting a lot of them off the macbook hard drive, is there an alternative that will work / handle the photos better than iPhoto? Is this normal for iPhoto?

I'm using OS X 10.9.4
 
glenthompson

glenthompson

macrumors demi-god
Apr 27, 2011
2,983
842
Virginia
Ruffian829 said:
I have a lot of photos in iPhoto and it is so unbearably slow to load/scroll/just use in general. I'm assuming that it is because of all the photos. Other than deleting a lot of them off the macbook hard drive, is there an alternative that will work / handle the photos better than iPhoto? Is this normal for iPhoto?

I'm using OS X 10.9.4
Click to expand...

iPhoto can get sluggish when you get into the 20k+ photos range. If you only have a few thousand pix then it may be memory or disk that is slowing you down. What are the specs on the mac you're using? Do you have a SSD? Have you run activity monitor while using iPhoto to determine where the bottleneck is?
 
R

Ruffian829

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
319
2
glenthompson said:
iPhoto can get sluggish when you get into the 20k+ photos range. If you only have a few thousand pix then it may be memory or disk that is slowing you down. What are the specs on the mac you're using? Do you have a SSD? Have you run activity monitor while using iPhoto to determine where the bottleneck is?
Click to expand...

Sorry for the delayed response- I actually try to avoid using my computer because it is so slow, I just can't be bothered. But I finally went and found out what I think the answers to your questions are:

I have 15k photos (57GB) at the moment. The mac is a macbook pro, the "about this mac" section says the following: OS X 10.9.4
Processor 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 4GB 1600 MHz DDR3

I'm not sure what an SSD is, and I've never tried activity monitor, but I am going to give it a try now and see what I can figure out.


EDIT: The activity monitor has iPhoto at between 24-39% CPU and CPU time is 39:30.76. I have no idea what any of that means but I know its at the top of the list, the next item is the activity monitor itself and its only 1.7% CPU. This is after iPhoto has started up and loaded completely (it is obviously much worse while starting).
 
Fishrrman

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,346
12,464
Maybe it's time to "tune up" the computer.

Just wondering -- do you have an external drive that is as large as your internal drive?
 
R

Ruffian829

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
319
2
I have an external hard drive that is 500GB I think. I think that is larger than my internal Mac HD? I'm not positive though.
 
glenthompson

glenthompson

macrumors demi-god
Apr 27, 2011
2,983
842
Virginia
Ruffian829 said:
Sorry for the delayed response- I actually try to avoid using my computer because it is so slow, I just can't be bothered. But I finally went and found out what I think the answers to your questions are:

I have 15k photos (57GB) at the moment. The mac is a macbook pro, the "about this mac" section says the following: OS X 10.9.4
Processor 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5
Memory: 4GB 1600 MHz DDR3

I'm not sure what an SSD is, and I've never tried activity monitor, but I am going to give it a try now and see what I can figure out.


EDIT: The activity monitor has iPhoto at between 24-39% CPU and CPU time is 39:30.76. I have no idea what any of that means but I know its at the top of the list, the next item is the activity monitor itself and its only 1.7% CPU. This is after iPhoto has started up and loaded completely (it is obviously much worse while starting).
Click to expand...

That's a lot of processor usage for not doing much in iPhoto. Do you use/want Faces in iPhoto? It may be scanning the database trying to find all the faces. If you don't want it, just turn it off in preferences. Another thing to check in activity monitor is memory pressure. As long as it's in the green you're good. If it gets into the yellow or red then you have a memory issue.

You have a fairly large iPhoto library. Your machine should have adequate processing power to handle it - I'm guessing it's a 13" mid-2012 based on the specs given.

A SSD is a Solid State Drive. Instead of a spinning platter it uses flash memory. Read/write speeds are 6-8x what you see with the hard drive. Single biggest improvement you can make in performance.
 
R

Ruffian829

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
319
2
I don't use faces but it is turned on- I'm going to turn it off, I didn't even realize I could turn it off.

I'll check the memory stuff once I'm home as well.

I post this on another thread but do you have any recommendations on backing up photos onto an external HD so I can delete them off the internal MacBook one (13" mid 2012 is accurate, btw)? I don't want to back up the whole MacBook, I just want to put photos in an organized fashion onto the hard drive so I can free up space on the MacBook. I tried to export them but they don't seem to export with any of the dates they were taken, leaving them a jumbled mess to sort and missing vital info (I'd very much like to keep the dates they were taken).
 
glenthompson

glenthompson

macrumors demi-god
Apr 27, 2011
2,983
842
Virginia
Ruffian829 said:
I don't use faces but it is turned on- I'm going to turn it off, I didn't even realize I could turn it off.

I'll check the memory stuff once I'm home as well.

I post this on another thread but do you have any recommendations on backing up photos onto an external HD so I can delete them off the internal MacBook one (13" mid 2012 is accurate, btw)? I don't want to back up the whole MacBook, I just want to put photos in an organized fashion onto the hard drive so I can free up space on the MacBook. I tried to export them but they don't seem to export with any of the dates they were taken, leaving them a jumbled mess to sort and missing vital info (I'd very much like to keep the dates they were taken).
Click to expand...

What you are describing is archiving, not backup. You are moving the photos to another storage device. From iphoto you can export the photos you no longer want in your library. The files won't have the date taken on them but the EXIF data should retain that date. Put them on an external drive that is not part of your backup strategy but include that drive in your backups.
 
R

Ruffian829

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 17, 2008
319
2
glenthompson said:
What you are describing is archiving, not backup. You are moving the photos to another storage device. From iphoto you can export the photos you no longer want in your library. The files won't have the date taken on them but the EXIF data should retain that date. Put them on an external drive that is not part of your backup strategy but include that drive in your backups.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks for the clarification! No wonder I seemed to be confusing so many people. I did export the photos but how can I find the exif data to see if the dates are still there?
 
glenthompson

glenthompson

macrumors demi-god
Apr 27, 2011
2,983
842
Virginia
Ruffian829 said:
Ok, thanks for the clarification! No wonder I seemed to be confusing so many people. I did export the photos but how can I find the exif data to see if the dates are still there?
Click to expand...

You can see some of the basic EXIF data via the Get Info option in finder but it doesn't include the date. There are numerous utilities available that will show all the EXIF data.
 
glenthompson

glenthompson

macrumors demi-god
Apr 27, 2011
2,983
842
Virginia
Ruffian829 said:
I don't mean to dense, but could you be more specific? When you say there are numerous utilities available- are these apps I have to download?
Click to expand...

Go into the App Store and search for EXIF. Both viewers and editors are available. I haven't used any of them so I can't comment on whether they are useful.
 
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