Aperture 3: any performance issues?

[Phrasikleia]

My biggest beefs with Aperture 2 are its sluggishness and bugs, which seem to come out with a lot of raw photos loaded into the library. I am not inclined to waste time importing thousands of photos into the Aperture 3 demo, so I'm hoping to get reports from those of you have have already purchased the program and have loaded it up with lots of raw files.

If you are one of these people:

1) Are you ever getting that red "file type unsupported" screen? This one comes up every so often in Aperture 2 and requires a relaunch to correct it.

2) Is it still like wading through molasses to tug on the adjustment sliders?

3) Is there any other annoying or buggy behavior that you've noticed?

Many thanks!

 

[Jon-Luke]

I was wondering how it holds up against LightRoom I have been testing the Beta for LightRoom 3 and its running quite well, seems to have all the same features as the new Aperture except for the whole multimedia editing ability and the facial recognition - but these things are a bit gimmicky for my uses...

 

[chrono1081]

I've had a few issues but I still like it enough to make me switch from Lightroom (which I currently use).

I've had it crash a few times on me when using the new adjustment brushes. Its also a huge ram hog. I ended up with a 2 gig swap file with the machine in my signature when only Aperture, Safari, iTunes, Adium and Socialite running.

Other then those bugs which I'm sure Apple will probably fix I think overall the speed is much faster then lightroom which is a huge plus for me. I'm gonna give it the full trial period before I decide to make the switch. (I have a TON of lightroom libraries so its a big step).

The camera I shoot with is usually a 5D II so I'm processing usually around 500 30MB raw files per Aperture project.

 

[HarryPot]

My biggest beefs with Aperture 2 are its sluggishness and bugs, which seem to come out with a lot of raw photos loaded into the library. I am not inclined to waste time importing thousands of photos into the Aperture 3 demo, so I'm hoping to get reports from those of you have have already purchased the program and have loaded it up with lots of raw files.

I have just imported my whole library (20,000+ RAW files) into Aperture 3. I have a MacBook 2.0GHz, Core Duo, 2GB of RAM, and have all my photos in an external drive.

1) Are you ever getting that red "file type unsupported" screen? This one comes up every so often in Aperture 2 and requires a relaunch to correct it.

Nope. But it never happened to me in Aperture 2, so it might be another problem you have.

2) Is it still like wading through molasses to tug on the adjustment sliders?

It takes about the same time than in Aperture 2 to make this changes. As for the new features, like brushes, they are very slow in my Mac, not sure why. Doing the same process in Photoshop is much faster for me. But do consider I have an old MacBook.


In general, browsing photos is much faster than in Aperture 2. In Aperture 2 when I scrolled down, the thumbnails would take a few seconds to load, here it is instant. Going from grid view to full screen is faster as well. Changing the thumbnail size is instant, when in Aperture 2 this was very buggy.

I'm still playing around with it, but for now I'm pleased with the experience. I know I can't expect much faster editing with my Mac, but at least this update made browsing thru my photos much faster, which is a big plus when showing photos to family or friends.

 

[Grimace]

I've posted plenty of thoughts in this thread already, but I see substantial performance improvements. Once every few months I would have the "file type unsupported" screen in Ap2, but I haven't seen anything like that in Ap3 yet (possibly too soon to know).

Performance sliders are a lot more responsive and everything seems zippier. It will run very well the more RAM you have, but even 2GB is doable.

I think it is the best update since 1.5 and it brings a ton of the quality features of LR over and maintains the superior Ap workflow and interface. Web page publishing options remain inferior to LR but all of the other enhancements more than compensate.

 

[CrackedButter]

I'm assuming you're talking about performance because you dealt with the library conflicts?

I moved my trial library to my downloads folder (so it wouldn't conflict with my existing library) BUT Aperture 2 still looks in there and refuses to load my old library because it has been supposedly upgraded. It hasn't, it just won't load my old library unless I delete the new (but empty) one. But having deleted the new one, Aperture 3 won't load! Vicious circle!

All I want to do is export a project into the new library so I can have a play around. What do other people recommend as a work around?

 

[macuserx86]

The responsiveness has increased in editing, browsing and importing
hitting "z" to zoom in takes more time than in aperture 2 (the image renders more slowly) but overall it's faster.

Some pet peeves that I'm sure I'll get over are: mouse scroll wheel no longer allows you to scrub through photos in the viewer and the icons are too large and cartoonish now. It looks more like iPhoto now :/

 

[Grimace]

I'm assuming you're talking about performance because you dealt with the library conflicts?

I moved my trial library to my downloads folder (so it wouldn't conflict with my existing library) BUT Aperture 2 still looks in there and refuses to load my old library because it has been supposedly upgraded. It hasn't, it just won't load my old library unless I delete the new (but empty) one. But having deleted the new one, Aperture 3 won't load! Vicious circle!

All I want to do is export a project into the new library so I can have a play around. What do other people recommend as a work around?

The libraries themselves are tied to versions so you should make an Ap3 library. Right click on any library and choose to open with the version that you want.

Export a project from Ap2 to your desktop, quit everything and open your trial library - then drag in the new library. It will say that the project can't be upgraded, but it does seem like the images themselves can individually be used with the new features.

All in all, it is easiest just to export 30-50 RAW files into a folder, and then open Ap3 and import them in.

 

[OreoCookie]

All I want to do is export a project into the new library so I can have a play around. What do other people recommend as a work around?

If you want to launch your old library with Aperture 2, right-click your library bundle and choose Open with > Aperture (2).

 

[CrackedButter]

Hey thanks for the tips, they worked a treat. I'll be buying this very soon!

 

[davegregory]

I downloaded the trial last night and started playing with it. I brought in some files to play around with, only about six. However, when I was making adjustments on one file from my 5D, my MacBook locked up completely, and I had to reboot. Upon rebooting, the entire Aperture library was corrupt and I had to start a new one. Not a big deal with only 6 pictures in it, but if it were fully of thousands and all the adjustments to go with it, I'd be more than annoyed. Just an FYI to backup regularly.

 

[Phrasikleia]

Thanks for the replies so far. Sounds like a mixed bag. I'll probably dl the demo this weekend, but I won't be loading much into it. If I decide to plunk down the upgrade money and stick with Aperture, then I'll bring in all of my photos. However, it's very possible I'll just put that money towards LR 3 instead. I'm really not sold either way yet.

 

[Westside guy]

Its also a huge ram hog. I ended up with a 2 gig swap file with the machine in my signature when only Aperture, Safari, iTunes, Adium and Socialite running.

"Only"?

 

[chrono1081]

I do think there is a memory leak however. I was playing around last night and I opened activity monitor, and each picture I click ram usage goes up and doesn't stop. It just keeps increasing and slowly slows the system to a crawl. (This takes a lot of clicking since I have 8 gigs of ram) but its 100% repeatable.

I still love aperture though and will most likely be sticking with it.

 

[maflynn]

I'm not seeing a huge uptick in performance but I'm comparing LR over A3. I've switched to LR this past summer and so comparing A2 and A3 isn't feasible. I had retained my old A2 library which I'm using to test and imported all of my DNGs from LR.

I see either a lag or spinning beachball when applying the default automatic adjustments and/or when switching to a new image. I suppose the latter issue is when A3 is rendering the full sized preview, which is what LR does so I'm not really complaining about that.

btw, I'm running on a 2.53Ghz MBP with 4 gig of ram in K64 mode

 

[CrackedButter]

I'm not seeing a huge uptick in performance but I'm comparing LR over A3. I've switched to LR this past summer and so comparing A2 and A3 isn't feasible. I had retained my old A2 library which I'm using to test and imported all of my DNGs from LR.

I see either a lag or spinning beachball when applying the default automatic adjustments and/or when switching to a new image. I suppose the latter issue is when A3 is rendering the full sized preview, which is what LR does so I'm not really complaining about that.

btw, I'm running on a 2.53Ghz MBP with 4 gig of ram in K64 mode

What size are your raw riles? This doesn't sound that good for me upgrade wise.

 

[Grimace]

I installed Ap3 on my MacBook Air, and even the crappy integrated video card in that machine is able to handle 24MB RAW files fairly well. I don't have a 50,000 image library in there but it is encouraging.

Dedicated video cards and 4GB+ of RAM is probably the best bet for larger libraries or for libraries with large RAW files.

 

[CrackedButter]

I installed Ap3 on my MacBook Air, and even the crappy integrated video card in that machine is able to handle 24MB RAW files fairly well. I don't have a 50,000 image library in there but it is encouraging.

Dedicated video cards and 4GB+ of RAM is probably the best bet for larger libraries or for libraries with large RAW files.

We'll see what maflynn says, but I'm running Ap3 with 3GB of RAM (mainboard limitation) and a 2Ghz core 2 duo chip with integrated card. This is the only program that slows my machine down to crazy amounts. I wait a bit longer for a newer laptop if his isn't preforming well. Good to know about the MBA though.

 

[maflynn]

What size are your raw riles? This doesn't sound that good for me upgrade wise.

My RAW files are small compared to others, I'm using a d70s - about 5meg a file.

I'm not saying its wicked slow but rather I don't seem to see the speed increase others have noted. I'm going to switch to 32bit mode and see if that improves performance. A number of people have mentioned doing that and finding it a better experience.

 

[Westside guy]

People with integrated video - if you could mention which one you've got (Intel versus nVidia), it'd be helpful. My Air has the integrated nVidia 9400M chipset, and in my experience for most tasks it runs circles around the older Intel "solution" that was in previous lower-end Macs.

 

[Grimace]

People with integrated video - if you could mention which one you've got (Intel versus nVidia), it'd be helpful. My Air has the integrated nVidia 9400M chipset, and in my experience for most tasks it runs circles around the older Intel "solution" that was in previous lower-end Macs.

nVidia 9400M here too -- so much faster than the older Intel option!

 

[CrackedButter]

My RAW files are small compared to others, I'm using a d70s - about 5meg a file.

I'm not saying its wicked slow but rather I don't seem to see the speed increase others have noted. I'm going to switch to 32bit mode and see if that improves performance. A number of people have mentioned doing that and finding it a better experience.

Weird, I'm playing with over 5000, 20meg raw files. Yours shouldn't be that slow plus I have the intel card. What kind of hard diskdo you have?

 

[yaroldb]

I've only been playing with it for a few days. I've imported 2 different events, about 20 pictures each. Most are Raw files (10mb) some are .tiff files (50mb). It opens fast and runs very fast for the most part. However, when I use some of the brushes, it lags. I'll paint an area and it takes a few seconds for it to catch up to the areas I painted. It's on a delay. I use a SSD drive (64mb Vertex), 4gb of ram and a 2.4ghz Unibody Macbook Pro. I've even changed the card (9600) to see if there was improvement and there was not. I really like Aperture 3 and am looking to move over from Lightroom, but this is making it difficult. I'll play with the demo for a while and see how it works out.

 

[wheelhot]

yeah, I realize editing is not that smooth yet especially in full screen mode. In full screen mode, I got no problem doing the management side in preview mode but things start to get laggy in non-preview (move to the next pictures quickly and it lags) and adjustments in full-screen is near unusable.

I got not much problem in non full screen though but editing is still not as smooth as I hoped for and like someone mentioned, brushes lags. I hope Apple will get this fix soon.

I wonder how are those with a MacPro are running A3

 

[HarryPot]

Does anyone else find that Aperture takes a looong time to launch?

Once you open it and close it, it opens faster. But after a restart, it takes way to long.