El Capitan's Finder is very slow with large images

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

If you're working with large TIFF, PSD or RAW files, the Finder in El Capitan GM1 is damn slow at previewing folder contents. I said this before but I have been doing more tests now. This is the slowest file manager for creatives that I have seen since PowerPC days. The last time the Finder was this slow was probably OSX 10.5. We're in 2015 now and we should have something closer to real time interaction, yet I have folders that I have been working from for two days and the thumbnails still haven't been generated.

For the record, 12 core Mac Pro, 24 GB memory, Samsung 850 Evo.

The test. On a folder with 19 TIFFS, each between 300-400MB, El Capitan still hasn't generated thumbnails after more than a day. It takes up to 5 seconds to open an image in Preview and almost 3 seconds with QuickLook.

The test on Windows 10. The same folder, except this time I have copied it to the much slower hard drive Windows is installed on. The thumbnails were generated for the whole folder within 4 seconds. Each file takes a second to open in Windows Photo Viewer.

This same test can be repeated with similar results in other folders of TIFFS and other large image files (note : measure in megabytes not dimension!). I'm sorry to say, but El Capitan in its current state is not good enough for creatives, artists, photographers, etc who don't want to lose very precious time waiting around when they have deadlines approaching.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I was asked in another thread to make a video demo. I was going to wait until the final GM build and will keep testing later on.

To make this test fair I placed the test image on a separate hard drive instead of loading it from the desktop of either Windows or El Capitan. This meant the image couldn’t be cached by the OS in any way.

Test system : Mac Pro, 12 core 3.46Ghz, 24GB RAM, Geforce GTX980
Test image : house.tif
File size : 2.88GB
File dimensions : 19648 × 22080
Color profile : Adobe RGB
File location : NTFS formatted hard drive.

The test video:
----link removed----

I had to remove the link because Dropbox said I was using excessive traffic.

Windows 10
File opens immediately in Windows Photo Viewer and renders in 4 seconds.

El Cap GM1
QuickLook : file beachballs and opens in 22 seconds
Preview : app hangs and finally opens image in 24 seconds

This is just a single image test. Windows wins easily.

But that was only half my issue with El Capitan. When I have many more large images in a folder El Cap fails to generate thumbnails for them, which means I have to use Adobe Bridge to be be able to see which files I am selecting.

I wish we could just blame my graphics card’s Mac driver, but I see these issues even on Yosemite on iMacs at work. Bear in mind also that this graphics card on Yosemite and El Cap can play the most graphically intensive games available without breaking sweat. You really can't blame it for these poor file operations that shouldn't be this slow and even with a much weaker graphics card.

Bridge and Photoshop still opens files at normal pretty fast speeds, proving that the Finder and Preview need work.

 

[Shirasaki]

El capitan is also very slow when trying to get file/folder size information.
Under Windows, this only accounts for the actual size of files/folders, since calculation algorithm is very effective.
Under El Capitan, or Mac OS X if possible, this process takes about 2 or 3 times longer time than under Windows, especially when file numbers are extraordinary large.
I have a folder often with 7000+ files stored inside and this will just take more than 20 minutes to determine file count and size, and another 20 minutes to delete them, by moving them to trash can. If I want to delete those 7000+ files, it will take overall 30-40 minutes to complete deletion. Sometimes it will take over 1 hour.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

El capitan is also very slow when trying to get file/folder size information.
Under Windows, this only accounts for the actual size of files/folders, since calculation algorithm is very effective.
Under El Capitan, or Mac OS X if possible, this process takes about 2 or 3 times longer time than under Windows, especially when file numbers are extraordinary large.
I have a folder often with 7000+ files stored inside and this will just take more than 20 minutes to determine file count and size, and another 20 minutes to delete them, by moving them to trash can. If I want to delete those 7000+ files, it will take overall 30-40 minutes to complete deletion. Sometimes it will take over 1 hour.

The final build of 10.11 was slower than the tests I ran above. Even worse is the fact I ran the new tests on my desktop off an SSD and I have Metal driver support now (so that was a non-issue).

The interface and animations are fast in El Cap, but the Finder isn't built for navigating the kind of large image files that modern professionals create.

Conclusion : You will have to use Bridge for serious file previewing.

 

[iBug2]

The last time the Finder was this slow was probably OSX 10.5.

Weird that you say this because 10.5 had the fastest Finder of any OS X release so far. Starting with 10.6 Finder started to get slower and slower when displaying the contents of a newly opened window. I used to be able to open a folder of 2000 images instantly and scroll up and down at 60 fps with 10.5. Nowadays I open a folder, it takes time to load the contents and when I start scrolling, the fps is terrible until Finder caches the entire thing. I'm on a nMP 6 core with D700 btw. I really miss the 10.5 Finder.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Weird that you say this because 10.5 had the fastest Finder of any OS X release so far. Starting with 10.6 Finder started to get slower and slower when displaying the contents of a newly opened window. I used to be able to open a folder of 2000 images instantly and scroll up and down at 60 fps with 10.5. Nowadays I open a folder, it takes time to load the contents and when I start scrolling, the fps is terrible until Finder caches the entire thing. I'm on a nMP 6 core with D700 btw. I really miss the 10.5 Finder.

Yes, it was somewhere around Leopard and Snow Leopard that the Finder took a backseat and then has not been catching up with advances in file sizes, photography and image creation. I still have back ups from those days and can compare the Finder's performance because of that.

In the days of 10.5-10.6 I was travelling a lot and my work was done on a MBP with a spinning hard drive, no more than 4GB RAM, a dual core processor and Radeon X1600 and then 860M. The Finder was performing was performing well for those times but things have moved on. Today a Nikon or Sony takes 36mpixel images. A Canon does 50mpixel. Windows File Explorer can handle these images easily. In two years time images this big will be at the consumer level.

 

[Shirasaki]

The final build of 10.11 was slower than the tests I ran above. Even worse is the fact I ran the new tests on my desktop off an SSD and I have Metal driver support now (so that was a non-issue).

The Finder isn't built for navigating the kind of large image files that modern professionals create.

Conclusion : You will have to use Bridge for serious file previewing.

And the fact is: all of my such files are arbitrary temp cache files. No way to open it and view them normally, except HEx editor.

I don't know if Adobe Bridge is free for use, but Apple does a very terrible job on large single file and large number of files managing.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

And the fact is: all of my such files are arbitrary temp cache files. No way to open it and view them normally, except HEx editor.

I don't know if Adobe Bridge is free for use, but Apple does a very terrible job on large single file and large number of files managing.

Bridge is 'free' only in the sense that it is a file manager that comes with Creative Suite. The big advantage Finder has over other file managers is that keyboard navigation is excellent. But without the performance it's not worth my time.

 

[Shirasaki]

Bridge is 'free' only in the sense that it is a file manager that comes with Creative Suite.

I currently have a creative cloud sub, but I don't know if I can download and use bridge as individual file manager, especially image and media file manager.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I currently have a creative cloud sub, but I don't know if I can download and use bridge as individual file manager, especially image and media file manager.

If someone doesn't have an Adobe subscription they can download a demo of Photoshop. Bridge is included and will probably continue to work after demo expires because it doesn't have a sign-in/activation in the app.

 

[Shirasaki]

If someone doesn't have an Adobe subscription they can download a demo of Photoshop. Bridge is included and will probably continue to work after demo expires because it doesn't have a sign-in/activation in the app.

Other than Adobe Bridge, do we have other alternatives under Mac? Path Finder did an even worse work when El Capitan was still in early beta.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Other than Adobe Bridge, do we have other alternatives under Mac? Path Finder did an even worse work when El Capitan was still in early beta.

Unfortunately nothing else. Finder would have been my preferred form of file management with Bridge for batch processing.

 

[Shirasaki]

Unfortunately nothing else. Finder would have been my preferred form of file management with Bridge for batch processing.

Well, would it be possible to hope Apple changing a little bit about this, in the future?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Well, would it be possible to hope Apple changing a little bit about this, in the future?

The bigger Apple gets the more harder it gets to make them listen to user requests. If enough people protest maybe there could be a change with Apple creating a dedicated department, but judging from the recent past they have scrapped, cut or simplified all professional applications including the Finder's ability to handle large images.

Sadly Mac users are too ridiculously sheepish to make a protest because Jobs very meticulously used religious style memes and rituals to keep people faithful to the brand. They turn to crying on each other's shoulders or looking for impractical work arounds. Just take a look at the Mac Pro forum. At first they sought practical ways to upgrade their computers and now that forum has turned into an emotional support board for people with personal issues/agendas who need to impress each other with pointless purchases that offer no real world benefit in an ageing machine. Anyone who contradicts them is attacked on a personal level. That's straight out of a religious fanatic's textbook.

 

[iBug2]

El Capitan finder so far is the fastest one since 10.5 though. I can copy/paste/cut large number of files without any lag, last witnessed at 10.5. It's still not as smooth as 10.5 but it's better than any Finder release that came after.

 

[PowerBook-G5]

I've noticed when viewing (18MP) photos with Quick-Look from my camera's SD Card that the Finder is very slow.

 

[Traverse]

Finder's general performance (creating folders, moving files, etc) is better than Yosemite, but working with larger images (20-26MB RAWs) is still slow.

 

[sibcc]

Bridge is 'free' only in the sense that it is a file manager that comes with Creative Suite. The big advantage Finder has over other file managers is that keyboard navigation is excellent. But without the performance it's not worth my time.

Slow here when opening or previewing image files. So far, I'm getting rather familiar with Apple's new flat spinning "beach ball." The EC UI seems slower just about everywhere relative to Yosemite. After a week, I finally managed to get my EC test machine in somewhat of a useable state, but I'm not moving to it anytime soon in the machines I use.

 

[cbrand493]

All okay here. 27" late 2013 iMac w/ standard HDD. Folder of 200+ canon RAW photos at 8688 x 5792 resolution (51.0 MP) generates previews pretty quickly. Files are around 65-85MB each.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

All okay here. 27" late 2013 iMac w/ standard HDD. Folder of 200+ canon RAW photos at 8688 x 5792 resolution (51.0 MP) generates previews pretty quickly. Files are around 65-85MB each.

Would be interested in seeing a video of that if you can because I can't replicate it on numerous faster machines.

 

[cbrand493]

Would be interested in seeing a video of that if you can because I can't replicate it on numerous faster machines.

I've just noticed your file sizes are quite a lot larger than mine so that could possibly be where the difference lies? Maybe you have an issue with thumbnail caches?

Btw, how did you get a GTX980 into a Mac Pro?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I've just noticed your file sizes are quite a lot larger than mine so that could possibly be where the difference lies? Maybe you have an issue with thumbnail caches?

Btw, how did you get a GTX980 into a Mac Pro?

The older tower version with expansion slots.

Just install Nvidia's Quadro drivers they supply on their site. Shut down, install the card, and boot. It isn't 100% native support (although some on the Mac Pro forum are a little too eager to believe it is and become particularly nasty when you tell them it isn't) but it works fine and Nvidia says they are working on supporting Maxwell's architecture genuinely.

 

[cbrand493]

The older tower version with expansion slots.

Just install Nvidia's Quadro drivers they supply on their site. Shut down, install the card, and boot. It isn't 100% native support (although some on the Mac Pro forum are a little too eager to believe it is and become particularly nasty when you tell them it isn't) but it works fine and Nvidia says they are working on supporting Maxwell's architecture genuinely.

Are the old Mac Pros PCIe 3.0? Aren't you bottlenecking the card there?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Are the old Mac Pros PCIe 3.0? Aren't you bottlenecking the card there?

It's PCIE 2.0 on Mac side, runs as 1.1 on Windows Bootcamp side.

This depends on the application or game. If an app genuinely does saturate that PCIE bus to a large extent then obviously there is a performance hit. But to give you a figure, CUDA/OpenCL apps run about same because those cores aren't so heavily reliant on the bandwidth. Gaming wise, in Bootcamp games are about 10% slower than a native Windows PC with 3.0. But that still means the frame rates are very high because the GTX 980 and other new cards offer excessive amount of power and enough video memory to prevent swapping. The only people who would care are enthusiasts who like to show off the highest possible numbers.

 

[johnmckay]

For RAW files I've been using this app that was on Nikon Rumors. It's basically a plugin. The RAW files show instantly when I click on them. Massive time saver and I don't even want to remember my job before it. I've been using it with Yosemite and hesitating to install El Capitan in case it goes back.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/raw-right-away/id963507809?mt=12