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waffles123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2009
228
0
Hey, I've been shooting a lot of RAW lately, and storing it in iPhoto. My Raws are about 5.5 mb (Nikon D40), and they take about 2 seconds to load them in iPhoto. I tried Aperture, and it's about the same, maybe a bit worse. I'm worried about this because I plan to upgrade my camera soon, and these new cameras have much more megapixels than my D40. How slow will that be. So I saw in iPhoto preferences that you can save these Raws as .tiffs. Does that mean it will keep the Raws, but load the Tiffs for faster loading? I took a Raw, and saved it as a .Tiff in Preview, and the file size skyrocketed to 47 mb. Why is that? Isn't Raw the most uncompressed you can get? How can I load these Raws faster? Thanks
 

emorydunn

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2006
457
0
Austin Texas
You are correct in assuming that if you upgrade your camera to one with higher megapixels that it will take longer to open the RAWs simply because there is more data (the file size will probably just quite a bit as well, I don't know about Nikon but with modern Canon's the file size is around 50MB I think).

I think iPhoto will keep the original RAW files but selecting "Save as TIFF" will mean any edits you make will be saved as TIFFs instead of JPEG.

Now, for loading faster, what computer do you have and how much RAM? Because that will be a big factor in dealing with the RAW files, just like loading any other large file; it takes longer.
 

waffles123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2009
228
0
I have a Unibody MBP, 2.4 Ghz, with 4 gb of Ram. I'm thinking about purchasing an Intel-X25m. I'm pretty sure that would help loading these large photos, right?
 

Jason Beck

macrumors 68000
Oct 19, 2009
1,913
0
Cedar City, Utah
I have a Unibody MBP, 2.4 Ghz, with 4 gb of Ram. I'm thinking about purchasing an Intel-X25m. I'm pretty sure that would help loading these large photos, right?

I have a similar setup except mine is the 2ghz Macbook Alum Unibody. I have the x25 and I load my Raw files almost instantly. They laoded a lot faster after the SSD upgrade, so did everything else lol.
 

waffles123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2009
228
0
I have a similar setup except mine is the 2ghz Macbook Alum Unibody. I have the x25 and I load my Raw files almost instantly. They laoded a lot faster after the SSD upgrade, so did everything else lol.

Thats awesome. But one question: The highest capacity x25 is 160gb. If these photos are 50 mb a pop, isn't the drive going to fill up pretty quickly? How many photos do you take? Do you archive most of them on an external drive? Thanks.
 

emorydunn

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2006
457
0
Austin Texas
I have a Unibody MBP, 2.4 Ghz, with 4 gb of Ram. I'm thinking about purchasing an Intel-X25m. I'm pretty sure that would help loading these large photos, right?

That's almost what I have and I can load RAW files pretty quick as well. You should do some testing to see if anything is using too much RAM or any other system resource.
 

waffles123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2009
228
0
I have about a 600mb of of free ram, and 750 mb of inactive. The rest is either active or wired. I'm not sure if I'm complaining about nothing, so I took a screencast to show you how long it loads. (It's only about 700 kb and 9 seconds). Notice once I select it in iPhoto, it takes a sec or 2 to make the image sharp. Thanks

Video: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/879409/iphoto raw.mov
 

emorydunn

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2006
457
0
Austin Texas
I have about a 600mb of of free ram, and 750 mb of inactive. The rest is either active or wired. I'm not sure if I'm complaining about nothing, so I took a screencast to show you how long it loads. (It's only about 700 kb and 9 seconds). Notice once I select it in iPhoto, it takes a sec or 2 to make the image sharp. Thanks

Video: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/879409/iphoto raw.mov

Actually, that doesn't look to far off from what my system does in Aperture. It takes it a second to load the photo at full size. I don't think iPhoto has an option to cache the full sized previews like Aperture or Lightroom do but that doesn't look abnormal.
 

waffles123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2009
228
0
Hey, I tried Aperture with the full size previews, and it loaded them much faster. The problem was that editing and changing pictures was pretty slow, even with just 45 pictures in the library. Also, it took a good 5 minutes for it to "Process" all of the photos. Is that normal? Also, my fans were blowing relatively high. I checked activity monitor and it said Aperture was using 900 mb of Ram. Is that also normal? Lastly, these 45 Raws were about 5 mb each, which should equal about 225 mb, give or take a few. However, the Aperture Library was almost 500mb. How many pictures do you have in your library and what's the file size of it?

Thanks a bunch.
 

emorydunn

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2006
457
0
Austin Texas
As I'm sure you've gathered if you've read any threads on Aperture, it's a resource hog. Aperture wants to eat your RAM for lunch and your processor for dessert (with a side of fan spinning).

Personally I love Aperture and for me some edits take a while to be applied where-as others are quick. As for processing time (after importing a photo, right?) that is because it renders out a bunch of stuff for each file. It will generate JPEG previews for it and that takes time so five minutes is about right for a small batch of photos.

As for library size, since Aperture stores previews and the originals and the edits (in a database, not as files) things add up quickly. I have 16,695 photos in my library and it is 71.27GB.
 

waffles123

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2009
228
0
As for library size, since Aperture stores previews and the originals and the edits (in a database, not as files) things add up quickly. I have 16,695 photos in my library and it is 71.27GB.

That's not too bad. Are all of those Raws? What camera, and how big are the files? Based on my calculations, each photo is about 4.3 mb, but you never know, as indicated by the weird filesize of my library. Thanks so much. ( I ask too many questions :p )
 

emorydunn

macrumors 6502
Jun 5, 2006
457
0
Austin Texas
That's not too bad. Are all of those Raws? What camera, and how big are the files? Based on my calculations, each photo is about 4.3 mb, but you never know, as indicated by the weird filesize of my library. Thanks so much. ( I ask too many questions :p )

It's a variety of cameras ranging from a Canon SD1000 to a 1D Mk III and everything in between. Not all of them are RAW, in fact most are probably JPEG. A RAW off my current camera (a Canon 40D) is about 13MB. And you can (usually :p) never ask too many questions.
 
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