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Mac Photos performance issues during editing

I recently upgraded an older macbook pro to high sierra and photos 3.0. Now when I open a photo for editing for the first time, I get a spinner in the bottom right corner of the photo and no changes take effect for 45-90 seconds. If I edit the photo again later, it's not quite as bad. Is there any way to improve performance? I've tried creating a new library with a handful of pictures, and the performance is just as bad. I've also tried editing photos that were imported with the previous version of photos, and the performance is still terrible. I've also left photos running in the background while the laptop is idle for multiple days (I saw some suggestions that it might need to complete background processing). Any ideas?

Posted on Aug 29, 2021 11:17 AM

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Posted on Sep 1, 2021 8:57 AM

Last suggestion is to log into a basic admin user account, Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac and see if the problem persists with another test library. This tells us if the problem is limited to your user account or is system wide.



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12 replies

Aug 29, 2021 2:01 PM in response to Heavydistortion

Hi


Couple of questions - does this older mac have an SSD?

Is "optimise mac storage" set in preferences? If so, it will need to download the original file from iCloud before it can do anything with it.


Also - if you use iCloud photos - it may well be carrying out a complete new sync, which will be impacting performance. What does the status say at the bottom of the all photos view?

Aug 29, 2021 3:58 PM in response to TonyCollinet

It does have an SSD. Optimize storage is turned off. I have over 30 gb of free space.


No, I do not use iCloud.


Its like theres now some new preprocessing step every time I edit a photo for the first time. Once I get past the initial delay, photo adjustments seem to perform similarly to preupgrade. The additional 45+ seconds is killing me because I have hundreds of photos to finish editing...

Sep 14, 2021 10:50 PM in response to Heavydistortion

How much free storage do you have on your Mac?

Is your Photos Library syncing with iCloud and using "Optimise Mac Storage"? If yes, then Photos may need to the download the original file from iCloud and toffee storage for the download, before it can start editing. The second editing will be faster, if the downloaded file is still stored locally.


Where is your Photos Library stored? Is it in your Pictures folder or on an external volume?


Mac Photos performance issues during editing

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