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TICKET ARCHIVE -> iPhoto lag

nuubie - Aug 31, 2008 - 1:10 am

When I move on to the next picture (on a fast 10000rpm Sata hard drive on the Sata bus, not Firewire or USB or a card reader), there is a lag of about 2 seconds before the picture becomes sharp. I thought this was to initially load it but its happening on pictures that have been viewed a few minutes ago as well. Is there any way of getting the system to load all the pictures into memory and they can be viewed with no lag? Surely this can't be normal iPhoto behaviour? No professional could put up with this. Surely I've missed something? Using 2gb ram on a 1.5ghz Solo CPU (surely the CPU is the weakest link).

DeltaMac - Aug 31, 2008 - 5:42 pm

If you are in editing mode, iPhoto will resharpen for each image as you show it on screen. On small images, the lag will not be noticable. You will notice there's no lag when going through the thumbnail images, which would normally be used for sorting, etc. Images that are larger than the screen area that you are using may have a very noticeable lag before the image re-sharpens. The time is certainly CPU-dependent.
iPhoto is not considered a pro-level app by Apple, or anyone else, AFAIK. It's a consumer-level app that comes with all Macs. Some pros that I know use it, regardless of its designation. But, there's certainly other photo library software out there.
Why wouldn't a pro photog put up with that? I have several customers who are pro photogs, and one apparently with national-class notoriety amongst photogs. He uses Apple's Aperture pro-class software. The others use iPhoto exclusively. They don't offer any complaints, but then I haven't asked them about that.
Another thing to consider, all the photogs that I know have at least 17-inch MacBook Pros, lots of memory - or a couple also have MacPro dual-quad loaded systems - which hove no problem with those lags. The lag is still there, just so short as to not be noticeable in normal use.

nuubie - Sep 1, 2008 - 12:08 am

I checked Activity Monitor and sure enough the CPU usage spiked as soon as it was processing the photo in full fomat (double clicking on the thumbnail). But if iPhoto would simply have an option whereby it would load all of them (say it takes a few minutes for a lot of photos), I could come back to it later and see everything pop up instantly. I guess there is no logical option like that. Another one of Apple's bizarre software design choices. I don't know how anyone without the patience of Job could put up with software design inferiority like that. In Preview there is no such lag. Of Preview is lacking in a lot of iPhoto's features. I tried Xee. Have you tried it? Its got some interesting prospects. I'll spend more time with my new friend Xee and let you know how it goes. (Sounds like a referee at the Beijing Olympics.)

nuubie - Sep 2, 2008 - 11:32 pm

Xee rocks. iPhoto's lag on full screen images makes the program useless for me. Who can wait 2 seconds when you're editing hundreds of photos? There is no lag with other photo programs. Not even Preview? Why iPhoto?

TechSupport - Sep 7, 2008 - 5:10 pm

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