Aperture slowdown

Well I am still on latest snow leopard and wait for updates to Aperture and OS Lion beofre I will upgrade to Lion. But til the latest upgrades to SL, I do have some slowdowns with Aperture 3.1.3 and some other Apple Apps, if Aperture is running.
First I saw that, was as I refined a slideshow within Aperture which was created half a year before. I know, exporting that slideshow to a movie took about four to five minutes at full hd resolution. But now, it took around 25 minutes with the same export settings. I tried that with few other slideshows too and with the same slowdown.
Today, I had iTunes made a photosync with iPad from iPhoto 9.1.5, which was running too and beside I opend Aperture, which took about 10 minutes to start. My Aperture library has only 25k of images in it and it takes normally only few seconds to start.
Has anyone the same behavior in case of Aperture and SL 10.6.8?

Hello Frank,
Mac Pro 2006, 2.66 GHz, 10 GB RAM, Aperture library resides on 2 TB disk, 1.2 TB free
I did a check of activity monitor but could not see any unusable like huge processor values on any process - Aperture runs most times within 100% - means one core is used or four cores are used by 25%.
I did this morning too a disk check but not faults overall. I do have a newer ATI 5770 graphics card installed, so this can not be the solution. What I changed in the last 6 weeks was, I installed new some apps from the mac app store like Apple Motion 5, iMovie 11, iPhoto 11 and Compressor 4. So my thought was first, a newer app could be the reason and thats why I checked activity monitor. On the other hand, I do have build in two 2 TB drives this year (one for my Aperture libraries, one for Time Machine Backup) and do have since 2007, as I bought this Mac, a 750 GB drive and my boot disk, the original 250 GB drive, in there. And because a drive can fail, I checked the disks too.
Ah, my boot disk is as over the past years never filled up with more than 50 %, today I have 140 GB free and 110 GB is in use. That didn't change this year. And because my libaries reside on the second drive, that can not be the reason.

Similar Messages

1.1 performance problems related to system configuration?

It seems like a lot of people are having serious performance problems with Aperture 1.1 in areas were they didn't have any (or at least not so much) problems in the previous 1.01 release.
Most often these problems occur as slow behaviour of the application when switching views (especially into and out of full view), loading images into the viewer or doing image adjustments. In most cases Aperture works normal for some time and then starts to slow down gradually up to point were images are no longer refreshed correctly or the whole application crashes. Most of the time simply restarting Aperture doesn't help, one has to restart the OS.
Most of the time the problems occur in conjunction with CPU usage rates which are much higher than in 1.0.1.
For some people even other applications seem to be affected to a point where the whole system has to be restarted to get everything working up at full speed again. Also shutdown times seem to increase dramatically after such an Aperture slowdown.
My intention in this thread is to collect information from users who are experiencing such problems about their system configuration. At the moment it does not look like these problems are related to special configurations only, but maybe we can find a common point when we collect as much information as possible about system where Aperture 1.1 shows this behaviour.
Before I continue with my configuration, I would like to point out that this thread is not about general speed issues with Aperture. If you're not able to work smoothly with 16MPix RAW files on G5 systems with Radeon 9650 video cards or Aperture is generally slow on your iBook 14" system where you installed it with a hack, than this is not the right thread. I fully understand if you want to complain about these general speed issues, but please refrain from doing so in this thread.
Here I only want to collect information from people who either know that some things works considerably faster in the previous release or who notice that Aperture 1.1 really slows down after some time of use.
Enough said, here is my information:
- Powermac G5 Dualcore 2.0
- 2.5 GB RAM
- Nvidia 7800GT (flashed PC version)
- System disk: Software RAID0 (2 WD 10000rpm 74GB Raptor drives)
- Aperture library on a hardware RAID0 (2 Maxtor 160GB drives) connected to Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 PCIe adapter
- Displays: 17" and 15" TFT
I do not think, that we need more information, things like external drives (apart from ones used for the actual library), superdrive types, connected USB stuff like printers, scanners etc. shouldn't make any difference so no need to report that. Also it is self-evident that Mac OS 10.4.6 is used.
Of interest might be any internal cards (PCIe/PCI/PCI-X...) build into your system like my RAID adapter, Decklink cards (wasn't there a report about problems with them?), any other special video or audio cards or additional graphic cards.
Again, please only post here if you're experiencing any of the mentioned problems and please try to keep your information as condensed as possible. This thread is about collecting data, there are already enough other threads where the specific problems (or other general speed issues) are discussed.
Bye,
Carsten
BTW: Within the next week I will perform some tests which will include replacing my 7800GT with the original 6600 and removing as much extra stuff from my system as possible to see if that helps.

Yesterday i had my first decent run in 1.1 and was pleased i avoided a lot perfromance issues that seemed to affect others.
After i posted, i got hit by a big slow-down in system perfromance. I tried to quit Aperture but couldn't, it had no tasks in its activity window. However Activity Monitor showed Aperture as a 30 thread 1.4GB Virtual memory hairball soaking-up 80-90% of my 4 cpu's. Given the high cpu activity i suspected the reason was not my 2GB of RAM, althought its obviously better with more. So what caused the sudded decerease in system perfromance after 6 hours of relative trouble free editing/sorting with 1.1 ?
This morning i re-created the issue. Before i go further, when i ran 1.1 for the first time i did not migrate my whole library to the new raw algorithum (its not called the bleeding edge for nothing). So this morning i selected one project to migrate all its raw images to 1.1 and after the progress bar completed its work, the cpus ramped and system got bogged-down again.
So Aperture is doing a background task that is consuming large amounts of cpu power, shows nothing in its activity monitor and takes a very long time to complete. My project had 89 raw images migrated to the 1.1 algorithum and it took 4 minutes to complete those 'background processes' (more reconstituting of images?). I'm not sure what its doing, but it takes a long time and shows no obvious sign it is normal. If you leave it to complete its work, the system returns to normal. More of an issue is the system allows you to continue to work as the background processes crank, compounding the heavy workload.
Bit of a guess this, but is this what is causing people system's problems ? As i said if i left my quad alone for 4 minutes all returns as normal. Its just not normal to think it will ever end, so you do more and compound the slow-down ?
In the interests of research i did another project migrating 245 8MB raws to the 1.1 algorithum and it took 8 minutes. First 5mins consumed 1GB of virtual memory over 20 threads at average 250% CPU usage for Aperture alone. The last three minutes saw the cpus ramp higher to 350%, virtual memory increase to 1.2GB. After the 8 minutes all returned to nornal and fans slowed down (excellent fan/noise behaviour on these quads).
Is this what others are seeing ?
When you force quit Aperture during these system slow-downs what effect does this having on your images ? Do the uncompleted background processes restart when you go to try and view them ?
If i get time i'll try and compare to my MBP.

Major slowdown causing Aperture to become unusable on MacPro

I posted this message back in September 08, but the thread has been archived so I cannot reply to it. But the issue is on-going.
I'm at my wits end with Aperture on my desktop Mac (Mac Pro, 2 x 2.66 Ghz Duel Core, 9GB Ram, Radeon X1900 512Mb video card).
My library is currently running at over 115,000 managed images divided into projects each around 100-200 images, these are organised into folders for each month of the year, residing in folders for each year. Images pre-2006 are JPEG and the rest, around 31,000, are RAW files.
When I go into a project and try to edit a caption, select an images, make an adjustment, or just 'Select All' I get the spinning beachball of death, sometimes for up to 5 minuets. Even just clicking on an image to select it in browser mode results in a SBBoD for 20-30 seconds. Adjustments are painful and frustrating. This happens with no other apps running and without Aperture doing any background tasks.
My library of managed images used to resides on a dedicated 1Tb drive installed in an internal bay of the Mac Pro, vaulted to a third drive. The was rather full so recently U have RAID-ed two drives together to provide more storage and now I have 476GB free, about 1/3 of the drives.
There is quite obviously something wrong, as once in a while I can edit a project fairly swiftly, making adjustments, using the sliders fluidly and use full-screen mode etc. However, most of the time it is as slow as described.
It has got to the point when I am editing on my Mac Book Pro (which only contains a few projects, around 500 RAW files) and then transferring the finished project to my Mac Pro for archiving purposes. In fact I have recently exported a project of 1800 RAW files to my laptop to edit, and when finished re-imported to the Mac Pro library as just selecting just a few images to export was taking me half an hour.
Does anyone have a suggestion as to what might be casing the colossal slowdowns and any tips for fixing it? I have already rebuilt the library and moved it to a drive with more free storage.
I'd like to hear from users who have over 100k managed RAW images in their libraries and hear what performance is like on certain systems. I'm convinced that Aperture is capable of running fast and smoothly with this size of archive and that I have a more than powerful set-up.

There is quite obviously something wrong
We agree that something is wrong. The problem is that with heaviest-graphics work almost anything or any combination of things can compromise performance as described. So...
• What version of Aperture?
• What are the files (e.g. mostly 20 MB Nikon NEFs or whatever)?
• What do you observe long term watching Activity Monitor?
• What exactly are your hard drive setups including how full, what types of arrays, what lives on what drives, what connectivity, etc.?
• What routine maintenance have you done on the box since it was new? Not just what you did last week, what was done 2007/2008? Have you ever "migrated" an install?
• What kinds of apps are on the box? Any free ones? Plug-ins? Any bargain buys that potentially could have been pirate versions carrying malware? Any other users with access to the box?
• Does this happen after a reboot with only Aperture open and after all hard drives are for sure up and fully running? A common problem is one or more hard drives spinning down, perhaps intermittently. That would exactly describe your symptoms. Note also that some small apps and most plug-ins get installed to auto-launch, so verify that none are running.
IMO running a Managed-Masters-Library with 100k image files probably requires a perfect RAID array setup for the Library running perfectly along with additional arrays to properly back it all up. Personally I use a RAID0 Library arrayed on two internal drives but use a Referenced-Masters-Library with Masters on external drives to keep Library size reasonable. (Note this para is just an observation, we have a lot more to discuss in order to troubleshoot)
Buy Disk Warrior (be sure to get the exact version appropriate for your OS) and run it if you have not yet done so.
Try creating and running as a new user.
Trash Preferences and restart.
Repair Permissions immediately before and immediately after any installation that asks for the admin password.
Although repairing Permissions is not a fix for poor performance, many of us on the Photoshop forums do find that religiously repairing Permissions immediately before and immediately after every installation of any kind helps keep a graphics box running more smoothly. In any event repairing Permissions does no harm, only good.
If we do not come to a solution I will lend you a new unused HD2600 XT graphics card to try in the event your 1900 card is flaky (which is not uncommon). I bought it but it requires OS 10.5.x and I still use 10.4.11.
-Allen Wicks

New Mac Pro 2.8 and Problems with Aperture

Hi,
I just bought a new Mac Pro 2.8 with the standard 2GB of RAM. My main application is Aperture. Since I loaded it and pointed to my library, the system runs *very* slow when I am in Aperture. I get a lot of spinning wheels for everything I do ... including just switching between pictures. My library is ~130GB and when I tried importing my iPhoto 8 library, it crashed. Now when I try to delete the import project, Aperture hangs. I am very surprised by all of this. Any thoughts or suggestions?
An interesting side note, iPhoto with 140GB library works great.
Mac Pro 2.8, 2GB, 320GB Drive, 130GB Aperture Library, Leopard 10.5.1
Thanks,
-chris

Chris-
Unfortunately Apple reps are seldom good counselors as regards application performance. They are after all retail sales people, not users. Better advice is available from user forums typically populated by folks with years of real-world usage experience as well as education beyond that typically found in retail sales.
RAM is inexpensive now, so IMO MPs should have more RAM, adding two 2-GB sized DIMMs as a minimum add. For heavy apps like Adobe CS or Aperture I recommend adding 8 GB RAM, always minimum 2-GB sized DIMMs to avoid wasting limited slots. IMO RAM is the cheapest performance enhancer and most of us handling heavy graphics will want even more RAM, all slots, over the life of a new MP.
I would recommend buying 4-GB sized DIMMs except that they currently cost much more per GB.
Aperture has always required an advanced graphics card for good performance, even with MP towers. Do not be surprised if adding RAM does not provide a magic bullet. If you use Aperture professionally you will want to add an 8800 GT card.
All that said, Aperture ran adequately on my MBP even with the stock 2 GB RAM. Odds are very high that the slowdown you observe is not simply hardware based. I strongly recommend that you carefully pursue every one of the points discussed in the excellent Bagleturf speed discussion, and especially get fully conversant with Previews alternative settings.
Please describe your hard drive(s) configuration, including how full, since mass storage also bears heavily on performance.
Good luck!
-Allen Wicks

Why has Aperture suddenly started "beachballing"?

It appears that ever since I have started "Vaulting" (Verbatim portable HD); Aperture has become slow and started beachballing every time I launch application. The trainer at the store installed iStat(?) but it hasn't helped me with anything. I am editing and printing my pictures OK, but the slowness of the "Preview" and "Thumbnails" and this beachballing are driving me crazy. Anyone got any ideas? Many thanks.
Maxsgirl
Levittown, NY

Maxgirl-
Drives slow as they fill beyond about half full. Your drive is less than half full, so when no external drive is attached the drive(s) are unlikely to be part of the slowdown. Images fill drives quickly, however, so later on (after this current issue is resolved) personally I would "Reference" Master images by moving new originals to an external drive prior to importing into Aperture because trying to keep originals on a laptop drive usually sooner or later overfills the internal drive.
You did not state your RAM, but whatever it is you should max it out like Steven suggests; very important. Laptops and iMacs are by definition limiting to heavy graphics apps, so we want to max out hardware as best we can and keep setups as clean as possible.
A good idea is to restart your Mac before each session with Aperture, and do not have any other unnecessary apps open, especially browsers. Keep the OS, Aperture and other apps up to date at their most current levels, and like Steven suggests turn off Preview building while you are working. If you run Photoshop concurrently be aware that it too can be a RAM hog; if you are not yet on PSCS3, upgrade now because PSCS3 is fastest and Rosetta emulation will absolutely kill performance.
Also, be aware that all kinds of things affect overall operational speed with heavy graphics apps. Although repairing Permissions is not a fix for poor performance, many of us on the PS forums, for instance, find that religiously repairing Permissions immediately before and immediately after every installation of any kind helps keep a graphics box running more smoothly. Similarly, avoiding letting games or crapware (e.g. any free non-Apple app) get anywhere near the box also helps.
Under System Preferences/Energy Saver set to "Optimize Performance," and when possible run attached to a/c power when using Aperture.
Good luck! Please let us know how it all resolves.
-Allen Wicks
P.S. I recommend the US$35 tutorial CD Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 2 (Apple Pro Training Series) by Ben Long, Richard Harrington, and Orlando Luna (Paperback - May 8, 2008), Amazon.com. Note that the value is in the tutorial, not in using the book as a manual.
P.P.S. Steve Weller, builder of the excellent <http://www.bagelturf.com/index.html> Aperture website, discusses speed improvements here:
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1273934&tstart=75>
To really maximize performance after hardware is optimized, work to dial in each of the performance tweaks he discusses.
Message was edited by: SierraDragon

Aperture 3 library performance tip after upgrading

This tip may be helpful for anyone experiencing slow project/album loading and beachballing even with no background processes running in aperture 3.
I was having some major issues with performance in aperture 3 with all library/project/album and book loading operations. It was very odd because Adjustment performance is very good.
All my imported aperture 2 books would beach ball for about 50 seconds to load, and then each page would take 10 seconds to load after clicking on it. In comparison my aperture 2 library was near instantaneous.
After exporting the project as a separate library, rebuilding the library, repairing permissions, nothing was working.
As a last ditch effort before opening up Shark - I decided to open up the library in the finder, and manually delete all of the original previews. I then opened up the library in aperture and manually updated all the previews by highlighting all the thumbnails and right clicking -> update previews.
Once this process completed I quit aperture and restarted to see if I was still getting any slowdowns and the problem is now gone! Library loading and project switching operations are speedy as ever now, and the book navigation is faster than aperture 2 now.
Hope this helps anyone with performance issues.

Speak up if anyone has problems migrating because of previews or is successful in migrating without previews. I suspect this is my problem. I get to:
Upgrading Library 7% complete (updating master metadata - 5,068 remaining)
After restoring from a file vault with Aperture 2, I get to the same spot, with or without previews. Although this is a slightly different issue, I tried deleting previews within Aperture and reimporting. I got to the same exact spot as before. The computer becomes nearly unresponsive, and I have to force quit Aperture after hours of sitting at 5,068 remaining.

Aperture 2 is buggier than 1.5.6

Aperture 1.5.6 under Leopard (fully updated) was buggy on my PowerMac G5 with 6.5 GB of RAM and Radeon 9650. The Viewer blackout bug was especially annoying, prohibiting A-B comparisons of edits and slowing my workflow.
I bought the upgrade to 2.0, only to find that I could not update from my Academic license (real smart marketing, Apple) so I've been using 2.0 in trial mode.
The Viewer blackout bug is still present, with the "enhancement" that sometimes the Viewer window goes yellow instead of black. The underlying characteristic seems to be randomness. I can't predict when it will happen or what the screen will look like when it happens.
Worse by far, for usability, is that 2.0 becomes slower the longer the working session, then the cursed beachball starts appearing occasionally, then it's in my face every time I make an edit. So I quit and restart. At least quitting and starting is faster than with 1.5.6.
The slowdown comes on sooner and sooner with each restart of Aperture. After about three restarts the spinning beachball seems to last forever and I cannot start any other application, like Activity Monitor. That exhausts my patience and I kill my Mac by holding in the power button.
After restarting Leopard, the whole sequence of getting slower and slower repeats. I'm not a professional programmer, but the pattern suggests a severe memory leak, which eventually affects other applications like the Finder.
Why is it that Adobe can write image processing software that works on the Mac better than Apple? In fact, I have no reliability problems with any software other than Aperture, so the I don't have a hardware issue. TechTool Pro passes my Mac. I repair disk permissions frequently, using Disk Utility and sometimes DiskWarrior.
Although I have used Macs since the Mac Plus, persistent Aperture bugs through a major update combined with the upgrade-from-Academic crap is souring me on Apple. Who is supposed to know Macs better than Apple?
I love the Aperture interface and the results of editing images. I'm unhappy about not being able to update my Academic license for 2.0, but I planned to buy the full version anyway. However I would by nuts to "upgrade" to such a disastrous new version.
I'm curious why there are not more reports of the problems I'm seeing on this forum. Lots of people seem to be experiencing bugs, but different kinds of bugs. A few people have even posted high praise for the upgrade to Aperture 2, so they appear to have no problems. My Mac is completely stock, except for a Sonnet SATA card that is essential for managing the extra hard drives my photography requires, and no other software has problems with that card. Why does Aperture behave so differently on different Macs?

Thanks for your reply. I have automatic generation of previews turned off, share previews with iLife and iWork turned off, and use embedded JPEGs turned on. Aperture 2 works at reasonable speed for a while after starting, then slows down more and more with longer use. Then the Viewer blackouts start, with an occasional yellow screen instead of a black screen. The SBOD may start before or after the Viewer blackouts start.
Since my original post, only hours ago, I've also now seen the Viewer image appear upside down and distorted side-to-side (once). As with all the Viewer weirdnesses, the Viewer image looked normal again after restarting the application. As reported earlier, the SBOD and Viewer appearance problems increase in frequency after multiple restarts of Aperture, until I am forced to reboot my Mac.
I'd classify these abnormalities as bugs.
The Radeon 9650 graphics card was bought as an upgrade when I purchased my PowerMac G5. It is not the fastest graphics card, to be sure, but no other applications, including Photoshop CS3, have the least problem with it. Slowness is not the most serious issue I'm having. Having to restart the application repeatedly, then eventually reboot the OS, is the big issue.
The upgrade from Academic is not related to the problems I'm having with Aperture 2. As I wrote previously, I will pay for the full version - I WANT to buy the full version because I love Aperture 2 when it works - but I would feel like such a dummy to spend my money on an application that is so buggy that it interferes with my workflow. If anyone knows of a way to make Aperture 2 work on my Mac, I will be delighted to learn it.

Survey on Number of RAW IMages in Aperture

I would be interested in knowing how many RAW images people are loading into an Aperture catalog? Does anyone have 100,000 plus images? Does it handle this many photos without slowing down considerably? Any feedback on this subject matter is appreciated. Thanks.

100,000 images isn't a problem.
The key is not the number of images in a library, but rather in a specific project. I wouldn't put 5,000 images in a project, but I have 35,000 images in my library (250 GB) and there are no slowdowns to speak of. (Well, I don't click the "all images" smart album often )

Aperture getting worse

I've got Aperture 1.1.2 running on a PowerMac Dual 2GHz G5 and a 17" MacBook Pro (2.18GHz) both with 2GB RAM. Both computers have OS X 1.4.7.
Aperture really slows down some times to the point where I get the spinning beach ball of death for 30 seconds or more. Sometimes when trying to view a photo in full screen, the image is either blank or corrupted... I have to quit then reload to get the image to load correctly.
On the MacBook Pro, I only have about 150 photos (Canon 10D RAW) and the slowdown is unbearable. It's really getting annoying.
Another thing that is really annoying is when trying to select a bunch of thumbnails by dragging a square around them, and when getting to the bottom of the screen, it scrolls really slowly; just a couple of pixels a second. Then sometimes it will scroll right up the to the top for no reason.
Has anyone got any tips to speed it up? I might try out Adobe Lightroom to see how fast that works with the same number of photos.

I wonder if the slowness is related to the rendering of the canon raw files.
As an experiment, you might try exporting the raw photos and creating a new separate library with them to see if aperture runs just as slow.
Even if you find the nonraw library runs more smoothly, I am not really suggesting you adopt this as part of your workflow. It just might be good to know if the format is a factor or if something else is causing the laggardly performance.

Heavy Retouch Editing Really Slows Down Aperture!

I've been editing a few images in Aperture 3.0.1 that have require a significant amount of Retouch editing. Once I've reached about 70-80 Retouch edit brush strokes, Aperture starts to bog down. If I go over 100 Retouch brush strokes, Aperture REALLY starts to slow down, particularly if I try to export a file to be edited in Photoshop or NIK plugins. In fact, exporting is DRAMATICALLY slowed down, even if just exporting a 800x800 JPG. If I hit 150+ Retouch brush strokes, the Export Version function in Aperture becomes all but unusable. It can take 20-30 minutes to actually export the version! And that's just for a single image.
Once Aperture has caught up with itself, I can go and export a lightly edited image and it will happen in mere seconds. Go back to that heavily Retouched image, and export takes forever!
I sure hope the next release of Aperture resolves this issue! As best I can tell, it is directly related to RETOUCH (both Repair and Clone) and not so much the other Adjustments.
BTW, I have already shared my experience with the Aperture Team via Aperture Feedback.
Mark

I've seen this slowdown as well.
I think that, to some extent, that this is an issue that will exist with the type of application that Aperture is. It is dynamically applying your edits and rendering a final image to your eye, and if you have 150 retouches Aperture has to do a LOT of work. I mean, really, the math and calculations required are extreme. Maybe there's a magic bullet for this in how Aperture renders the output, but I don't know from the non-destructive nature whether this is possible. It could just be that I can't think of an easy way.

Aperture Performance Bottleneck- the Straighten Tool ?

While waiting for the next generation of MacPro's, I'm constantly frustrated by the performance of Aperture. I've got a maxed out MBP with 7,200 RPM internal drive, referenced masters on an ultrafast eSATA RAID, latest updates of everything, fresh OS, rebuilt Aperture Libraries, full test for bad RAM, etc. My current working library is around 25,000 images, and I try to keep projects to less than 1,000 each.
But some images take forever (up to a minute!) to load, and making adjustments often instantly brings up the spinning beach ball of death. It's gotten to the point where I dread sitting down to work because of the inevitable frustration and lack of productivity.
Last night I was reading Vincent Laforet's blog about the 28,000 or so shots he made at the Olympics. He uses Aperture, and while he may have a slightly more powerful 17" MBP, I can't imagine that he would use an application that would slow him down in the slightest. What is going on here....
I made a fresh library and put a few images in it and started playing around. One thing I noticed was that using the straighten tool seems to slow down the responsiveness of the sliders in the other adjustments. In other words, I can adjust white balance, exposure and enhance with only minor slowdown as I move from one brick to the next, but once I apply straightening, then things start crawling or spinning or hanging. I haven't tested this thoroughly, but my guess is that other similar tools such as cropping, or retouching may also have a disproportionate affect. If I remove all the adjustments, the images load instantly, and the sliders are responsive again.
Yes, I have read and applied Bagelturfs excellent advice on the subject: http://www.bagelturf.com/aparticles/tips/tipperf/index.php
and yes my 30" is probably slowing things down a bit, but the slowdowns are way beyond acceptable.
While a high horsepower desktop will certainly help, I still need to use my MBP on the road. Short of dreaming of Aperture 2.1.2 (or 3.x) and whatever improvements it may or may not bring, I'm really curious how other people who are trying to use Aperture for daily professional work on the MBP are dealing with this.

OK, did some testing.....
1) Did a 100% fresh install on an external FW800 drive. No Share/Freeware, just OS & Aperture. App launched slightly faster, but not much. Adjustments seemed ever so slightly faster, but not much. Overall experience was about the same.
2) Disconnected the external monitor and ran Aperture from the fresh install. Everything seemed snappier. Image pops into full screen much faster. Adjustements were snappy. Adding the Straighten adjustment did slow things down, but overall performance was improved.
3) Booted back to my daily OS (which has some free/shareware, but mostly mainstream stuff and no Unsanity, APE, etc.) Tested in my normal configuration. Seemed about the same as running off the fresh OS.
4) Ran from my daily OS, but without the external. Bingo. Snappy. Can move the levels slider in real time. Could not get any of the adjustments to beachball. Straighten slows things slightly.
So it looks like the video card is the culprit. I've got a mid-2007 MBP with the 256MB of VRAM. I see the newest MBPs have 512MB (but still using the same GeForce 8600)
I upgraded from my 23" ACD to the 30" NEC for both color accuracy and to speed up my workflow by giving myself more real estate for comparison, etc., but I now see that without a MacPro and speedy graphics card I've shot myself in the foot. I'd spring for a MP except a refresh seem like its probably right around the corner. Would be wonderful if Apple shifted its focus away from the iPhone/iTunes for a few nanoseconds and released a real workstation.....
In the meantime I'm in this strange limbo where if I want to use my ultra color accurate monitor for adjusting images, I have to deal with slow motion software. (BTW, the NEC LCD3090wQXi and Spectraview software is fantastic. Maybe 95% the quality of an EIZO for 50% of the cost.)

Aperture 2 All Projects will not allow viewing individual files

In the Library/All Projects selection are 4 projects, 3 allow me to click on any image and view it full screen. The 4th will not. Clicking on a picture won't open it, nor can I copy any files from it. How can I fix this? All of my pictures are stored here, over 10,000. And once there was a smart folder called ALL PICTURES in the LIBRARY but it has vanished, How can I put it back?

I tend to limit the size of each project to around 1,000 images as I notice a performance decrease thereafter. With 10,000 in one project you may have a decent slowdown.
Can you create a new project and drag pictures from project 4 into it?
If so divide up your huge project into smaller chunks.
Have you tried to rebuild the library/consistency check (hold alt as you start up aperture and run the checks in order)?
To replace the smart album, click on library, new - smart album - then choose, for example, rating is greater than 'unrated'. Then call it unrated or better photos. Again I tend to steer away from this mega folders due to the resultant slowdown.
Hope this helps
M.

Snow Leopard + Aperture 2.1.4 (problem)

I´ve just installed Snow Leopard in my MacBook Pro.
When I opened Aperture 2.1.4 that I use, i saw in the export window a fixed grey bar, wich is sometimes a problem to see folders.
I made a clean reinstall of Aperture but the problem is still there.
Any help please.
Problem image here : http://www.euroweblink.com/fotografias/screenshot.jpg

zemitch - I also use one of the slowest machines capable of running SL, but my your graphics card may be different than mine. But I also store my masters on an external drive and that wasn't the issue.
I found rebuilding the database of Aperture when starting up helps a bit, but the biggest improvement is to do cropping/straightening AFTER the other adjustments. That changes my workflow, but with no crop/straighten, the other adjustments didn't not show the horrible slowdown.
See if that helps you.

Snow Leopard and Aperture Nightmare

I am having major problems with Aperture 2.1.4 since upgrading to Snow Leopard. Everything is Much Much Slower, The Spinning Beachball appears regularly and at least twice a day I have to Force Quit the Application.
Other Applications are having slowdown and beachball issues as well but Aperture is my main work space and I am getting extremely frustrated when it takes me ridiculously long to do any simple task, even cropping. I have an Imac 3.06 with 4gb Ram with 80,000 Images but surely this should be well capable of operating perfectly. Any solutions?

If you are having problems with ALL programs, then your problem most likely is not related to Aperture specifically, but rather a hardware interface or OS installation problem. Your computer specs are more than adequate to run Aperture. Have you tried a clean install of Snow Leopard? To be clear, I am not suggesting this is a fix as I have made a clean install of SL, Aperture, new Library with fresh images, all updates, etc.. no peripherals installed, no 3rd party drivers/software...and still had beach balls, slow performance during adjustments and impossible use of Full Screen editing without visual corruption of screen images in Aperture. The remaining programs on my iMac, however, appear to run well.
If you haven't tried this already, open font book and make sure there are no conflicts. If you are running 10.6.2, this should have been fixed in the update. If not, you may have installed something after the update with new fonts and therefore, conflicts.
Make sure you have reset your PRAM by hold CommandOption+PR when starting your mac. Hold these 4 keys down together until your mac chimes 3 times.
You can try a boot into safe mode by holding down the S key when booting your mac.
You can try rebooting your mac by holding down your power button until you hear a long beep.
You can use a third party utility like Onyx or Cocktail or SLCC and flush caches (all of them), rebuild spotlight and rebuild dyld stuff.
You can make sure every printer driver, mouse driver, tablet (if you have one) and scanner drivers are up to date and Snow Leopard compatible. This is important.
You can run Console to see what error messages crop up during the beach ball spinning and send feedback to Apple.
For Aperture specific stuff you can hold the Option and Command keys down while opening Aperture and perform a consistency check or data rebuild.
You can move the com.apple.aperture.plist file from the Library/Preferences folder to your desktop and restart Aperture to see if this helps. (make sure to check your preferences in Aperture regarding previews as the new plist file will turn previews "on")
Highlight each of your projects and go to the gear icon in the top of the sidebar window and see if "maintain previews for project" is checked or not.
While using Aperture, as a troubleshooting measure, select the Activity window to be active from the Window column in the menu bar and see if anything is running in the background while using Aperture.
I'm sure more people will chime in....good luck and join the disgruntled crowd.

Initial thoughts on Aperture 2

1. Interface buttons nicely grouped and overall cleaned up
2. Tabs for projects, metadata, adjustments nice, but I cannot see a preference for "my set" of default adjustment tools: will have to look at plist
3. Preferences pane much better
Now the meat and two veg ....
4. Adjustment sliders are very smooth and result in an easier to achieve balance for an image. That said, still have to use <Option> or key in zero to get a slider back to zero.
5. Straighten, with or without crop is utter joy. Granted it should never have been the dog it was under 1.x, but kudos for fixing. Even works pretty fluidly at 100% zoom, though somewhat more hesitant than full screen. Tried 2 up with one image cropped and zoomed and straighten still worked well.
6. RAW v2 looks slightly more saturated with slightly less noise by default vs. 1.1, and the additional sliders are useful. Overall (Canon 20D) 1.1 was a good RAW algorithm, so the differences are more subtle from v2 but welcome. Unsure I'll reprocess many, but the great news is that RAW reprocessing is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY faster.
7. Recovery and Blackpoint work really well and make H'light/ Shadows somewhat less needful .... so why are they there by default? Again, I really wanted "My Adjustment Tools" preset.
8. No curves. C'mon Aperture team.
9. Lift/stamp of auto-exposure copies the actual values, not the instruction. Still useless therefore as a batch concept.
10. Retouch/patch/clone work pretty fluidly. Some hesitancy on retouch, but not a problem. Good news is that it appears better than CS3 at determining edges and texture, meaning a simple wipe across a complex background doesn't pick up invalid pixels and retains underlying detail. Pretty darn impressive. Also, didn 't notice any slow-down after applying 20 retouches and then trying to straighten (a killer in v1.x). Fabulous!
11. Haven't tried export yet to see whether it's faster or whether it actually outputs the full image (the missing quadrants bug in jpeg's esp). But you can work alongside exports now and responsiveness is v.good.
12. All above working alongside Thumbnail generation (~4,500) and Previews (~4,500). The good news is that they took a back seat to editing and adjustments and no longer compromised performance.
13. Importing and editing images in parallel is amazingly good. Hardly noticed any lag due to disk I/O etc.
So, I couldn't end on 13, could I?
14. Overall it is a very very good first impression. No bug or crash or slowdown, SBOD etc. after 1 hrs use. Impressive.

I would like to add one new entry into this mix. The Intel Clarksfield new i7 series, while not the complete full power of the current i7 chips this new addition to the i7 family will be a mobile processor and it is supposed to be announced on Sept 23 giving laptops a new quad core lease on life.
"Quad core in future laptops
The new mobile platform from Intel code-named Calpella will supposedly be launced on September the 23rd. The Calpella platform is designed for the quad core Clarksfield processors, which feature the Core i7 line-up. The Calpella platform is designed for high-end laptops and will open up for mass uasage of quad core CPUs in mobile computers. For now there will be only 3 Core i7 mobile CPUs:
* Core i7-720QM       1.60 GHz       256 kb L2 cache per core       6 Mb unified L3 cache       45W TDP
* Core i7-820QM       1.73 GHz       256 kb L2 cache       8 Mb unified L3 cache       45W TDP
* Core i7-920XM       2.00 GHz       256 kb L2 cache       8 Mb unified L3 cache       55W TDP
All three CPUs come in 989-pin mPGA packaging and with an integrated dual-channel DDR3 memory controller. They all support HyperThreading so 8 processes can be run simultaniously. Because of the memory controller the Clarksfield CPUs will use a little more power than existing Core 2 Quad mobile CPUs, but overall system power usage is expected to be about the same".
"Taking a performance improvement over existing mobile processors, Intel Core i7 720QM evaluated at $ 364, 820QM - at $ 546 and 920XM - at $ 1054, the source"

Aperture slowdown

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