Perhaps A Performance Improvement in Aperture 3

OK… if you've been following along, and if you yourself are having issues (seems not everyone is), here is my latest "fix" for Aperture 3. It seems to have made a significant performance difference. And Lord knows, I've tried it all.

First, the obvious turn off the Faces feature by removing the check from Aperture > Preferences > General – Enable Faces

While that stops while that will stop Aperture from searching through your entire photo collection for faces, it still doesn't address the poor overall system performance.

After working with Apple Tech Support, having my case escalated to the development engineers and ultimately exhausting the ideas put forth by the Aperture development team, I "think" I've finally got Aperture working reasonably well on my Macbook Pro.

So… here you go:
Delete all of these files:

• Hard Drive/Library/Caches
• Hard Drive/System/Library/Caches
• Hard Drive/Users/(Your user)/Library/Caches

Then delete this file:

• Hard Drive/Users/(Your user name)/Library/Preferences/com.apple.aperture.plist

Next, empty your trash. Some files will not empty from trash because they are probably in use. Just continue deleting until you've deleted everything that will delete.

Now, from the Finder menu, use the Secure Empty Trash option and delete the remaining files from Trash.

At this point, I'd suggest you restart your computer.

Now restart Aperture. You will notice upon restart, all the settings will be reset to default… and you may need to locate a Library or switch to "Other." Don't worry… they're still there.

Thats it!

For me Aperture has been significantly better. File that had been sent to Aperture developers for testing now export in 25% of the time, even with the dreaded Definition adjustment applied.

One last option is you can create a new Library and re-import pictures, but I haven't found it necessary and for many of us with large archives, that's an ugly proposition.

Hope that helps!

Comments

[AJM]

Cache and prefs, that was it?

/Cache and prefs?/

It's just like the *old* days of using a Mac -- "something goes wrong, clear cache, trash prefs and restart."

Unreal. Now all the guys at Aperture need to do is automate the function and all will be right with the world.

[Michael Perini]

I'm happy to hear you got some relief, I did not.
In my last post I described my attempt to export 388 Canon 7D converted and edited Raw files on a Quad Core 3.0Ghz MacPro, 14 GB Ram, 8800GT Graphics Card running 10.6.4 and Aperture 3.0.3. The Aperture library is on a dedicated internal 7200 rpm drive which is less than 1/2 full.
My Exports were running 3-5 minutes each, Clearly unacceptable
When I saw that you found some improvement I was pleased.
I repaired Permissions, emptied Caches, emptied trash, restarted, reset Aperture preferences (turned off Faces & Places again) all that you suggested.
Selected the same 388 heavily edited files, this time to export 1024 x 1024 jpgs.
The first 10 of 388 took 28 minutes, by the two hour mark only 25 were done. (4.8 minutes each)
For many of us Aperture is Still Broken.
My wife & Daughter shoot events, I edit my Wife's take in Aperture , Canon 7D 21+/- mb files. My Daughter Shoots Nikon D300's (12-15mb files) and edits in Lightroom. Earlier today she exported 850 Tiffs in less than 90 minutes, on the Same computer.

While I'm happy that Apple is working on the issue, Aperture is almost unuseable in a volume/ deadline situation.
I own both Aperture & Lightroom. I much prefer Aperture. I had to purchase LR When my Wife bought her 7D's last year and Apple took months to support the camera and she had jobs to do.
To the extent Apple is listening, I have loved Aperture since v1.1. I.ve been frustrated by Aperture since v1.1. The Aperture 3 feature set is awesome.
But, Many people have been having significant problems with A3, from it's early "Alpha release" quality to maddening slowness.
Not everyone has the issues, but MANY DO. What ever happened to "Built For Speed" and "Just Works"??

I don't need (or want) Aperture to look like iPhoto (Which is a wonderful family photo Application) I don't need Faces or Places or consumer quality books.( those things are fine, but ONLY after the basic functions work)
I need the Awesome photo managment and editing power of Aperture to work reliably and Fast.
For many of us it STILL does not.
Thanks again to John for providing this forum.

[ashley]

thank you for the forum, john, and well-stated, michael. i am unable to export in aperture 3 after applying a preset adjustment and/or a brush adjustment. i have a dual core 3ghz, 4gig imac. the files are 5DII, exporting raw to jpg. i can only export if i remove the adjustments.

the aperture cpu activity is at 170% when exporting just one image with adjustments and will usually hang without end, or take a very, very long time to finish.

i have looked around for a solution, but have found nothing. i would appreciate any ideas!

best,
ashley

[David Medina]

After some initial problems when Ap 3 came out, Ap 3 has been running decently on a MACPRO 2.66mhz (circa 2007) with 11GB of memory until I updates Snow Leopard to the most recent version 10.6.4. Then, all of the sudden Aperture became so unstable as to be unusuable. It is erratic, unstable and slower than usual. The mouse becomes erratic and wild jumping all over the monitors. I cannot control it. As soon as I terminate Aperture it goes back to normal.

I tried reinstalling the update from the combo update... no go. Then, I decided to reinstall everything from scratch, a clean install. Still the problem persist. Thank God I own a copy of LR 3 because otherwise I could not work. So, for me Ap 3 is totally broken and I am loosing faith quickly, specially when I can work so fast in LR 3.

If anyone have any ideas I am all ears.

Thanks

[Bill Jurasz]

Thanks for the update John. Unfortunately I still don't think I'm going to upgrade from Aperture 2.0 yet.