Why is Apple Aperture slow on a fairly powerful iMac, and what can I check to improve performance?
Asked 5/13/2013
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I use Apple Aperture on an iMac i5 2.9GHz with 24GB RAM, GTX 665M, a Fusion Drive, and my photo library on an external Thunderbolt SSD. Despite the hardware, Aperture becomes sluggish in two ways:
- Browsing slows down after viewing roughly 30–40 photos, but improves again after restarting Aperture.
- Editing is very unresponsive, especially when zoomed in and using brushes or multiple adjustment “bricks.” Updates can lag by 1–2 seconds or more, and toggling adjustments can eventually take several seconds.
I already increased RAM from 8GB to 24GB, which only delays the slowdown. What should I check to diagnose this? Could disk, cache, or scratch-drive performance be the cause, and would any hardware change realistically help?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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I'm using Aperture on a much slower machine: a 2007 iMac (Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM).
The Aperture library is on the internal hard drive, but the originals are on an external USB 2.0 hard disk.
Performance isn't stellar, but acceptable. Sometimes it takes a tad longer to go to the next photo, and a few times it froze and I had to force quit it, but I don't see the extreme and predictable slowdown that you describe.
I've about 36,000 images in the library, mostly around 4-5 MB JPEG, although there are some 12 MB images as well. Maybe it's different if you have larger (RAW) images.
Before that, I had Aperture briefly on a 2006 MacBook. This was too slow. However this might have been mainly due to a dying hard disk. So check the health of your disk.
Originally by user15676. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user15676
13y ago
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Your hardware should be capable of better performance, so the behavior suggests a bottleneck rather than simply “not enough CPU.” Based on the replies, two things are worth checking first:
- Disk health/performance: Even if your library or originals are on a fast external SSD, a failing or slow drive elsewhere can hurt responsiveness. Check the health of all drives involved.
- Scratch/cache location: Aperture may be writing temporary processing data to a scratch/cache location that is slower or busy. That would explain why adding RAM only postpones the slowdown—more RAM lets it work longer before relying on disk.
The predictable slowdown after browsing many images could also indicate an application-side issue, since restarting temporarily restores speed.
In short: verify drive health, find where Aperture stores its cache/scratch data, and make sure that location is on a fast drive with plenty of free space. If those are fine, the remaining issue is likely Aperture itself rather than a simple hardware upgrade.
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