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dvwannabe · Nov 11, 2003, 01:17 PM

Has anyone noticed that iPhoto is slow in 10.3?

I can't figure out if it's 10.3 or my new iBook. I have a dual 450 G4 running 10.2 and it runs iPhoto great. On my new iBook (933 mHz G4 with 640MB RAM running 10.3) it runs soooo slow... it's almost not worth using.

It takes forever to load the iPhoto library on the iBook. On the Dual 450 it doesn't even prompt that it's loading the library, just loads it.

When switching form picture to picture, they stay pixelated for a few seconds before they get clear. Plus it hangs up when scrolling up and down through the library... leaving me with an almost constant beach ball.

I downloaded the 10.3.1 update, deleted half my photos and deleted my prefs... no help.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Thanks for your time

jyvin563 · Nov 11, 2003, 02:19 PM

I am having the same issue. I have not put any time into working it out yet but you are not alone.

NeXTLoop · Nov 11, 2003, 02:53 PM

My guess is that it has to do with the integration of iPhoto into the system more. That's one of the things that has been touted about Panther, but probably contributes to the slowdown. Hopefully an update will fix this.

absmiths · Nov 11, 2003, 02:57 PM

Yep - dog slow. I don't think it has anything to do with integration. It is more likely that some graphics primitive or library that iPhoto uses to smooth the images is to blame and it wasn't a high enough priority to fix it before release.

cambro · Nov 11, 2003, 03:00 PM

Loading an iPhoto library with a bunch of photos is a disk-intensive task. Thus, the much, much faster hard disk in a desktop machine is going to cause dramatic speed improvements over a portable hard disk.

Did you ever compare the speed of iPhoto on your iBook to a portable running 10.2? I suspect that you are picking up on a general portable-desktop hard disk performance issue and not a 10.3 specific issue.

P.S. For what it is worth, my 2500+ photo library loads as fast or faster in 10.3 as it did in 10.2 on my Ghz Tibook.

Zadian · Nov 11, 2003, 03:02 PM

iPhoto has always been very slow since it came out. It actually got a bit faster with 10.3 but it is still unusable slow.

cambolo · Nov 11, 2003, 03:06 PM

No problems on 1GHz TiBook , 1GB RAM, running 10.3.1. Don't remember having a problem with 10.3.0 on the TiBook but do have the pixelation problem on 700MHz iBook, 256MB ram, in 10.3.0 when going from album thumbnail view to individual image view. Do not have the problem when using scrolling arrows and going from image to image under edit tab.

Macpilot · Nov 11, 2003, 05:55 PM

Originally posted by dvwannabe:
Has anyone noticed that iPhoto is slow in 10.3?

I can't figure out if it's 10.3 or my new iBook. I have a dual 450 G4 running 10.2 and it runs iPhoto great. On my new iBook (933 mHz G4 with 640MB RAM running 10.3) it runs soooo slow... it's almost not worth using.

It takes forever to load the iPhoto library on the iBook. On the Dual 450 it doesn't even prompt that it's loading the library, just loads it.

When switching form picture to picture, they stay pixelated for a few seconds before they get clear. Plus it hangs up when scrolling up and down through the library... leaving me with an almost constant beach ball.

I downloaded the 10.3.1 update, deleted half my photos and deleted my prefs... no help.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Thanks for your time

I am not. iPhoto seems faster on every Mac I have installed Panther on. Then again, I did clean install of 10.3 on formatted hard drives.

Have you considered re-installing Panther?

Superchicken · Nov 11, 2003, 07:28 PM

Why is iPhoto still slower than Photoshop Element's Image Browser? They do essentially the same thing only PS Elements does it better! Why the heck, it generates a thumbnail quickly and doesn't require a weird system of folders and junk to go with it!

phantomo · Nov 11, 2003, 08:31 PM

I did a clean install of Panther and it is still slow. The next thing I'll try is remove the whole library and add photos back to it and see if things improve.

I currently have 1960 photos on iPhoto2 but is it just too slow to be useable. I am using iView instead in the time being.

C.J. Moof · Nov 11, 2003, 08:48 PM

iPhoto became tolerable once I turned off shadows and used view by roll to cut down on the number of images it was processing.

There are still times I yell at it to hurry up..... on an 800mhz Cube.

phantomo · Nov 11, 2003, 08:56 PM

C.J. Moof, Thanks for the tip, turning off shadow does the trick. Now it is much better.

Cipher13 · Nov 11, 2003, 09:08 PM

iPhoto has ALWAYS been slow.

Mr.Clicky · Nov 12, 2003, 01:04 AM

Originally posted by Cipher13:
iPhoto has ALWAYS been slow.

Ditto. Add to that iMovie and often iTunes. Maybe removing the 'i' would slim them all down a bit

Tomster · Nov 12, 2003, 02:13 AM

For all those experiencing slow starts with iPhoto, I recommend iPhoto Buddy. I noted iPhoto seemed glacial. I then realized I had about 2500 photos shot from 3-5 megapixels. That is a huge amount of data. Fire up iPhoto and there are massive pageouts.

I used iPhoto Buddy and split my photo library up into thirds. At around a 1000 photos per sub library, iPhoto is usable again. Not too much of an issue running multiple libraries. I find things more organized as well as faster.

GENERAL_SMILEY · Nov 12, 2003, 04:14 AM

I did a clean install of Panther, then just copied over my iphoto folder - seemed to work fine, but I think it has got definitely slower, it scrolls really badly now, even with shadows off.

17 AL, 512 mb