Brandicm Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 I have a Mac desktop running OSX Yosemite and Photoshop CC. It is over 2 years old, and has 8GB of RAM. Its hard drive has 560GB free out of 2TGB. The last time I shut down was just before posting this thread. I have never run a cleanup program. The entire system is running so slow. It hangs for up to a minute or more on simple tasks such as opening a web page. It takes forever to open a photo in photoshop or to even get lightroom to load. It was slow about a month or two ago when the new updates for photoshop came out. Then it worked fine. I have tried just having my email program open and photoshop and or lightroom, no photos and it still runs slow. What should I try next? I have restarted it a few times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 Definitely start here. By the way, I'm going to move this post into Brian's Mac section, where he'll be able to help you better than I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandicm Posted April 9, 2016 Author Share Posted April 9, 2016 thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted April 10, 2016 Share Posted April 10, 2016 Hopefully you have a 27" iMac. If you do, I'd purchase extra RAM to take it to at least 16GB, better yet, max it out to 32GB. RAM is fairly inexpensive now. Head to Crucial.com and download their scanning tool and run it. It should take you to a page with your options. You are looking for TWO 16GB kits. (Four 8 GB Sticks total.) When it comes to Macs, when a hard drive is about 75% full, performance takes a hit. So I'd start culling. You do not need 75 photos of your lunch from 4 years ago sitting on your HD. So Cull-Cull-Cull!! The third thing I would do is clear off your Mac Desktop. The more files and folders (aka Crap) you have on your desktop, the slower the thing runs. The reason is that the Mac OS treats ALL that crap as open files. Got 1000 Photos from the Smith-Jones Wedding and 500 photos from the Miller Family Session at the park? That's 1502 "open" files. 1500 photos plus two folders. A Mac Desktop isn't a dumping ground, though it's easy to become one. Most people have no idea of just how bad it is to keep stuff on the desktop. I would also purchase CleanMyMac from MacPaw.com. You usually can find a coupon code to offset some of the cost. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted April 11, 2016 Share Posted April 11, 2016 Oh, one more thing. Large LR catalogs are slow by nature. So if you have tons and tons of photos in a single LR catalog, that will cause a performance hit. A catalog that has 30,000 photos in it will run a lot slower than one that only has 3000 photos in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Damien Symonds Posted April 11, 2016 Share Posted April 11, 2016 What Brian means is that a Lightroom catalogue with no photos in it is best 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted April 11, 2016 Share Posted April 11, 2016 21 minutes ago, Damien Symonds said: What Brian means is that a Lightroom catalogue with no photos in it is best Yep. It's a good practice to have a unique catalog associated with a photo-session or category. Like a catalog for the "Smith-Jones Wedding" or a "Portraits" Catalog. Honestly, Catalogs are a real pain when it comes to LR. More so when you have lots and lots of photos in them. Oh, as Damien pointed out, LR runs REALLY FAST when it doesn't have any photos in it. LOL!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandicm Posted April 11, 2016 Author Share Posted April 11, 2016 Yes, I do have a 27 in imac. I will look into getting more RAM. I did download macpaw and let it do it's thing. It seems to have helped. However, my desktop in a junk yard and that will be the next thing to tackle. Thank you so much! Yes, Damien I hear you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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