I need iMac advice (Page 3): SSD drive should be defragged.

Festus Loc: North Dakota

rgrenaderphoto wrote:

In Preferences (Mac OS) Click the File Handling tab.
In the Camera Raw Cache Settings area, experiment with a Maximum Size of 10.0 GB or more.

Try this.

Also, can you defragment a disk in iOS?

SSD drive should be defragged.

Festus Loc: North Dakota

karno wrote:

I bought an top of the line iMac about a your ago ... (show quote)

Your computer is not slow. You stated you are stacking tiffs from a 46mp camera. Therefore, the tiffs are probably in the 85 to 105mb in size. That's huge! Your computer is not slow. You are dealing with very large files. You also stated that you photos are on an external drive. (Probably not an SSD drive) Your computer is only as fast as the drive that you are using to catalogue your photos.

bpulv Loc: Buena Park, CA

karno wrote:

I bought an top of the line iMac about a your ago ... (show quote)

I bought a new 27" iMac just two weeks ago. It has the i7 4.2GHZ processor, 1TB SSD, Radeon Pro 580 2Mb graphics and 24GB RAM (I bought it with 8GB and added 16GB myself). So far I have not had the problem you describe, however with the exception of the file I am currently editing, the only files on the SSD are my program files. Everything else is on external hard drives including a copy of the file I am currently editing. When I complete editing a file, I move it to the external storage drives and the RAID backup drives.

alphonso49uk

Ive got the exact same set up ...only had the imac a month......only 8gb of ram and 2tb hard drive.....so far it runs smoothly.Photoshop and lightroom a lot faster than my old 2013 mac

karno Loc: Chico ,California

Festus wrote:

Your computer is not slow. You stated you are stacking tiffs from a 46mp camera. Therefore, the tiffs are probably in the 85 to 105mb in size. That's huge! Your computer is not slow. You are dealing with very large files.

The computer is slow, if my 2011 Mac Pro handle these tasks with out problem ?
And is impossible on a top of the line iMac that is the definition of slow. This machine should eat a 100 mb file for a warm up

ezslides

You may have a problem with memory modules. I got 8GB on my new iMac and added 32GB from OWC, then had similar problems,which got worse over time. It turns out the two 16GB modules had a problem, and when OWC replaced them, my problems disappeared. There are software programs that can test memory modules, but I did not try them.

karno Loc: Chico ,California

ezslides wrote:

You may have a problem with memory modules. I got 8GB on my new iMac and added 32GB from OWC, then had similar problems,which got worse over time. It turns out the two 16GB modules had a problem, and when OWC replaced them, my problems disappeared. There are software programs that can test memory modules, but I did not try them.

That interesting I will look into that.
My problems occurred right out of box so I upped the ram to max from owc, but problems continued. May I ask what kind of post prossesing you do.

karno Loc: Chico ,California

ezslides wrote:

You may have a problem with memory modules. I got 8GB on my new iMac and added 32GB from OWC, then had similar problems,which got worse over time. It turns out the two 16GB modules had a problem, and when OWC replaced them, my problems disappeared. There are software programs that can test memory modules, but I did not try them.

My computer runs great until several adjustments in Lightroom and the my desktop rolls to a stop

a6k Loc: Detroit & Sanibel

rmalarz wrote:

We use SSDs at work and were told never to defrag an SSD. Additionally, iMacs run Unix. That system takes care of itself. Unix usually likes to be rebooted about once a month, though. That removes a lot of "junk" that collects over time, inodes.
--Bob

While I agree with Bob's conclusion, just to be correct, the file system on an iMac, if up to date, is proprietary to Apple and no longer Unix. While it is true that Apple's Mac OS is a descendant of Unix, it certainly is not Unix today. Even the basic file/folder hierarchy varies in significant ways. Even the previous file system was no longer Unix.

With the "current" OS (High Sierra and/or Mojave) there are some applications that struggle to correctly and efficiently use the new file system. I don't know if the Adobe apps are among those.

MrGNY Loc: New York

RYour systems not slow, it may have a setup issue. First check your settings in LR and see if they at least match your MacBook. You scratch disk allocation my need to be upped. Also run check permissions. If you are using an older external drive setup and saving the files there that may be your issue. USB 2 for instance. The slowest connection is your bottleneck. If you installed extra ram yourself remove those chips and see if you have a difference in performance.

Some large files may slow down the machine. If you do a few large strokes with the paint brush and apply a filter etc it can slow the machine down.

Are you running anything else while doing photo work on the iMac? Like streaming music?

I am a designer so I am always pushing the iMac. Programming PDF files, photo manipulation, inDesign work, illustrator never have an issue except a slowdown from time to time, but that’s to be expected.

ezslides

Nothing really fancy. The main memory hogs are stitching panoramas together from a maximum of perhaps 6 files. However, I was having problems even with 4-6 tabs open in Firefox or viewing photos in Pathfinder.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

karno wrote:

My computer runs great until several adjustments in Lightroom and the my desktop rolls to a stop

FWIW:

You might be onto something about the 5k video being the root of the issue.

On my 5k imac with 32 GB ram, Lightroom is snappy, unless I push it with too many brush adjustments, then it can bog down.

Lightroom works fine for global edits, being a parametric editor, but for me I round trip over to Photoshop for local edits, and speed remains snappy and 5k is not affected.

Brianhward

Batty:
Although it sounds like the earlier comments have covered most everything, I have a few suggestions. My experience with lightroom is limited to simple editing but I have noticed that if you don’t close Lightroom after your finished but rather let it go to sleep mode with the computer then when you return, Lightroom acts confused. If I then close and reopen Lightroom everything is back to normal. I never experienced this problem with other types of software such as Office, etc.
Second, I agree with the comment about cables. After 34 years in the Aerospace business, I learned one important rule. No matter what your particular issue is, first rule is check the cables. Second rule is see rule number 1.
Last, Lightroom might not be the best program for what your doing. Photo Shop may be a better choice. Of course, Adobe would not tell you this since why would they claim one of their products is better suited than the other for certain tasks. However, if that was true why do they offer two programs that to a nonexpert seem to do the same thing. Just a couple of thoughts
Ciao
Brain

jayluber Loc: Phoenix, AZ

Which processor is in the iMac?. I just purchased a 27" with a 4.2 Ghz i7 processor - quad core. It is infinitely faster than my old i5 dual core. I'm running with only 24 G of memory. My video card has 8 G of memory on board - so its very fast and capable.
Your processor may have something to do with the machine bogging down.
Also - check your setting on having the processing done on the video card - make sure that is off unless you have a top of the line video card installed.

I also have a 2T fusion drive. I partitioned the drive into 40/60% and keep my photos on the larger partition. Mine runs just fine and very fast.

jayluber Loc: Phoenix, AZ

Oh yeah - and close all other apps. On my old machine I created a new user jus tfor photo edit so that there were no aps competing for any resources.