My iMac is 8 years old, manufactured in 2014, purchased used, and I'm to a point now that working with it for photo editing at times boarders on maddening due to its slowness. I use this machine almost exclusively for PS and LR, and while on some days it seems fine, on others it seems that every adjustment I make triggers the spinning wheel that sits for well over a minute. I've spoken with Adobe support, and even after they assisted in making some settings adjustments to optimize speed, I'm still facing the same issue. I've also spoken to someone at AppleCare who was not able to offer any new informations. So, here's what I've done so far...

- Reinstalled LR and PS
- Created a new catalog in LR
- Optimized LR catalog
- Cleared cache in LR and PS
- Reduced the time when both LR and PS are open simultaneously
- Watched the Activity Monitor for CPU usage and Memory Pressure - this does show excessive memory pressure (yellow and red on graph) from time to time
- Scanned for Viruses and Malware

And here are the particulars of my machine...

iMac (Retina 5K, 27", Late 2014)
Processor: 4 GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
Memory: 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2 GB
Storage: 1.12TB (320 GB available)

As you can imagine, I'd prefer to not buy a new machine, but at this point, I'm willing to bight the bullet if it will finally mean I no longer have to sit and watch that ball just spin and spin!

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide, which will be greatly appreciated.

Wow, just had an upsetting situation happen on Instagram. I made a comment on a non photography post on Instagram and someone must have gone to my page, or what ever you call it, and looked at my photos. They then went on to say that many of the photos were not mine! They even said they had seen one on Nat Geo and was not mine and I was not giving credit! I responded to this person saying they were certainly all mine and the response back was there is no watermark and why do others names show up? Then proceeded to ask if I worked for Nat Geo.... I can only assume the other names they referred to are the people I tagged who were on the trip with me and I do not use a watermark, as many on Instagram do not.

This just really upsets me to be accused of claiming someone else’s photo! I did once again reply that I guaranteed that 1,000% they are all my photos and I was honored they thought my photos were Nat Geo worthy....