Apertur more or less unusable.

taken the plunge and upgraded from A2 I am for the first time ever utterly disillusioned with Apple. I followed all the advice I could find, installed it, updated it and with the RAW files I use from a Canon 5D it's useless.

Whenever I process anything the images break up into all sorts of patterns, block colours and sometimes pixellate. Whilst processing everything else stops, except of course the spinning beachball of death. To describe it as slow is just the start, three photos tonight which should take about three minutes are still not done after an hour.
Two screenshots are attached, please don't laugh at the daft pictures!

Can someone please help, I'm that hacked off I may put my copy of Aperture on EBay and try something different, Lightroom probably. I've invested much money in Aperture, Noise Ninja as a plug in for example.

I apologise for this rant but I really could do with some assistance.
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Bodensee

To facilitate, could you describe your system (model, memory, version of OS X). Also, do you still have your original library, ie a backup? Did you rebuild it before you upgraded? That one pre-upgrade step seems to have helped people avoid a lot of problems. If you did all that, I would try re-processing your affected images. That has helped with video problems similar to yours.

Thank you for the reply. iMac, 2.16Ghz, 2gb ram. 10.6.3. Aperture 3.02. According to my reseller 2gb should be enough as more ram is only really of use for multi-tasking and I almost always only use Aperture on its own. I can only fit 3gb anyway.

I did back it up but I didn't rebuild it, that's the first time I have seen that suggested.

Thanks again.
--
Bodensee

Some thoughts:

-- First, do a "search" here and especially on the Apple forum. This subject has been done to death and some of us have been toasted for publishing a step-by-step. (Some say that it is no longer necessary to follow a careful regime.) Try this thread for starters:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1017&message=35083496

-- Secondly, the issues are usually bad images in AP2.0 and cache and pref files from AP2. It also takes about 5 seconds per image to update the Library first time. Trying to work during that time is a bad idea as the conversion process will suck up system resources. How much free disk space do you have?

-- Finally, if you can't find an answer, you will need to describe exactly your machine configuration and the steps you took. Did you rebuild your AP2 Library? Update the OS? Update AP3? etc.

Bottom line, most of us find that Aperture 3.0 is very, very fast with a minimum of 4 GB of RAM.

Best wishes!
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DiploStrat ;-)

I read your thread before upgrading amongst others. I think I did all you suggest as well some other suggestions like deleting caches and preferences. the only thing I didn't do was to rebuild the A2 library beforehand.

Thanks for the reply.
--
Bodensee

The screen artefacts look like a graphics card issue. Perhaps some incompatability with the model of GPU in your iMac?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2330532&tstart=0

It seems on-point.

Jeff

A call to Apple will reveal a problem with the 7300gt, Aperture and 10.6 SL.

Make them aware by going to the Aperture menu and selecting "submit feedback"

hoops, a delete plists, preferences and rebuild this or that and wait for 2 days while AP generates 30 gigs of thumbnails etc....

AP is full of bugs. Sad to see that a 3rd party beta program runs circles around an OEM "full" release software product.

Gene

Thanks everyone for the various replies. I checked the Apple thread about graphics card issues and the various solutions tried seem not to have worked.

As several of you say it seems to be a graphics card issue and one which Apple does not seem willing or able to solve. Methinks LR may be the answer now. I'm gutted, absolutely gutted about this.

If anyone has any other ideas then please do not hold back!
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Bodensee

I'm fresh out of ideas other than to agree that it appears to be a graphics.

Aperture 3.0 is a massive rewrite to use all of the special features of Snow Leopard and especially the full capacities of multiple cores and graphics cards. When the magic works, as it does on my little Mac Mini, the results are spectacular. When it doesn't as it doesn't in your case, things are rough.

I'm not an expert, but I would agree that your problem lies in the graphics area - but bad card or bad code, I couldn't guess.

I assume that:

-- The problem occurs with all images (JPEG/RAW/TIFF) all the time.
-- You have sent a bug report through Aperture.
-- You have called Apple UK and asked for help.

Very best wishes.
--
DiploStrat ;-)

Sorry for your troubles.

Perhaps you already did this, but my standard process for upgrading is:

• back-up files
• create a restore point for the OS and system (Time Machine?).

Then execute the upgrade following the manufacturers instructions - as automatically as possible. Then test. If the test fails you can always revert to your old system and figure out what to try next.

Trying to execute an upgrade after following wierd and wonderful advice on internet forums - including removing configuration files and other features of the previous versions - is risky. Give the programmers some credit. You can assume that they built the upgrade to work with a normal situation. When you first make that situation abnormal then you may get funny results.

In this case the video card seems to be the prime suspect - but I am not certain. I would try a roll back first and then contact Apple Support. In my experience they know a lot more about fixing stuff than you might imagine, and if you paid for the software you have the right.

Let us know what happens.

I feel bad for your problem. It's funny how I came to Lightroom in the first place. I tried Aperture's trial and could never get the thing to install right. So, I tried Lightroom on trial and a few hours later ordered it. Next to switching to a mac, it's the best thing I did with computers. And, I'd say about 9 out of 10 photographers use Lightroom anyway. I've rarely found anybody I shoot with use Aperture. Hey I love Mac stuff too, but not in this case. Use Lightroom 3 beta 2 as some suggest and you will see. If you still get those weird things on your screen, I'd have to say that would confirm some kind of problem with the video card.

Best,

Jim Patterson
http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

First you need to decide which problem you want to solve. Selling Aperture and moving to Lightroom will lose all your raw edits and much of your metadata. Thats's potentially a lot of re-work, so it's only really worth doing if you decide you prefer LR over Aperture.

If you decide you want LR then concentrate on the move.

If you want Aperture then concentrate on understanding and resolving the issue.

If the issue turns out not to be fixable, you have the option to move to LR, revert to Aperture 2, or perhaps other work flows.

To start tracking down the issue, do some of these:

1. Make sure you have installed all firmware updates for your machine (especially gfx card).

2. Download the stand alone version of the latest software update and re-apply it.

3. Repair permissions.

4. Start Aperture and leave it for a few minutes to see if there are any background processes trying to run (thumbnails, previews, internal processes, faces, places, etc). If there are, leave Aperture running them until everything is complete.

5. Try scrolling through a view of all your images, the thumbnails should appear quite quickly. If you see that it has to generate thumbnails, this is a sign that a process got cancelled (by you, by quitting Aperture, or by Aperture crashing). If this happens, select all images and choose the option to regenerate thumbnails. Leave it (possibly several hours) until it completes.

What you are trying to get to is a reliable installation of OSX, on reliable hardware/firmware, running a reliable Aperture database.

6. Once you are confident Aperture is not running any background processes, quit Aperture. Use first aid (press option + command while launching Aperture) to repair permissions. Then again to repair the database.

7. Create a duplicate version for the image showing corruption. Process it but turning one of the adjustments off and then back on again. Does it still corrupt.

8. Create a duplicate version for the image showing corruption. Re-process it using the new raw engine (press the button shown in the raw section on the screenshots you posted in your thread). Does it still corrupt.

Try launching Aperture in 32 bit mode and repeat 7 & 8. Does it make a difference.

Try booting your Mac with the 64bit kernel (hold down 6 and 4 while booting). Run Aperture in 64 bit mode, Does it make a difference.

I used to get a similar problem in Aperture 2, once Aperture had been running for a long time and the GPU got very hot. I think the OS throttles back the GPU to reduce heat and that seemed to introduce the issue. If you leave you machine off until cold, and then process the images, does the corruption still occur.

If you think people with LR or Capture 1 or Bibble don't ever get problems, take a visit to their support forums.

-Najinsky

I have the same Imac as you and have the exact same problems but with Aperture 2 not Aperture 3. My problems started when I updated to Snow Leopard. I opened a ticket # with Apple Care last week and after 2 days received a reply that this is a graphics driver issue with Snow Leopard and my 7300 graphics card in the 2.16 Imac. They are aware of and are working on this issue and hope to have a solution shortly. I occasionally get similar results using Iphoto09. The Iphoto problems also occurred only after I upgraded to Snow Leopard from Leopard. All was fine with Leopard - no problems.

There may be some hope - my Macbook has these same graphics problems but with the recent 10.6.3 1.1 update to Snow Leopard they have now cleared up. The Macbook fans would go full speed anytime I accessed Iphoto but that has cleared up also.

If I receive any further info on my problem ticket # I will reply to this thread.

It is frustrating though - Aperture is unuasable for the most part on my Imac.

By the way, I initially called Aperture support but my problem was upgraded and transferred to Snow Leopard support.

Originally, I was suggesting users of a 6,1 white 24" iMac download the Firmware Update for 7300gt cards dated 1/19/10. Then reinstall 10.6 over 10.6.3 and update to 10.6.2 with the Combo updater only. Do not update to 10.6.3..

Interestingly, Apple had a firmware update from 1/19/10 for 7300/7600gt cards that actually worked fairly well with Snow Leopard UNTIL the 10.6.3 update. THIS UPDATE ACTUALLY SOLVED/FIXED ALMOST ALL ISSUES WITH 2.1.4. ASK APPLE ABOUT THIS.

I loaded the firmware update after I had updated to 10.6.3. Perhaps I should downgrade to 10.6.2 and see if some of these problems clear up or at least don't happen as often. I don't think it would hurt. When I was on 10.6.2 I did have the problems but had not done the firmware update until after I had gone to 10.6.3. Now that I think about it, although the problem existed prior, it does now seem worse since 10.6.3. Thanks for the info.

I notice that the firmware update is back up, Apple had pulled it for a few days. If you downgrade back to 10.6.2 via reinstalling 10.6 and then a combo update, you will find Aperture runs much better.