Why is my Mac so slow with NEF files?

[Steve Feldman]

First of all, thanks to everyone for all of your advice!

I also have an IBM T40 laptop for work (1.5 Ghz processor). I installed Nikon Capture on it; it's MUCH faster than my G4 800 Mhz .. still a bit slow with Nikon Capture but within the range that I can tolerate. (except that I cannot tolerate doing photo stuff on a PC!!)

Anyway .. you may think "well of course .. 1.5 Ghz compared to 800 Mhz" however I can say that Photoshop 7 feels the same on either machine. Most apps feel the same on either machine, the issue is with Nikon Capture.

Will Nikon fix this ever? I'd gladly purchase an upgrade .. a 5.0 version .. if it were much faster on a Mac than 4.1 is.

-s-

Hi all,

I have an 800 Mhz G4 with 1 Gb memory. My main photo applications
are Photoshop 7 and Nikon View 6 (I also just got Nikon Capture
4.1).

For years, my Mac has been fine (and not perceivably slow) dealing
with .jpg files, no matter how big. I owned a CP8800 for a short
while; the hi-res .jpg files are actually larger (or the same size)
as my D70 NEF files.

I have no issues with .jpgs. For example, in Nikon View 6 I can
select a group of hi-res .jpg's and run a slide show .. from
picture to picture is very fast.

When I run the Nikon View slide show on NEF files, everything
crawls. Likewise, I find that using Nikon Capture on NEF's is too
slow, so slow that I cannot use it without being frustrated. Why
is my computer so slow with NEF's? Is it due to the complexity of
the NEF file itself .. that it stores 2 embedded .jpg files within
it?

Any help is appreciated. If I can't find a solution, I'm going to
sell my Nikon Capture software and go back to shooting hi-res .jpg
files.

-s-