# I'm not much of a techie, need some advice on my iMac...



## Northstar (Feb 22, 2013)

I have an iMac that I bought new about a year ago - i5 processor and 8GB of ram.

My question...when working with large 50-100GB RAW files (in Aperture) I notice that the computer slows down, so I'm wondering if another 8GB of ram to bring it up to 16GB would help much?

Would it be a little better or much better?

edit....sorry, I had GB's on my mind...I meant 50-100 MB files.


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## Dukinald (Feb 22, 2013)

Memory is cheap nowadays. I say max it out and you can see only improvements in performance. I always do that to my laptops and imac. Dont buy from apple too as their prices for memory are much higher.


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## bdeutsch (Feb 22, 2013)

I think extra RAM is unlikely to make an enormous difference. Either way the files are far larger than your available RAM. Faster, defragmented hard drives (with plenty of available space) and faster video cards are more likely to make a bigger difference, I think. 


Actor Headshots NYC | Gotham Family Photos | NY Wedding Photography


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## bseitz234 (Feb 22, 2013)

privatebydesign said:


> Other World Computing is a great place to get RAM, and any other Mac upgrades from, I use them regularly.
> 
> However 50-100GB RAW files, that makes no sense. A 21MP RAW file is about 25MB, to get into the GB category you need to be talking about layered TIFF's or PSD's, but to get into multiple GB files you are talking serious stitching or a very inefficient workflow, or a typing error
> 
> I am not an Aperture fan, I gave up on it after Lightroom 2 came out, but if your files truly are in the multiple GB size then I suspect something is wrong.



that was my thought, too. How are your images that huge? 

But yeah, I've been thinking about upgrading my iMac (older than yours) to 32GB. I say go for it... can't hurt!


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 22, 2013)

Adding more memory might help if you have a lot of memory hungry applications running as well. Say you have Firefox running with 40 or 50 tabs over multiple windows. You're easily talking 1-2GB there. If you're doing Photoshop as well, that can easily eat up another 1-4GB or more, depending. iTunes to listen to music undoubtedly eats up another 300-400 MB. So, it can add up. But, if you basically only have Aperture open (windows closed on an application doesn't count, you have to actually exit the application), then more memory is unlikely to result in any real performance gains.

I'd say you're more likely to get some performance gains off of using an SSD for Aperture file cache, and definitely if you have a newer processor. Even if it's the same speed, simply going up 1-2 processor generations often results in some pretty good performance gains. Watch the Activity Monitor. If the CPU usage is basically pegged, or nearly so, you just need to bite the bullet and upgrade, either now or when the next updated iMac comes out. That will also net you newer graphics processor, which may result in some minor performance improvements since OS X includes so much eye candy and affects. Or switch to PC and get Lightroom which will let you upgrade incremental parts as needed.


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## paul13walnut5 (Feb 22, 2013)

100GB or 100MB raw files?

RAM can do so much, the real bottleneck these days are s-l-o-w s-p-i-n-n-i-n-g drives.

You can speed things up by having two drives, say one for CR2's and one to save your TIFFs or JPEGS to (that way one drive head isn't trying to read and write big files at the same time through one bus.

Some imacs (27's) had space for a second internal drive, so maybe this the way to go, a wee blazingly quick esata SSD or something big for storage. Either way your machine will run faster.

Either way it sounds like your single HDD trying to is the _write and read_ problem _at the same time_.

what's going longer bit Takes a. it? Doesn't out to work


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## iKenndac (Feb 22, 2013)

Going from 8Gb to 16Gb will _absolutely_ increase Aperture performance — I know because I've done the same thing.

Sure, individual RAW files are unlikely to fill 8Gb, but you need to remember the system is also running an operating system and a bunch of other applications.

That, and Aperture likes to cache stuff in memory to improve performance, so if you're moving between photos it'll likely fill up a ton of RAM keeping them (or 1:1 previews of them) in memory. That way, switching between photos is instant rather than having to re-load them each time.

Case in point: I just loaded Aperture and skipped through an album of 18MP images from my 60D. Without any editing, memory usage went up to 4.4Gb in a minute or so: http://cl.ly/image/140y3Y451R2C

RAM is so cheap these days, you may as well just do it!


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## bseitz234 (Feb 22, 2013)

paul13walnut5 said:


> Either way it sounds like your single HDD trying to is the _write and read_ problem _at the same time_.
> 
> what's going longer bit Takes a. it? Doesn't out to work



copy-paste glitch? ;-)


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## robbymack (Feb 22, 2013)

I know MacBooks are a little restrictive in terms of what is replaceable (I think only the ram chips) but iMacs are a little more flexible. Start with the ram, it's cheap, super easy to install yourself, just max it to what ever spec OTW says is ok for your machine. Then if its still slow for your liking look into the video card and hard drive.


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## Drizzt321 (Feb 22, 2013)

paul13walnut5 said:


> 100GB or 100MB raw files?
> 
> RAM can do so much, the real bottleneck these days are s-l-o-w s-p-i-n-n-i-n-g drives.
> 
> ...



Well, actual processing seems a bit more CPU limited, at least when it comes to Lightroom. A faster drive/SSD might help a bit, but at least for me, Lightroom tends to be CPU bound when I move from one image to the next and it has to render the full 1:1. Once it's rendered and in memory, actual edits are fast, but it's that 2-4 second (more sometimes!) rendering times when I switch to another image.


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## Northstar (Feb 22, 2013)

bseitz234 said:


> privatebydesign said:
> 
> 
> > Other World Computing is a great place to get RAM, and any other Mac upgrades from, I use them regularly.
> ...



I edited my original post....typo - 50MB RAW files.


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## 7enderbender (Feb 22, 2013)

I don't have a Mac (yet) and I obviously don't work with Aperture. But I follow these discussions since I'm planning on moving to the Mac platform at some point this year.

What I can offer though is that I'm on a ancient Thinkpad laptop as my main photo editing computer (because those had really good high resolution screens that are surprisingly true to colors when calibrated). It's a Dual Core Pentium with 4GB memory - make that 3GB since it's running on XP. That thing handles raw files from my 5DII under both Lightroom 3 and PS CS5 pretty well as long as I don't open too many at once (5 or so is totally fine).

So, more memory is always a good thing but I also find that newer computer with "modern" operating systems are not necessarily much faster. For instance, my work-work computer is an HP Elite Book with i5 and 4GB Ram. Give it a little more complex stuff to do and it caves in.

The other thing to consider are speedier drives. That made a difference for me also in the past when I installed fresh 7500rpm drives in my old Windows machines. On an iMac that is obviously difficult to do but you could hook something up via firewire or thunderbolt, e.g. an SSD drive, and see if that helps. I don't know how Aperture manages it's files but CS5 uses a "scratch disk" and you want that to be in a fast place with enough room also.


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## bseitz234 (Feb 22, 2013)

That sounds much more in line with what I'd expect. 

Here's an experiment: open Activity Monitor (should be in Utilities), and pin it to your dock. Go up to View -> Dock Icon -> Memory Usage. You'll get a pie chart in the dock, showing your system RAM. Red is active, Yellow is Inactive, Blue is Wired, and Green is Free. The first three are basically "RAM being used". Green is what you have available. Go about your workflow, but check on it when things start getting slow. Do you have any green? If you have available RAM, then upgrading probably won't help. With 50MB images, you theoretically probably have enough. As others have said, it depends what else you're doing simultaneously, etc. I've found that 12 is usually enough for me for LR processing, but when I run into trouble is when I have PS stitching together panoramas. 

Sparknotes: If things get slow and you have no available RAM, an upgrade would definitely help. If you have available RAM when you experience slowdowns, the bottleneck is elsewhere.


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## Northstar (Feb 22, 2013)

iKenndac said:


> Going from 8Gb to 16Gb will _absolutely_ increase Aperture performance — I know because I've done the same thing.
> 
> Sure, individual RAW files are unlikely to fill 8Gb, but you need to remember the system is also running an operating system and a bunch of other applications.
> 
> ...



good to know...thanks!


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## bc33 (Feb 22, 2013)

If you do turn out to have enough RAM you could add an SSD.

I put an SSD where my optical drive used to be in my 2009 iMac and it makes everything much quicker. I got my local apple authorised service provider to do the work and it cost, I think, £60 plus the cost of the SSD and a caddy to hold it in place.


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## paul13walnut5 (Feb 22, 2013)

bseitz234 said:


> paul13walnut5 said:
> 
> 
> > Either way it sounds like your single HDD trying to is the _write and read_ problem _at the same time_.
> ...



That was my very best impersination in type of a hard disc trying to read and write at the same time.

The completely obvious root of the problem.


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## Northstar (Feb 22, 2013)

bseitz234 said:


> That sounds much more in line with what I'd expect.
> 
> Here's an experiment: open Activity Monitor (should be in Utilities), and pin it to your dock. Go up to View -> Dock Icon -> Memory Usage. You'll get a pie chart in the dock, showing your system RAM. Red is active, Yellow is Inactive, Blue is Wired, and Green is Free. The first three are basically "RAM being used". Green is what you have available. Go about your workflow, but check on it when things start getting slow. Do you have any green? If you have available RAM, then upgrading probably won't help. With 50MB images, you theoretically probably have enough. As others have said, it depends what else you're doing simultaneously, etc. I've found that 12 is usually enough for me for LR processing, but when I run into trouble is when I have PS stitching together panoramas.
> 
> Sparknotes: If things get slow and you have no available RAM, an upgrade would definitely help. If you have available RAM when you experience slowdowns, the bottleneck is elsewhere.




great advice - thanks, I did just as you wrote and see that I have about 1gb in the green while I play around with editing my files. so I'm probably ok with 8gb.

thanks again bseitz!


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## Pete.A (Feb 22, 2013)

I use a "late 2009" Imac + aperture for my processing. I found that 16gb ram and the use of a firewire connected external drive sped things up exponentially (I was previously using a USB2.0 connected drive for file storage).

I found my memory through Crucial DOT com


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## jrh (Feb 22, 2013)

privatebydesign said:


> That makes more sense
> 
> The main reason I gave up on Aperture was because it is such a resource hog, get the maximum RAM you can and then take whatever steps you can to maximise your workflow. Things like splitting your library into smaller, more relevant libraries, limiting other programs open at the same time, simple stuff will make a good difference.



+1 Aperture is a resource hog. I also found Aperture to be a poor with RAW conversion and noise reduction, it has improved but still lacking far behind LR4. Aperture is great for file management. You may consider LR4 before you get too far down the Aperture road. More RAM will help with both programs.


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## Fknbryce (Feb 22, 2013)

absolutely it will make a difference. aperture is a 64 bit program so the more memory it has available to it the faster it will run. I use a 16g quad i7 at home and a 32gb i5 at work. the memory certainly does help.
best of luck!


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## Botts (Feb 22, 2013)

Northstar said:


> bseitz234 said:
> 
> 
> > That sounds much more in line with what I'd expect.
> ...



Prior Apple Genius here. Bseitz brings up what seems like it should be the truth. The reality is though that OS X and Aperture are extremely intelligent when it comes to allocating RAM. Aperture won't use what it really needs at the expense of other processes to an extent. It knows that you may flip into something more important, so it won't take what it really wants.

Swap used in activity monitor gives a better indication of whether or not you've maxed out your RAM.

Finally, as someone who has used a MacBook Pro with both 8GB and 16GB of RAM in a similar use case to yours, I noticed a big increase going to 16GB of RAM. Going from 16GB to 32GB in my iMac wasn't as big of a difference, still a nice little boost though.


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## bigmag13 (Mar 2, 2013)

Pete.A said:


> I use a "late 2009" Imac + aperture for my processing. I found that 16gb ram and the use of a firewire connected external drive sped things up exponentially (I was previously using a USB2.0 connected drive for file storage).
> 
> I found my memory through Crucial DOT com



I did this as well but added a third external because I shoot lots of pics. I have a USB2 as a time machine back-up and two fire wires for files. I try to keep my eternal as free as I can by not saving pics to it. thank goodness for LightRoom!!!


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## Brand B (Mar 2, 2013)

Just an FYI about the late 2009 iMac, it will take 32GB of RAM if you were so inclined, I've got one using that much using the OWC 1366MHz 8GB dimms intended for the mid 2010 iMacs. Even runs them at the higher bus speed instead of the 1066 of the original RAM.


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## dbduchene (Mar 2, 2013)

bdeutsch said:


> I think extra RAM is unlikely to make an enormous difference. Either way the files are far larger than your available RAM. Faster, defragmented hard drives (with plenty of available space) and faster video cards are more likely to make a bigger difference, I think.
> 
> 
> Actor Headshots NYC | Gotham Family Photos | NY Wedding Photography



It is a Apple and does not have a FAT 32 file system so you do not de-frag it. 

Yes taking it to 16 GIG of ram will help a LOT (Been there done that) Beyond that apple started encrypting the files when it swapped (the unix term) or was using virtual memory (the windows term) this was done because a security expert said or showed that doing a Dump of the swap "Could reveil or show passwords that had been typed. THe truth is though that this file (swap or Virt memory file) is owned by ROOT and can only be dumped with root access and if someone has root access you are owned anyways. Encrypting Swap is kind of like locking the barn after the horses got out IMHO You can search find how to turn encrypted virtual memory of or disable it. You will see a gain doing that also. Yes I know that I am going to be flamed for the security risk but as I said if someone has root you to dump virtual memory you are owned anyways. Increasing my 09 iMac to 16 gig (its max) and disabling encrypted virtual memory has made my performance a LOT more acceptable. My file coming from a 7D and a 5D MK II are 22 to 30 Megs Raw. I tend to have 5 to 8 open windows and 20 to 30 tabs open in my web browser. Hope that this helps


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## Northstar (Mar 11, 2013)

Just an update....bought 2 more 4GB cards to bring it up to 16GB on my iMac.

It DID make a difference....especially when working with raw files in Aperture, but the increase in speed is small. 

I noticed that the activity monitor had previously been using 7 of the 8 GB's, now, doing the same type of work, it shows that I'm using 11 of the available 16GB. So as some mentioned, Aperture will take more if it's available and less if things are tight.


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## bseitz234 (Mar 12, 2013)

Botts said:


> Prior Apple Genius here. Bseitz brings up what seems like it should be the truth. The reality is though that OS X and Aperture are extremely intelligent when it comes to allocating RAM. Aperture won't use what it really needs at the expense of other processes to an extent. It knows that you may flip into something more important, so it won't take what it really wants.
> 
> Swap used in activity monitor gives a better indication of whether or not you've maxed out your RAM.
> 
> Finally, as someone who has used a MacBook Pro with both 8GB and 16GB of RAM in a similar use case to yours, I noticed a big increase going to 16GB of RAM. Going from 16GB to 32GB in my iMac wasn't as big of a difference, still a nice little boost though.



At the risk of hijacking the thread, only doing this here hoping for benefit to more people than myself: 

I always get confused about Page ins / Page outs / Swap. I used to use Page outs as my indication for needing more RAM, lately, haven't had a problem with it though. I mostly used Page outs because it also gives a bytes/sec readout, so you can tell what you're currently using. For swap, am I correct that it shows what you've used since the machine last restarted? For instance, my swap currently shows 2.92 GB, Page outs 2.42 GB (0B/sec), and Page ins 24.06GB (0B/sec). 3.42GB available RAM. So currently, I have plenty available, but given that I haven't restarted in a few weeks, at some point I did something that required some swap, and that's still showing up on activity monitor. 

Thoughts? Thanks for your help! 
-Brian


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## Cptn Rigo (Mar 12, 2013)

16 Gigs will help you lot... 

But if you can... add a SSD, you will feel like you bought a faster computer


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## Botts (Mar 23, 2013)

bseitz234 said:


> Botts said:
> 
> 
> > Prior Apple Genius here. Bseitz brings up what seems like it should be the truth. The reality is though that OS X and Aperture are extremely intelligent when it comes to allocating RAM. Aperture won't use what it really needs at the expense of other processes to an extent. It knows that you may flip into something more important, so it won't take what it really wants.
> ...



Swap is what is currently being used. Page ins and page outs are cumulative.

OS X won't move memory from swap to active unless it determines that it is being required. Some apps may store some files in memory that aren't accessed until you do something to require their loading. I.e. you may have a preview window open on a different desktop, and not actively using it. Similarly, a video game may precache a level, but it isn't needed until you finish the current level. OS X won't waste the computing effort to move this from swap to active unless it is needed in active. Obviously this causes a slight delay, but OS X won't put it back in swap as long as you need it.

Right now my Mac is using 7.11GB of swap, but I have 4.55GB of RAM free, and 11.42GB used.

If you want to do some easy reading on this see here Apple KBase article on reading activity monitor.
For some more in depth reading, here is the developer page on virtual memory. Developer Info.

*tl;dr If you have no, or little RAM available (green), and a large swap file, you'll want more RAM. If you have GBs of free RAM and some swap used, don't worry. *


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