Mac Performance
I am about a week into my trial of ON1 2020 and, unless there is anything settings-wise that I can do, will have to sadly abandon the programme and resort to paying Adobe their monthly subscription.
I have really loved working my way through the programme and getting to grips with how it edits and views photos, but the lack of speed and the constant fan noise on my iMac and MacBook Air are really getting to me. I am sure that my iMac would benefit from being replaced by a new one, but that's not going to happen any time soon.
I have tried the System sliders in a variety of positions, restarted the programme and moved the scratch disc to a remote location, but nothing seems to calm down the hunger of ON1. ON1 is showing it taking c.500% of the CPU, 1.4Gb of memory with NO other apps running. Even when I am doing absolutely nothing in the programme itself, the programme seems to need more from my Mac.
Navigating through the browser tree lags and clicking on populated folders does nothing for an annoying length of time.
I am running ON1 2020 on my iMac (27-inch, Late 2012) running Mojave v10.14.6. The iMac has a 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 processor with 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory. The graphics card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2 GB.
I have tested a wide range of photo manipulation programmes and have often encountered this problem. I do not understand how Lightroom, working under exactly the same conditions, seems to work flawlessly with rarely a hint of working overtime or being stressed.
Is there anything settings-wise I could try before I leave ON1?
Many thanks
Chris
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You said you moved the program's scratch space to a remote location. Where did you move it to? It is recommended that it be on an SSD with a dedicated connection to the computer and that is not used for anything else. I've also moved the PerfectBrowseCache there to remove that space requirement from my internal drive. Where is yours? If it is still on the internal drive you may get more Browser performance by moving it.
I run on a 2017 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, 2.8GHz i7, same OS, and it has an AMD Radeon Pro 555 with 2GB of VRAM. Your system should outperform mine everywhere except the video card, mine is newer and probably faster. I'm pretty happy with the performance I'm getting. Might a newer, external video card help? That would boost other GPU intensive program's performance as well.
Photo RAW is very GPU intensive. I suspect they are doing things quite differently than the Adobe products. Also, Adobe has had a much longer time to get things like that worked out while ON1 is relatively new in comparison. Just my opinion.
How long has it been since your iMac has been opened up and all the dust cleaned out? That might help with the fans.
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Hello Brian. Thank you for responding.
I tried moving the scratch disc to the only space hard drive I have. It's not an SSD drive and probably as a consequence made no difference to the CPU usage. Not sure I'm brave enough to start dismantling my iMac and cleaning out the fans - seems a rather drastic step for me.
I have just started to trial DxO PhotoLab 3 and noticed that it runs perfectly on my iMac with no fan speed issues, drag or hanging. I can navigate quickly around the in-built browser and made complex and quick edits without noticing any issues with stressed memory or graphics use. It is quite different from ON1 and is a more expensive product, but looks interesting and results in a perfectly quiet Mac!
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Putting the scratch space on its own dedicated SSD is the biggest performance enhancer beyond a faster GPU that you can do. It isn't the amount of CPU usage that matters, it is I/O contention. Think about the OS, the program code, the program's scratch space, and the photograph itself as all needing to drive on the same road. If everything is on one drive that road is a one-lane road, traffic moves slowly. By putting the scratch space on a fast drive with its own connection it gets its own express lane for I/O resulting in faster performance by the program.
Your computer is 8 years old. If it has never been cleaned out I promise you it has enough dust in there to plant corn. ;) Cleaning it out will make a difference in the system's ability to remain cool. I can understand if that is something you're not comfortable with doing yourself. Opening an iMac isn't easy. Something you can do is to use a toothpick & compressed air to clean out the ventilation ports. Just drag the toothpick through them gently to collect and remove the dust bunnies.
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Hello Brian. I have tried moving the scratch space to a SSD and it's made no difference I'm afraid. Interestingly, the app only creates issues with fans and CPU usage whilst in Browser mode. Everything calms down whilst in Develop mode (which from someone who knows very little, is counterintuitive).
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Chris, if you happen to be in the middle of building catalogs, you'll get higher CPU usage until they complete. They build while in Browse mode and seem to suspend while in Edit mode.
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Cataloguing is an unruly thug. On the Mac at least the claim that it works in the background is simply not true. While cataloguing, many editing operations are adversely affected by the process, including those called by apps other than ON1. To test your system try deleting all your catalogued folders, there should be a noticeable increase in performance.
If you really need to catalogue, set your machine up and go on holiday for a week or two, though for some configurations it has been noted that cataloguing never really completes and locks into a continuous cycle. For the past six months I have been trying to get to the bottom of why it does this. I’ve spent weeks starting, restarting and deleting catalogues and I think I am getting closer to an answer, though I usually run cataloguing overnight or when I am away for the day.
I wish ON1 would do this research.
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I had a mid 2012 Imac, 24gb RAM, 27 inch and used an external thunderbolt SSD for scratch. The problem came down to the speed of USB2 after trying all the suggestions. The input/output speed of USB2 is extremely limiting on performance of ON1, almost unusable unless your image files are very small.
I did replace to Imac with a mid 2015, 32gb RAM, USB3, it is way better and good enough for now. I also found that is way fast not to use any catalogue.
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Without cataloguing the speed and response when editing is significantly increased across all programs, not just ON1. If you need a catalogue then try Adobe Bridge, it’s not on subscription and is entirely free to download and use, and once you get used to its search and filter routines you’ll wonder why you ever used ON1 cataloguing.
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"try Adobe Bridge, it’s not on subscription and is entirely free to download and use"
Hi, you caught me in the middle of an endless questioning...I wish to leave Adobe, I quite like ON1 and DXO PhotoLab (among others) but their DAM capacities are not enough for me and their search functionalities are minimalist.
Do you mean a subscription is not needed to use Bridge?
I also use NeoFinder which can be used with different types of documents.
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Sorry, I checked more than once, Bridge is free...as part of the Adobe subscription...
I should have known!
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Bridge is free. No subscription or any other product is needed. There is an article about it here and a download link at https://www.adobe.com/products/bridge.html?red=a
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Here is an article from Dec 2019 that says Bridge 2020 is free and the licence never expires.
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We found the same article. :)
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Ah, ok. I'm just checking to see if it installs properly. (IE: free)
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It's working on my Mac.
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Well, it's been 30 min and I still don't have it running. The download link on the Adobe site says I need Creative cloud first. It's not something that I want to install, but ok... except it's excruciatingly slow! It's done 2 updates so far and still not done.
Oh great, now it has an error to fix...
In the meantime, I've discovered that I still have Bridge CC2017 and CS3 still installed. I don't use either of them.
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Yes, everything is installed & updated through the Creative Cloud app even if you do not have a CC subscription. It installs first then it updates itself until it is up to the latest release then it starts the Bridge installation.
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So, assuming that I get bridge running, Will I then be able to uninstall creative cloud? Not that I actually need bridge, but if it's free It might be useful someday.
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I think so but if you are going to use Bridge you'll want to keep it so you can get the updates. You do not have to keep it running to use Bridge though so I used to just quit the CC app until I needed it.
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So, more than an hour now and I can't answer my question. After the cloud was installed, it updated my already installed Bridge (to V10.0.3). If I try to install what was downloaded from the link above, nothing happens, no window opens and there is no indication that anything is installing. Maybe it's because I already have it.
I'll have to go with Brian's results on this one. In any case, Christian should be able to install Bridge for free.
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Thanks for proving that ON1 is absolutely unable to get its things running and working. To install Adobe Bridge because ON1 is not working properly is exactly what it sounds like: a completely mad idea. They simply do not know what they are doing - file wise!
I am not yet decided whether I will sue them or not. But I definitely won't do anything of what you suggest.
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"I'll have to go with Brian's results on this one. In any case, Christian should be able to install Bridge for free."
The thing is...I already have it along with the whole Adobe CC stuff, so I guess I'll just have to jump ship and see what happens. BTW my yearly Adobe CC renewal deadline is on March 13th, so I'll have to think fast.
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Christian,
I don't think you'll have a problem. Everything I see says Bridge will continue working after your subscription.
Jan,
what are you talking about? Your post doesn't make sense.
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Aren't you explaining how you can use Bridge instead of the inbuilt ON1 cataloguing options? Because the OP complaint that catloguing was not working for him in ON1?
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No, I don't use Bridge, Christian wanted to try it but thought it wasn't free anymore. I was just checking to see if Bridge was still free or not. It took a lot longer than I thought it would.
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