Closing windows fast in Photo - needed to clear memory in MacOS

[dave2017]

We have an iMac which only has 8 Gbytes of main memory - though it is newish and has a fast processor.

I loaded up a bunch of files, including several RAF(RAW) files - from a Fuji camera and everything went very slow. I tried coming back out of Photo, and reloading, but it insists on trying to load the files.

I checked with Activity Monitor, and it's pretty clear that Photo wants nearly all of the 8Gbyte main memory in order to function.

That's OK if I know that I can avoid problems by not loading up photos, or not loading up RAW files, but since Photo keeps trying to load the files it has already loaded that's hard.

I need a way to shut down most of the loaded photos so that I can avoid this problem. I have not found a way to do this satisfactorily yet.

I have another machine which has a slower processor, but has 16 Gbytes of main memory. It is possible that the work could be done on that.

Not being able to reset Photo to a state where it can accept a smaller number of photos for proessing is a real nuisance.

Also - I think that if I were to accept JPG processing, this problem would be reduced somewhat, though that is not guaranteed.

It would be helpful if Photo could check main memory available before trying to load new files, and either prevent a new file from being loaded, or issue a warning. Some form of forced action should also be available to clear out photos which keep trying to load.

[dave2017]

I could not find an easy way of closing down the photos in Photo. However, as I also have Designer I opened the one of the photo files there, and then tried to edit it in Photo. This then enabled me to have just the one photo loaded into Photo, and I examined it there, though as it needed hardly any processing I closed it up after checking out the effects of exposure changes etc.

Before this Photo clearly was just about bringing our machine to a halt, and eventually crashed it - possibly losing other work in the process - and requiring a restart.

This really is an issue which needs attention.

 

[Old Bruce]

7 hours ago, dave2017 said:

I loaded up a bunch of files, including several RAF(RAW) files - from a Fuji camera and everything went very slow. I tried coming back out of Photo, and reloading, but it insists on trying to load the files.

 

16 minutes ago, dave2017 said:

I could not find an easy way of closing down the photos in Photo.

The next time you have this problem Force Quit the application (Photo/Designer/Publisher) and then hold down the Control key (Both Windows and Mac use the Control key for this) while starting up the application until you see the Clear User Data window, check the second item and hit clear.

[R C-R]

To prevent having this problem in the future, in Preferences > General, untick the first item, "Reopen document(s) on startup."