Monday, May 9, 2011 at 1:25 PM by Joseph Linaschke Adjustment Presets Slowing You Down? Solution Found!
For those who’ve added loads of 3rd party Adjustment Presets (like these) to Aperture and have noticed that it’s slowed things down, specifically when you first start working in adjustments or any time you open and close the preset window, it appears that something snuck into a recent Aperture update to address this.
I noticed it when setting up a new system for someone else, and when I added all of the ApertureExpert Adjustment Presets, I didn’t see the spinning beach ball I was used to seeing—but I was still experiencing it on my own computer. Hmm… so a little experimenting lead me to realize that if you delete all the existing presets, then reinstall them, you gain the newfound speed!
I’d advise anyone with ANY 3rd party presets installed prior to Aperture 3.1.2 follow these steps:
1) Go to the Adjustments tab and under the Presets menu, choose Edit Presets…
2) You could dig up all the the previous downloads and re-install from those, but it’s easier to just export all the presets you have as one set, and re-import those later. To do that, select all your third party presets, and select Export… from the gear menu.
3) Now you can delete the ones you just exported with the Delete Preset… option.
4) IMPORTANT — You have to click OK to confirm the deletion! (If you clicked Cancel now, all your presets would still be there—so the actual deleting doesn’t happen until you click OK).
5) Now go back to the Preset Editor, and this time select Import… and choose the pack you just exported.
6) Once imported, click the OK button, and you’ll notice right away that the dialog closes almost instantly—unlike before, where it would beach ball for several seconds, if not longer, before closing.
That’s all there is to it. Enjoy your newfound speed!
Joseph Linaschke
NOTE: Some users have reported problems if you have empty presets. That’s a preset name with zero adjustments in it (because you’ve deleted the adjustments, but not the preset itself). If you have any empties, I’d get rid of them before proceeding!
Reader Comments (7)
Joseph- Thanks. I'll give it a try. I do the beach ball when I first select anything-adjustment, preset, import, etc.
Florian
Thanks! I noticed a big difference!
Joseph, thanks for this tip.
A small word of warning, if one of the presets is 'empty', such as during experimenting, I might have deleted the actions of the preset but somehow left the preset in the list, then it is not possible to export it. (makes sense)
But if you highlight it among the others, and export, nothing happens at all.
To my horror, I highlighted all, exported, then deleted, then tried to find the file to import. Nothing. Gone. End of story.
After a bit of heartburn, good old Time Machine rises to the occassion.
The Presets are stored in
Library>Application Support>Aperture>Adjustment Chain Presets.plist
So I restored that from an hour or so before and they are back. Cool.
Then I deleted the several that were empty and a few others that I no longer need, and retried exporting. Success.
But doing the recover from TM seems to have had the same effect. I don't have the beachball.
So, I suppose what is happening is that the Preset file is being restored or reimported in a non-fraged way and reads quicker?
It also taught me to export each of the important presets and back them up somewhere.
Thanks again for a (eventually for me <gg>) really useful idea.
DJ
David,
Thanks for the warning! I want to clarify something then I'll add it to the main post above.
When you say a preset is "empty", do you mean that you've created a preset but removed all of its components, or do you mean that you have an empty preset group? See [screenshot].
Thanks
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
Hey how cool. Just did the above and it works great. Thanks
G
Hi Joseph,
When you say a preset is "empty", do you mean that you've created a preset but removed all of its components, or do you mean that you have an empty preset group? See [screenshot].
Yes, the preset was empty, due to much playing about with presets, trying to find the perfect one for every use. <ggg> I did not have an empty group. (although thinking about it, should try and see just for sake of completeness ah?)
I suppose I had made the preset, then altered it, and then gone back and deleted the various settings, by hitting the delete key, I suspect.
So the D200 In the Snow preset, was a name only and the changes for each component had been deleted.
Leaving D200 In the Snow, still in the list, but not actually doing anything... And as I don't have any current snow/D200, I didn't take any more notice.
I found in the end, that I had 3 empty presets without components.
Story being, it is good idea to delete unused presets or at least save them away and then delete them.
All is running fine at the moment.
DJ
Yes, this can be dangerous, if people don´t check that the export actually works before deleting their presets, there is a risk of loosing their presets.
I too can´t export more than 1 preset pack at a time.
What i cant replicate is the above post regarding empty presets, just comment that whenever i try exporting more than one preset pack, the export dont work.