# Big Sur photo apps impact



## mcasan (Nov 13, 2020)

MacOS 11 Big Sur finally rolled out today.   Once downloaded (around 15 minutes) it took around 30 minutes to install, doing several restarts along the way.    No noticeable impacts on LrC, Ps, Photo Raw or other photo apps.   Machine in question is a 2017 iMac with quad 4.2 CPU and 580 GPU.     Am planning to replace it with a new Mac Mini with 16GB or memory and 1TB internal drive.  External storage (RAID 0 of SSDs) will be moved over from iMac to Mini.


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 13, 2020)

Thanks for the input. I always wonder if these upgrades are beneficial to the point of warranting immediate action, though not upgrading is avoiding the inevitable. Perhaps I'm a selfish human, but I'd prefer not be a 'bug tracker and exterminator' if I don't have to be...


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## mcasan (Nov 13, 2020)

Some folks like the bleeding edge, some like the trailing edge (and feathered), and likely most folks are somewhere in between.


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## Zenon (Nov 14, 2020)

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/big-sur.41514/#post-1275395
Also Photomatix Pro 6.2 opened and my 3 year old HP printer worked.


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## Zenon (Nov 14, 2020)

mcasan said:


> MacOS 11 Big Sur finally rolled out today.   Once downloaded (around 15 minutes) it took around 30 minutes to install, doing several restarts along the way.    No noticeable impacts on LrC, Ps, Photo Raw or other photo apps.   Machine in question is a 2017 iMac with quad 4.2 CPU and 580 GPU.     Am planning to replace it with a new Mac Mini with 16GB or memory and 1TB internal drive.  External storage (RAID 0 of SSDs) will be moved over from iMac to Mini.



Thanks. If I had not read this post I might have waited. I like it so far. Getting reports on other sites that thing are running OK.  I like the bleeding edge even if I bleed sometimes. Did my 2019 iMac. I'm just about done installing on my 2015 MacBook Air. Next time I replace that Air I'm not going to get the cheapest one money can buy. 4GB and low def screen. Travel got tougher after using a 5K screen. LR and PS run OK.


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 16, 2020)

So far, so good for me, though my first Time Machine Back-Up took quite a while. Hopefully, the next one will go faster.


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## Zenon (Nov 16, 2020)

Actually I did notice something. I got about 5 messages  that the Time Machine drive did not eject properly after the first night. I didn’t try to eject it. Hasn’t happened since. Everything seems to be OK.


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## clee01l (Nov 16, 2020)

Ok, based upon the consensus here and elsewhere,  Im going ahead and upgrade to MacOS 11.0


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## Conrad Chavez (Nov 16, 2020)

Bill Ballard said:


> So far, so good for me, though my first Time Machine Back-Up took quite a while. Hopefully, the next one will go faster.


While that’s normal since any major system upgrade will replace many GB of files, Big Sur is much larger than most past macOS upgrades, because it has code for both Intel and Apple Silicon. On my Mac it says it’s going to be 12.18GB. That could make the first backup after the upgrade take longer than usual.

Also note that for the first time, in macOS 10.11 Big Sur it is finally possible for Time Machine to create a backup on a volume formatted as APFS. In theory this should allow faster and more reliable backups, but because APFS support is new, there could be bugs.



clee01l said:


> Ok, based upon the consensus here and elsewhere,  Im going ahead and upgrade to MacOS 11.0


Some more good reading is:
Big Sur: Read this before upgrading by Howard Oakley

I’m going to do my usual thing and wait several point releases before upgrading, to give everyone from application developers to the companies who write all the drivers for my peripherals to get caught up. I didn’t upgrade to Catalina until July…


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## Zenon (Nov 16, 2020)

I didn’t know the back up is now APFS. I”ll have to back up my MacBook Air. I use a portable EHD and it always ejects the disk over night and I don’t know why. Been happening for a few years and I couldn’t figure it out. It’s just travel laptop and not much there. I plug the EHD in once a month.

The iMac ejecting was a one time thing. Just thought something. Maybe because the drive I use with the laptop is portable?




M


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## clee01l (Nov 16, 2020)

clee01l said:


> Ok, based upon the consensus here and elsewhere, Im going ahead and upgrade to MacOS 11.0



So far the only hiccup has been the AirSketch app that run resident and Something that I use for copying screen shots. It crashed on open and since it has not been updated since Jan.2019, I not so surprised. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Conrad Chavez (Nov 16, 2020)

Zenon said:


> I didn’t know the back up is now APFS. I”ll have to back up my MacBook Air. I use a portable EHD and it always ejects the disk over night and I don’t know why. Been happening for a few years and I couldn’t figure it out. It’s just travel laptop and not much there. I plug the EHD in once a month.


If I understand it properly, if you already have a Time Machine backup on an HFS+ volume I don’t think it auto-converts that, but we now have the option of making new Time Machine backups on an APFS volume.

I don’t know what’s going on with the portable drive ejecting itself, unless it’s one of those cases I’ve heard about where a USB drive doesn’t stay mounted during sleep.


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## Zenon (Nov 16, 2020)

Conrad Chavez said:


> If I understand it properly, if you already have a Time Machine backup on an HFS+ volume I don’t think it auto-converts that, but we now have the option of making new Time Machine backups on an APFS volume.
> 
> I don’t know what’s going on with the portable drive ejecting itself, unless it’s one of those cases I’ve heard about where a USB drive doesn’t stay mounted during sleep.



I'll have to explore that. Thanks.


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## mcasan (Nov 16, 2020)

Good reminder.   I just reformatted my TM drive to APFS and had Time Machine start a new series of backups.    Of course the first backup takes a while because I have it backing up the entire file system (both Machintosh HD and my RAID set).   Later backups will be quicker as they are incremental backups.


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## Zenon (Nov 16, 2020)

mcasan said:


> Good reminder.   I just reformatted my TM drive to APFS and had Time Machine start a new series of backups.    Of course the first backup takes a while because I have it backing up the entire file system (both Machintosh HD and my RAID set).   Later backups will be quicker as they are incremental backups.





mcasan said:


> Good reminder.   I just reformatted my TM drive to APFS and had Time Machine start a new series of backups.    Of course the first backup takes a while because I have it backing up the entire file system (both Machintosh HD and my RAID set).   Later backups will be quicker as they are incremental backups.



My Time Machine drive is spinny disk formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Do I just reformat to AFPS or is that only available for SSD?


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## clee01l (Nov 16, 2020)

Zenon said:


> My Time Machine drive is spinny disk formatted to Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Do I just reformat to AFPS or is that only available for SSD?



APFS is available on any drive SSD or HDD. The biggest problem is figuring out where to put the contents if you manually make the covnversion.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Zenon (Nov 16, 2020)

clee01l said:


> APFS is available on any drive SSD or HDD. The biggest problem is figuring out where to put the contents if you manually make the covnversion.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk



Thanks. I'll do a few searches.


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## Colin Grant (Nov 16, 2020)

None of my Topaz plugins run and if you do upgrade do not uninstall DxO Nik for any reason as you won't be able to reinstall - the Nik installer is not compatible with Big Sur.


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 17, 2020)

I just read this afternoon about APFS formatting. My initial back-up with Big Sur did fine, it was just very slow. However, I did have the same disk ejecting issues mentioned above, but the disk now boots and ejects normally. I think I might pick up a new HD for Time Machine, set it for APFS formatting, and go from there.



Colin Grant said:


> None of my Topaz plugins run and if you do upgrade do not uninstall DxO Nik for any reason as you won't be able to reinstall - the Nik installer is not compatible with Big Sur.



I use DxO Nik and haven't had any issue with it since the upgrade, or at least no issues with Silver Efx Pro, which makes up 99% of what I use from Nik. The only Nik associated bug I've encountered is the Nik Selective Tool doesn't open, which for me, isn't a biggie.


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## Zenon (Nov 17, 2020)

I reformatted the ED for my iMac and it did the new complete backup in less than an hr. I’ve never seen it that fast. Thanks for the info everyone.


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## Colin Grant (Nov 17, 2020)

[QUOTE="Bill Ballard, post: 1275545, member: 42461"
I use DxO Nik and haven't had any issue with it since the upgrade, or at least no issues with Silver Efx Pro, which makes up 99% of what I use from Nik. The only Nik associated bug I've encountered is the Nik Selective Tool doesn't open, which for me, isn't a biggie.
[/QUOTE]
What I said was that the Nik apps will run but do not for whatever reason uninstall them as you will not be able to reinstall -  the Nik installer is not Big Sur compatible as yet.


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 17, 2020)

Colin Grant said:


> [QUOTE="Bill Ballard, post: 1275545, member: 42461"
> I use DxO Nik and haven't had any issue with it since the upgrade, or at least no issues with Silver Efx Pro, which makes up 99% of what I use from Nik. The only Nik associated bug I've encountered is the Nik Selective Tool doesn't open, which for me, isn't a biggie.


What I said was that the Nik apps will run but do not for whatever reason uninstall them as you will not be able to reinstall -  the Nik installer is not Big Sur compatible as yet.
[/QUOTE]
Oh yes, understood.  I mentioned the bug with the Nik Selective Tool in the event other Nik users might have stumbled across something else. No plans to uninstall anything...


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## Colin Grant (Nov 17, 2020)

[/QUOTE]
Oh yes, understood.  I mentioned the bug with the Nik Selective Tool in the event other Nik users might have stumbled across something else. No plans to uninstall anything...
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately I did uninstall. Was following some instructions to get the plugins working with Affinity Photo. It was only an academic exercise too :(


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 17, 2020)

Oh yes, understood.  I mentioned the bug with the Nik Selective Tool in the event other Nik users might have stumbled across something else. No plans to uninstall anything...
[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately I did uninstall. Was following some instructions to get the plugins working with Affinity Photo. It was only an academic exercise too :(
[/QUOTE]
Oh dear...has DxO/Nik offered any solutions? Aside from the promise, "we're working on it,"?


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## Colin Grant (Nov 17, 2020)

Nope - they're working on it. I have already ditched PhotoLab as it does not support Fuji X - the company does not always make one feel comfortable.


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 17, 2020)

I've got PhotoLab 3, but haven't used it. I've been using Nik for years, since they first came along.

I did have an issue this morning, when using Nik, and that was my Nik layers weren't saving. (I was using Color Efx Pro when this happened.) I would have to save my PSD file, close Photoshop, reopen it, reopen the file, and then it worked normally. It didn't do it with Silver Efx. I'll give it a few days before going to Nik about it.


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## Zenon (Nov 17, 2020)

Colin Grant said:


> Nope - they're working on it. I have already ditched PhotoLab as it does not support Fuji X - the company does not always make one feel comfortable.



As we know Adobe got and still does get tons of flack for LR going subscription. They have never done anything to me. They have always been accommodating.

Last year DXO kept sending me email after email to upgrade to V3.  I finally did and two weeks later the BF sales came out. DXO told me too bad.

This year Canon released the R5.  Even C1 Pro released  RAW support within 3 weeks.  DXO waited for 2 months so you have to pay for a version upgrade to use the software.  They won’t get anymore money out of me.


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## Colin Grant (Nov 17, 2020)

Zenon said:


> As we know Adobe got and still does get tons of flack for LR going subscription. They have never done anything to me. They have always been accommodating.
> 
> Last year DXO kept sending me email after email to upgrade to V3.  I finally did and two weeks later the BF sales came out. DXO told me too bad.
> 
> This year Canon released the R5.  Even C1 Pro released  RAW support within 3 weeks.  DXO waited for 2 months so you have to pay for a version upgrade to use the software.  They won’t get anymore money out of me.


DxO are not known for their fleetness of foot or accomodating approach to customer service.


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## Zenon (Nov 17, 2020)

Colin Grant said:


> DxO are not known for their fleetness of foot or accomodating approach to customer service.



I got it for Prime but didn't use it as much as I thought I would. I prefer to work under one roof as much as possible. I'm getting clean 10,000 ISO files with the R5 using LR. I set LR's ISO Adaptive preset to get me within range and often need just a little tweaking. For tougher NR I resort to Topaz which can create weird artifacts. PL4 came out with Deep Prime so I went back here to wake them up.      Last post.                        

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conv...tion-feature-request/5f5f46144b561a3d427295da


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## mcasan (Nov 17, 2020)

For me the move to Big Sur is step one.   That went well for me.  Step two is to replace 2017 iMac with M1 Mini 16GB 1TB that will be hooked up to Dell UP3216Q Monitor.   Can't wait.  The Mini will reuse the RAID 0 set of SSDs via TB3 that I used with the iMac.


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## mcasan (Nov 18, 2020)

Pixelmator Pro 2 was released today with native Apple Silicon support.   Affinity Photo 1.8.6 was released a couple of days ago and also does native Apple Silicon support.    So for Big Sur that is the two main Ps alternatives now doing native mode Apple Silicon.


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 19, 2020)

Something of an Update:

I did get a new Western Digital portable hard drive formatted to APFS to serve a dedicated for Time Machine Backups. Holy cow, what a difference! The first Time Machine backup took rough 1.5 hours...so much faster than the first attempted backup with Big Sur on the old drive formatted to HFS+. Hopefully, this means subsequent backups will be equally as fast.


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## Zenon (Nov 19, 2020)

Bill Ballard said:


> Something of an Update:
> 
> I did get a new Western Digital portable hard drive formatted to APFS to serve a dedicated for Time Machine Backups. Holy cow, what a difference! The first Time Machine backup took rough 1.5 hours...so much faster than the first attempted backup with Big Sur on the old drive formatted to HFS+. Hopefully, this means subsequent backups will be equally as fast.



Amazing isn't it. Subsequent updates should be lighting quick as it only updates changes.


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## Conrad Chavez (Nov 19, 2020)

Bill Ballard said:


> I did get a new Western Digital portable hard drive formatted to APFS to serve a dedicated for Time Machine Backups. Holy cow, what a difference! The first Time Machine backup took rough 1.5 hours...so much faster than the first attempted backup with Big Sur on the old drive formatted to HFS+. Hopefully, this means subsequent backups will be equally as fast.


These reports of fast backups are interesting and encouraging, because up to this point, APFS has not been recommended as a format for hard drives because it’s designed and optimized for how SSDs work. When a system boot hard drive is formatted as APFS, it tends to run slower than as HFS+. But these reports make it sound like the performance improvement of Time Machine on APFS is so great that it  outweighs the lower efficiency of APFS on a hard drive. That could be true, since the structure of Time Machine backups was almost collapsing under its own weight on volumes formatted as HFS+…this Time Machine switch to AFPS has been long awaited by many.


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## Jan Emery (Nov 19, 2020)

I've decided to wait a while before downloading Big Sur until I've checked overall compatibility with other software etc.   Can anyone tell me what settings I should have on my Mac desktop to prevent it downloading, but still keep everything else up to date?  Thank you.


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 19, 2020)

Conrad Chavez said:


> These reports of fast backups are interesting and encouraging, because up to this point, APFS has not been recommended as a format for hard drives because it’s designed and optimized for how SSDs work. When a system boot hard drive is formatted as APFS, it tends to run slower than as HFS+. But these reports make it sound like the performance improvement of Time Machine on APFS is so great that it  outweighs the lower efficiency of APFS on a hard drive. That could be true, since the structure of Time Machine backups was almost collapsing under its own weight on volumes formatted as HFS+…this Time Machine switch to AFPS has been long awaited by many.


I had wondered about that as well. The experience I described is my initial backup on the APFS formatted dive - but it seems to echo what so many are experiencing. I remember when I first started with Time Machine, the very first back-up to a blank, new, drive took almost 16 hours. 'Normal back-ups averaged well over 2 hours. I back up to TM once per week, so this coming Sunday will be the telling of the tale...


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## Bill Ballard (Nov 19, 2020)

Jan Emery said:


> I've decided to wait a while before downloading Big Sur until I've checked overall compatibility with other software etc.   Can anyone tell me what settings I should have on my Mac desktop to prevent it downloading, but still keep everything else up to date?  Thank you.



I don't think it will 'force' itself onto your system for a while. I held off on Mojave when it was first released for a bit, a few months perhaps, then downloaded on my own.


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## clee01l (Nov 19, 2020)

Conrad Chavez said:


> These reports of fast backups are interesting and encouraging, because up to this point, APFS has not been recommended as a format for hard drives because it’s designed and optimized for how SSDs work.


When APFS was initially released,  It was only for MBPs with SSDs  HDDs and Fusion Drives were not supported  for APFS.   Withe the next version of MacOS,   Apple supported APFS on all drives and would convert your Primary drive  on upgrading the OS keeping the data in place during the up grade.   At that point I converted all of my Thunderbold HDDs to APFS.   I have never seen a recommendation against formatting HDDs to APFS.   Do you have an authoritative source (Apple) other than "they"?


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## Zenon (Nov 19, 2020)

I reformatted one HD (not an SSD) to APFS and Time Machine did the entire backup in less than an hour.  I'm  not a computer wizard. What about my external HD drives where I store my RAW files? I imagine APFS should be faster when I'm editing, importing and moving files to the ED? I have a portable ED as a third backup I update from time to time. Another safety net. Should I proceed or not bother?


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## Conrad Chavez (Nov 19, 2020)

clee01l said:


> I have never seen a recommendation against formatting HDDs to APFS.   Do you have an authoritative source (Apple) other than "they"?


Here are a couple of links. The first is from a vendor of Mac hardware peripherals including storage drives; I own a lot of their products. The second is by the developer of Carbon Copy Cloner, one of the premier utilities for Mac bootable backups.

Using APFS On HDDs … And Why You Might Not Want To — macsales.com

An Analysis Of APFS Enumeration Performance On Rotational Hard Drives - bombich.com

The second link focuses on concerns with 2.5" 5400RPM hard drives, but relevant to this thread, those are popular for backups. The widely available bus-powered compact backup drives by Seagate and Western Digital are 2.5" 5400RPM drives. It does say “…performance difference is most noticeable on a macOS startup disk that is (or includes) a rotational disk” which is why I thought maybe AFPS is less of a problem on a storage drive used only for backup.

Looks like Apple doesn’t mention any concerns. Their file system article says “While APFS is optimized for the Flash/SSD storage used in recent Mac computers, it can also be used with older systems with traditional hard disk drives (HDD) and external, direct-attached storage.”


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## Zenon (Nov 20, 2020)

My FAT32 flash drives did not play nice with Apple's Numbers. It didn’t want to save changes.  I keep my passwords on a stick. My guess the same would be for Pages and Keynote. I reformatted them to Mac. I only use these on a Mac so not a big deal. I might have been able to make some changes but it was easier just to format.


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## Zenon (Nov 22, 2020)

Conrad Chavez said:


> If I understand it properly, if you already have a Time Machine backup on an HFS+ volume I don’t think it auto-converts that, but we now have the option of making new Time Machine backups on an APFS volume.
> 
> I don’t know what’s going on with the portable drive ejecting itself, unless it’s one of those cases I’ve heard about where a USB drive doesn’t stay mounted during sleep.



Not sure if it is because of APFS or I'm using the other USB port the Air  has not ejected the ED for a few days. I'm happy so far.


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## mcasan (Nov 25, 2020)

If you are interested in real world photo and video processing on an M1 Mac, you might want to watch one of the episodes of Photoshop Cafe.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SndWxRaMzxA


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## mcasan (Nov 28, 2020)

Have now taken step two.    My M1 Mac mini arrived yesterday.   It has 16GB and a 1TB SSD.   I moved my data drive (RAID 0 set) and Time Machine drive over from my 2017 iMac and had Big Sur migrate from the latest Time Machine backup.   No problem.   I did notice that now Creative Cloud offers me the Beta of Ps updated for M1.    I have not installed it.   So both LrC and Ps are running with Rosetta II emulation layer.   So far, no problems.


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