[aviator]

More memory (at least 4gb) and 10 percent or more FREE hard drive hard drive space will help. Also, run the Disk Utility program to repair permissions. If your images are really big that may be a factor.

[Talisker]

More memory (at least 4gb) and 10 percent or more FREE hard drive hard drive space will help. Also, run the Disk Utility program to repair permissions. If your images are really big that may be a factor.

Yep. Spinning beachballs are timeouts, and on the Mac that usually means data shuffling in limited memory space, either RAM or HD. The other thing that can bring about the same problem is lack of proper memory clearing, either by a buggy program, or a collision with another program that's either dirty, or a memory hog.

[grwcfl537]

Other hint concerning memory usage -- go on App Store, Free Apps and down loadFreeMemory.

OWC or Newegg sell memory at reasonable prices.

Mel

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

More memory (at least 4gb) and 10 percent or more FREE hard drive hard drive space will help. Also, run the Disk Utility program to repair permissions. If your images are really big that may be a factor.

I've had a Mac for years, but I finally bought an instruction book for it - Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

And that book agrees that cleaning up permission problems by using the Disk Utility - go to launchpad, and click on "Utilities" - can cure a multitude of sins. I had a different problem - a new hard drive had an installer which wouldn't run, and the drive didn't even show up on the desktop - but Utilities found it and formatted it snic-snac (it was helpful to know that the "Erase" command formats a drive). I've enjoyed reading the book, and would recommend it. $35 list, tho . . .