I've just migrated to Mac from Windows and the adaptation process has been a bumpy ride. I now have a question regarding Preview.
I just got back from a trip and have some 3GB of photos (DNG) that I have imported into my MBP. I did not use Photos because I am a Lightroom user and I intend to keep using Lightroom in the future (I am still planning on how I will move my LR stuff from my Windows PC to the MBP).
Yesterday I wanted to show my girlfriend the pictures, so I opened all of them using Preview. The application crashed after one minute of usage. I tried again, and one more time the application crashed.
I did some googling and found a suggestion that I could go to the Library folder and trash a few Preview related files. I decided to give this idea a spin and ditched them. I fired up Preview again, used for a couple of minutes and…. it crashed.
I am now wondering if Preview isn't suitable for viewing loads of pictures, or if there is something wrong on my Mac? If not, which software do you guys use (other than Photos and LR)?
— UPDATE
I have a MBP 2015 model running on 8GB of RAM. I didn't have any application open other than Chrome when I tried to use Preview.
Best Answer
To the best of my knowledge there is no documented limit to the number of photos you could open at one time using Preview. Usually, when software has no hard-coded limit, the only limitation is that created by the amount of RAM available to the application.
In the case of Preview, the more RAM available the more it can take advantage of when opening images. In addition to RAM being a factor, the number of images Preview can open at once also depends on the image format and the individual image sizes.
You don't specify how much RAM you have and what else (if anything) you were running at the time, nor do you specify the exact model of MBP etc. However, I've been using Preview for over 16 years and can attest to the fact that in some cases it's only been able to open a few hundred images, while in other cases it's been able to open 1000s.
My suggestion would be to start with only opening a hundred at a time and if it handles that without problems, double it to 200 and so on. You'll soon establish what's comfortable in your scenario.
A final word
One thing to consider also is that if you happen to have a corrupted image file then this could cause problems. I've seen Preview (and other apps) normally capable of opening a large number of files, randomly crash because one of the files you're trying to open is damaged in some way. Likewise, similar problems can be experienced if you've inadvertently selected a file that isn't supported. While these issues aren't usually a problem as Preview would just present you with an error message, it can be a problem if Preview is processing a large number of images simultaneously and is also waiting for a response from the user.