C23 Memory Leak workaround

I'm a very new C1 user. I had the unpleasant experience of using the import tool on a real workflow in v16.3.x on a M2 MacBook Air 16GB. C1 would balloon to over 60+ GB of memory when opening >20 DNGs. MacOS was killing the process after it consumed all the memory. I stumbled upon the forums and realized to my immense disappointment this issue has been around for the last 3 releases of C1 and had no workaround. Talk about buyer's remorse! (Yes I have filed a support ticket to no avail)

I managed to find one after a few days of tinkering and wanted to save others the same pain. The source of the memory leak is the preview generation in the import/cull tool. When you browse multiple DNGs (i.e. scroll in the import window), C1 attempts to generate preview for each photo and doesn't release memory. You can actually watch the memory usage monotonically increase in Activity Monitor as you scroll. However, I noticed the batch preview used when editing seems to not have this problem.

This is the workaround: Do not scroll after opening the import window. Simply check "pick all" at the bottom and immediately import everything. Wait for the batch preview generator to complete. Go through your images in the main window and rate/flag them. Filter by rating/flag. The downside is your sessions are larger and more cluttered at first, but at least you should be able to complete your workflow without having MacOS OOM kill C1.

Hope it helps!

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