anyone else find Finder's photo's integration to be absurdly slow? like I just open photos and drag the photo I want to use to the desktop and that is at least 10x faster than waiting for finder to show me the photos

I’m not sure I understand what Finder integration means...

quicklook previews? Thumbnails in some specific Finder view settings?

maybe it isn't technically finder... the open file dialog in an app has "media" in the sidebar and when I click on "photos" there

that sidebar looks like the finder sidebar, but I don't see the Media section unless I'm in an open file dialog

It's been like this for me since that option showed up. I don't use it, but from time to time over the years I've tried it, usually after an OS update, and it always takes an absurd amount of time to load the pictures.

Aah - that's the media browser

So daemons populate that and the database that holds those thumbs can get wonky

Do you customize spotlight much? Reset it or poke / exclude files