So I have lots of images in some categories. Whenever I edit an image, it goes back to the category with images but it tries to load all the images. Since I have hundreds of images in each category, the page times out. How do I make it so that when after I edit an image, it doesn't try to load all the images in a certain category and limit that to like 10 or 20?

If you go to the actual image page, click Admin on the banner and then [b]Edit image[/b], it should just edit that single image. What exactly are you editing in the image? The only times it's gone to the bulk image editing for me is when I have deleted an image.

After I upload into a category, it takes me to the category page and loads the last 10 images, which is what I want. I then go to "edit image data" to edit the tags of one image and after I hit "apply changes", it goes back to the category page except it tries to load every thumbnail in that category. Can this be turned off?

That is not the usual behaviour. You can set how many images per page you want to display via options. It never loads all images only that many as set on the "images per page" backend option.

Are you using the latest version? If not please consider to update.

Also please use the right terms to avoid confusing: What you call "categories" is called "albums".
Categories are something different and related to the Zenpage CMS plugin.

This is only in the admin panel, it isn't what visitors see, but it kinda freezes my admin panel. Using 1.4.11 I think.

I have no idea, please check those options. The only page where always all images of an album are shown is the image sorting page.

The edit page is always paginated or the one image edit page. Also check the logs for errors (server log as well).

Is it in the "theme options"?

When I first go to the Album to edit images, it does paginate at 10. Its when I go to a single image edit and then hit "apply" and it returns me to the album page, then it tries to load every image in the album.

Sorry, my bad, even devs loose sight on all options at times: For the image edit page there is no such option. But actually you have a dropdown selector on the top right to choose the number of images per page. That actually should stick per user on futher usage.
http://www.zenphoto.org/screenshots/zenphoto-admin/images-editing.jpg.html

But if you are on the single edit page you should actually stay there after applying and not return to the paginated page. That's how it works for me actually. Which means I cannot reproduce this weird behaviour.

Well, here's the weird thing, if I go to edit an image that has already been edited, it does stay on the image editing page. However, if I edit an image(on the image editing page) that's just been uploaded, it goes to the album page.

Interesting, I just tried that (via ftp/uploader) but sadly couldn't reproduce it… I stay on the edit page I hit apply on. So something else must be different…