[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

Just now, v_kyr said:

Good RAM choice, especially for running certain memory hungry apps in parallel!

Oh, I need every bit of it for music and audio apps.

Just now, v_kyr said:

Well honestly I doubt it will make that much difference GPU wise here for the actual Affinity apps, but maybe or probably for other multithreaded programmed GPU intensive apps. The whole depends on how apps are programmed and build-up in order to make full use of all possible GPU cores. AFAIK there are actually only few apps which will make use of those and thus will benefit from a full blown set of GPU cores.

Thinking about it, I should ask Topaz about Gigapixel AI. Last time I looked they hadn't updated it for Apple Silicon, but it does use the graphics card for processing (there's even a preference). And it can easily take half an hour to process a file on my current main machine.

 

Just now, v_kyr said:

However, you can take a look through the Benchmark lists here in order to see & find out if it possibly makes any valuable difference or not!

You have to test & try out which pleases you more and is also overall less storage memory consuming for you!

 

Yeah, I don't really care about storage - it's cheap.

Thanks for the link. Benchmark scores are usually sort of abstract (in that they tend not to mean a lot in the real world), but that's a good guide.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

Thanks v_kyr.

Yes, I'm definitely going to order the Mac Studio with 64GB (the one that can hold 128GB is twice the price, which is just too much money for a computer). What I want to know is whether having 32 vs 24 graphics cores makes any difference and if so how much difference to Affinity Photo - i.e. is it worth $200 or not. It doesn't make any difference for the music and audio programs I use.

As to the clipboard, what I discovered (thanks to this thread) is that - in clearer language than I wrote above - if you copy from one open Affinity picture to another, the clipboard is flushed when you quit. But if you do a screen capture it isn't, as expected (because that's a PNG rather than in Affinity's own format).

I'm starting to think it's wise to use more shapshots and less saving the undo history. At the least it saves drive space.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

The way I've left it: next time this happens I will look more closely and try to figure out what's going on. In the meantime there's not much I can do.

Early in this thread someone suggested that it could be the clipboard. That actually could be *part* of the answer - when I've copied something from the screen, because Affinity flushes the clipboard when you copy "internally."

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

Come on.

You people need a grasp of the very basic subtleties of language.

I appreciate help, I don't appreciate being patronized. Things like "and how exactly are you determining that your memory isn't being freed [the implication being that I'm an idiot who needs to be taught the different kinds of RAM use in macOS]" are just annoying.

Again, it's in the way it's said.

thomaso, you don't know me from Adam. Pease stop insulting me.

You are contributing nothing other than antagonizing me. No, I'm not a dickbrain.

And I asked the question about M1 and M2 separately BECAUSE I'M INTERESTED IN THE BLEEDIN' ANSWER! Sorry you find that strange.

***

As to the remark about my preferring Memory Clean to looking at Activity Monitor... the two are not mutually exclusive.

I use Memory Clean to free up memory. In the past RAM access has been a major issue for music software, as I wrote. Again, Memory Clean typically frees up less RAM than it used to for whatever reason, but it's useful to have it running nonetheless.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

Not "as has been suggested" - YOU want me to do that, YOU think you can help me if I do, and I am not interested in doing so at this particular time vector window moment.

Also, it is suggested that one not use the passive voice.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

23 hours ago, R C-R said:

I have no problem with that. However, you might find it useful to read https://support.apple.com/guide/activity-monitor/view-memory-usage-actmntr1004/10.14/mac/10.14, particularly considering what it says about Cached Files & performance.

Look, I don't come here to be rude to people.

But first, my understanding of RAM cache is that it's used by the system. Second, it's supposed to be available if programs need to overwrite it.

Remember, the reason I posted was not because I care about what the display says but because I was experiencing instability when running Logic after Affinity Photo.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

Please. It has been suggested that you give it a rest.

 

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

That is to be expected because it all depends on the demand other processes (including both user-launched apps & other processes being run by the OS) are putting on the available RAM.

You can monitor this by opening Activity Monitor to the Memory tab & checking the Memory Pressure graph & by setting the View to show all processes, System processes, & so on.

Again, if the graph stays in the green, there is no reason for the OS to page things out of memory. So please show us a screenshot of that graph before & after quitting AP if you want us to understand what makes you think there is something wrong with AP that is causing the OS not to release RAM when it is needed by other processes.

Also, it may help if you start up AP, find it in the Activity Monitor window, & double-click on it to show all its open files & ports. Note that many of these items like fonts & various system level items may be used by several other apps & precesses so they will still use some RAM even after AP has quit.

Nope. Programs free up their RAM when you quit them.

And the reason I posted about this originally is that I've experienced instability in other programs (specifically Logic) after quitting Affinity Photo.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

All that says is you have 39.51 GB free. It says nothing about memory pressure being sufficiently high enough to force releasing any more of it so other processes can use it. In fact, like has already been mentioned, absent high memory pressure the OS will try to avoid releasing recently used data already in memory in case it might be needed again because it is much quicker to move it from inactive to active memory than fetching it again from even the fastest SSD.

 

Sigh.

No.

Example: if Ioad my large music template into Apple Logic Pro X, the available memory display you're looking at will go down to roughly 20GB.

Then when I quit Logic, the display will go back up roughly to where it was before launching it, maybe 50GB.

That happens with AF sometimes, sometimes it doesn't.

Bear in mind that I may be stupid, but I've been dealing with memory access for 20 years, since the dawn of streaming sampling when it was a very scarce resource. I've been a music tech magazine editor for a long time - point being not to brag, but to say that this is something I've had to pretend to understand for a long time in order to keep how stupid I am hidden from public view!

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

42 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If by "it" you mean the macOS, then again what specifically is it that makes you think there is something wrong with AP if not all the memory it has used while open is cleared when you quit that app? Where in Activity Monitor or in Memory Clean or in any other app or utility do you see any indication of that?

If instead by "it" you mean AP itself, it is still unclear what makes you think something is wrong.

 

Oh come on.

I appreciate your willingness to help, but this is just getting frustrating.

Please just look at my last post. Look at the picture of my menu bar.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Try some tool like Memory Diag and set it up to "Automatic recycle" when memory intensive apps (like APh etc.) are closed. You can also setup a "Limit in MB" for free memory, so the recycle runs when that limit value is reached!

 

 

 

I use Memory Clean, but I wouldn't want to have a utility do that automatically.

And I certainly wouldn't want to limit memory use! I run real-time music programs that stream samples off drives into head-start RAM buffers, and the last thing you want is for it to start using swapfiles instead of memory.

In general macOS does a great job of handling this seamlessly. I haven't actually had to use Memory Clean to regain RAM for years, but when I do it might free up 3GB. It used to make a much more dramatic difference.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

59 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Where specifically in Activity Monitor do you see Affinity Photo still using memory after it has quit? Is it private memory (memory not available to other app because the OS has reserved it for the private use of AP), shared memory that other apps might still need to use, or what?

Remember that by design the macOS will not automatically clear recently used data from memory unless/until it is needed by some other process.

Basically, as long as the 'memory pressure' graph at the bottom of the Activity Monitor window stays green, everything should be OK.

It doesn't always free the memory when you quit the program so you can run other big programs, regardless of what should happen. Yes, I'm aware of the different kinds of memory use, and at one point I could have told you what they are.

This is my menu bar, which includes Memory Clean's display. It tells you how much application memory is free. Right now I have 39.51 GB free.

Bottom line, something is going on, whether it's a real problem or just a quirk specific to my setup. My machine is frozen on an outdated macOS version (Mojave), and I don't expect Affinity to use it as a target.

As I said, I plan to update to a Mac Studio fairly soon.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

Macs come with a utility called Activity Monitor that can display the memory use - what's being used by programs, what's installed, etc. It's much like Task Manager on Windows.

I also have a utility called Memory Clean that has this info right in the menu bar.

54 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

After you quit Affinity Photo and start some other (non Affinity) application that needs lots of RAM does the RAM become available for the second application?

I appreciate your attempt to help, but this is like calling an electrician because your power is out and being asked whether you can turn on the living room lights when you flip the switch on the wall.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

On 7/19/2022 at 1:00 AM, Callum said:

Hi NickBatz, 

This doesn't seem to happen when I try some tests here. As far as I'm aware we might hold onto the RAM until something else needs it but it should be immediately free'd up for use once it's needed. Would you be able to provide a screenshot of Activity monitor on your mac showing the RAM usage before and after closing Affinity?

Thanks
C

 

Well, I just tried this again.

The first time I tried it, Affinity Photo didn't relinquish its RAM when I quit. I'd been working on one picture (a complicated one with lots and lots of layers), and don't know whether I had anything copied to Affinity's clipboard, 

Then I restarted, loaded a few pictures... and it did relinquish the RAM. I didn't have anything in the clipboard this time, but somehow I don't think that's the issue after all.

So I'm not sure where to go from here! There must be something going on to have caused it to happen the first time.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

5 hours ago, carl123 said:

 

 

Also, bear in mind that any information copied to the clipboard by the application is still there in memory when you close the application and nowadays you can have multiple items stored in the clipboard (clipboard history) You would, at least, need to flush the clipboard after closing the app to see if there are still missing chunks of memory

Ah, I'll bet you're right.

Thanks.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

10 hours ago, Callum said:

Hi NickBatz, 

This doesn't seem to happen when I try some tests here. As far as I'm aware we might hold onto the RAM until something else needs it but it should be immediately free'd up for use once it's needed. Would you be able to provide a screenshot of Activity monitor on your mac showing the RAM usage before and after closing Affinity?

Thanks
C

Okay, thanks, will do. It may be a couple of days, if that's okay.

[Affinity Photo memory usage/relinquishing questions]

I have 64GB in my Intel Mac (specs below). Affinity Photo uses a whole lot of that, especially when I have multiple pictures open with Save History With Doc enabled.

And that's fine.

The issue is that it doesn't relinquish all that RAM when I quit the program. I'm not ready to use words like "memory leak' that are supposed to make one sound intelligent, but something doesn't seem right.

Memory Clean (I think that's the utility's name) is unable to free up the RAM.

This isn't a huge deal, except that I run music software that uses a whole lot of RAM as well, and I'm not used to having to restart before launching it. It does become unreliable very quickly if I don't.

So two questions:

1. Is it just me?

2. Is this better in M1/M2 Macs? Just curious, because I'm planning on upgrading to a Mac Studio in the near future.

Computer specs: Mac Pro 5,1, 12x3.46 GHz, 64MB RAM, Radeon RX 560 4 GB video card, macOS 10.14.6 Mojave. All SSDs, not using spinning drives.

TIA 

[Mask not 100% opaque. Why?]

Thanks NotMyFault. Will check the brushes.

[Mask not 100% opaque. Why?]

Both the top layer and the mask are selected in this screenshot, but just selecting the mask layer doesn't change the behavior.

Also, the brush I'm using seems to be a solid one.

[Mask not 100% opaque. Why?]

If you look at the area of the mask I'm in the process of painting in solid black - ostensibly - you can see that it's not 100% black. (Look at the big circle - you can see that it's slightly foggy compared to areas I've gone over multiple times.)

Any idea why? Is the glitch in my brain or in Affinity Photo?

This is zoomed way in, and I pasted the brush settings onto the screenshot so you can see them.

The only thing I can think of is that I had previously reduced the opacity of the top layer in order to see what was going on beneath it. But it's 100% here.

TIA

 

[AP: Feathered area stays behind when you move a copy/pasted selection]

By the way, it appears that there's still a 6-pixel feather when you deselect and move. I expect the planet to survive this, but it might be worth looking into.

[AP: Feathered area stays behind when you move a copy/pasted selection]

Yes! That did it.

Thanks very much.

[AP: Feathered area stays behind when you move a copy/pasted selection]

I copy/pasted this selection from a picture, then moved it (which was the reason for the exercise in the first place). The 6-pixel feather doesn't get moved, it gets left behind.

Rasterizing doesn't change the behavior.

I was able to use the leftovers to creative effect, but am I missing a way to prevent this from happening?

TIA

[Recalling History requires clicking on the state to recall it (is it a bug or a feature request?)]

4 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Because they are basic?

They're mixed like everywhere else on the Internet.

But - while I do apologize for being an idiot here this time (okay, and maybe a couple of other times) - I plead guilty to glossing over correct and helpful answers because they got lost in the signal-to-noise ratio I was anticipating.

I'm quite serious that someone here told me how to use a mouse as a response to a question!

[Recalling History requires clicking on the state to recall it (is it a bug or a feature request?)]

Okay, I'm eating crow.

I take back all the huffing and puffing.

Thanks.