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When loading generative artwork - Affinity Designer slows down to unbearable levels even with relatively easy meshes This problem seems to exist on all platforms affinity runs on - which leads me to believe basic acceleration structures are not in place. Example file: https://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/img/substitution/danzers-7-fold/patch.pdf Import this, try select all/ungroup/do anything to it -> framerate down to 1fps even on the beefiest of workstations Same issue can be recreated by creating any shape and copying it about 100 times.

Hi, I have a PC with these specs: Core i9 CPU + 32 GB RAM + RX580 8 GB GPU + Dell 4K Display. Latest version of Affinity Designer. Every driver is up to date. I'm getting huge performance issues whenever I enable isometric grid layout. Just dragging around a single rectangle is super lagging. It's a fresh install of Affinity and just a blank Desktop artboard. I tried to record my screen but couldn't find anything that can record properly 60 fps. (open for suggestions how to record my screen. tried build in game bar but it's terrible.) Any suggestions? Thanks.

I am currently layouting a photo book (330x240mm) with 500-600 pages in Affinity Publisher on my Mac. Unfortunately, the memory consumption of Publisher is huge. I set the memory limit in Publisher to 28 GB (out of 32 GB I have in total) and disk warning to 64 GB. I have 500GB free space on my SSD and Publisher takes about 351GB while saving the document. Sometimes while moving pictures it crashes (but luckily keeps a backup file) and saving the file takes ages. The pictures are all linked and do have less than 10GB in total in full resolution. Is this a common behavior or is there anything I can do to fix this. Really looks like kind of a memory leak and is not fun working at all. Maybe you do also have some performance recommendations for my 15inch 2018 MacBook Pro with Radeon Pro 560X 4 GB, 2,9 GHz 6-core i9, 36 GB RAM and 1TB SSD? Thank you so much in advance! I really would love to do this project with Publisher and not go back to InDesign.

I work on a illustration with a huge number of small dot that i start on Illustrator and i work fine ; but when i change to Affinity, everytime i duplicate an element (and i do that a lot) my computer freeze for a few second. I loose a lot a time. Then i notice that the time my computer freeze was the same for one or multiple duplicate elements. And when i move a element, my PC doesn't freeze. So all i have to do was duplicate a lot of element and move them where i want.It's save me a lot of time. Hope that can help someone in the same situation (and sorry for my bad english).

Hi, I have a iMac Pro 2017 with 3 GHz 10-Core Intel Xeon W, 64 GB 2666 MHz DDR4, 2 TB SSD and Radeon Pro Vega 64X 16 GB graphic card. I use Capture One to develop my 61MP Sony A7rIV photos. Some of the photos need to be edited in Affinity Photo and I use a TIFF 8bit uncompressed AdobeRGB as format. The image has 9504x6336px size. Saving the picture after edit in Affinity Photo takes a lot of time. It takes ~14 seconds for every photo!!! Is that normal for such a high performance machine? The Activity View does not show any heavy consumption of resources while saving in that 14 seconds. Greetings, Christoph

With more complex Publisher documents, I sometimes experience crashes just moving about in the document.. I have a feeling that the crashes are related to settings in the Performance section of the Preferences, but I can't find anywhere a FAQ or a comprehensive discussion on what the different choices really mean for the stability and performance of the app. A few questions: In the Display section, which is more stable: Metal, OpenGL, OpenGL (Basic) or Software rendering? I suppose Metal is fastest, or am I wrong? Does clicking "Use only integrated GPU" affect anything, especially as I only have an integrated GPU in my Mac Mini. What Does "integrated" refer to: Intel integrated graphics on the chip, or Integrated, as in "internal" as opposed to an eGPU? What effect has lowering or enlarging the RAM usage limit? Is 6 GB enough for more complex documents? Is it a good idea pushing the limit way over installed physical RAM size (I have 16 GB physical RAM installed)? Shouldn't apps allocate memory dynamically, anyway? Why am supposed to fiddle around with this? Does View quality affect the stablity of the app, since one would assume better quality would be more taxing on many resources? Does hardware acceleration/Metal compute really work in any meaningful way on Intel integrated graphics, with its paltry 1,5 GB RAM, which it allocates from main memory? So many questions, I know.

As I've mentioned in this post, Affinity Designer's brush performance isn't all that great, but what's surprising me is that I've found out the issue is not present in Affinity Photo at all! I've recently purchased Affinity Photo while it was on sale, and immediately the brush performance seemed better, but I've tested it and it's a very significant difference! For this I've created an identical document on both Designer and Photo: 2800 x 2800 pixels @ 300DPI CMYK colour space using the same brush on both apps using the same colour, just in case same zoom level only one pixel layer same iPad Pro 9.7" (2016) obviously both apps running simultaneously If you look at the attached video then no further explanation is needed, the brush paints smoothly and fast on Photo, while on Designer it's rendered slower and in blocks of pixels, as if it's struggling to keep up. I think that covers it, but let me know if you need or want more information. Thanks! RPReplay_Final1573724065.mp4

I have begin using Publisher to layout novels. However, speed issues are really slowing me down, especially on text that is flowing over hundreds of pages. Other aspects of the application are slow as well, not just text entry. Selecting fonts and sizes, applying styles, and changing visual options like showing/hiding baseline grid is so slow, a force quit is required. The below video shows a text entry example with a file that has virtually no graphics. It is mostly text, 503 pages long. To show the difference in performance, I first type into a single non-linked text frame. Everything works as expected. However, editing text in a linked text frame, the lag between characters appearing onscreen is almost ten seconds, per character. In fact, during that time Windows thinks the application has become unresponsive. It is really difficult to work like this. Any ideas? Is this a bug or just me? I hope it's a setting on my computer I can change. Demonstration of slow performance (Youtube Unlisted video) Affinity Publisher 1.7.2 Windows 10 Home Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz 16GB Memory 2TB HDD / 128GB SSD

The attached Affinity Designer project illustrates how different drawing techniques can result in pdf export files that differ is size substantially. I discovered this while developing images that are to used in an iOS app. Of course, we can expect the size of the pdf file to impact the performance of the app. The attached AD project has three artboards. Each artboard has a separate drawing of a flower - all of which look much the same: Yellow-Flower: The pdf for web file size is 282 KB. Each of the twelve petals is a separate curve object with yellow fill and a black stroke. The inner pistils is comprised of 27 brown ellipses imbedded inside a single black eclipse. Red-Flower: The pdf for web file size is 31 KB. The twelve petals is comprised four curve objects (each represent three leaves) with red fill and black stroke . The inner pistils is comprised of 27 brown ellipses imbedded inside a single black eclipse. (Same as yellow flower.) Blue-Flower: The pdf for web file size is 176 KB. The twelve petals is comprised four curve objects (each represent three leaves) with blue fill and black stroke (same as red flower). The inner pistils is comprised of a single black curve imbedded inside a single brown ellipse. Why are these file sizes so different? The yellow flower has only nine additional petal curve objects compared to the red flower. Yet, the pdf file size is also nine times the size. Note, the the pistils are the same. The blue flower uses the same petals as the red flower. However the pistils were refactored into only two objects, one complex curve and one ellipse. The complex object was created by subtracting the 27 ellipses from a single ellipse. The result of this distillation of the pistils causes the pdf file size to grow from 32 KB to 180 KB. is there a knowledge-based article that will help me understand why this occurs and how to avoid these problems during design? Flower-Yellow.pdf Flower-Blue.pdf Flower-Red.pdf Flowers.afdesign

Hello The problem: I have have had Affinity Designer for 1 year now i think, but had not used it for a while. Came back to 1.7.1 version and the program felt a bit slow. I did update to 1.7.2 and still have this issue, With slow i mean, every time i used the view tool, the screen felt like, it was moving with a 0.1sec delay (huge smoothign effect) same goes for selection tool when selecting an area or simply moving objects, Bigger files around 50-60 MB are even worse sadly. What i tried: I tried looking into the performance settings and found the cause, which is the Nvidia GPU render option. I use laptop so i tried integrated card: Intel HD 630 and it started working pretty smooth, but has weird lag spikes from time to time. What may be the cause for the software to slower down on Nvidia GPU? First i thought i may have throttling issues, but i have undervolted my CPU and the laptop never reaches more than 42* temp. My laptop specs: Dell XPS 15 9570 CPU: Intel i7 - 7850h GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 TI - Max Q edition Ram: 32Gb In short, the Intel Graphics work better which should not be like that and any help is appriciated

Doing a series of technical drawings – not complicated. Copying a few lines with arrowheads (or even just 1) into a document created in a pre-arrowhead Designer version, results in the spinning beachball of death. Is there a workaround with older documents to avoid this issue? (I have tried some of the old favourites – like saving as without success). Cheers Friatec Tee T EF Blu-ill.afdesign

Affinity Designer 1.7.2 (and 1.7.1) is lagging and/or crashing/not responding when I'm scaling/moving/rotating a complex vector image which is placed in a masked layer. If the object is placed as a normal layer I can scale/move/rotate it without a hitch. it can be reproduced (at least on my laptop). Tried the same thing with version 1.6.5 - had no problems. - Working with Version 1.7.2; - Windows 10; - 16 GB RAM; - Intel i7-6600U CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.81 GHz

It's what the topic title says, the further you zoom in, the slower the brushes becomes. If you're zoomed way out brushes perform between well to acceptable, depending on their complexity. As you keep zooming in, the performance drops further and further until they're unusable. This is true even for basic round brushes, but it's more noticeable in complex brushes, such as Frankentoon's. I've also noticed it's worse if you're drawing over vector shapes, which is the whole point of these brushes. See the video for a visual reference. iPad Pro 9.7" with latest version of iOS 12.4 and Affinity Designer 1.7.1. I've tested and this also happens on Windows, the more you zoom the worse the brushes perform. But on Windows, especially on a desktop machine, the sheer processor power masks the issue. Thanks! RPReplay_Final1565346075.mp4

Under Preferences -> Performance are the two checkboxes Dither gradients and Use precise clipping. Using the help section won't help me: Dither gradients speed up the performance? So why should I leave it unchecked? Choose a clipping option implies that there is more than just a checkbox. Checked or unchecked what is the difference?

Hello! I have had a few issues recently that seems to be performance related (serious lag and erratic behaviour of node tool and move tool) I have attached a video of a work session (sorry if it's long and tedious, it's a realistic snippet of how I, and probably many others, have to work) I don't know how to put subtitles on a video so I will put a list below with the issues I found. Now, I must say, as it have been pointed out multiple times a smooth and/or simplify option on path and nodes would be greatly appreciated. I know that I will receive comments on the fact that I should learn to be proficient with a pen tool before trying to smooth paths, because that what I have been reading a lot on these forum. I get that most people who answer here are "creators", but I suspect a lot of us Designer users are what we call "artworkers". Meaning we have to work on files given to us by others (who don't care if their files make sense or not - they don't give a crap, they couldn't be bothered, don't even try to talk to them ) The case I am presenting here is a 146 kb .eps file provided by the studio in charge of digitizing the assets from Schultz estate. They provide those files (take it or leave it) to those who buy the licensing rights. My work here is to smooth out the jagged lines, because the scan was probably done, digitized via livetrace (and converted to .eps) from a small/damaged/blurry line drawing. So if you have the patience to go through the video, you'll see that the file has 81 layers (which I tried to organise a bit prior to recording the video). You'll see that I really lack the availability to use a smooth tool or a simplify option. I tried to use the "smooth" function in the contextual menu, but it makes little difference to the end result. so the list of issues with the timecode are below: 0.06: trying to use the space key to pan the canvas, it's either slow or simply not working (it sometimes does) have to use the navigator instead 0.14: Same with using the zoom (Space bar + CTRL) 0.38: Trying to select a shape with the node tool (it sometimes works) end up using the layer panel (wading through 81 layers) 1.24: The node tool now has a mind of its own. At the particular moment I am not even touching the tablet with the pen. I am just hovering over the drawing after clicking the node and the node tool has now picked up the node and travels with it. I get the same behaviour with a mouse. (but who would use a mouse?). Again, I am not clicking, nor click/draging the node. I have to do a number of CTRL+Z to restore state. 3.10: Happens again. As I said, the original file is 810 KB. It's 146 kb when saved as an afdesigner file. Beyond the lag/performance issue, I would like to plea for artworkers workflow to be taken into account in the development of the software. When I do an inventory of all the features I'd like to add (select similar for example) I can see that these are features aimed at modifying shapes and paths as opposite as creating new ones. It seems to me that the project managers had "creators" in mind and not artworkers (simplifying here), meaning that if you are working on a generic .eps or .ai file created by someone else, it's infinitely easier do it in Adobe Illustrator (because those feautres exist in .ai), whereas I have no trouble using all the - very well - thought-out tools of Affinity designer if I want to create a design from scratch (I am someone who is naturally very neat with her layer stack, and I always name and group my layers, it's even a breeze if someone has to work on my files ). But if you decide that your software isn't aimed primarily at artworkers, then I think you're losing out (particularly given the price and licencing model, artworkers are AD natural customers. Apologies for the Sundays ramblings.... Hope everything makes sense... record_000001.avi

Overall performance is good for me, but there is a lag when trying to use the node and move tools with a pen. The node or object selected doesn't start moving until a *long* time after the drag starts, and in that time the pen is a long way from the original touch point. After the delay, the object or node snaps to the pen position. Things are smooth after the initial delay-snap. Other features are smooth as well. Drawing with the pen for example is perfectly smooth and lag free. I am using a Surface Book 2 with maxed out memory, and the latest version of Designer. Having the base attached or not makes no difference. I tried turning off the "tap and hold to right click" feature in Windows and various settings in the performance tab. Nothing I have tried so far makes a difference. Also note that the CPU is basically idle and I am just trying this with one object. This is super annoying, especially after using my iPad for editing, where the same features are buttery smooth. Even editing over a wifi connection on the Mac with AstroPad is a better experience. Any suggestions on how to fix this with a setting somewhere? If not, are you working to improve this feature? I would like to use my Surface Book more with Designer, but this is a total buzz kill for me. Thanks for an awesome Mac and iPad version. I am really looking forward to a better experience on Windows.

Input please: As a photographer I’ve been using Lightroom on my (now outdated) iPad for years, and used my wife’s Macbook Pro when I needed features, not available on my iPad (photoshop). I don’t really like Lightroom, I’m intrigued by Affinity Photo, and I need new hardware - so here’s my dilemma: Is there any difference in performance/possibilities/features/flexibility using Affinity Photo on an iPad Pro, or an iMac? Because that might decide my hardware choice (I really like my iPad cuz I travel a LOT, but the output and flexibility is far more important). I hope this makes sense! Thanks in advance for any help!

Hi, I have downloaded the new 1.7.0 version and followed by 1.7.1. The performance is a disaster and a real workstopper. Drawing something with any Brush tool is the worse I have encounter anytime (no matter if Healing, Brush or Clone....). I have a new top series NTB and Wacom Pro..... but I feel like working with old 486 PC :( I have been using AP for about the time of the first official release, but never saw anything like this :( This had not been a case of 1.6. version that one worked fine for me, but now I do draw something on Wacom and have to wait around 2 to 5 seconds till I see it on the screen, which makes any realtime drawing impossible I have tried restarting many times..... sometimes it works most time not...... It does not seem to be problem of Wacom as it looks the same working with touchpad or a mouse. Do not tell me I am the only one with this problem...... Please let me now ASAP as I am a professional and this makes my job unable...... Thanks Jindra

I'm the first to admit, I'm a total Affinity fanboy so this is a difficult one --- I've been sitting on this problem for a week or so as I know publisher is a massive deal and a major focus for the Affinity team - but I can't work normally on my children's book illustrations as there appears to be slowdowns, the most annoying being the time it takes to open the .afdesign file which has gone from around 4 minutes to open in 1.6 (which ran nice and quick and snappy) and roughly about the same time to open in betas 1.7.0 - 1.7.0.7 (still nice and quick performance) then with the move upto beta 1.7.0.8 performance had slowed to a crawl then 1.7.0.10 refused to open the file but appeared to be fixed in beta 1.7.0.11 although it was now taking around 10 minutes to open and still with the slow performance issues (originally reported on May 6th - see below) With the 1.7.0 Appstore release I was having slightly better performance and far less beach balling but I timed the document opening at 16 minutes (WHAT!) then came the 1.7.1 update (me hopeful I'd get some performance increase) but I was left watching "Loading 1 document" for ages way more than 16 minutes before force quitting and restarting my mac (wish there was a progress bar?) so thought I'd time it opening = 46 minutes (AAAGGGHHH!) well at least it opens! - I though before bothering the forum, I'd have a go at trying to improve things with a few tricks that helped me out years ago in Illustrator and also Quark - so I went back to the first 8 pages which I put together in 1.6 which opened up in around 30 seconds in 1.7.1 and was super quick and nippy to get around then I took pages from the 1.7.1 46 minute doc and copy pasted into fresh art boards in the 8 page doc - all went really well I I was getting nippy performance compared to the 46 minute version, which was slow and choppy to get around - re-saved as 'NITN proper.afdesign' I also went through all the pages and layers and trashed anything not in use, in order to streamline the file - saved, quit Designer and re-started and re-opened the new file, thinking I'd wait maybe 5 minutes or so so at most, thought I'd time it, just in case = 1 hour 50 minutes (WTF......AAAAAAAAAAGGGGVHHHHHHHH!) + lots of beach balling - although, no more jumpy, choppy performance when getting around and zooming (between beach balls that can lock up for around 5 minutes) The artwork for the first book in the series (which uses all the same characters, textures and all that and is the same 26 page format) was having similar performance and opening issues in the last beta but now takes less than a minute to open and is nice and fast and fluent in 1.7.1 and all my smaller documents run like a dream. I'm currently at the final 'last tweaks stage' before we get PDF and hard proof copies to send out to agents and publishers along with the first book (we are down to the last 30 hard proof copies) - all flawlessly put together in publisher using rasterised linked tiffs of the art boards from the problem file. Just wondered if someone can offer help or advice - and yes, after tuning into Affinity Live the other night, I wish I had Metal compute but I need to stick with El Capitan as it's the last Mac OS that runs 32bit apps (CS5) without major issue (I only very occasionally run Illustrator to plug the gaps til' designer has all the knobs and whistles) but the main one is Acrobat pro 9 which I need for checking pdfs as theres nothing else, apart from Callas PDFtoolbox (£500!) so NO METAL (for the foreseeable future) (original forum bug report:-)

Let me first say that it was a real privilege to watch the Affinity Live presentation last night and to witness the obvious enthusiasm and vision of Serif in creating and marketing such a comprehensive suite of interactive products. I own all three and am delighted with them, though am far from being a power-user. However, one thing struck me quite forcibly last night: all the demonstrations in the presentation were running on either Mac or iPad. There was considerable time spent extolling the obvious benefits of e.g. using Metal to improve graphics speed and performance. I think I heard the word "Windows" once. It would have been very reassuring to be told that similar improvements in performance were also coming to Windows, or did I miss something??? I should add that I am also delighted that Affinity products are truly cross-platform, even though I don't own a Mac or an iPad, but it would be "helpful" to learn that we Windows users are not being forgotten in the striving to create a top-notch graphics/publishing/photo suite. Jeff

With the new version 1.7.0.380 there are a some problems I did not have in any other version before. AP works slowlier. It crashes down every time I try to import or create a new category for brushes. It crashes down every time I try to import or create a new brush. It cursor freezes often when I want to change the settings of a brush. It often crashes down when I try to change the settings of a subbrush. I can't open Luminar Flex as a plugin. Colors sometimes change while exporting a JPG from a RAW. The exported JPG is more yellow and the contrast is to low.

First of all: Love the new features, especially the isometric grid, cant wait to use them seriously! Usually i work on my laptop and have an open browser to google stuff. I noticed that the panning/zooming drops in performance significantly when i switch back to my Affinity Designer Window (artboard). After restarting Designer it works ok for a while, but it always comes down to opening a browser window, switching back to Designer, zoom in/out - no animation or it does not zoom properly. If i want to pan - then i would need to use the navigation bar even though Space + drag is so convenient when using a tablet. In the past it was a non-issue, so i really don't know if it's my hardware. I used to do Vector/Pixel-based Artwork and Designer handled everything fluently. I panned and zoomed like crazy Now i struggle with simple Logo-Designs Could it be that Designer has become a bit resource-hungry since the update? Or is it me? Can i do something about it? My laptops' specs: i7-6700HQ 2.6GHz 16GB RAM Intel HD Graphics 530 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M (i switch them up sometimes) Wacom drivers are up to date (intuos pro)

I've created a DIN A4 booklet about 80 pages. Before the last two updates the app works good and fast. Now when I open my file, the memory and CPU explode and the app or the whole computer works really slow. After a few minutes the CPU works normaly but the Memory is still high used. Sometimes the tool crashes when loading the file. Is that a known problem? Any Tips for a short-term solution?

Im working on a document in APub Beta 1.7.0.376 on macOS 10.12.6 (16G2016). If I use floating text over 40 pages with multiple text frames and insert some pictures and graphics with custom wrappings APub slows down extremely and the fan of my iMac27 (4 GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB) start to spin like crazy even if I only scroll. It seems to be caused by rendering the whole document on every event (scrolling, inserting text, etc.) I redesigned the document and use only text frames without floating from one page to the next. And behold... no time consuming rendering. Everything works fine. The slow document with floating text is appr. 2.2 MB the one that works fine is appr. 700 kB. All images/graphics are linked and not embedded. CPU in macs Activity Monitor App sometimes reaches over 500%. Another side effect is the slow rendering of the previews in the pages panels. Rendering-Problem.mp4 Any ideas how to use floating text without this side effect???

Hello there, I am searching for a solution for the performance issue when I'm working with bigger vectorgraphics. My System is stable and doesn't provide any bottlenecks. CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight-Core Processor, 3394 MHz RAM: 16GB DDR4 GPU: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series (4095 MB) This is while working with really large vectorfiles: Affinity (big vector) just opened. ...while zooming in and out very fast. My Problem is now, that I don't know how to merge those files - they are so detailed like I never would need them. But I want them to stay vectorfiles to change their size afterwards like I need them. While working with such files, the performance is very bad, I can't copy and paste anything on realtime, or change anything without big lags (adding a new line of words - 15-30 sec). Does anybody know, how I can change those files, lower the details without changing vector to pixelgraphic? What I have tried: 1. Saving them to compressed .svg => not the best idea (poor details) 2. Merging them with boolean operators (this changes pixels to the same color) => useless Thanks mates. Have a great day! Best regards Chris