Problem with Affinity Photo and Catalina on iMac

[Robert Hardy]

It seems that there is some incompatibility between Affinity Photo and Catalina 10.15.1 It slows down the computer and after a while the spinning wheel starts running for unlimited time.. I don't have this problem if I don't open Affinity Photo.

Am I alone with such an issue?

 

Thanks

Robert

[stokerg]

Hi Robert and Welcome to the Forums,

Not having any issue here on a 2014 Mac Book or on my 2019 iMac in the office.  

Is its one certain thing that leads to the slow down or is it just any tool/filter you use?

[Robert Hardy]

If I open the app and leave it opened in case I need it, the situation described above happens after, let's,24 hours.

 

Robert

[Castle Al]

Hi everyone,
Maybe I have overseen it, but there have been no anouncement from Serif about an official support by upgrading to Catalina.
What's up? Is it already OK, or is it still recommanded to wait?

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, Castle Al said:

Hi everyone,
Maybe I have overseen it, but there have been no anouncement from Serif about an official support by upgrading to Catalina.
What's up? Is it already OK, or is it still recommanded to wait?

Unless you really need to update the OS don't bother. Save yourself a lot of frustration.

[Castle Al]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

Unless you really need to update the OS don't bother. Save yourself a lot of frustration.

Well, it's what I think too... In fact Mojave works quite well enough!
I thought to upgrade only for the Handoff function and stop with Astropad Studio. But as it seems to need to be linked to iCloud - and I hate to dépend on the cloud - it is almost useless to me to go ridding on Catalina.

 

[PaulD]

I have put off the upgrade due to These an other issues with Catalina. A REAL aggregation is that Apple is limiting functions on Mohave..pushing the upgrade, i.e. Reminders no longer supported on mohave... syncing issues between iPhone IOS13 and Mohave... bad scene all around!

[Castle Al]

Hello PaulD,
My last works don't seem to suffer yet while keeping Mojave. Maybe it's due that I don't go into deep enough operations to encounter specific troubles...
Also, in order to use Publisher next to create illustrations, I need Scrivener and Antidote to place texts under diverse forms. As only Antidote has announced its Catalina compatibility, I'll have to wait to upgrade the OS anyway.
Waiting few more weeks probably won't be that terrible.

Also, as Sidecar - one of the main arguments for upgrading - seems to need the addiction to iCloud... I'll stick to Astropad in order to draw from iPad to Mac.

[Big_Stan]

I just switched from a 5,1 Mac Pro to a 2019 iMac with Catalina.  I am using C1, AP and other common S/W and I am not experiencing any problems. In fact, I have found that my post processing seems to be running smoother and faster. I did have an issue getting Noiseware installed as an AP plugin, but that is a known problem (Imagenomic told me that they do not support AP and while it may seem to be "working", it may not be fully functional.) 

[Marcus French]

My mac's have been running slow, spinning wheel and long pauses. After 2 months and using activity monitor, I found it was Afinity Photo. It was causing crash monitor to be at 97%. I have stopped my iCloud from using Afinity Photo, and it has curred my problems. I am using Big Sur on all my Macs. The program is very good and good value for money. Just hope this helps other users.

[v_kyr]

Another common point with Catalina is nowadays also ...

Quote

Security update for macOS 10.15 kills OpenCL

Without any Apple info, support for the Open Computing Language was canceled with the Catalina Security Update 2021-002. Some old apps are broken.

• Security update for macOS 10.15 kills OpenCL

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Another common point with Catalina is nowadays also ...

As far as I can tell, that doesn't affect the Mac Affinity apps because they do not have an option to use OpenCL. Is that right?

[Castle Al]

I notice that only Catalina is concerned... I'm on Big Sur now: no troubles with any Affinity app.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

As far as I can tell, that doesn't affect the Mac Affinity apps because they do not have an option to use OpenCL. Is that right?

Even OpenGL and OpenCL on the Mac were already discontinued in 2018, their APIs were still included in certain MacOS versions, since there was still also older software which relies on those APIs (sort of backward compatibility). Now the latest MacOS security Catalina update 2021-002 silently removed those APIs, which might be a problem for certain older version software which entirely relies/relied on those.

I'm actually on an El Capitan based old hardware Mac and there you can see ...

... that Affinity will use OpenGL or Metall (in case the hardware supports it). - On the company dev MacBook Pro where I still run Catalina it's only using Metall.

 

[R C-R]

50 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Even OpenGL and OpenCL on the Mac were already discontinued in 2018, their APIs were still included in certain MacOS versions, since there was still also older software which relies on those APIs (sort of backward compatibility). Now the latest MacOS security Catalina update 2021-002 silently removed those APIs, which might be a problem for certain older version software which entirely relies/relied on those.

Well, I'm running Catalina & just tried switching to OpenGL. No issues I noticed occurred. BTW, these are my choices:

[v_kyr]

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Well, I'm running Catalina & just tried switching to OpenGL. ...

The news article I've referenced only said that OpenCL is now (due to the update) deleted. - So OpenGL will probably not be affected here, which you can prove by looking after the existance of ...

Quote

> ls -l  /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework

total 32
drwxr-xr-x    8 root  wheel   272 18 Jun  2017 .
drwxr-xr-x  136 root  wheel  4624 10 Jul  2018 ..
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    24 18 Jun  2017 Headers -> Versions/Current/Headers
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    26 30 Jun  2016 Libraries -> Versions/Current/Libraries
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    23 30 Jun  2016 OpenGL -> Versions/Current/OpenGL
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    26 30 Jun  2016 Resources -> Versions/Current/Resources
drwxr-xr-x    4 root  wheel   136 30 Jun  2016 Versions
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel  1046  2 Aug  2015 module.map

... then!

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

So OpenGL will probably not be affected here...

I only mentioned it because you said "Even OpenGL and OpenCL on the Mac were already discontinued in 2018..."

Just wanted to confirm that OpenGL still works on Catalina.

[v_kyr]

Ah Ok, however fact is (see also ars technica etc.) ...

Quote

OpenGL and OpenCL

OpenGL and OpenCL were officially deprecated in Mojave last year, though that's a little misleading since it implies that Apple had been actively maintaining and updating its support for those standards. In Catalina, as in every macOS version going all the way back to Mavericks, the macOS OpenGL implementation is stuck at version 4.1 (2010), and the OpenCL version is stuck at 1.2 (2011). This means that apps that still rely on those APIs on macOS will continue to run, provided they've been updated to meet the 64-bit-only requirement. But you shouldn't be developing new Mac apps that rely on OpenGL or CL for anything important.