Help! AP is very slow & laggy on my MBP

[To Affinity & Beyond]

Were the minimum system specs changed for the final release of AP? One of the reasons I purchased it was because it's supposed to be fast and able to handle certain processes in real time. That's not been my experience at all. I tried developing a RAW file and for every button I pressed, AP was a good 3-5 seconds behind. It's been like this since the evening I bought it. I given it a few days and I even exited every other program I had running and restarted my comp - same result.

 

I have a mid-2009 Macbook Pro with 8GB Ram and OSX Yosemite. Is there an option I may have missed in preferences or something? As it stands now, the program is completely unusable to me. I'm willing to try different things because I think there's great potential here and I would prefer to keep it, but not if it runs like this. Any help would be immensely appreciated.

[DonatoF]

Just to give you another reference point, I'm using AP on an early 2008 MBP with 4GB RAM running Yosemite, and am not seeing any issues like you are having.  Development of Canon 50d RAW files has no lag. I do see a bit of a slowdown when I add a bunch of layers and the file size gets past 650MB, but even then it is minor.  Just a thought, have you checked the amount of free space you have available on your disk?

[To Affinity & Beyond]

Just to give you another reference point, I'm using AP on an early 2008 MBP with 4GB RAM running Yosemite, and am not seeing any issues like you are having.  Development of Canon 50d RAW files has no lag. I do see a bit of a slowdown when I add a bunch of layers and the file size gets past 650MB, but even then it is minor.  Just a thought, have you checked the amount of free space you have available on your disk?

 

Glad to hear AP works on "older" hardware like ours, so there's some hope this can be fixed. As for me, I recently reformatted my MBP, so I have 386/500GB free. For my photo processing in LR/PS, I work with Canon 7D files off an external 1TB G-Drive. I haven't even been able to get to layers in AP. The program bogs down when I attempt to work on a RAW image. I tried sending from Lightroom>AP and it was slow; so then I just opened up a RAW on it's own and the same problem persists. It's maddening.

[Voxen]

Once in a while I see the spinning wheel turning for 30 to 60 seconds in a middle of something. Dunno how and why it happens. Otherwise performances are really good on MBP retina 2012 8gb and Yosemite.

 

Did you try to disable your antivirus software if you are running one? I found out lately that my Kaspersky antivirus slowed my Mac as hell. I uninstalled it and it turned as a formula one ;)

[Nazario]

Glad to hear AP works on "older" hardware like ours, so there's some hope this can be fixed. As for me, I recently reformatted my MBP, so I have 386/500GB free. For my photo processing in LR/PS, I work with Canon 7D files off an external 1TB G-Drive. I haven't even been able to get to layers in AP. The program bogs down when I attempt to work on a RAW image. I tried sending from Lightroom>AP and it was slow; so then I just opened up a RAW on it's own and the same problem persists. It's maddening.

Could it be a bottleneck in the connection to the external drive? What connection type is the drive? USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt etc? Try putting a few files on your main drive and see how AP performs?

[DonatoF]

It's also possible the Mac App store messed up the download, try deleting the app and re-installing it from the App store.  If you check your "Purchases" tab in the App store, sometimes the cryptic " An error has occurred" message will be next to some of the downloads (it was for me for AP, the first time).  If you delete the app from the Launchpad, then the App store will know you have deleted it and will give you the option to install again, if you delete using the Finder sometimes the App store still thinks it's installed and won't give you the Install option.  I did a more thorough test last night of the develop persona, everything was very fast, no lag at all.   There is another post that has some responses from the Affinity folks you might want to look at: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10492-cant-open-affinity-after-purchase/

[LilleG]

@To Affinity & Beyond,  have you tried increasing, in Preferences>Performance, the amount of RAM that you allow Affinity to use?  That might help.  It did for me.

[To Affinity & Beyond]

Did you try to disable your antivirus software if you are running one? I found out lately that my Kaspersky antivirus slowed my Mac as hell. I uninstalled it and it turned as a formula one ;)

 

I'm not running anti-virus software.

 

 

Could it be a bottleneck in the connection to the external drive? What connection type is the drive? USB, FireWire, Thunderbolt etc? Try putting a few files on your main drive and see how AP performs?

 

Good question. My external HDD is connected via Firewire 800. I'll try your idea and edit a few files off my internal to see how it goes.

 

 

It's also possible the Mac App store messed up the download, try deleting the app and re-installing it from the App store.  If you check your "Purchases" tab in the App store, sometimes the cryptic " An error has occurred" message will be next to some of the downloads (it was for me for AP, the first time).

 

I checked the purchases tab; My download was fine.

 

 

@To Affinity & Beyond,  have you tried increasing, in Preferences>Performance, the amount of RAM that you allow Affinity to use?  That might help.  It did for me.

 

When I opened AP for the first time, it was set to 8192 MB.

[To Affinity & Beyond]

As Nazario suggested, I put some pics on my internal HDD and while AP performed a bit better, it was still quite laggy.

 

Any serif dev wanna chime in with their thoughts? 

[Sascha]

Hi,

i run it on a Mac Pro (last one) and i see a significant lower performance than PS on comparable or same files.

I never got an answer from Affinity during Beta ... i am a bit frustrated.

Sascha

[Nazario]

As Nazario suggested, I put some pics on my internal HDD and while AP performed a bit better, it was still quite laggy.

 

Any serif dev wanna chime in with their thoughts? 

AP and AD are super fast for me on both my SSD 27" iMac and my work HDD iMac.

 

While an external drive may make things very slightly slower, it shouldn't really be that noticeable. It definitely shouldn't cause the UI to lag though. 

 

Its always a trade off between storage space and speed when it comes to external drives (unless you have thunderbolt).

 

Maybe reinstall AP and see what happens. Its only two clicks of a button, it can't hurt. 

[To Affinity & Beyond]

While an external drive may make things very slightly slower, it shouldn't really be that noticeable. It definitely shouldn't cause the UI to lag though. 

 

Its always a trade off between storage space and speed when it comes to external drives (unless you have thunderbolt).

 

I have over 400+GB available on my 1TB drive. I work in Photoshop with no lag whatsoever.

 

I'll try an un/re-install of AP.

[To Affinity & Beyond]

Nope. An un/re-install of the software didn't help too much. Admittedly it was a bit better than before, but it's still laggy. If I didn't know any better, I would've thought it's because I don't have enough RAM, but I'm hearing people with 2GB are having no trouble and I have 8GB.

[LilleG]

I have 4 GB and most of the time it runs fine in that but I've found that too many open apps slow mine down.  Especially Safari.  When things get laggy, I start closing stuff.

[To Affinity & Beyond]

I have 4 GB and most of the time it runs fine in that but I've found that too many open apps slow mine down.  Especially Safari.  When things get laggy, I start closing stuff.

 

From my OP:

 

I even exited every other program I had running and restarted my comp - same result.

 

Did everyone keep the preference settings to default or configure them? I'm open to suggestions. 

[DonatoF]

I left mine at default values.  Have you tried logging in as a different user, does the problem persist? 

[To Affinity & Beyond]

Hi,

i run it on a Mac Pro (last one) and i see a significant lower performance than PS on comparable or same files.

I never got an answer from Affinity during Beta ... i am a bit frustrated.

Sascha

 

I'm sorry that happened to you Sascha. This is growing very frustrating for me as well. When you say "Mac Pro", you mean the black trashcan?

 

 

I left mine at default values.  Have you tried logging in as a different user, does the problem persist? 

 

No I haven't tried that, but how do you think logging in as a different user would alleviate the problem?

[DonatoF]

It's more of a troubleshooting method to narrow down if it is a system-level problem, or just specific to your user account (corrupt preferences, your account may be starting other background processes, etc.).  I would also look at Activity Monitor to see whats going on when you open AP, and check the Console for messages to see if there is anything unusual.  The other thread I pointed to earlier had a method to reset AP, did you try that also? Hopefully the AP folks will offer some suggestions soon.

[LilleG]

@To Affinity and Beyond

 

One thing you haven't mentioned is doing a Repair Permissions on your internal hard drive.  Quite often when things start getting flaky for me, Repair Permissions and a Restart settles things down. It might not help but if you haven't done it, it might be worth a try.

[To Affinity & Beyond]

@To Affinity and Beyond

 

One thing you haven't mentioned is doing a Repair Permissions on your internal hard drive.  Quite often when things start getting flaky for me, Repair Permissions and a Restart settles things down. It might not help but if you haven't done it, it might be worth a try.

 

No other program I have is lagging. Not Photoshop nor Lightroom - and LR is known to be a slow, unoptimized PITA. Even the Affinity Designer beta runs flawlessly. Only AP is giving me trouble.

[To Affinity & Beyond]

No one from the dev team can chime in?

Would posting my entire system specs be more helpful?

[maritan]

I'm not having serious issues with Affinity Photo but it is noticeably slower than PS CC2015 (trial). There is definitely a lag between an action I take and a reaction - for example painting black into a white mask. It takes so long that I start wondering if the computer registered my click and drag or not.

 

According to this preview of Affinity Photo vs PS CC: https://www.wingsart.net/home/2015/07/09/affinity-photo-launches-as-a-serious-contender-to-adobe-photoshop/  AP uses only 250MB of RAM and PS CC uses 1.4GB.

 

Well, on my computer AP is taking around 1.34GB of RAM! Is this normal?

 

AP is allowed to use all 8192MB of RAM per settings in Preferences. I'm running Yosemite with all the latest updates on a 2013 13" MBP Retina. Only other app running is Firefox and Finder. No anti virus software. Colormunki X-rite profiler is running the background too.

 

I wonder what's going on? I will not be going back to PS, but I'd definitely like to see the advertised improvement in speed/ performance over PS.

[To Affinity & Beyond]

I'm not having serious issues with Affinity Photo but it is noticeably slower than PS CC2015 (trial). There is definitely a lag between an action I take and a reaction - for example painting black into a white mask. It takes so long that I start wondering if the computer registered my click and drag or not.

 

According to this preview of Affinity Photo vs PS CC: https://www.wingsart.net/home/2015/07/09/affinity-photo-launches-as-a-serious-contender-to-adobe-photoshop/  AP uses only 250MB of RAM and PS CC uses 1.4GB.

 

Well, on my computer AP is taking around 1.34GB of RAM! Is this normal?

 

AP is allowed to use all 8192MB of RAM per settings in Preferences. I'm running Yosemite with all the latest updates on a 2013 13" MBP Retina. Only other app running is Firefox and Finder. No anti virus software. Colormunki X-rite profiler is running the background too.

 

I wonder what's going on? I will not be going back to PS, but I'd definitely like to see the advertised improvement in speed/ performance over PS.

 

Emphasis mine.

 

This is me right now. When I first ran AP, I had both Chrome and Lightroom open. After experiencing the massive lag, I closed everything and restarted my comp. By default, I have very few login items booting up so background processes is not the issue. I've tried every suggestion in this thread including resetting AP and uninstall/reinstalling it. The members who've posted in here have really tried to be helpful. It's not their fault the program isn't working for me. I wish someone on the dev team would communicate and try to help me because from the videos I've seen of AP, it looks like a sweet program. I've messed around with the beta of Affinity Designer and I have not experienced any of these problems with it (not yet anyway). 

 

If I can't solve this issue, I'll be forced to ask for a refund because right now, for my workflow, AP doesn't work for me. I don't mind a program taking some time when running certain actions (like in-painting or PS's shake reduction), but general lag just from switching tools? Going from RAW to Develop? Using the exposure slider? I've also been wondering why AP, by default, is using up 8192 of my RAM.

[MattP]

Hi To Affinity & Beyond,

 

I'm sorry you're experiencing problems - I just wanted to affirm to you that we are reading the forums and I noticed your post but as yet haven't had anything to suggest other than what other users are suggesting... I have a 2008 MacBook Pro with SSD (I retrofitted it) running Mavericks and it's genuinely pretty nippy with Affinity - it's not instant, but it's not going to be instant - it is, however, quicker in Affinity than in any other software I can find to run on it... You're using images from a 7D on a 6 year old Mac so it's not going to be instant either, but it shouldn't be a bad experience so it does sound like something's amiss - but as to what, I'd need to see the physical machine and interact with it in order to determine where the problem may be - not something that's trivial to do remotely.

 

One thing I would say is just start up the program with Ctrl held down (hold down Ctrl as soon as you click to launch the program and keep it held) and it will bring up a dialog offering to reset settings - select all options and just reset them. The factory defaults are almost always the best starting point and unless you know what you're doing you can actually make things worse. Also, don't​ worry about what RAM Photo says it will use - it's not actually currently using that RAM - it's just what limit to hit before it starts paging to disk.

 

(@maritan - unless you're doing exactly the same test with exactly the same files, the numbers you see may be very different)

 

After you've reset everything, you can try to debug where your problems are... Start with a 1024x1024 pixel document - now paint on it with the default brush tool - is it still laggy? If so, your machine is just not performing at all as well as my older 2008 MacBook Pro! If all seems well, try again with larger image sizes until you start to see problems.

 

When you talk about the exposure slider - I assume you mean in the Develop Persona? If so, that's dealing with converting your RAW file and applying all your existing settings and your new exposure value each time you move the slider - so it's not going to be particularly swift... there are definitely optimisations we will do in the future that will change this, but for now, if that is how you are measuring performance then you will not be able to make that quick... As a matter of fact, are you always referring to operations done in the Develop Persona? Everything is done from the original RAW file each time you make any change so this Persona will be significantly slower than any other part of the program.

 

I think that ultimately if the experience is generally poor for whatever reason, unless we can stumble across the culprit it's going to be very hard for you to enjoy the program :(

 

Just wanted you to know that you're not being ignored - it's just that without actually seeing the machine there's not a lot we can suggest that hasn't already been suggested...

 

Thanks,

Matt

[Gutshot]

Close some apps in your dock and run a memory cleaner once in a while. When you have opened lots of apps, working with them or not, as long as they are running. They use memory. With one click I free up more then 2 to 3 gig of memory. You get free memory cleaners in the Appstore.