Performance related Problem with AF Photo on Windows 10

[Herbill]

My set up comprises:

Windows 10, i5 Processor; Ram 8 GB, NVIDIA GeForce GT525m graphics card

View quality set to Bilinear (Best quality), Retina Rendering set to Auto (Best quality)

Compared to CS 6, I have always found Affinity a little on the slow side but of late it has become seriously slow.

For example processing an image 595 MB (4617x3499px)

              To open = 20 sec.

              To merge visible = 3:15 min.

              To magnify to 100% = 15 sec per section (up to 1 min to cycle through the whole image)

 

That is just a flavour of the situation.

Is my problem a case of insufficient RAM or do I need to tweak some settings or worse still upgrade to a new computer?

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, Herbill said:

To merge visible = 3:15 min.

What is the state of your document before doing the merge visible? How many added layers, are any of them live filters (how many), etc.

[Herbill]

The image comprises 5 adjustment layers and 6 pixel layers.

 

[carl123]

28 minutes ago, Herbill said:

Is my problem a case of insufficient RAM

More ram is always good

But you have not mentioned your hard drive. Is it an SSD drive and is that where the document is loaded from?

If you can upload the document (or post a dropbox link to it) you may get some comparison figures as regards the times you have stated

[Herbill]

I use a SSD drive for current work and pre-2021 work is archived to an external herd drive. There is little or delay in loading from my external hard drive.

 

[Herbill]

Just for the record, I saved the aforementioned image as a PSD file. I reopened it in CS 6 in jig time. I did a merged visible, converted it to a smart filter and sharpened it using a high-pass filter. Again the processing time was minimal!

My question again. Why does the processing Affinity photo take so long.?

Moderator please take note and respond.

Regards

[NotMyFault]

It could depend heavily on the filters used.

An excellent way to slow down AP is to have a RGB document, 16 or 32 bit color depth, and the use adjustmenst like curves, but using the LAB color space in the filter. After 3 filters of this kind Photo will freeze, even on big gaming PCs.

Most affected is Windows, Apple both Mac and iPad are much less, as the GPU / HW acceleration works for Apple at least. This might change with AP 1.9 (on Windows able to use HW accell).

Just an example: entering tone map persona (using same picture) takes 10x the time on Windows PC compared to iPad pro 2018, despite 8x CPU Ghz, 8x RAM, faster Samsung EVO SDD, and Nvidia GTX1080 wich is no slush, too.

So please wait for Photo 1.9 to be released. In 1.8, GPU is mainly ignored / idling with Photo.

 

[Herbill]

I get your point. I use layers and filter layers quite extensively in my workflow. If version 1.9 speeds up AF, I will be more than pleased.

Any idea when it will be released?

I believe the Beta version is available. Any idea where I could download it from, to try out?

[walt.farrell]

19 minutes ago, Herbill said:

Any idea when it will be released?

I believe the Beta version is available. Any idea where I could download it from, to try out?

Only Serif knows, and they won't say. We can guess it might be soon, given that they're on Release Candidate 5 for the Photo 1.9 beta.

Photo betas for Windows are in the Photo beta on Windows forum.

[Herbill]

Thanks, Walt. I have clicked on the above link but for the life of me, I can't see the download button!

[Move Along People]

-

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, Herbill said:

Thanks, Walt. I have clicked on the above link but for the life of me, I can't see the download button!

Look at the first topic in that forum.

[Herbill]

Successfully downloaded Beta. I have tested it on my problem image and the processing time is on a par with CS 6. I don't think that I will be upgrading to a new computer. Thanks to one and all for helping me out.

A few questions on how I set up Preferences >  Performance in Beta:-

1. Rendering;  Beta pull in my default graphics card and not my NVIDIA GeForce  GT525m. Q: Should I switch to NVIDIA?

2. Retina Rendering. Beta pulled in Automatic (Best) and  not High quality. Q. Which should I choose?

3. Q. should I enable hardware acceleration?

4. What is the difference between Nearest neighbour and Bilinear best quality?

5. should I enable the dithering and precise clipping boxes? 

 

As you can guess, this is all new to me and I want to ensure the best possible performance. I am just a plain old amateur photographer who enjoys processing his own images.

Thanks again