Is there anything I can do to make Photo 1.9.2 work better on my old system?

[Otto Manuel]

Hi,

 I use Designer frequently and love it. I use Photo less often, but especially like to use it as an exporter of large 16bit ProPhotoRGB TIFF photos, which I prepare in Photoshop, to downsized 8bit sRGB JPEGs.

 I recently downloaded the 1.9.1 and then the 1.9.2 updates and feel as if they are not happy to run on my system. I have an older system, but the earlier versions of Photo worked just fine. I didn't use 1.9.1 much at all, but I am finding that 1.9.2 seems to stall, freeze and choke on just about every operation I do, and all I am doing is opening Tiffs, adding a "signature" layer I made in Designer, and exporting JPEGs.

 I am wondering if there are any settings that might have been changed or reset or added, that I might adjust to restore my experience to one of appreciation for how nice Affinity Photo has seemed.

Thank you!

 Windows 7 x64

[CrimsonSkies]

What specs are you running?

I have a similar question, have put Affinity on an old machine to play/learn - it runs but very laggy (and crashed a few times) if I have too many images open at once. Mostly I shoot RAW and like doing HDR so thats kind of demanding

This device is c10 years old with low spec i3 M380 and 4GB of memory (mostly the kids use for the internet) but with a modern SSD drive. I think low memory is my issue, esp with HDRs

PS - you say you are running Win7 x64, is that on an OEM machine (ie did the device come with Win 7 installed)? If so you can probably move to Win10 for free, that's what I did with this old laptop

 

[Otto Manuel]

It is an old Windows 7 x64 laptop running an i7 2.4Ghz with 16GB Ram. I typically use it with 1.5GB multi layer Photoshop files and often times assemble high res photo stitch .psb composites, that grow to 5GB or more, from which I save as a flattened TIFF for use with Affinity Photo. The laptop is slow but predictable in Photoshop with these large files.

When I speak of using Affinity Photo I am simply opening the flattened TIFF, adding a signature layer, and exporting as a distribution ready down sized JPEG.

Everything seemed easy and smooth prior to the 1.9 updates.

It may be that my system is no longer compatible, or it may be that there are some settings within Affinity Photo that can be adjusted. Just wondering.

Thank you.

[Dan C]

Hi @Otto Manuel,

Our sincerest apologies for the delayed responses here, we're working to clear a backlog of tickets that occurred during the release of 1.9.2 & 1.9.3 whilst working from home, so many thanks for your patience and understanding.

I can confirm that Hardware Acceleration was added to Windows around this time, and this may have been causing issues on your older system.

Should you still be experiencing these issues, or still have access to the older system, I recommend navigating within the Affinity App to Edit > Preferences > Performance and untick Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of this dialog.

Restart the app as prompted and then try editing your documents once again - does this reduce the 'freezing' behaviour you've been seeing please?  

[Otto Manuel]

Thank you for taking the time to post a suggestion!