Affinity Publisher Ram Usage

[RudMerJ]

I have an eight page flyer with 136 linked pictures. Total size of document and pictures is less that 1 Gb. However, when I open with affinity publisher, it consumes gargantuan amounts of RAM. My Win 10 pro 3.4 Ghz core i3 with 8gb of RAM works very sluggishly and publisher hangs regularly. Try to print and it takes abysmally long (ten minutes) if it will ever perform the task.

Because of these issues, I switched to using a RDP session on Server 2012r2. With 48gb of ram to blow and a 6 core Xeon 2.2 Ghz processor you'd think it should work fine. But here I see Publisher itself with this document open shows almost 10Gb of Ram used just for itself. Opening the file take at least half a minute. When I close even without saving changes, Publisher goes into "not responding" mode for about 20 seconds. And I can't even have two of these open together to copy things between without severe issues scrolling or flipping between documents.

I saw other posts from two years ago and not much help was given other than free up space for swap. But for me swap is not going to speed me up will it? Just make it behave even more slowly.

I am running Publisher version 1.9.2.1035 and hope that this issue can be resolved sometime. I don't understand why 1gb of pictures needs to take 10gb of RAM. I attached the file and a folder with the pictures for you to look at and give me some advice.

June 2020.afpub Pictures.zip

[Rick G]

I didn't have any trouble with it on Windows 10 with 32GB memory

One thing you might consider: reduce the size of you pictures. They are 5mb and more each.

I cut 001 down to 500 px tall Try it and see if there is any VISUAL difference in your document

[uneMule]

Bonjour @RudMerJ
Vous pouvez commencer par stopper le contrôle en amont qui prend beaucoup de ressource.
Pour rejoindre @Rick G, vue la taille de vos images, je ferai une macro pour redimensionner ces images à leur taille finale avec une résolution de 300 dpi (si vous imprimez).
Petit commentaire perso, mon Publisher sur ma machine n'aime pas beaucoup et la mise à jour des images fait planter l'application.

*****

Hi @RudMerJ
You can start by stopping the resource-intensive preflighting.
To join @Rick G,  given the size of your images, I would do a macro to resize these images to their final size with a resolution of 300 dpi (if you print).
A personal comment, my Publisher on my machine doesn't like it very much and updating the images crashes the application.

[uneMule]

@RudMerJ Vous pouvez essayer l'archive jointe.
Les images sont redimensionnées avec Affinity Photo et une macro. Le fichier publisher mis à jour.
Comme j'ai ré-échantillonné toutes les images à la volée, le fichier n'est pas pour autant bon à exploiter. Il s'agit simplement de vous permettre de vérifier la différence entre celui-ci et le précédent.
De mon côté j'en ai profité pour modifier mes préférences et notamment la gestion de l'affichage en utilisant la vidéo interne.
J'utilise un vieux portable Asus core i7 3630QM avec un SSD et 16 Go de RAM.

*****

@RudMerJ You can try the attached archive.
The images are resized with Affinity Photo and a macro. The updated publisher file.
As I resampled all the images on the fly, the file is not good to use. It is simply to allow you to check the difference between this one and the previous one.
I took the opportunity to modify my preferences and in particular the display management by using the internal video.
I use an old Asus core i7 3630QM laptop with an SSD and 16 GB of RAM.

test.zip

[Wosven]

Affinity apps are real gluttons for memory and CPU usage.

It remind me of 90’ and old mono-apps system, when it suck all resources for itself and the other apps hang.

They lack the refine ability to switch to low resolution preview or even grey square instead of images that help working on some huge files, once you're done working with images.

I notice that, like with other apps, having to calculate a lot of vector objects, or effects, take resources and slow down the app. Sadly, APub have those 2 problems, since it's a mix of vector and pixel app. I hope they'll find solutions, since having a top computer was acceptable for games, to adapt to new 3D engines and such, it shouldn't be in our work where other apps can manage this better.

 

Now, effectively, your images seems a little bit too much on the resolution size. Keep them at 300 or 600 if you want to keep some option like resizing them later, and/or keep the originals in another folder for other uses.

[uneMule]

1 hour ago, Wosven said:

It remind me of 90’ and old mono-apps system, when it suck all resources for itself and the other apps hang.

@Wosven

Je me suis réveillé ce matin et je me suis dit "Je vais ouvrir un sujet sur l'éventualité d'améliorer la mise à jour des images. On dirait qu'on utilise un X...S 2.12 !"
Bonne journée et content de vous lire.

*****

@Wosven

I woke up this morning and said to myself "I'm going to start a thread about the possibility of improving the updating of images. It looks like we're using an X...S 2.12!"
Have a good day and I'm glad to read you.

[Komatös]

You all forget that image files are kept uncompressed in memory when they are loaded. And then a file can quickly take up several times as much memory.

If you are using a system that does not have a dedicated graphics card, you must remember that the graphics unit can be allocated up to 50% of the RAM. For example, with 8 GB RAM, most manufacturers reserve up to 2 GB RAM for the iGPU. Then comes Windows. The operating system treats itself to as much memory as possible. This may leave only 3.5 to 4 GB for background processes and programmes. For larger projects, there is discreetly little memory left over.

[Gabe]

Hi all,

We have made some ram/performance improvements for large documents and will be coming in the next beta. If you want, you can't try and open your project in either Photo or Designer latest beta and see how it goes. 

[RudMerJ]

I'm rather new. Is there somewhere to sign up for the beta release? How can I try it?

[Rick G]

1 hour ago, RudMerJ said:

I'm rather new. Is there somewhere to sign up for the beta release? How can I try it?

Go here

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/32-beta-software-forums/

The latest bulds are at the top of each forum

[RudMerJ]

Thanks! I found it. I will give it a try.