Publisher, Photo, Designer all extremely lagging

[MRose]

I got all 3 Affinity programs, hoping to do away with Ad*be, but so far, I haven't been able to do that at all. I've been trying for a year. They're all way too slow.

Today, I tried laying out a book in Publisher with 49 pages. After 3 hours, I got 10 pages laid out. I gave up and did the job in InD*sign. I got the entire project done in 10 minutes.

I have the latest version of the program. I restarted it 5 times. I restarted my computer.  I don't understand why it's so slow.

Windows 10 64 bit, 16g RAM, Intel i7 2.20ghz SSD, Nvidia GTX 1050

This computer has no problem running Ad*be products. Why can't Affinity work?

[TheOtherRoland]

Once you learn the program, you can get that 3hrs down to 10 minutes as well.

However, I think 1.10 has some lagging issues. I've noticed that too. It wasn't this slow in 1.93 (or whatever the last one was).

Other than that (temporary issue) I disagree. I think it's a great app for publishing books, especially when you compare the prices for both. I bought my copy when it came out for $50 or so USD — and I've saved myself a ton of money since on not having to pay Adobe subscription fees — or $3500 for CS6 production suites.

[MRose]

No, I know how to use it. 95% of the time was spent trying to place items in the document and waiting for them to load. It took as long to load one image in Publisher as it took to do 50 in ID.

[MikeTO]

3 minutes ago, MRose said:

It took as long to load one image in Publisher as it took to do 50 in ID.

That's interesting. Am I correct in assuming placing the same or similar image in 1.9.x was much faster? What is the image file format and could you share a sample here for testing?

[MRose]

It's always been slow regardless of version, and I can't really share a sample because it's adult content and under an NDA. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but the file format was tiff.

[MikeTO]

7 minutes ago, MRose said:

but the file format was tiff.

Are you embedding the TIFF images or linking them? How large are they?

I'd never seen a beachball when importing an image, it's always lightning fast, but my images are all optimized and all are linked. When I placed a large original of 130MB I did see a beachball and it took 4 seconds before the image appeared but that seemed reasonable.

[Wosven]

2 hours ago, TheOtherRoland said:

Once you learn the program, you can get that 3hrs down to 10 minutes as well.

It's not about knowing the program, it's about the app being slow each time you do an action, as simple as copy-paste text, select all, cut... go to another page and paste, etc.

It takes me hours working on text of a 200-250 pages book badly formated, doing simple operations.  It was the same with earlier versions (for the same reasons as @MRose, when I need to work, I do it in ID). The app remind me of time when for playing a new game you had to buy a new computer with the best specs available... at least if you want to work efficiently.

I'm not sure if the app redraw every page of the book between each action, but it need seconds each time to be responsive again.

[MikeTO]

5 minutes ago, Wosven said:

I'm not sure if the app redraw every page of the book between each action, but it need seconds each time to be responsive again.

There's something going on then because 1.9.3 and 1.10 are not that unresponsive for me on a very long-in-the-tooth MBP. My book is hundreds of pages with hundreds of images and Publisher is pretty speedy on my old hardware.

FWIW - I have linked all of my images to improve performance and file size. Most of the images are inline. I don't have any embedded PDFs or PSDs. I've broken my book up into chapters, each with its own series of linked text frames - I assume that helps with performance but I haven't tested it both ways, I've just been doing that forever.

[carl123]

2 hours ago, MRose said:

and I can't really share a sample because it's adult content and under an NDA. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but the file format was tiff.

Can you recreate a troublesome document using dummy text and images?

If so, upload that

The first thing we need to do is establish if it is your PC/Software configuration or the document itself

 

2 hours ago, MRose said:

It took as long to load one image in Publisher as it took to do 50 in ID.

If Hardware Acceleration is on in Edit > Preferences > Performance, switch it off. It's been the cause of a few weird problems in certain PC configurations.

Also are your images stored on your SSD drive or elsewhere?

[MRose]

I tried it with hardware accelerator on and off and it made no difference. All images are stored on my SSD. They are all linked, not embedded.

At the end of the day, the format of the files doesn't really matter. The exact same batch of 50 images takes 15 minutes in ID and 9 hours in Publisher. If Publisher is trying to be comparable to ID, it needs to be able to handle files like ID can in a similar time frame.

I have similar issues with Photo and Designer. If I'm running Photo, I can't have any other programs running if I want the lines to flow smoothly. Why are these programs so chunky?

[Old Bruce]

57 minutes ago, MRose said:

At the end of the day, the format of the files doesn't really matter. 

It does though. There are TIFF files which cause problems and there are TIFF files which don't cause problems.

[MRose]

Again, ID doesn't find any of these files problematic.

If I wanted to hire someone to build a house for me, and one construction company had all the power tools and said they could build it in three months, and another construction company said they only had hammers and hand saws and it would take them a year and could I please change the design of the house to make it less complicated... I would not be inclined to go with the second company, even if they were much cheaper, especially if I need this house in three months.

If this program can't handle my files, but another one can, the problem is not my files.

[MRose]

Y'all, I came here wondering if there was a fix I could make to the program to make it work. "Oh, turn this thing on and that goes away." "Change this setting and it should work." I would even accept "your computer doesn't have enough power to run this, sorry."

The fact that the responses assumed I am incompetent or inexperienced with design programs or that something is wrong with how I work and create my files is insulting. I've been doing this for twenty years. It's my profession. This is far from the first, second, or third design program I've used.

I truly want this program to work. I hate Adobe's business practices. I want to support smaller companies instead. But so far, I don't think I can use this program in a professional capacity.

[MikeTO]

Most file formats allow for some variations and it's possible AfPub is struggling with the variation you are using. Or perhaps there is something non-standard with your files that Adobe long ago accommodated that incorrect variation which raises the expectations for other developers to build in accommodation for incorrect variations. This is not uncommon in software development.

But without a sample file there's no way to test it. I understand that you can't share those images but perhaps whatever process is used to create them could be used to create an equivalent image of a dog or a chair that causes the same problem.

[Dan C]

@MRose sorry to hear you're having trouble!

'Lagging' in Affinity may be caused by an out of date or corrupted GPU driver, so I'd like to try removing all drivers from your system and installing the latest driver, to see if this helps improve performance for you.

Can you please download the latest driver from the following link, and also download DDU (Display Driver Uninstaller) -

Nvidia Drivers - https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx 

DDU - https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html 

Please run DDU first to remove the current drivers you have installed, then install the latest drivers you've just downloaded and restart your system.

After restarting, try using Affinity once again - with both Hardware Acceleration enabled and disabled. Does this perform better for you now please?