M1 / Mac Monterey - Affinity Photo etc now has the wheel of death quite a lot

[Dean C]

Oddly, after reenabling Metal acceleration I have not been able to reproduce the constant delays that were causing the spinning wheel cursor.

I think I may have rebooted the computer in the interim, so maybe that has something to do with it.

[eFoxot]

On 4/28/2022 at 1:41 PM, Leigh said:

I have a bit of an update on this issue. If you're using Affinity Photo on a M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max Macbook/iMac or using a display that supports Extended Dynamic Range, can you try re-enabling Metal from Preferences > Performance from within the app and turn off Automatic Brightness in System Preferences > Displays and see if this stops the app from lagging/beach balling when in use.

Let me know how you get on

Having the same problem with Photo and turning off auto brightness worked !

Thanks

[unitizer]

Turning off auto-brightness seems to have cleared it up for me as well. Thank you!

[Timothy Butler]

Is there any further updates on this? I just saw the auto-brightness suggestion and thought I'd try it -- but I don't really love the idea of disabling that feature for good...

[unitizer]

No to let anyone off the hook but I have not noticed the loss of auto-brightness. I actually like having brightness be manual as I want to know exactly where it is when manipulating images.

[Leigh]

13 hours ago, Timothy Butler said:

Is there any further updates on this? I just saw the auto-brightness suggestion and thought I'd try it -- but I don't really love the idea of disabling that feature for good...

Not at the moment, sorry. It's logged with our developers.

[room34]

I've been having this issue a lot lately on my M1 Pro/Monterey setup (2021 14" MacBook Pro). I just found this thread and tried turning off auto-brightness. I realized that auto-brightness has actually been annoying me anyway — I like to have full manual control — but I hadn't thought to look for the option to turn it off!

I've only just made this switch, so I haven't quite had enough time to know for sure that it fixes the problem. But it was happening so regularly with the file I'm currently working on that it should only take a minute or two of actions like switching layers, changing zoom level, etc. (the things that would cause the spinner before) to notice the problem, and so far so good!

[imakeinternet]

I also had this problem and Photo became pretty much useless to me. The beachball was spinning almost every 5-10 seconds when doing simple tasks like selection or translating shapes. Turning off auto-brightness cleared the problem right up! Why? I have no idea but I am so thankful the issue is resolved. 

[Timothy Butler]

On 7/5/2022 at 3:13 AM, Leigh said:

Not at the moment, sorry. It's logged with our developers.

Any further news two months later? It's pretty discouraging since it has been going on for nearly a year. As much as I prefer Affinity Photo, I've taken to using Pixelmator Pro most of the time for simple jobs so that I don't have to go turn automatic brightness control off just to make a few photo edits. (And even with it off, Pixelmator Pro seems surprisingly sluggish on an M1 Max compared to older Intel Macs or an original M1 -- something just seems wrong.)

I'd gladly pay for an update if it would just fix these performance bugs with Affinity on M1 Pro/Max.

[Leigh]

On 9/5/2022 at 10:31 PM, Timothy Butler said:

Any further news two months later? It's pretty discouraging since it has been going on for nearly a year. As much as I prefer Affinity Photo, I've taken to using Pixelmator Pro most of the time for simple jobs so that I don't have to go turn automatic brightness control off just to make a few photo edits. (And even with it off, Pixelmator Pro seems surprisingly sluggish on an M1 Max compared to older Intel Macs or an original M1 -- something just seems wrong.)

I'd gladly pay for an update if it would just fix these performance bugs with Affinity on M1 Pro/Max.

I have nothing new to report, sorry. I can only repeat what Patrick states is the following thread:

Quote

We are focussing our efforts on a major release (new features and fixes) and consequently have not done any minor patches for a long time, as you say. But no not dead.

[gencris]

Hello,
I have been having the same color wheel problem for several weeks. Over the past few days it has been coming up repeatedly. unable to work properly.
I tested without believing the brightness adjustment in the parameters and miraculously it is much better. great.

However I still have a memory management problem with photo and designer.
I load a small file of 40mb, vector and bitmap, Aphoto displays 2.5gb on the activity monitor. I work for a few minutes. photo take at once 12gb of memory!!! slowdown but without the wheel.
I click "modify in designer": Aphoto 2.34go, Adesigner 4.65go.....! 🤪

It's painful. I don't really want to go back to Photoshop, but I'm starting to think about it... 🤔

I work with MacbookAir M1 16gb ram.

---------------traduction google

Bonjour,
Je rencontre depuis plusieurs semaines le même problème de roue multicolore. Ces derniers jours cela revenait de façon récurrente. impossible de travailler correctement.
J'ai testé sans y croire le réglage de la luminosité dans les paramêtres et miracle ça va beaucoup mieux. génial.

Cependant j'ai toujours un problème de gestion de la mémoire avec photo et designer.
Je charge un petit fichier de 40mo, vectoriel et bitmap, photo affiche 2,5go sur le moniteur d'activité. Je travaille quelques minutes. photo prends d'un coups 12go de mémoire!!! ralentissement mais sans la roue.
Je clic "modifier dans designer" : Aphoto 2,34go, Adesigner 4,65go.....!

C'est pénible. Je n'ai pas trop envie de retourner sur Photoshop, mais je commence à y penser...

Je travaille avec MacbookAir M1 16go ram.

[Leigh]

On 9/17/2022 at 11:44 AM, gencris said:

Hello,
I have been having the same color wheel problem for several weeks. Over the past few days it has been coming up repeatedly. unable to work properly.
I tested without believing the brightness adjustment in the parameters and miraculously it is much better. great.

However I still have a memory management problem with photo and designer.
I load a small file of 40mb, vector and bitmap, Aphoto displays 2.5gb on the activity monitor. I work for a few minutes. photo take at once 12gb of memory!!! slowdown but without the wheel.
I click "modify in designer": Aphoto 2.34go, Adesigner 4.65go.....! 🤪

It's painful. I don't really want to go back to Photoshop, but I'm starting to think about it... 🤔

I work with MacbookAir M1 16gb ram.

Thanks for the information. Regarding the memory issues, were these "small" files originally created on the M1 Macbook or are they from an Intel Mac?

[nickbatz]

New Mac Studio here (M1 Max, 32-core graphics, 64GB). I just did a search hoping to find the recommended settings for my machine, and this thread came up.

Same lagging behavior, especially copying and pasting - which is what I'm doing here.

Well, this report isn't providing any new information.

Is the macOS version due next month any better?

[nickbatz]

And wasn't Affinity Photo one of the programs Apple bragged about in one of their product intros - I think the M1 MacBook Pros?

Also, another question: is it better to run the program in Rosetta mode?

I guess the answer is for me to try rather than asking.

[Leigh]

4 hours ago, nickbatz said:

New Mac Studio here (M1 Max, 32-core graphics, 64GB). I just did a search hoping to find the recommended settings for my machine, and this thread came up.

Same lagging behavior, especially copying and pasting - which is what I'm doing here.

Well, this report isn't providing any new information.

Is the macOS version due next month any better?

Is performance improved if you go to System Preferences > Displays and disable "Automatically adjust brightness"?

[gencris]

Il y a 22 heures, Leigh a dit :

Merci pour l'information. En ce qui concerne les problèmes de mémoire, ces "petits" fichiers ont-ils été créés à l'origine sur le Macbook M1 ou proviennent-ils d'un Mac Intel ?

Everything is produced with the MacBook M1.

Reading several other posts, I also disabled "enable metal hardware acceleration". This further improves execution speed and recurring crashes.

1 month ago,I also uninstalled all my assets (vectorial), however few in number, which took up 8go when starting Photo!! I thought that library was not loaded in RAM, but apparently yes.

I can work properly again.

-------

Tout est produit avec le MacBook M1.

En lisant plusieurs autres posts, j'ai également désactivé "activer l'accélération matériel metal". Cela améliore encore la vitesse d'exécution et les plantages récurrents.

Il y a 1 mois, j'ai également désinstallé tous mes assets (vectoriels), pourtant peu nombreux, qui prenaient 8go au démarrage de Photo!! je pensais que cette bibliothèque n'était pas chargée en mémoire vive, mais apparemment oui.

Je peux à nouveau travailler correctement.

[nickbatz]

8 hours ago, Leigh said:

Is performance improved if you go to System Preferences > Displays and disable "Automatically adjust brightness"?

That isn't an option with my Samsung displays. Maybe it's only on iMacs and Mac laptops?

But thanks, I appreciate the help.

 

[Leigh]

On 9/21/2022 at 6:19 PM, nickbatz said:

That isn't an option with my Samsung displays. Maybe it's only on iMacs and Mac laptops?

But thanks, I appreciate the help.

 

@nickbatzCorrect. You may not have the option with certain external displays. Have you tried turning off Metal to see if that improves your situation?

[nickbatz]

9 hours ago, Leigh said:

@nickbatzHave you tried turning off Metal to see if that improves your situation?

These are my current settings (below). I'm guessing Use only integrated GPU should be enabled? it would make sense, given that I'm now endowed with 32 graphics cores.

Edit: and now I see there's another Metal checkbox. Okay will try that. The following sentence may be moot, will see.

To reiterate, copying/pasting selections (from either a pixel or an adjustment layer) is slow as molasses, so something seems wrong.

Thanks. 

Edited September 23, 2022 by nickbatz
Saw another place to enable/disable Metal.

[nickbatz]

Yeah, changing those two settings does seem to help. I just copied a selection from a 300 DPI pixel layer. It took about ten seconds to copy, which brings it back into the realm of First World problems.

I'm leaving the post above intact in case it's helpful to see what the - I think! - solution is.

[nickbatz]

Just to follow up after more time - Leigh's solution (turning off Metal) is the answer. Big difference.

Thanks again.

Oh, a suggestion: it might be a good idea to include a "Preferred Settings for Apple Silicon Users" Read Me with the installation.

That is, unless you did and I missed it - which I certainly wouldn't put past myself. 

[Leigh]

13 hours ago, nickbatz said:

Just to follow up after more time - Leigh's solution (turning off Metal) is the answer. Big difference.

Thanks again.

Oh, a suggestion: it might be a good idea to include a "Preferred Settings for Apple Silicon Users" Read Me with the installation.

That is, unless you did and I missed it - which I certainly wouldn't put past myself. 

That's good to hear. You shouldn't have to disable Metal on Macs with Apple Silicon but for some users, like yourself, they have to for the app to work. We believe this issue was linked to the automatic brightness setting but some users don't have this option enabled and are still having to disable Metal.

[nickbatz]

10 hours ago, Leigh said:

That's good to hear. You shouldn't have to disable Metal on Macs with Apple Silicon but for some users, like yourself, they have to for the app to work. We believe this issue was linked to the automatic brightness setting but some users don't have this option enabled and are still having to disable Metal.

 

In case it has something else to do with monitors: I have the Max version with the 32-core graphics upsell, and two 4K monitors connected, both scaled down (one is at 3008 x 1692, the other one 1080p [a few feet away]).

[Leigh]

12 hours ago, nickbatz said:

 

In case it has something else to do with monitors: I have the Max version with the 32-core graphics upsell, and two 4K monitors connected, both scaled down (one is at 3008 x 1692, the other one 1080p [a few feet away]).

Thanks for the additional information 👍

[Roland Schwarz]

On 9/28/2022 at 8:54 AM, Leigh said:

Thanks for the additional information 👍

Using Mac Studio M1 max with Mac Studio in P3-D50 mode. Same here - Photo works best with Open GL. It's weird.