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Affinity Photo opens very slowly.


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Affinity Photo was once very fast. However, unfortunately, with each new version, it slows down with the opening speed. Every time I open the app, it bounces on the Dock 10-15 times. Then I think it gets stronger and decides to open up.

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HW Acceleration off?

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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2 hours ago, coral said:

Every time I open the app, it bounces on the Dock 10-15 times. Then I think it gets stronger and decides to open up.

You don't say which MacOS release you're using. But perhaps this explains it;

 

 

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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@coral, my apologies for the delayed response here.

I can confirm, as explained in the above FAQ post - this is a known issue on macOS Catalina & higher.

Our latest beta version attempts to resolve this (and other known issues in Monterey) however our developers have confirmed this will require an update on Apples side to be completely 'fixed'.

Should you wish to try the latest beta, please find this linked below. This can be installed alongside the retail version, so you have 2 versions of AP installed at once -

I hope this helps :) 

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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3 hours ago, Dan C said:

I hope this helps :) 

Thank you very much for your support. I also tried the beta version. I got a screen recording showing boot times. No change, no speed difference. I present to your information. As you can see in the video, it opens in 18 seconds in both versions. 

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Many thanks for letting me know - can I correctly assume you're using the Mac App Store version of the Affinity app?

If so, we're aware that the beta itself may not show any major signs currently of being improved, due to 'Sandboxing' on your mac for apps launched from the Mac App Store.

Essentially, the changes we've made may not take effect on certain systems until it has been released as an update through the Mac App Store, so the behaviour described above is not overly unexpected.

Of course this means we can't guarantee the changes we've made will definitely resolve the issue until the update is available through the Mac App Store, but our developers are hopeful that the changes made should be clearer once this update is live :)

However I'll be sure to pass this information, along with your system specs through to our developers so that we can keep track of this ongoing issue!

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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6 hours ago, Dan C said:

Many thanks for letting me know - can I correctly assume you're using the Mac App Store version of the Affinity app?

If so, we're aware that the beta itself may not show any major signs currently of being improved, due to 'Sandboxing' on your mac for apps launched from the Mac App Store.

Essentially, the changes we've made may not take effect on certain systems until it has been released as an update through the Mac App Store, so the behaviour described above is not overly unexpected.

Of course this means we can't guarantee the changes we've made will definitely resolve the issue until the update is available through the Mac App Store, but our developers are hopeful that the changes made should be clearer once this update is live :)

However I'll be sure to pass this information, along with your system specs through to our developers so that we can keep track of this ongoing issue!

Thanks. Yes. I am using the Mac App Store version. I logged in with the Guest account on my computer with macOS Monterey 12.0.1 (21A559). Affinity Photo opens in just 10 seconds. Then I created a new user and tried again. The problem is fixed. It boots up in 10 seconds. I guess that's a normal time, right?

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12 hours ago, Dan C said:

I can confirm, as explained in the above FAQ post - this is a known issue on macOS Catalina & higher.

Curiously, on my iMac running Catalina there is a short delay after a cold start in how quickly the Affinity apps start up, but it is only a few seconds (maybe 4-5 bounces on the Dock at most), but nothing like the 20 seconds some users are reporting.

This cold start delay is the same for all 3 Affinity apps, including APub I bought directly from Serif & AD & AP I bought from the MAS.

No idea what might be different about my system that would make any difference, though.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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13 hours ago, coral said:

The problem is fixed. It boots up in 10 seconds. I guess that's a normal time, right?

That's certainly closer to what we'd expect, depending on the specific system and how many fonts are being loaded etc - however our developers are still working to reduce this where possible :)

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

Curiously, on my iMac running Catalina there is a short delay after a cold start in how quickly the Affinity apps start up, but it is only a few seconds (maybe 4-5 bounces on the Dock at most), but nothing like the 20 seconds some users are reporting.

As above, it's possible that Affinity is loading fonts during this time (/building the font preview cache). Equally, if loading from a mechanical hard drive rather than an SSD, this can affect load times - as well as currently available system resources such as CPU cores/memory. :)

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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14 hours ago, coral said:

Thanks. Yes. I am using the Mac App Store version. I logged in with the Guest account on my computer with macOS Monterey 12.0.1 (21A559). Affinity Photo opens in just 10 seconds. Then I created a new user and tried again. The problem is fixed. It boots up in 10 seconds. I guess that's a normal time, right?

The delay only happens after a cold start. If you restart the app a second time without restarting the system it does start quickly as usual however this doesn't mean the issue is fixed. Have you restarted the system as well when you tried the second time?

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On 12/9/2021 at 4:24 AM, Dan C said:

…however our developers have confirmed this will require an update on Apples side to be completely 'fixed'.

Has there been any indication from Apple that this is something they intend to fix?

I recall many times in the past where we had reported blocking issues to Apple only to be met with a "won't fix" (or crickets) response, with the issues going unresolved for years, only to be fixed when Apple needed them fixed for their own applications/reasons.

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2 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Has there been any indication from Apple that this is something they intend to fix?

When this issue was first reported I was informed our development team were contacting Apple to discuss the problem and try to find the best resolution. I'm not certain if we heard back from Apple as I was not personally updated, nor have I seen any information as such in the development logs.

I'll try and find out if we did receive a response, but as it stands our developers believe the issue hopefully be improved within 1.10.5 once it's fully released to retail - but unfortunately only time can tell! (due to the above sandboxing discussed).

Please Note: I am now out of the office until Tuesday 2nd April on annual leave.

If you require urgent assistance, please create a new thread and a member of our team will be sure to assist asap.

Many thanks :)

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5 hours ago, Dan C said:

As above, it's possible that Affinity is loading fonts during this time (/building the font preview cache). Equally, if loading from a mechanical hard drive rather than an SSD, this can affect load times

I understand that. I just find it odd that on my system, there is essentially no difference in cold start load times between AD or AP, both bought from the MAS, & APub, bought from the Affinity store. That suggests there is something more than the sandbox/verification thing going on with this, at least for Catalina.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I had similar load time experiences with my machine when running 10.14.x (never used 10.15). I believe that OS also used Sandboxing but the Mac App Store versions loaded quicker than they do now with 11.6.1

I could be wrong with my thinking that Sandboxing worked with 10.14.6.

As it is now I find the first start of Photo and Designer, both from the Mac App Store, after starting up the machine take about a minute or so, subsequent starts are a few seconds. Publisher is from the Serif/Affinity store and there is no difference in its start times, just seconds.

To put start times into perspective I recall my Mac+ starting up (with Opcode's Max in the startup folder) taking enough time for me to fill the kettle bring it to the boil and make a large pot of coffee by the drip filter method. Of course Opcode has been defunct now for over 20 years. Max still exists and runs quite fine.

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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Hola! Beta 1.10.5.270 opens in 6-7 seconds on my new MacBook Pro with Apple silicon native - not using Rosetta. 

I can't report on the production because I only have the beta installed right now.

Regards - - john

 

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Edited by jdvoracek
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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I recently purchased a M1 Max 64MB and have been really disappointed with the opening speeds of Affinity apps.

Designer and Photo take over 20 sec. while Publisher takes 2-3 sec.

Designer and Photo were purchased on the App Store while Publisher was purchased from Affinity directly.

All apps are version 1.10.5

It would be great to get an update on the status of the fix coming from Affinity or Apple which ever the case may be.

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@mliving and @coral  I can’t find the actual link to the post from @Leigh  on these forums right now, but do remember the jist of it.  It was suggested that we go to the Apple Systems Preferences>Displays> and uncheck “Automatically Adjust Brightness.”  I tried this and have found that all three — AP, AD and APub — open very quickly.  I had  not experienced very long delays before (Big Sur) but this setting change definitely helped.

Also, here is a screenshot of a comment from another topic regarding this, which might help too, in case you don’t already have this setting in your User Preferences.  Sorry it is so small.  Can’t make my ipad behave.

0C936D3A-AE2B-4569-A29C-99F04EF4211F.jpeg.f1558ef539d294dfb5553fb4617c141d.jpeg


24" iMAC Apple M1 chip, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16 GB unified memory, 1 TB SSD storage, Ventura 13.6.  Photo, Publisher, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.3.
MacBook Pro 13" 2020, Apple M1 chip, 16GB unified memory, 256GB  SSD storage
,  Ventura 13.6.   Publisher, Photo, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.1.1.  
 iPad Pro 12.9 2020 (4th Gen. IOS 16.6.1); Apple pencil.  
Wired and bluetooth mice and keyboards.9_9

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2 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

I can’t find the actual link to the post from @Leigh  on these forums right now, but do remember the jist of it.

Perhaps because it was James Ritson, not Leigh, who posted about it? :/

 

 

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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4 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Perhaps because it was James Ritson, not Leigh, who posted about it? :/

 

 

Right!!!  Thank you so much.  I believe the post I was looking for added a link to James Ritson’s post.  I am so glad you could find it.  The information is spot on!


24" iMAC Apple M1 chip, 8-core CPU, 8-core GPU, 16 GB unified memory, 1 TB SSD storage, Ventura 13.6.  Photo, Publisher, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.3.
MacBook Pro 13" 2020, Apple M1 chip, 16GB unified memory, 256GB  SSD storage
,  Ventura 13.6.   Publisher, Photo, Designer 1.10.5, and 2.1.1.  
 iPad Pro 12.9 2020 (4th Gen. IOS 16.6.1); Apple pencil.  
Wired and bluetooth mice and keyboards.9_9

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On 5/18/2022 at 6:06 PM, jmwellborn said:

It was suggested that we go to the Apple Systems Preferences>Displays> and uncheck “Automatically Adjust Brightness.”

I'm using a 2013 Mac Pro and a Dell U2715H monitor. This setting is not showing for me. Also, the Hardware Acceleration setting doesn't work either. Unfortunately I'll be going back to Photoshop. Because I'm tired of drinking coffee while I wait.

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8 hours ago, coral said:

This setting is not showing for me.

It won't unless your Mac has an ambient light sensor or the Dell has one that communicates with the Mac. See https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-your-displays-brightness-mchlp2704/mac for more about that.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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