Affinity Photo too slow using the new macbook M1 PRO with 16gib Memory 10core/16gpu core 1TB

[rmlibrado]

I experince a terrible lag using Affinity Photo on my new Macbook M1 Pro chips with 16gb memory 1TB.. i am trying to open RAW file from my sony A6500.. it is very slow.. i thought it was optimized with M1 chips.

[NotMyFault]

Hi, 

some operations do not utilize multiple cores, or gpu cores at all. Especially read/write from disk. 
You will see the performance gains of M1 pro in many operations like live filters / adjustments and huge numbers of layers.

The Develop Persona was never the strongest part of Photo.

If you can upload one example RAW file, we can check on our systems to give some benchmark data.

[henryg]

And with my admittedly old i5-85xxx (no graphics card, but with 16gb of ram and a very fast NVME SSD), I use a macro to load levels, white balance, and curve adjustment layers and some auto adjustments into a separate layer; and sometimes the layer thumbnails stay "black" seemingly for ages until updated. If I open one of the adjustment layers, the large display is also black. And then there are the intermittent freezes and crashes. Hardware acceleration is turned off.

There seems to be some real problems with Photo.

ps why, oh why, oh why, is there still only one forum covering all the Affinity programs? Makes it a right PITA if, like me, you are only interested in Photo? Beta programs have separate forums.

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, henryg said:

ps why, oh why, oh why, is there still only one forum covering all the Affinity programs?

It is because there is considerable overlap in what is supported in each of the 3 apps, so for many questions the answers apply to all of them.

[Ron P.]

If everyone would make use of tags when posting, we could easily narrow down all the posts related to a specific program. The search feature allows for numerous search criteria, tags being one of them. It could be beneficial to search on affinity photo, BUT users fail to even post which app they're asking about.

If you browse through all the different forums, you will quickly see, the rules, directions are not followed by all. Members post questions in the Tutorials, Feature/Suggestion, post Feature/Suggestion requests in the Questions (this one), just the wide spectrum of not following the directions that are posted on the forums.

So @henryg, do you really think having separate forums would really get questions for the corresponding program? Might help a little, but when members refuse to read or search first, the end result is the same.

[henryg]

3 hours ago, Ron P. said:

So @henryg, do you really think having separate forums would really get questions for the corresponding program? Might help a little, but when members refuse to read or search first, the end result is the same.

I think it would make a huge difference; even if likely not to be perfect.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, LondonSquirrel said:

And operating system, and version, and whether they are using a local or network drive, etc.

Some users have suggested that the forums be split up so the Mac & Windows operating systems each have a different area of the forum. Some have suggested that there should be a "general" forum for questions that apply to all (or most?) of the apps running on either or both OSs; and/or a pair of "general" ones, one each for Macs & Windows.

All together, if these suggestions were implemented we could end up with eight (!!!) or maybe even more sub-forums in the Questions section of this site. It would be a nightmare!

[henryg]

16 hours ago, R C-R said:

... All together, if these suggestions were implemented we could end up with eight (!!!) or maybe even more sub-forums in the Questions section of this site. It would be a nightmare!

First, an apology for hijacking this topic!

I find it an issue, if not a nightmare, scrolling through all the posts that are not relevant for me.  And with the likelihood that I'll miss one that could be of interest. For me, one sub-forum per program would be sufficient, but I accept that consensus is unlikely.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, henryg said:

I find it an issue, if not a nightmare, scrolling through all the posts that are not relevant for me.  And with the likelihood that I'll miss one that could be of interest. For me, one sub-forum per program would be sufficient, but I accept that consensus is unlikely.

If there was just one sub-forum for each Affinity app, you still would be missing a great many posts that were relevant to whichever app you are interested in because so many of them are about topics that apply to more than one or all three of them.

So for example, almost anything about using the Layer panel, how to customize the toolbar or Tools panel, setting up & using layout presets, the functions of the status bar & contextual toolbar, what clipping/nesting layers does & how to use it, the File > Export options, using new document presets & Templates, working with any of the vector tools, the Glyph browser, & much more is equally applicable to all of them, & many others are applicable to at least tow of them.

Many if not the majority of the best & most helpful posts about such topics would be unlikely to appear in all of the sub-forums unless enough users were following all of them & did not mind doing the extra work of reposting the same info to all of them. In fact, some would consider that a form of spamming the forums, or at least an annoyance or discourtesy to those following more than one of those sub-forums.

It is unfortunate, but there really is not a good way to filter topics to just the ones of interest, other than relying on other users to tag or label the topics they start with something that makes that a bit easier.

[Lee D]

On 12/24/2021 at 2:30 PM, rmlibrado said:

I experince a terrible lag using Affinity Photo on my new Macbook M1 Pro chips with 16gb memory 1TB.. i am trying to open RAW file from my sony A6500.. it is very slow.. i thought it was optimized with M1 chips.

Back to the original issue @rmlibrado are you still having issues with RAW development times? Are you referring to the initial loading time or when you click Develop, how long is it taking on average? Have you tried switching the RAW engine in the Develop personas assistant to see if this makes any difference?

[Ulrich_S]

Hi I'm using MacBook Pro 16'', M1 pro, 16GB Ram and the Affinity Photo always hangs and is very slow!?

I'm using:
Hardware: MacBook Pro 16'' (2021), M1 pro, 16GB Ram
Software: macOS Moterey, Version 12.2

When editing the photos (resolution 10,000px), the Affinity Photo hangs all the time, and I'm making much slow progress. Affinity Photo only uses 1.88 GB of RAM memory! When do you want to solve this problem?

[Raphys]

I am experiencing the same problem and lags using only shape tools on either affinity photo or design ! I am using MacBook m1 13 inch 16gb with the latest version of Monterey.. This is driving me nuts ! What is going on ? I feel like I wasn't experimenting such problems before Upgrading to Monterey.

 

[Casperwitz]

I am having long lags and slow performance using erase brush, paint and other tools in Affinity Photo on 24" iMac M1 (2021) with 16 GB memory and Monterey 12.2.1. Have set Ram access to max.  Deleted and reinstalled app, no improvement.

 I never had lags with Big Sur on 27" iMac (2012).  This is a serious issue and makes Photo (and Design) virtually unusable.

Seeing other posts this obviously not a new issue, what is being done to resolve it? 

 

 

[v_kyr]

9 minutes ago, Casperwitz said:

and Monterey 12.2.1.

The current version of macOS Monterey is macOS 12.3.1, which was released to the public on Thursday, March 31.

For your 12.2.1 version see also for example ...

• macOS Monterey, ..., features and problems

... and check the memory usage in Activity Monitor, since some Monterey versions still suffer from certain memory leak bugs. - Though Affinity might also still have some here in their M1 code portions.

[Casperwitz]

4 hours ago, v_kyr said:

The current version of macOS Monterey is macOS 12.3.1, which was released to the public on Thursday, March 31.

For your 12.2.1 version see also for example ...

• macOS Monterey, ..., features and problems

... and check the memory usage in Activity Monitor, since some Monterey versions still suffer from certain memory leak bugs. - Though Affinity might also still have some here in their M1 code portions.

Updated to MacOS 12.3.1 on M1 iMac and M1 MacBook Pro, no improvement with Affinity Photo on either.

[NotMyFault]

To analyze performance issues, it is required to be specific what exact performance issue is observed and to keep the multiple possible causes apart:

• This thread was started about develop persona, and raw images of a specific camera model
• the last reply was about pixel paint brushes.

It does not help to mix every performance issue into one big bag and blame it on „memory leaks“, ARM vs Intel, etc.

I doubt that you are doing the exact same workflow with identical files and identical frame parameters (e.g. display size / color model).

So comparing to other PCs is only helpful if you can measure the time of operations ob both PCs exactly, and ensure the test is performed like for like.

A 4K display with HDR capability uses 4-16 times more data vs. a „Full HD“ display. Almost all operations have performance with constant byte per second, or objects / second. It should be clear that larger display size will reduce performance.

In the past (release 1.8) i measured that my iPad was 8 times faster vs. my far beefier PC (spec see my signature) for the same 6kx4k image to switch to tone map persona. This was a reproducible performance issue, and Affinity closed the gap after introducing HW acceleration on Windows. I resized my original image (/2, /4, /8 ) and the found a linear correlation between pixel count and seconds.

So if anybody suffers performance issues and want them fixed, please be specific, provide evidence (documents, screen recording, measurements). If you suspect an old PC / version was faster, please provide the evidence for both PCs / versions.

If you are unable or not willing to provide the required evidence, nobody else will be able to help.

Regarding brush lag, there are several issues already documented, but all are bound to specific situations (e.g.

• In Designer, pixel layer nested to vector layer,
• some OpenCL / gpu driver related.
• a known performance pig is having too many fonts - because all fonts are loaded during launch.
• Performance issues related to Mac OS versions

To close my post: if you have a reproducible performance issues, and can provide all required so that others can reproduce on their PCs, Affinity and forum users will be happy to analyze and provide a fix or workaround. 

[bepresent]

On 4/10/2022 at 10:51 AM, NotMyFault said:

Quote

To close my post: if you have a reproducible performance issues, and can provide all required so that others can reproduce on their PCs, Affinity and forum users will be happy to analyze and provide a fix or workaround. 

 

Sorry if this has been stated before, are there some log that can be provided/uploaded to help with the diagnosis?

I also have a Macbook M1 Pro and consider Affinity Photo unusable at this time. There are massive lags/freezes every few seconds for any kind loaded image. This was not the case on an older Intel based version. Affinity Designer does run fine.

[Dan C]

Hi @bepresent & any other users experiencing such issues,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

I'd recommend opening the Affinity app and navigating to Affinity [Publisher/Designer/Photo] > Preferences > Performance.

In the dialog that opens, please untick Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of the dialog, then change the Renderer from Metal to OpenGL.

Restart the app as prompted and try editing your document once again - hopefully this improves the performance of the app.

If you're still having trouble having tried the above steps, please create a new post in the bugs section of the forums and our team can investigate further for you:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/71-bug-reporting/

I hope this helps!

[Dazmondo77]

I Have a triple boot intel Mac setup (Mac OS Big Sur 11.6.5, Monterey 12.3.1 and Mojave 10.14.6) and find lags and beach-balling in all Affinity apps under Monterey, also using open gl - everything works great in both Big Sur and Mojave - this is currently the problem with Affinity and the newer M series macs as I'm pretty sure you can't install Big Sur or Catalina on a mac that shipped with Monterey

[Dan C]

38 minutes ago, Dazmondo77 said:

I Have a triple boot intel Mac setup (Mac OS Big Sur 11.6.5, Monterey 12.3.1 and Mojave 10.14.6) and find lags and beach-balling in all Affinity apps under Monterey, also using open gl - everything works great in both Big Sur and Mojave

Thanks for letting me know, I suspect this is the below issue that our developers are aware of -

We hope to have an update regarding this shortly

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

Thanks for letting me know, I suspect this is the below issue that our developers are aware of -

But doesn't that say that the issue should be resolved by updating to Monterey 12.1 or higher? @Dazmondo77 said the Intel Mac was running Monterey 12.3.1, so it would seem that does not apply here....

[Dan C]

I believe the FAQ needs updating in that regard - as much as we thought the 12.1 update helped to alleviate these issues, we're still seeing reports consistent with the original, though the latest Monterey updates are certainly a marked improvement.

This is something our development team are aware of and have been working with Apple directly to try and reduce/resolve