Specific Performance Issues with Affinity Photo after Installing OS Monterey

[CH Trippe]

I have checked the FAQs and see that performance issues with Affinity Photo after installation of OS Monterey is a known issue and is being investigated,  but I wanted to say, for the record, that the two things I have had the most difficulty with occur when I am attempting to create a gradient or a color overlay in Layer Effects.  Previously, all I had to do to get the color selection to appear was to place the mouse arrow on the selection bar -- the colors would pop right up. Now it is extremely flukey --- I cannot tell precisely  where to place the mouse arrow as  it seems to vary every time I use it -- sometimes it just won't come up,   so this process has become fairly time-consuming and frustrating.    It does take Affinity Photo a bit longer to open, but  the spinning wheel is a minor annoyance compared to the problem of working with gradients and color overlays. I hope this issue can be resolved before too long. And I was having so much fun! 

[Lee D]

@CH Trippe Have you tried going into the apps Preferences > Performance and making sure Hardware Acceleration is disabled as this is causing a few issues at the moment.

You can also give this beta version a go as some changes where made regarding some UI stalling. Some users have also reported that this has been resolved with the latest macOS updates installed.

[CH Trippe]

Thank you, Lee.  I will check the hardware acceleration --- didn't know to do that. Then maybe I will try the beta version. Is there anything special I should know about using it? I appreciate the tips, since several of the tools I have been using a lot have now become very slow, jerky, unpredictable and  difficult to use! I keep checking the forum for help, so I thank you for any suggestions!

 

[CH Trippe]

Hi again Lee. Well, disabling the hardware acceleration did not have any effect on the performance of those tools, so I set it back to what it was. ( I'm always a little hestitant to change settings in  areas of the computer that are foreign territory to me! )   My MacBookPro is an early 2015, and Monterey is probably the last OS this computer will support, but  Affinity Photo was working beautifully before that update . I can't pinpoint the exact moment when it stopped being so smooth, but it was definitely after I updated to Monterey.  I  have been wondering, though,  if the newest Apple  computers are also having similar issues in Affinity -- with Monterey?  I have plenty of storage space on my hard drive,  so that can't be an issue. (I also back up everything on an external hard drive).  

I probably wouldn't even have noticed these  particular Affinity performance  differences had I not  recently started building composite  images with cut-outs, using more gradients and layer effects. So this bug, or whatever it is causing the problems, has slowed me down considerably.   I loved the speed and accuracy with which the selection brush tool worked -- it has been enormously improved and I was becoming quite adept at it, and now it's got cold feet so to speak, so that's  been pretty frustrating. Many of the Affinity tools work as well as ever, as far as I can tell.  

So maybe it's time to give beta a try!

 

 

[CH Trippe]

Lee, I want to thank you again. Just downloaded Affinity Beta, and now the selection brush tool is working fine. I haven't tried out the gradient or color overlays yet, but I expect they will also perform as they did before. So all's good for now!  This forum is fantastic!