What makes layers take so long to get updated?

[DaveLawrence]

I've gotten super confused when it takes 10 seconds for layers to get updated.

You can see that I've already renamed the layer, then had the time to take this screenshot, and the layer was still not updated.

[Dan C]

Hi @DaveLawrence,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble! Can you please confirm for me, are you referring to the name of the artboard on the canvas not updating, or the thumbnail for the layer?

Are you running Affinity on Mac or Windows please?

Many thanks in advance 

[DaveLawrence]

Good point!

Affinity Designer on Mac

Thumbnail for the layer, but also the letter name in parentheses, such as (E)

I forgot to state the steps.

1. Use text tool to make selection.
2. From the glyph panel replace the letter.
3. Push escape or CMD+D, to get out.
4. The letter stays the same.

GIF:

Here I'm using a special character, but it also happens with normal characters like 'D'.

 

[Old Bruce]

I don't know why this takes so long for you, for me it is quite quick. But I have to be honest, 99% of the time I don't look at the thumbnails when I am working with the layers panel so this is not a problem for me. 

Does it become quicker if you toggle the visibility of the layer?

[DaveLawrence]

On 2/4/2022 at 11:10 AM, Old Bruce said:

I don't know why this takes so long for you, for me it is quite quick. But I have to be honest, 99% of the time I don't look at the thumbnails when I am working with the layers panel so this is not a problem for me. 

Bruce, I'm not quite sure what you are meaning here?

Oh...BTW my set up is Affinity Designer 1.10.4, and Mac OS 11.6.2. (A little bit older than your OS version)

 

On 2/4/2022 at 11:10 AM, Old Bruce said:

Does it become quicker if you toggle the visibility of the layer?

Toggling the visibility of the layer updates the layer. However, turning off visibility doesn't increase the speed at which the layer updates on its own.

[Old Bruce]

15 hours ago, DaveLawrence said:

Bruce, I'm not quite sure what you are meaning here?

The thumbnails are not anything I worry about, I literally do not look at them most of the time. Therefore the speed at which they update is of no real consequence to me.

[Dan C]

Thanks for the steps and GIF provided!

I've tried this here (on both Monterey and Big Sur) and I note the same experience as Bruce, the layer (both name and thumbnail) update almost instantaneously for me.

Can you please confirm the exact specs of your Mac? (found under Apple > About This Mac)

Can you also please within Affinity navigate to Affinity Designer > Preferences > Performance and provide a screenshot of your settings here for me?

Many thanks once again

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

I've tried this here (on both Monterey and Big Sur) and I note the same experience as Bruce, the layer (both name and thumbnail) update almost instantaneously for me.

FWIW, I do not seem to get any update of the parenthetical name of the text from "(Frame Text)" to whatever I type in the frame until/unless (for instance) I toggle its visibility to force the update.

See for example this No text update?.afdesign file with the History included. At least for me, at the 4th History step "Clear Selection" the text frame still has not updated to show "E" -- that only happens after I toggle visibility.

This is with Catalina.

What am I missing about this?

[DaveLawrence]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

See for example this No text update?.afdesign file with the History included. At least for me, at the 4th History step "Clear Selection" the text frame still has not updated to show "E" -- that only happens after I toggle visibility.

This is with Catalina.

What am I missing about this?

R C-R, Thank you for posting! Your experience seems similar to my own.

Yeah, sometimes it's taken a really long time. Sometimes I've thought a layer was wrong, only to click into it and find out it was right.

Dan C, Thanks! And I appreciate the warm welcome that I have received here from the staff and others in the community! Here are the screenshots:

[Dan C]

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, I do not seem to get any update of the parenthetical name of the text from "(Frame Text)" to whatever I type in the frame until/unless (for instance) I toggle its visibility to force the update. (...)

What am I missing about this?

You're not missing anything here - simply I had tested this issue on both Mac & Windows using the Artistic Text Tool and not the Frame Text Tool!

My apologies as I should have been more thorough. 

@DaveLawrence I can confirm I'm able to replicate this here when using the Frame Text Tool, on both Windows and Mac - the app seems to take much longer than expected to update both the layer name and thumbnails for these specific objects, so I'm logging this as a bug with the developers now.

I hope this helps

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

... the app seems to take much longer than expected to update both the layer name and thumbnails for these specific objects, so I'm logging this as a bug with the developers now.

To be clear, for me the parenthetical frame text layer name never updates on its own -- I have to do something like toggling the layer visibility to force that to happen. Also, unless I have misunderstood what you mean, there is no Layers panel thumbnail for frame text layers other than the "T" in a box, much like the capital "A" thumbnail for art text, so there is never anything for the thumbnail to update to that isn't there from the moment that layer is created.

[Dan C]

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

To be clear, for me the parenthetical frame text layer name never updates on its own -- I have to do something like toggling the layer visibility to force that to happen.

Thanks for the further info, I'll be sure to include this in the dev log

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

Also, unless I have misunderstood what you mean, there is no Layers panel thumbnail for frame text layers other than the "T" in a box, much like the capital "A" thumbnail for art text, so there is never anything for the thumbnail to update to that isn't there from the moment that layer is created.

I'm referring to the thumbnail of the Artboard in the layers panel, as I setup my document to match the one shown in OPs above GIF and it appears as though this thumbnail is not updating as quickly as it should be either - apologies for the confusion!

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Dan C said:

I'm referring to the thumbnail of the Artboard in the layers panel, as I setup my document to match the one shown in OPs above GIF and it appears as though this thumbnail is not updating as quickly as it should be either - apologies for the confusion!

Thanks for the clarification. FWIW, for me the artboard thumbnail does not ever update by itself when I change the frame text content -- like with the frame text layer parenthetical name, I have to force it to update, for example by toggling the layer visibility.

[Raptosauru5]

On 2/9/2022 at 12:16 PM, Dan C said:

Thanks for the further info, I'll be sure to include this in the dev log

I would like to confirm something similar is also happening on Windows (10).

I have couple of layers in the Layers tab and I am clicking on them with the mouse randomly and they are visually being selected in the scene, however, sometimes it just forgets to select them and it only does so as soon as I move my mouse cursor to the scene. Very weird. The biggest problem is that it totally confuses me when I am working. When this happens, I can also see a microsecond of a flash of a correct selection but it disappears immediately - it is definitely some kind of bug.

[Dan C]

Hi @Raptosauru5,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums & I'm sorry to hear you're having trouble!

This sounds like a slightly different issue to the one being reported above - can you please provide a screen recording showing this issue for me? 

If you're unsure how to take a screen recording, please check out our FAQ linked below - 

Many thanks in advance

[Raptosauru5]

Hi @Dan C,

Thanks for your reply, I am attaching the video. (Just to prevent further confusion, I am using Ctrl+Z to revert every change I am making. In the end of the video, the Ctrl+Z actually caused the glitch as well.)

Note that this is happening in both Affinity Designer and Photo.

 

As you can see the canvas will sometimes refresh only when mouse is moving over it and never updates until then. I am not showing it on the video, but this can also happen when working with Layer Effects window or other interface. It even happens when changing some input using keyboard while mouse is on canvas, it only triggers the refresh when mouse starts moving.

I am not using any special software to mess with my GPU that could be causing it.

Let me know if you want to see my specs or GPU settings.

Thanks for looking into this, it drives me crazy!

Affinity refresh problem.mkv

[Dan C]

Thanks for your recording provided @Raptosauru5 - this is certainly interesting behaviour!

Can you please open Edit > Preferences > Performance and provide a screenshot of your settings here for me?

Can you also please confirm that none of the following apps are installed?

Many thanks once again

[Raptosauru5]

@Dan C

Here is my settings:

I tried to mess with these settings earlier, but nothing seem to have fixed it.

I am not using any of the software in the list except Display Fusion Pro. I tried to terminate it and kill it's process through the Task manager and restarted Designer, however did not change anything (I am also not experiencing the "Application hang/crash on open" anyway...)

 

Hope this helps.

[Dan C]

Hi @Raptosauru5,

My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here as I have been out of the office for the past week.

Can you please try unticking Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of this dialog, then restart the app as prompted and let me know if this helps?

I'd also recommend ensuring you have the latest drivers available for your RTX 3080, directly from the Nvidia website

[Raptosauru5]

Hi @Dan C,

Thanks for suggestion,

I have been trying this already long time ago. I re-tried it today as well, but no success. Still exactly same

[Dan C]

Thanks for confirming that for me and I'm sorry to hear this - if you set Retina Rendering to High Quality (Slowest) does this help the canvas refresh?

[Raptosauru5]

@Dan C Unfortunately still the same.

I tried with both HW acceleration ON and OFF.

[Dan C]

Many thanks for letting me know and I'm sorry to hear this - does this occur in multiple documents, or only in the one shown in your screen recording?

I've been unable to replicate this issue and I'm not aware of previous reports, so I suspect it could be caused by something in this file specifically.

[Raptosauru5]

@Dan C Thanks for your care.

Unfortunately this is happening in ANY document.

It also happens after I reinstalled the Affinity products and also reinstalled Windows.

This was happening on my laptop before and I am now on new Desktop build.

Could it be some of my windows settings or some Nvidia Control Panel settings? - I suspect that because I would probably set those "my way" right away when reinstalling system.

[Dan C]

Thanks for letting me know - this is the first report of this issue I've seen previously, but from your above comment I understand you've experienced this across multiple computers?

If so, this may be a good indication that certain software/hardware that both computers are using could be conflicting with Affinity.

Was Display Fusion Pro installed on your laptop also?
Are you using a drawing tablet, or have any other hardware connected that was also connected to your laptop?

20 hours ago, Raptosauru5 said:

Could it be some of my windows settings or some Nvidia Control Panel settings? - I suspect that because I would probably set those "my way" right away when reinstalling system.

I'm not personally aware of any Windows or Nvidia settings that would cause this issue, I too have my own personal settings for the Nvidia Control Panel as I have a Gsync monitor and also game on my personal PC, but I'm unable to replicate this behaviour currently.