Photo doesn't start properly (split)

[nietsmelkn]

My affity photo doesnt work really. I have a new Mac Air with M1 processor.When i work with affinity photo ( I have bought it in the Appstore)the programm have always breaks and the sign ( rainbowcircle ) is coming and have to wait. What i can do?

[Dan C]

Hi @nietsmelkn,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

Sorry to hear you're having trouble.

22 hours ago, nietsmelkn said:

When i work with affinity photo ( I have bought it in the Appstore)the programm have always breaks and the sign ( rainbowcircle ) is coming and have to wait. What i can do?

Can you please expand on this for me, or perhaps provide a screen recording of the behaviour you're experiencing? I can see you have posted in a thread titled 'Photo doesn't start' - however from your description it sounds as though the app may be opening and you're having trouble when editing documents? What do you mean by 'the program always breaks'?

The more information you can provide here, the easier this will be to investigate. Many thanks in advance!

[nietsmelkn]

 

I am working on photos in Affinity Photo. During individual work steps, the rotating beach ball from the MacBook Air keeps coming and I can only continue working after a few seconds. My computer is 1 month old, the 500 gigabyte hard drive is only 10% full and I bought Affity Photo from the Appstore a month ago. I've removed the Affinity Photo program from my computer before and then reinstalled it.

[Dan C]

40 minutes ago, nietsmelkn said:

During individual work steps, the rotating beach ball from the MacBook Air keeps coming and I can only continue working after a few seconds. My computer is 1 month old

Can you please confirm for me, what exact version of macOS is installed currently?

[nietsmelkn]

MacOS Monterey 12.1

 

[Dan C]

Thanks for confirming that for me! Other users have reported issues when using this version of Monterey in the Affinity apps, as I suspect this is the reason your app is freezing.

The users reporting this issue have verified these freezes appear to be mostly alleviated with the most recent update, so I'd recommend installing Monterey 12.2.1, restarting your mac and try editing with the Affinity apps once again

[nietsmelkn]

Now i have installed Monterey 12.2.1 but i have the same problems like bevor. When i work on an picture in affinity photo sometimes the spinning beachball is coming and i have ashort break until continuing my work

[Dan C]

Thanks for trying that for me and I'm sorry to hear this!

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

[nietsmelkn]

[nietsmelkn]

[Dan C]

4 minutes ago, nietsmelkn said:

Many thanks for providing this for me!

Firstly I can see that your RAM limit is set higher than your current RAM amount in your system. I'd recommend setting this top value to 8192 MB.

Secondly, please try unticking Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of the dialog and restart the app as prompted, then try editing once again.

If you're still having trouble after changing these settings, then a screen recording or further explanation of the exact steps you're taking in Affinity when the app freezes may help us to identify the problem.

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

Many thanks once again

[v_kyr]

6 hours ago, nietsmelkn said:

When i work on an picture in affinity photo sometimes the spinning beachball is coming and i have ashort break until continuing my work

You've assigned 10,24 GB MAX RAM, though you're MB Air has only 8 GB physical memory build in. (Ah I see now @Dan C was faster in replying to that).

Metal support highly depends here on how good the Affinity devs have adapted it to Apple Silicon (see for example here).

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

Firstly I can see that your RAM limit is set higher than your current RAM amount in your system. I'd recommend setting this top value to 8192 MB.

I do not understand why it should make any difference if the limit is set higher than what is installed on the system. RAM use is controlled by the macOS, so there is no way for any one app to use more RAM than the OS allows it to use, which will always be less than that limit even if it is set to be identical to the installed RAM since the OS will always reserve whatever it needs for its own use.

It certainly makes no difference on my Intel Mac running Catalina if I set that limit to much higher than the installed RAM, so is thi something specific to M1 Macs and/or Monterey?

[Dan C]

On 3/5/2022 at 5:50 PM, R C-R said:

I do not understand why it should make any difference if the limit is set higher than what is installed on the system. RAM use is controlled by the macOS, so there is no way for any one app to use more RAM than the OS allows it to use, which will always be less than that limit even if it is set to be identical to the installed RAM since the OS will always reserve whatever it needs for its own use.

Setting the RAM limit value above the amount of RAM in a system will likely cause the app to 'overflow' into swap files more frequently, which can reduce the apps responsiveness.

The app will always try to fill memory to the RAM limit set in preferences when required, for example when opening a pixel heavy document, so having this value set higher than your actual RAM amount on the system may force the app to write to swap files more often.

For this reason, we always recommend setting this value at the physical memory amount installed in your system, or perhaps slightly less if you have an abundance of RAM (I would class an abundance as 32GB or higher)

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

Setting the RAM limit value above the amount of RAM in a system will likely cause the app to 'overflow' into swap files more frequently, which can reduce the apps responsiveness.

Isn't this also what happens when the limit is set to less than or equal to the installed RAM, & doesn't it happen that much sooner if the app is limited to substantially less than the total amount of RAM the OS would otherwise allow it to use?

IOW, the lower the limit, the more likely it becomes for swaps to occur, the same as if there was less RAM in the system.

[Dan C]

22 hours ago, R C-R said:

Isn't this also what happens when the limit is set to less than or equal to the installed RAM, & doesn't it happen that much sooner if the app is limited to substantially less than the total amount of RAM the OS would otherwise allow it to use?

As I understand it, that's also correct - hence I usually tend to recommend setting this value to exactly your system memory limit to avoid unnecessary swap files where possible.
Too low and the app will be forced to 'swap' when hitting this limit, too high and the app will actively try to fill the 'available' memory (which is more than the system has) and again will being swap filing

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

Too low and the app will be forced to 'swap' when hitting this limit, too high and the app will actively try to fill the 'available' memory (which is more than the system has) and again will being swap filing

As I understand it, whenever needed the app will always try to fill all the memory the OS makes available to it before it is forced to start swapping, so the behavior should be no different unless the limit is set too low. Setting it higher than the installed RAM will not change that.