Would it help to reinstall 1.10.2 on my Mac instead of 1.10.5 for M1 version

[nucleonbge]

Hello, 

Affinity Photo worked vey smooth on My Mac is 2012 (Late) with 24GB RAM before it was updated to the new M1 processor.

With updated version for M1 Affinity Photo (1.10.5) is slows down after one Live Filter Layers (Clarity) and significantly slows down after adding Unsharp Mask. Then the added Vignette changes the screen by squares (VERY SLOW).  

Activity Monitor show that 24 GB RAM barely used (1.2 GB), however the CPU used over 250%. 

Is it possible that the pre M1 Affinity version worked smooth and fast by using my Mac 24 GB RAM, and the latest Affinity Photo version uses the fast new M1 processor more instead of RAM memory.

I would like to reinstall the pre M1 Affinity Photo version (1.10.2 ?) to restore the Affinity Photo smooth and fast operation.  Am I correct?

Thank you!

Leo

[v_kyr]

Hard to tell, since I'm personally not a M1 Mac user. - Do you run the latest (just a few days before) updated MacOS Monterey 12.3.1 version?

However, you can try out what happens when you disable Metal hardware acceleration under the Performance Preferences on your M1 system, aka if it has some influence here or not. - Other than that you might want to search through the forums post about M1 & Monterey related threads and look what other Mac M1 users do report and if they possibly have posted some solutions to such occuring problems. So threads like this recent one ...

Switching back to older APh versions usually shouldn't be an advisable way, since there have been in the meantime (from APh release v1.10.2 to v1.10.5) other bugs been fixed. So the latest APh version should usually be overall slightly better behaving now.

[MikeTO]

For the most part the Affinity suite runs perfectly smoothly on my M1 Pro. But there is a bug in it that makes it spin the beachball for 5-15 seconds when doing mundane things like opening a menu or creating a new document or clicking a tool. It never goes away once it starts keeps recurring at least once a minute even if you let the computer sit and close every other application. Once it starts you're better off restarting Affinity or even restarting your Mac.

I agree that this is a newer bug but I'm unsure which version it started in. I didn't believe it was there until it happened to me but now I've encountered it a dozen times with Publisher (this isn't specific to Photo). At first I thought it was a bug in macOS but I'm now leaning firmly toward it being a problem with Affinity. But it's so infrequent and it can start when I'm doing nothing of importance with a blank document so I don't know what triggers it. And since it doesn't crash, there's nothing to send to Serif to investigate.

I don't recommend downgrading your version of Affinity - there are lots of great bug fixes and speed improvements in the latest version. I do recommend being prepared to restart your Mac when necessary. When I encounter the bug, I just save my work (under a new filename just in case) and then restart. I never bother trying just to restart the app, I restart my Mac for good measure but I'm not 100% sure that it's necessary.

The next time it happens I'll make a screen recording to share with Serif and I'll include other data such as memory usage. I'll also try opening a second Affinity app and seeing if I experience the same problem in both apps at the same time.

[DWright]

Can you please confirm the M1 Mac that you are using as I am unable to replicate this on my M1 Macbook Air

[nucleonbge]

Thank you for all replies!!!

My post English - was clumsy.

My Mac is 2012 (Late) with 24GB RAM (i5.) It was working very fast (no delays) with pre M1 updated Affinity Photo.

After the Affinity Photo for updated to take advantage of the new Apple M1 the first update was running almost the same speed on my 2012 iMac with 24 GB RAM.

The latest Affinity Photo version 1.10.5  on my old Mac is 2012 (Late) with 24GB RAM (i5) processes  Live Filter Layers very very slow. The Activity Monitor shows CPU use up to 340%, while the memory (RAM) use does not exceed 1.2GB. Why the remains of the 24MB remains unused?

For some reason I could not apply Metal before. Today affinity Photo accepted Metal. Thank you for the "push" owouldnot ally it as it was not accepetd before. Today Affinity accepted the Metal setting. It helpped!!!!: the CPU usage droped form 340%  to 151%. However the menory use by Affinity Photo remains the same 1.2GB

In Preference RAM usage Limit set to 24578. Affinity speed does not affected is I reduce the RAM usage Limit 8GB.

The Affinity Preference setting screen is attached. Changes from fast test to slowest are not dramatic.

Thank you for the help

Leo

 

[nucleonbge]

Update:

I have installed older Affinity Photo version an verified, that on my computer, iMac Catalina, it runs (editing slow down with number of layers) practically at the same speed. My M1 related speculation was wrong.

Leo