andy.farrar Posted August 16, 2022 Share Posted August 16, 2022 This seems to have been a problem for a long time, and I know there's a forum entry for it in the "pre 1.10 bugs" area, but that doesn't seem to be active. I saw something about it maybe being fixed or improved in 1.10, but I don't see any improvement. I regularly have the histogram in "Levels" adjustment layers freeze or disappear. Sometimes they recover after a few minutes, sometimes I have to restart Affinity Photo to resolve it. This also happens quite often to the main histogram view as well. I rely heavily on histogram displays for astrophotography processing, and if they're not working, then I just can't do the editing I need to do in Affinity. I am on Windows 10 (up to date), core i7 CPU with 32 GB RAM. Graphics card is a GeForce GTX1650 (nvidia driver up to date). I have tried this with hardware acceleration on and off, and also with the renderer set to WARP instead of the GTX1650. None of those settings have made an discernible difference, other than slowing some other things down. Is this issue still being looked at? IS there any word on timing for a fix? In the meantime, is there any way in Affinity that I can force the histograms to refresh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff NathanC Posted August 16, 2022 Staff Share Posted August 16, 2022 Hi @andy.farrar, It is understandable that this issue can cause some frustration, i'll confirm the issue regarding resource allocation for the histogram mentioned in the original pre 1.10 board is still active and add your report for consideration. I'm not aware of any method to 'force' the histogram to refresh, however i'm interested in what your usages are whilst the histogram is attempting to load/update, could you send a screenshot of task manager CPU/Mem/GPU usages on the performance tab in task manager whilst the histogram is trying to update? Additionally, if you could send me one of the files you're experiencing this on so I can compare. 🙂 Many Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy.farrar Posted August 16, 2022 Author Share Posted August 16, 2022 Thanks for the response. I will try to capture some video of this next time it happens. There isn't any particular file involved here - it happens eventually on pretty much every file I edit. My usage doesn't seem that complex to me - a few layers for sure, but I don't use a lot of selections, and I tend to merge my live adjustments and filters often rather than keeping them live, in order to help performance. the images I work on are 18 megapixels maximum (the resolution of my camera), but often a lot smaller as I tend to crop most of them. The image I was editing today when this happened is two pixel layers and a single levels adjustment layer on top. When the problem occurred, only one of the pixel layers was switched on and I had no active selections. Can't get much simpler than that. When the problem occurs, I do fire up Task Manager and look at CPU, disk and memory usage - I have yet to see them really high when this occurs, and once the levels histogram has disappeared or the main histogram has frozen, I can leave it for several minutes with the system pretty much idling and the histograms usually don't recover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff NathanC Posted August 16, 2022 Staff Share Posted August 16, 2022 1 minute ago, andy.farrar said: the first thing I do is fire up Task Manager and look at CPU, disk and memory usage - I have yet to see them really high when this occurs, and once the levels histogram has disappeared or the main histogram has frozen, I can leave it for several minutes with the system pretty much idling and the histograms usually don't recover. I have since confirmed that usages won't spike when making these adjustments so no need to capture this information, the develop persona is able to utilise additional CPU time for the Histogram to update more consistently, whilst in the Photo persona this is handled as more of a background task to give priority to other tasks - by design i'm afraid. Although, the Histograms should be better optimised to increase responsiveness and reduce freezes within the other personas which i'll confirm. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy.farrar Posted August 16, 2022 Author Share Posted August 16, 2022 My use case - and this would be the same for almost everyone else doing astrophotography based on tutorials I've seen and conversations I've had - involves using the levels adjustment (and also the curves adjustment) while watching the effect on the histogram closely. This could be on the whole image or on a selection. So unless other personas have a levels control and selection (and I don't see any that do), then it looks like you're suggesting that Affinity Photo can't do what I need it to do. I could handle the histogram being a background task if there was a "refresh" option somewhere to kick it back into life. IS that waht the little warning triangle on the histogram is supposed to be? Because it does nothing when I click it. Given the issue tends not to recover once it has happened, even after several minutes (the longest I've left it is about 20 minutes), it really looks more like a bug than a legitimate "it's a background task so it might take a while" thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff NathanC Posted August 16, 2022 Staff Share Posted August 16, 2022 As you've mentioned levels is only available within the Photo persona, the point regarding the task priorities was deemed as by design at the discretion of the developers, However i'll confirm/raise this to be improved in the Photo persona as previously mentioned. 1 hour ago, andy.farrar said: IS that waht the little warning triangle on the histogram is supposed to be? The yellow triangle can be pressed to display the colour distribution in finer detail, more information on the histogram is available in the below help guide. https://affinity.help/photo/en-US.lproj/pages/Panels/histogramPanel.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy.farrar Posted August 17, 2022 Author Share Posted August 17, 2022 Thanks for that. Next time the problem occurs I will try to do a video capture and also provide the file I'm working on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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