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Resource/Memory Issue Merging Layers...


Glennsart

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Good Day. I've run into a verifiable/reproducible issue when merging layers that originate from another file type than an .afphoto format. I noticed this when working on a multi-layered painting that was in the .afphoto format, and I copied in a .png file as a new layer. If this .png layer is then resized downwards then duplicated (in my case, 3 or 4 times) followed by a merging of those layers, the memory pressure on the Info Panel shoots from about 20% to roughly 150% and the merge can take minutes to an indefinite period depending on how many layers that file was copied. I increased my max RAM limit in preferences to the max and while that helped, it still took an extended period of time (in my case 15s to 2 minutes) to merge those layers, and after several minutes following the merge my memory pressure was still so high that doing anything anywhere on the computer was pretty much impossible. I am enclosing the file herein and below are the instructions to reproduce the issue. Please note I sent this same file to a friend (also on a Mac but not the same models) and he was able to reproduce it on 2 of his machines (Mac Pro and MacBook Pro).

Instructions for reproduction:

1. Open the .afphoto file enclosed

2. Note the 4 layers at the top entitled "Smoke"

3. Select all the layers marked "Smoke"

4. Go Menu>Layers>Merge Selected.

Note the layers entitled "Smoke" were a single .png format that was resized and duplicated 3 times as layers within this document. The same thing has happened when I imported .jpg files to an .afphoto document.

You should see the issue arise from that. Note that if you duplicate other layers within this document that were part of the original file and saved as a .afphoto file, the merge using the above is instantaneous. Further, if I first save the imported .png file as an .afphoto file, *then* import it to the document in question, the merge is also instantaneous. This seems to occur only when mixing file types. If working with a .jpg document and one imports another .jpg document as a layer, there is no issue merging copies of those.

Please note I am using the latest version of Affinity Photo. My computer specs are in my signature, although my friend was able to reproduce this on 2 other Macs so I'm not sure how relevant the computer model is. This issue was not tested on a Windows machine.

Thanks for your time.

Glenn

702574370_Outpost1aff.afphoto

Mac Studio, Sonoma (latest version) / 32 GB RAM / 1 TB SSD Storage / Wacom Cintiq 24 Pro (latest drivers)/Intuos Pro 5 / Affinity Suite 2

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A quick update - turning off Acceleration does help greatly with this. Merge times are reduced to a few seconds and the memory pressure stays under 60%, although it does rise significantly from where it was previous to the operation. That's likely to be expected.

Mac Studio, Sonoma (latest version) / 32 GB RAM / 1 TB SSD Storage / Wacom Cintiq 24 Pro (latest drivers)/Intuos Pro 5 / Affinity Suite 2

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Hi @Glennsart,

In the Layers Panel, if you right click on the first smoke Layer and select Rasterize and repeat that process for the other 3 and then do a Merge of the layers, it should act much better now and the memory pressure shouldn't rise by much at all, at least in my tests it didn't.  

I'll need to get this logged with the Dev team as i'd expect better performance when merging those 4 layers.

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