Intel iMac, Photo app issue with "merge visible"

[58volts]

Photo app issue with "merge visible" image renders with random squares with a different tone (looks like carpet tiles). Also I had to change the performance settings for Retina Rendering to best quality  because I was experiencing these random squares appearing as moved the mouse across the image. 27" iMac (2020) i7 64gb ram

 

[Dan C]

Hi @58volts,

Thanks for your report and our sincerest apologies for the delayed response here. We are exceptionally busy following the release of V2 and we thank you for your continued patience and understanding here.

The 'square' shown in your screenshot appears to be a rendering issue with the Mipmaps that Affinity uses - just to confirm if you zoom in and out of this document, does the rendering issue resolve itself, or does this 'square' remain?

Can you please also navigate to Affinity Photo 2 > Preferences > Performance and provide a screenshot of your settings here for me?

Many thanks in advance!

[58volts]

Hi Dan, the square remains when I zoom. I changed the performance settings from default because as I was moving the mouse over the image I was seeing the squares darken under mouse pointer. The issue with the square appearance is random in its location and if I delete and redo a few times I can get a usable layer usually. It happens when I have about 10 or so layers open. 

Many thanks

Gregg

[Dan C]

Thanks for confirming that for me Gregg and for the screenshot provided!

Can you please try the following:

• untick Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of this dialog
• Change the Display option from Metal to OpenGL
• Restart the app as prompted

Once restarted, does this issue still show in your files please?

[58volts]

Hi Dan, thank you, that seems to have fixed it (only tried a couple of times of merge visible and it worked fine) it seems lot faster as well, before I was getting a progress bar that was taking about 5-10secs to merge now it is instant

Many thanks

Gregg

PS I hope my other issue with printing can be solved as easily. 🤞

[A_B_C]

Just to understand, should we disable Metal acceleration on Intel Macs completely? 🙂

[Dan C]

That's great news, many thanks for letting me know!

11 hours ago, A_B_C said:

Just to understand, should we disable Metal acceleration on Intel Macs completely? 🙂

I wouldn't recommend this across the board - Metal acceleration can be a great improvement to most documents/workstations, however there are certain situations where it may be struggling with the complexity of documents, causing redraw issues such as the above

[58volts]

I've now had chance to test what difference turning off Metal acceleration as had on the performance, today I did a new Astrophotography Stack and the merge visible issue has gone away, but some of the tools and macros are now very slow and clunky particularly screen redraw, merge visible sometimes results in the image changing colour (a neutral background changes to having a colour cast), trying to pull sliders now needs several attempts to move them. The software is now unusable, I'm now reverting back to version 1.

Edited December 11, 2022 by 58volts
More issues.

[Dan C]

Many thanks for letting me know and I'm certainly sorry to hear this has negatively affected other tools for you - I'll be sure to log this information with our developers now as the mipmap issue should not occur with Metal rendering enabled and hopefully can be resolved in a future update!

Edit - are you able to provide a copy of this .afphoto file to the below link for me, such that I can provide this to the developers also?

https://www.dropbox.com/request/6incQOJQMe3UVhzd47Et

Once uploaded, please reply here to let me know!

[58volts]

Sorry I deleted that image and started again and did it a different way as I was blending 2 different exposure values. I have other files with the full layers stack that the same problem has occurred if they are any use?

[Dan C]

No problem at all, any file showing this issue should help our team - many thanks in advance!

[58volts]

Your dropbox link doesn't work!

[Dan C]

My apologies - I'm not quite sure why the request was closed in Dropbox, can you please try the same link for me again?  

[58volts]

Thank you Dan, uploaded. 1.2 gb file.

 

[58volts]

I've updated to the latest release 2.0.3 and the merge visible issue is still plaguing me. I do astrophotography stacking and editing with Affinity Photo V2 and use a couple of plugins for star removal and noise reduction so I need to create a number of merged layers in order to use the plugins, once the layers panel gets to about 10 items say 3 pixel and 7 adjustment layers everything starts going wrong, merge visible either has squares of a different brightness or the entire images gets a lot brighter. If I do get a usable merge the performance slows down eg using the in-painting brush has about a 5 second lag. I'm using the same workflow that worked fine in version 1.10.5 but that now has the same issue in 1.10.6. The only way I can now edit my images is with destructive editing having to merge down after each adjustment layer. Equipment spec; 2020 27" iMac i7 intel 3.8Ghz 64gb ram AMD Radeon Pro 5500XT 8gb.

Dan C was handling this before he went on holiday.

[Patrick Connor]

Sorry you are still waiting on this issue. Thanks for the additional information, including that 2.0.3 is still affected.

Please do not make new threads for already reported issues, thank you. I have merged this post above into your existing thread

 

[Dan C]

My sincerest apologies for the delayed response here once again and many thanks for providing your file!

I have tested this on the following setups:

iMac 2019, 6 core i-5, 16GB RAM & Radeon Pro 580X 8GB

Mac Mini, 8 core M1, 8GB RAM

Windows 10, 4 core Xeon W3520, 16GB RAM & GTX 1050

Unfortunately on none of these devices have I been able to directly replicate the Merge Visible issue, however I can clearly see the issue in the layer you generated in the file provided, and interestingly when zooming in/out on Windows repeatedly, I was able to see the mipmap issue rendered on the canvas, before performing the 'Merge Visible' step.

Therefore I'm getting this logged with our developers now, as it may require the same (or more similar) GPU as you have in your setup to replicate - though as I've been able to recreate the same preview when zooming, it certainly indicates an issue with how the app is processing your layers.

I will be sure to update you here with any further information from our developers and we hope to have this resolved in a future update

[58volts]

Thank you Dan, the only way I can use Affinity Photo at the moment is with destructive editing  and staying with 5 or less layers which really isn't practical with Astrophotography. I've attached a screen shot of my system spec.

[Dan C]

No problem, many thanks for the further information provided - I'll be sure to pass this through to our team with the bug report now.

I'd like to also try one more step on your machine to see if this alleviates the issue, under Preferences > Performance can you please change the Display option to Software, then restart the app and follow your steps in your file once again.

The app may be slower to respond, but I am hoping the rendering issue will not appear.

Does the same issue still occur please? This should help indicate to our team on a base level, if the issue is between Affinity and your GPU or Affinity and your RAM

[58volts]

Hi Dan, I've done a test and it would appear to be successful with the rendering, my layer stack has 5 merged layers and 8 layer/macro adjustments and all have merged ok but it is very slow (brushes are impossible to use because of lag). Version 1 worked fine up to the last update but it now has the same issue.

[Dan C]

Thanks for confirming that for me, this would indicate it appears to be a rendering issue when using your GPU, so I will be sure to include this in the development log for our team

[58volts]

Version 2.0.4 issue still has not been fully resolved, I've not had the random squares appearing after a merge visible but the entire image changes brightness with a merge again with about 6 or 7 layers.

[Dan C]

Thanks for letting me know and I'm sorry to hear this - I will be sure to update the development log with this information now.

Although this specific issue hasn't yet been marked as resolved by our devs, it may be worth trying the latest beta version, V2.1, to see if this is improved there.

You can find our how to sign up for the beta here: 

I hope this helps