Designer V2 suddenly slow/ laggy

[Maxximilian]

Hello,

in both, Designer V1 and V2, I experienced that the app slows down from time to time.

Usually a restart of the app solved the problem eventhough it did not help all the time.

Are there any guidelines (e.g. max. number of layers, curves, filesize etc.) for the files to avoid/ reduce this?

Since yesterday I can't work on my latest file.

Designer V2 is suddenly slow/ laggy, which makes it impossible to work on some files.

Everything is slow like opening the file, zooming in and out (the file is blurry while zooming and it takes forever to focus it), movinge nodes, exporting, etc.

I can't even copy some layers or groups as this causes Desginer to crash.

I thought maybe it is the bad structure (too many layers, curves, effects) of my file, the filesize is to big or some downloaded files causing the issues,

but I opened a backup of this file, which is about a week old, and it is the same issue with this file.

 

I haven't changed settings or the installation of Designer V2.

I haven't changed or modified anything on Windows 11 as well.

 

PC Info:

Windows 11 Home (Version    10.0.22621 Build 22621)

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

graphics card: nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 Ti

RAM: 32 GB - 3200 MHz

 

So far I tried the following:

Windows 11:

Virus scan - non detected

Designer settings:

- reduces undo-steps to 128

- disabled hardware acceleration

 

As a side note:

Trying to find a solution and opening different files in Designer V2, it seems that it takes windows explorer longer than usual

to show the preview pictures on the icons, if I open a folder with more pictures or affinity files.

 

 

Any help is highly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Maxximilian

 

 

[Paul Mudditt]

You didn’t mention whether rebooting your PC made any difference?

[Maxximilian]

Rebooting makes no difference.

I just tried opening the file in Affinity Photo 2 and it is the same issue.

The App slows down extremely.

The taskmanager lists no other apps using much cpu and/ or memory.

While e.g. zooming or moving objects the cpu-usage of the app goes up to 100% whenever I monitored it.

Below is a picture of the file in question (afdesign-filesize: 25 MB)

The face was the first thing illustrated in this picture.

I copied only the face into a new file and it is the same issue.

While e.g. zooming or moving objects the cpu-usage of the app still goes up to about 50% whenever I monitored it.

 

 

[Dan C]

Hi @Maxximilian,

Thanks for your report and we're sorry to hear you're having trouble.

I would recommend ensuring that your Windows version is fully updated, and you have the latest drivers directly from Nvidia for your GPU, as outdated drivers/updates can cause slowdowns both in Affinity and in Windows generally.

On 2/13/2023 at 7:24 PM, Maxximilian said:

While e.g. zooming or moving objects the cpu-usage of the app goes up to 100% whenever I monitored it.

I can confirm this is expected behaviour, the Affinity apps will use all resources available when editing documents.

Please do let us know if updating your system helps here!

[Maxximilian]

Hi Dan C,

Windows was already up to date.

And updating the GPU drivers didn't help.

Would it be worth a try to remove the apps and make a new installation?

 

 

[Maxximilian]

Since yesterday I got the issue that the windows explorer opens up a new window randomly.

Sometimes a couple windows in a few seconds. This is so annoying.

I read that this is a bug in explorer related to the new tab feature.

Could it be that due to one of the latest windows upates both, Designer and explorer, aren't working properly anymore?

 

[Dan C]

Apologies for the delayed response here!

On 2/15/2023 at 4:32 PM, Maxximilian said:

Would it be worth a try to remove the apps and make a new installation?

I would not expect this to change the behaviour described, more likely resetting the app to default settings may help, however doing so will lose all of your custom brushes, assets, settings etc. If you wish to try this you can reset your app back to its default settings by holding down the CTRL key while launching the app. When the Clear User Data window appears, select the following options and then click Clear. The app will now open.

If you don't wish to reset your application losing this data, I'd instead recommend trying the latest beta for Designer (v2.1) as we've had users who confirmed their performance issues are considerably improved within this version.

You can find out more about joining the latest beta here - https://affinity.serif.com/affinity-beta-program/

This will install as a separate, standalone application meaning you can test v2.0.4 and v2.1 side-by-side, and also 'reset' v2.1 back to default settings, without losing your saved content in v2.0.4.

3 hours ago, Maxximilian said:

Since yesterday I got the issue that the windows explorer opens up a new window randomly.

Sometimes a couple windows in a few seconds. This is so annoying.

I read that this is a bug in explorer related to the new tab feature.

Could it be that due to one of the latest windows upates both, Designer and explorer, aren't working properly anymore?

I've not heard of this Windows issue being reported elsewhere and I would not expect this to affect the Affinity apps in any way - though it certainly does sound annoying!

Please do let me know how you get on here

[Maxximilian]

I tried both, resetting V2 and installing V2 beta, but unfortunately no performance improvements.

Maybe you can open the attached file and let me know if it is slow/ laggy for you as well?

The file contains just the face of the above posted picture, which is still quite slow/ laggy.

 

Face TEST.afdesign

[Powerhorse]

Maxximilian, you have Acronis on the machine, then it may help if Affinity in is excluded in the protection of Acronis.

Also try disabling Hardware Acceleration under Performanse. I noticed that Affinity sometimes has problems with the RTX 3060.

 

 

[Maxximilian]

Hi Powerhorse, I don't have Acronis and I already tried disabling hardware acceleration.

What I don't understand is that everything was fine and suddenly the issues appear.

Are there any settings in the nvidia control panel I should doublecheck?

 

 

[Dan C]

Many thanks for providing this for me!

I can confirm that I do see a delay when editing this document, however with multiple Pixel layers and live FX applied to multiple layers, the app will have to calculate these FX as you edit the document, and this can cause the rendering to slow.

I have however been able to improve the performance with the following settings in the app -

Equally, I can see you have applied FX to the top 'Layer' container, which means that every layer is being calculated and re-rendered as you change the design. I have found that rather than applying this directly to the Parent Layer, I grouped all of your layers below this and then applied the same FX to this group instead - which also improved the performance for me.

Can you please test with the above settings and the document I have attached with the aforementioned change and let me know if this performs better for you?

Face TEST_e.afdesign

[Maxximilian]

Took me some days to test and reply as I had the flu since Sunday.

And on Saturday I even tried both,  resetting Windows to one of the latest recovery points and reinstalling a clean Windows.

By doing this I got rid of that annoying windows explorer bug at least.

After trying your settings with your file, I can confirm that the performance is better.

Changing the performance settings of the app seem to make not much of a difference on my system.

The major improvement is because of how you applied the FX.

It is the same with my original file, were I have applied FX to the top layer as well.

Switching off the FX on this top layer improves the performance a lot.

 

So far I never wasted a thought about how to structure my files in regards of the apps performance.

As a novice I am always glad to get something on the canvas.

 

Thank you very much Dan C for you support.

[youreg39]

If the graphics is using a lot of FX, it slows down while its been worked on. But by turning the FX off and finish the graphics, then applying the FX at the end of the process will not effect any performance of the app.

[Komatös]

10 hours ago, youreg39 said:

But by turning the FX off and finish the graphics, then applying the FX at the end of the process will not effect any performance of the app.

Hello and welcome to the forums.

This is exactly how you should proceed, even and especially if the combination of CPU and graphics card does not allow hardware acceleration to be activated. This additionally slows down the display and real-time calculation of the effects.

[lepr]

@Maxximilian Designer 2 has a 'Hide Effects' view mode which you should try.