Affinity-Photo 2.4.1 - Performance problems under Sonoma 14.4.1 - possible malfunction of the metal interface

[Udo B.]

 

My equipment:

MacBook Air M3 15" (16GB/512GB) - Sonoma 14.4.1

After the update to Sonoma 14.4.1, sometimes significant performance problems occur with Affinity Photo 2.4.1 (and also 2.4.0).

In the example video you can see that simply moving an image with several complex layers is very jerky. The CPU utilization is high, while the GPU is hardly used.

This was not the case with Sonoma 14.4.0. The movements (and other processing steps) were always fluid; the CPU utilization was low in contrast to the current behavior, while the GPU utilization was high (about 80-90%).

Could this be due to a malfunction in the metal interface?

Changes to the customizing settings in Affinity-Photo (only use integrated GPU; enable metal acceleration for permissions) did not bring any changes.

Under Sonoma 14.3, the partly poor performance could also be observed - Sonoma 14.4.0 ran absolutely smoothly.

Thank you very much for your support

Best regards

Udo Bachmeier

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @Udo B.,

Not to rule out there being potential problems with 14.4.1 and the apps, but I recently had an M3 Mac user report similar poor performance regardless of the in app settings, this was resolved by doing a full reboot of their Mac, have you tried restarting just to confirm?

[Udo B.]

Thanks for the reply!

I have already restarted the Mac several times - without success.

The described poor performance was also observed under Sonoma 14.3 (Macbook Air M2; 8/512 GB - high CPU utilisation, low GPU utilisation). With Sonoma 14.4 (Macbook Air M3; 16/512 GB) everything was fine (with low CPU utilisation and high GPU utilization).

Since the update to Sonoma 14.4.1, poor performance again.

At the beginning of the year, I first bought a Macbook Air M2 with 8 GB (Sonoma 14.3) and returned it because of the poor performance. I thought the 8 GB RAM was the cause. With my current Macbook Air M3 and 16 GB (Sonoma 14.4) everything was initially OK - until the update to Sonoma 14.4.1.

Thank you very much for your support

[NathanC]

On 4/4/2024 at 10:55 AM, Udo B. said:

I have already restarted the Mac several times - without success.

Thanks for confirming, just needed to rule that one out early.

It may be something environmental or possibly specific to M3's as on my M1 I'm not experiencing any of the same performance issues running the same version. The document shown in your recording does have a quite complex layer structure with multiple live filters active, any chance you could send a copy of that .afphoto document over for a fair comparison as well as a screenshot of your performance settings in the app? I've added a private upload link below for the file.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/QHDcJKjoPbMtbL0AnKzt

Could you also try a Mac Safe mode boot and running the app, and then trying to run it again out of safe mode? This also clears some of the caches that could be problematic.

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/116946

Thanks

[MikeTO]

@Udo B. I can't help with your issue but could you do us a favour? Some of the forum users would like to know how Affinity Photo performs on the new MacBook Air M3. Could you please run the benchmark test and then share a screenshot of your results here?

1. Start Affinity Photo
2. Choose Help > Benchmark
3. Click Run Benchmark. Do nothing else until it is finished - the Run Benchmark button will appear again when it is finished.
4. Take a screenshot.

Thank you for your help.

[Udo B.]

Hello,

thanks for the suggestions!

• but there were no changes both during Mac Save Mode and after normal boot! The performance remains poor.
• I bought Affinity Photo in the Apple App Store. Does that possibly play a role? (allegedly, for example, the version from the App Store  takes longer to start - on my newly rebooted system about 22 sec).
• I uploaded my .aphoto file using the Dropbox link. It is far from optimally structure and you can certainly do many things better and differently. But as I said, everything run absolutely smoothly under Sonoma 14.4.0.
• Furthermore, I carried out the benchmark requested by MikeTO and attached corresponding screenshots. One Benchmark ran alone, the other one with CPU/GPU history for more informations. During both tests, the computer was connected to the power supply. The power save mode was off.
• A screenshot of my affinity photo performance settings is also included

Thank you for your support!

Best regards

[Udo B.]

Hallo,

A short addendum to my last reply:

I noticed in the benchmark that no values were determined for the "grid (multi-GPU)“ and "combined (multiple GPUs)" points.

Is that normal?

I have marked the two points in the attached screenshot!

thanks

[NathanC]

13 minutes ago, Udo B. said:

I noticed in the benchmark that no values were determined for the "grid (multi-GPU)“ and "combined (multiple GPUs)" points.

Is that normal?

Yeah that's completely normal for Silicon Macs, as this only applies to Multi-GPU hardware, for example my Windows device has both a dedicated Graphics card and Integrated Graphics, so it gives me a combination score in this field.

---

Thanks for giving safe mode a try, unfortunately I don't have any direct access to an M3 device, however I'll raise it internally and see if I can get this MacOS version checked on M3. To rule out there being any local user environment issues on your device, could you try creating a new temporary Mac user and running the app from this new user account for comparison?

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl3e281fc9/mac

Thanks

[MikeTO]

Thanks for running the benchmark. I've added your system to the table over here which shows that the M3 has as very high single CPU core performance. This won't be terribly useful for you but could help somebody with an M1 trying to decide whether to upgrade to an M3 - even if they don't know what each metric impacts, they can get an idea of how much of an increase they'd see across the board.

sc

[Udo B.]

As you suggested, I created a second user account and logged in with both accounts at the same time. With the newly created account, AF runs absolutely smoothly and without problems. With my old account, everything remains as before and the performance there is still poor (even if I switch back and forth between the two accounts with the quick user change).

There are no login objects for both users and no other applications are running.

Do you have any idea how I can solve the problem with my first account?

Thanks

[NathanC]

Good to hear that it works on the new user, however unfortunately local user account issues can be quite difficult to identify, as there could be a problem with the mac user account itself if there's no difference in terms of the active and background programs running.

The Affinity apps store the app preferences and user settings in the local user library folder, so by creating a new user these files are re-created. You could try deleting these files + folder on your original user to reset the apps, but there's no guarantee this will work but it will eliminate the possibility of the problem relating to the local app files, you can get to these folders via spotlight search (CMD + Space)

~/Library/Group Containers/ delete or rename the '6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs’ folder.

 ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2/Data/Library/Preferences/ delete or rename the com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2.plist file.

~/library/application support/ delete or rename the 'Affinity Photo 2' folder.

[Udo B.]

I have deleted the files or folder with the names you specified. However, the file 'com.seriflabs.affinityphoto2.plist' and the folder 'Affinity Photo 2' were located in other locations and occurred 2x each. I have deleted all of them (see attached screenshots; I searched them with the "Find Any File" app).

Up to now everything seems to be working fine. Since my settings were removed by deleting the files, I now have to set them up again. However, I will not come to this and more precise tests until tomorrow or so.

If I notice anything else, I will get in touch again (I think in this case, a complete system recovery would probably be necessary). The actual reason for the error caused by the update to Sonoma 14.4.1 will probably not be found out!

First of all, thank you very much for the great and fast support.

I only do the image editing as a hobby - Affinity Phono is just the right app for me. Hopefully Affinity Photo is constantly being developed and it remains with the excellent support!

Best regards

[Udo B.]

Hello again,

after I took over my previous settings, the same problem occurs again - the performance is poor and the CPU utilisation is high!

But - the following steps will probably lead us to the solution of the problem

1) Start Affinity Photo

2) Opening my .aphoto file -> Performance is bad

3) Switch to the 'Info' panel and then back to another panel of the same panel group, so that the 'Info' panel is in the background and no longer visible (except for the tab) -> Performance is good again

4) Re-activate the panel 'Info' -> Performance is bad 

5) Activating another panel of the same panel group -> good performance again

6) Quit Affinity Photo (with a non-active panel 'Info')

7) Restart Affinity Photo

😎 The performance is bad, even though the "Info" panel is not in the foreground

9) Only after switching to the 'Info' panel and back the performance is high again!

The steps described can also be seen in the attached video

A complete deactivation of the 'Info' panel via studio also leads to normal performance!

What is your opinion on this?

The behaviour is identical in AF 2.4.1 and 2.4.2!

[NathanC]

Hi @Udo B.,

Thanks for the recording and steps, I've now been able to re-produce the issue on my M1 mac using your file. There appears to be a bug with the Info panel's live sampling and the panel's interaction with live filters in your 'Group' layer, as soon as I delete the 'Group' which contains these filters performance returns to normal with the Info panel active.

I'll get this logged with the developers for further investigation and resolution. I found that while performance was good if I toggled the Info panel off from the 'Window' menu the performance remained strong during subsequent app sessions, so I'd suggest keeping this panel toggled off entirely for now, and if it needs to be used follow your workaround to return the app performance to normal.

[Udo B.]

Thanks for the info,

The workarround is perfectly sufficient for me. The cause is now known - and possibly fixed in one of the next releases!

Thank you again for your support

Best regards