Photo macOS - Live Clarity filter - super slow redraw

[ronnyb]

Source image is ~5K x 4K resolution. Live Clarity is set as below.

[James Ritson]

You're using Designer it looks like—have you tried this document in Photo to see if it's any faster? Unless something has changed, Metal Compute is only used for brush work in Designer, and live Clarity is quite expensive to render even on GPU, so it will be even slower on CPU.

If it's still that slow in Photo, that may be cause for concern. I wouldn't expect it to be rapid as you're mixing raster and vector, but it should be faster than Designer...

[ronnyb]

5 hours ago, James Ritson said:

You're using Designer it looks like—have you tried this document in Photo to see if it's any faster? Unless something has changed, Metal Compute is only used for brush work in Designer, and live Clarity is quite expensive to render even on GPU, so it will be even slower on CPU.

If it's still that slow in Photo, that may be cause for concern. I wouldn't expect it to be rapid as you're mixing raster and vector, but it should be faster than Designer...

There is ZERO delay in Photo while doing the same exact thing.... that's why I thought it was a new bug... I can upload the file in question for review to see whether its just on my end...? I'm running an M1 Max w/ 24GPU cores and 32GB RAM and the latest macOS (Public release not beta)

[ronnyb]

5 hours ago, James Ritson said:

live Clarity is quite expensive to render even on GPU, so it will be even slower on CPU

Here's what Activity Monitor shows...

[James Ritson]

Yes, that looks about right: all cores on the CPU are maxed out. Live Clarity is being composited on CPU within Designer, along with all the other operations, so things will be slower—especially zoomed in. If you zoom out, performance may improve slightly.

It's not a bug (GPU raster compositing is just significantly faster for most modern hardware setups), but it may raise the question of whether Designer would benefit from GPU acceleration for more than just brush work. Because live filters aren't exposed in Designer, it's possible most users won't be using this type of workflow—or those that do will typically be performing their vector work in Designer, then applying live filters in Photo to finish...

[ronnyb]

Thanks for the reply @James Ritson

I think with the fluidity of today’s workflows, and the power of non-destructive Live filters, and the benefits of a fully integrated suite, GPU acceleration in Designer and Publisher would provide an incredible performance and user experience boost. 

I regularly swap which app i use to edit content in Affinity using the “Edit in…” commands…. Having parallel performance across apps would be a boon to all…..

Can this be added as a feature request with Devs?

Thanks for all you do!