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I have always noticed that dragging objects with applied effects (such as something simple like a stroke) lead to poor performance in Affinity Designer, particularly low frame rates and refresh rates. Since upgrading to Yosemite, however, these issues seem to have compounded.

 

Attached is a video of the performance issues of simply dragging an object with a stroke. Note that the recording accurately represents what I'm seeing on screen; the recording isn't just at a low frame rate.

 

Is anyone else noticing these performance issues?

 

Basic computer specs:

Mac Pro mid 2010

3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

16GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB

poor-performance.mov

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I have always noticed that dragging objects with applied effects (such as something simple like a stroke) lead to poor performance in Affinity Designer, particularly low frame rates and refresh rates. Since upgrading to Yosemite, however, these issues seem to have compounded.

 

Attached is a video of the performance issues of simply dragging an object with a stroke. Note that the recording accurately represents what I'm seeing on screen; the recording isn't just at a low frame rate.

 

Is anyone else noticing these performance issues?

 

Basic computer specs:

Mac Pro mid 2010

3.33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon

16GB RAM

ATI Radeon HD 5870 1024 MB

 

Is there a reason you are using the Stroke LayerFx instead of a normal line. In the beta we have renamed Line -> Stroke and now offer alignment for your stroke in the Stoke panel. The original Stoke LayerFx is creating a raster based effect that can take some time to render, this effect is mainly used for alpha edged images and not vecotors. The new stroke (or old line) should render immediately. 

 

To avoid confusion we have also rename the old LayerFx Stroke -> Outline.

 

For reference, we always render LayerFx at draw time so they don't use any memory. We have some designs with thousands of objects with LayerFx and this would be impossible if we cached the result as other Apps sometime do. 

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Is there a reason you are using the Stroke LayerFx instead of a normal line. In the beta we have renamed Line -> Stroke and now offer alignment for your stroke in the Stoke panel. The original Stoke LayerFx is creating a raster based effect that can take some time to render, this effect is mainly used for alpha edged images and not vecotors. The new stroke (or old line) should render immediately. 

 

To avoid confusion we have also rename the old LayerFx Stroke -> Outline.

 

For reference, we always render LayerFx at draw time so they don't use any memory. We have some designs with thousands of objects with LayerFx and this would be impossible if we cached the result as other Apps sometime do. 

 

 

I wasn't actually using a stroke for my art. I just noticed that when any effects are applied the performance takes a real hit. I used a stroke as an example.

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  • 2 months later...

I experience exactly what you describe, I simply made a cog shape, added bevel & emboss, some shadows, noise and inner glow and when I drag it I can feel my CPU churn it out at 100%

 

CPU: i7 4930K 6 cores @ 4.5GHz

GPU: MSI GTX 980

Ram: 16GB @ 2400MHz

 

At least my system is working for it beyond 2% stress for once.

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Can I just mention that adding bevel emboss effect does per-pixel lighting, shadows are generated per-pixel, glow is per-pixel, noise is per-pixel, etc - so you're doing many things for each pixel which require non-trivial algorithms. Most of these algorithms also involve a convolution stage that requires sampling input from a large number of surrounding pixels for each destination pixel so when you multiply all of this up to being how large your image is on the screen and how large the effects are on the object then that is the reason your cpu is busy - it simply takes time to work out the answers. There are shortcuts but these result in inferior results so we don't use them.

 

Other programs choose to cache the results so you can use the program smoothly after an initial lumpy delay - we don't do this because: 1: it takes memory, 2: it is cached at a particular size, so when you zoom in you would start to notice the pixellation. This is the only real alternative to it using your cpu to generate the effect at the required resolution per-frame.

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Can I just mention that adding bevel emboss effect does per-pixel lighting, shadows are generated per-pixel, glow is per-pixel, noise is per-pixel, etc - so you're doing many things for each pixel which require non-trivial algorithms. Most of these algorithms also involve a convolution stage that requires sampling input from a large number of surrounding pixels for each destination pixel so when you multiply all of this up to being how large your image is on the screen and how large the effects are on the object then that is the reason your cpu is busy - it simply takes time to work out the answers. There are shortcuts but these result in inferior results so we don't use them.

 

Other programs choose to cache the results so you can use the program smoothly after an initial lumpy delay - we don't do this because: 1: it takes memory, 2: it is cached at a particular size, so when you zoom in you would start to notice the pixellation. This is the only real alternative to it using your cpu to generate the effect at the required resolution per-frame.

Thank you that makes a lot of sense! I don't experience a performance loss at all, just a bit of choppiness moving the item around. I forgot to mention that my canvas was in Retina mode, so a crazy DPI ;)

You guys have created a truly amazing app!

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Can add that I installed Yosemite to one of my computers, not my main computer.Now, I wish I could roll this thing back to maverick on that computer? I feel like I have taken a performance hit everthing I do on that Machine now! Am I the only one who feels that way?

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