Affinity photo unusable as usual, When will it actually work?

[Sulsa]

I am rather disappointed posting this as I have really wanted to move away from photoshop but affinity just makes it impossible.

There are no real improvements to the app, it's crippled and slow and just unusable. In years of giving it a try many times i still have the same exact issues. 

It's super lagy. I can't use it for any real work even basic work. Can't use the brush, can't use the inpaint brush is a nightmare. Can't make selections either without being lagy. Can't do any work. I paid for all apps, The ipad version kinda works okish, macos sameish but Windows is just unusable, which is my main working machine. I have good specs to run it.

 

I have done post in the past and hit the same wall, same old fixes which improved mildly but not enough to work. I am sick and tired of the same old things. 

Yes, the G-sync is disabled, how is it that you know this is an issue and in the last 6 years it has not yet been fixed??? Easy to blame the G-sync but clearly the software itself has an issue as everything else works with it. Every tiny update resets the G-sync setting, every Nvidia update does it. It's exhausting to have to keep reminding myself to do it just to use the software for 5 mins and give up as you can't do anything without lag. 

I went through all the menus disabled everything suggested multiple times and nothing helps or make it usable. All that's left at this point if for the team to suggest me to get rid of Nvidea all together for something else. 

Still you have to convert layer to pixel layers to be able to cut a selection from an image. Such and weird way of working, again I am not the only person with issues with this and yet it has never been addressed. 

When you make a layer invisible by disabling it you can still paint on it, like what the hell??? Again for years and this was never addressed and at some point someone in the comments said this was a "feature", why would anyone want this as a feature, the moment you disable a layer you don't want to paint on it! i messed up so many times because of this.

The serious question is, When will affinity actually work? I paid for it and can't use it.

 

 

My PC is an

intel i9 18 core running at 3.7

64GB DDR 4 

Nvidea 2080TI

m.2 pro and a few SSD

[Meliora spero]

Your computer is fine. Photo is not.

Just for your planning and creativity: I don't think Photo can be saved. It's built on poor technology (weak algorithms), wrong architecture, and is shockingly made without any knowledge of workflows and usability. Even Photoshop was better 20 and 30 years ago for all the basic things, both in terms of algorithms and speed.

The product needs to be rebuilt properly from the ground up, and a lot of junk needs to be thrown out. If the same people are assigned to that task, it's not going to happen. We're literally talking about starting from scratch.

[R C-R]

53 minutes ago, Sulsa said:

The serious question is, When will affinity actually work? I paid for it and can't use it.

Keep in mind that there are many users working with it daily & not experiencing any significant problems with lagging -- just check some of the videos forum users & third parties like Affinity Revolution have put on the web, as well as the official YT videos posted by the staff.

So it is at least possible that there is something that you could do to eliminate or at least reduce the lag problems you are seeing.

As for image vs pixel layers, there are many posts explaining why they are different & the benefit of the special Image container type of layer.

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, Sulsa said:

Still you have to convert layer to pixel layers to be able to cut a selection from an image. Such and weird way of working, again I am not the only person with issues with this and yet it has never been addressed. 

You don't have to do that. You could, instead, Edit > Copy Merged (or Copy Flattened, depending on your OS). Image layers offer some advantages over Pixel layers, but users need to learn about them. That's really no different than learning any other application, and every application has differences from other applications you may have used.

[Sulsa]

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

Keep in mind that there are many users working with it daily & not experiencing any significant problems with lagging -- just check some of the videos forum users & third parties like Affinity Revolution have put on the web, as well as the official YT videos posted by the staff.

So it is at least possible that there is something that you could do to eliminate or at least reduce the lag problems you are seeing.

As for image vs pixel layers, there are many posts explaining why they are different & the benefit of the special Image container type of layer.

I had it on different PC, including laptop and I experience the same exact thing. At the moment I tried 4 different computers. Surely I didn't do something wrong on every single one of them? I installed, logged in to activate. That's it. Drivers are up to date, windows up to date. App itself is up to date, on all of them i turned G-Sync off after testing first, there were some settings in the software itself i was asked to turn off. What else could it be?

Fair enough on the pixel layer methods etc, I never got into it enough to properly learn it because of the bad performance. Had it work fine i would have learned inside out but what encouragement do I have if I have to wait ages for anything to happen, even a brush stroke? So yeah not knowing how to use it properly is on me. 

[Meliora spero]

As you can clearly see, @Sulsa, you're up against a wall of people who don't understand the extent and seriousness of the problem.

They can't change the world with their dislikes. It's something the world struggles with a lot these days, the belief that you can make a difference by clicking on a symbol.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, Deperditus Cliens said:

... you're up against a wall of people who don't understand the extent and seriousness of the problem.

All we are saying is that it works without appreciable lags for a great many Windows users so it is reasonable to assume that there is something about this user's system or settings that could quite possibly be causing or at least contributing to the lags being experienced on that system.

7 hours ago, Sulsa said:

... there were some settings in the software itself i was asked to turn off.

It might help if you could list them, & who or what suggested that you turn them off (which usually means disabling something at either the system or application level).

Basically, the more info you can provide, the better the chances are that someone can help you solve your lagging problem.

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, Deperditus Cliens said:

you're up against a wall of people who don't understand the extent and seriousness of the problem.

It's a bit difficult for people who don't have the same problems to understand why other people would rather spend their time ranting about how bad Affinity is, rather than either trying to find a solution to the problems, or just stop using it and find alternative software that is more to their liking!

(FWIW: Over the years I've used the Affinity Suite on 4 desktop PCs (2 at work and 2 at home) and a laptop, all of which had lower specs than the OPs, and never experienced the problems described. I must be doing something right!)

[Sulsa]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

All we are saying is that it works without appreciable lags for a great many Windows users so it is reasonable to assume that there is something about this user's system or settings that could quite possibly be causing or at least contributing to the lags being experienced on that system.

It might help if you could list them, & who or what suggested that you turn them off (which usually means disabling something at either the system or application level).

Basically, the more info you can provide, the better the chances are that someone can help you solve your lagging problem.

I totally understand, all computers that i tried to run it off were of different specs so it isn't related in any way. Plus as I mentioned I have only followed the setup and activation process, i didn't fiddle with any other things to "mess it up"

Here is a list of what I did and been suggested previously:

• I installed it on Windows 10 and did a fresh install of windows
• I installed did a fresh install of Windows 11 and installed Affinity only to check for potential clashes. It was the same performance and no change.
• Disabling Hardware Acceleration in the settings
• Disabling G-sync 
• Tried a fix rate of  refresh rate of 60hz, 100hz and 120hz no luck either This was after disabling G-sync
• Checked for driver updates
• Tried gamer version of Nvidea and studio drivers separately 
• Tried other windows computers 1 of them was a fresh install, Alienware Laptop at the time with a RTX 2060 I believe it was the M15 model, then I swapped for an M17 with RTX 2070 max q with 32GB ram and an I9 CPU I believe. 
• I tried back then Version 1 of affinity 
• Used version 2 of affinity from the early one and usually with every bigger update I try it
• Not proud of this one and i know it is not legal, I own a license but still I tried a crack version of the internet to test and see if it was different but it was the same. Desperate times call for desperate solutions.

Many of these were attempted along the years on the different computers. As i mentioned many times already, it never worked successfully.

I may have tried other things but can't remember. I watched videos and checked on reddit as well.

[Sulsa]

16 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

It's a bit difficult for people who don't have the same problems to understand why other people would rather spend their time ranting about how bad Affinity is, rather than either trying to find a solution, or just stop using it and find an alternative that is more to their liking!

Trying to find a solution is what I have been trying to do for years but there is only so much time I can spend trying to figure it out.

I would happily use something else but what do you recommend besides photoshop?

[PaulEC]

1 hour ago, Sulsa said:

what do you recommend besides photoshop?

Sorry, I'm afraid I can't recommend anything else. Personally I prefer Affinity Photo to Photoshop, so that doesn't really help if you are having problems with it! However, there's a lot of other photo editing software out there which other people do seem to like. 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Sulsa said:

Tried a fix rate of  refresh rate of 60hz, 100hz and 120hz no luck either This was after disabling G-sync

What did you use to change the refresh rate? Was that with an add-on or something built into Windows?

Also, have you tried temporarily creating a new user account & trying to run AP from it?

[Meliora spero]

14 hours ago, PaulEC said:

It's a bit difficult for people who don't have the same problems to understand why other people would rather spend their time ranting about how bad Affinity is, rather than either trying to find a solution to the problems, or just stop using it and find alternative software that is more to their liking!

(FWIW: Over the years I've used the Affinity Suite on 4 desktop PCs (2 at work and 2 at home) and a laptop, all of which had lower specs than the OPs, and never experienced the problems described. I must be doing something right!)

You can bet I use Photoshop. It is light years ahead. But as a customer of Designer and Publisher, I don’t get to escape the shared code, especially from Photo, which severely drags the products down. And here is my opinion: Photo is an incredibly bad product that pulls everything down. You have to live with it. You are a satisfied customer. I am an unsatisfied customer. You simply cannot relate to our usage scenarios because you clearly do not know them.

It is a poor, knowledge-empty, and perspective-less angle to say that you are doing something right, and by that saying that others must be doing something wrong. It is a fact that all these customers experience problems, and that all shortcomings and weaknesses have been reported in heaps by many, many others besides me. So essentially, I am pointing out what you completely miss: that if anyone is to solve problems here, it is Serif-Canva. The fact is, there is a wall of people in here who have spent years of their lives rejecting this—people who, in no way, explain why anything in world history has moved forward.

[R C-R]

42 minutes ago, Deperditus Cliens said:

It is a poor, knowledge-empty, and perspective-less angle to say that you are doing something right, and by that saying that others must be doing something wrong.

Nobody is saying that.

[Sulsa]

17 hours ago, R C-R said:

What did you use to change the refresh rate? Was that with an add-on or something built into Windows?

Also, have you tried temporarily creating a new user account & trying to run AP from it?

Nvidea Panel controls all of it. 

I am a very techy person, worked in IT. I am pretty sure I am not doing anything wrong. I tried every thing that came to my mind, I went beyond by cleaning installing my pc fresh no backups at all more then once. Every app, every login, every key activations done manually. Keep in mind I work with video editing, motion graphics and VFX. I use a lot of software, it takes me a while day to sort out everything. I simply don't want to be funding adobe, I used them for many years and add to fix countless bugs. 

Nvidea been solid with everything so I trust their software. I am really out of ideas. 

[wonderings]

What a strange problem, and even more difficult when it can't be repeated by anyone else, or few are having the same issue. When you did a clean install, just to rule out everything else, did you try installing Photo first, before any other apps and see how it runs then? Go as basic as you can, fresh install of Windows, GPU drivers, default settings and then install Affinity and try. There must be something causing this issue, and maybe all the computers that you tried on are setup in a similar way for your workflow, and one pesky thing in that is causing some strange issue with Affinity. 

[KarinC]

Your computer(s) are much better than mine. I don't use Photo as often as Designer but I only had trouble with lagging after a few hours. Once I turned off hardware acceleration that problem went away. I tried to duplicate what you showed in your video but in my case (on Windows) it worked fast and smooth. I wonder if your problem has something to do with the input device - mouse - tablet? Just a wild guess.

[Sulsa]

2 minutes ago, KarinC said:

Your computer(s) are much better than mine. I don't use Photo as often as Designer but I only had trouble with lagging after a few hours. Once I turned off hardware acceleration that problem went away. I tried to duplicate what you showed in your video but in my case (on Windows) it worked fast and smooth. I wonder if your problem has something to do with the input device - mouse - tablet? Just a wild guess.

I didn't try it by choice but I have upgraded my keyboard and mouse and it's the same. But could have been a good guess.

[Sulsa]

6 minutes ago, wonderings said:

What a strange problem, and even more difficult when it can't be repeated by anyone else, or few are having the same issue. When you did a clean install, just to rule out everything else, did you try installing Photo first, before any other apps and see how it runs then? Go as basic as you can, fresh install of Windows, GPU drivers, default settings and then install Affinity and try. There must be something causing this issue, and maybe all the computers that you tried on are setup in a similar way for your workflow, and one pesky thing in that is causing some strange issue with Affinity. 

Indeed I did, I though the same, maybe something interfered. But i got the same issues. The brush is unusable. The inpaint brush as well. 

Things like moving stuff around and making layers etc is fine, but when it comes to selections, using eraser or anything brush related i get what you saw. 

[NotMyFault]

Can you please share screenshots of:

• Performance settings in Photo
• the document format / template used

if you have a freshly installed PC: it might take several hours or days and reboots to get normal performance.

Some background processes may slow down the PC which only becomes noticeable in Photo. On Mac, this behavior is officially documented by Apple, but similar things happen on Windows.

The Ti 2080 GPU is a  legacy architecture no longer sold or supported since years. (I know I use an older 1080). Affinity tends to fully utilize all cores over long times. A year old gpu can degrade in performance due to cooling or voltage issues. Not noticeable in regular apps, but Photo will unearth all weaknesses.

[Sulsa]

4 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Can you please share screenshots of:

• Performance settings in Photo
• the document format / template used

if you have a freshly installed PC: it might take several hours or days and reboots to get normal performance.

Some background processes may slow down the PC which only becomes noticeable in Photo. On Mac, this behavior is officially documented by Apple, but similar things happen on Windows.

The Ti 2080 GPU is a  legacy architecture no longer sold or supported since years. (I know I use an older 1080). Affinity tends to fully utilize all cores over long times. A year old gpu can degrade in performance due to cooling or voltage issues. Not noticeable in regular apps, but Photo will unearth all weaknesses.

It happens in any resolution and size.

It's not a new install, that was the last time I tried to fix this exact issue. 

My GPU performance is doing really well, I am editing 6K raw with video (not with grade and effects on) this is on a 6K timeline using Davinci Resolve with Braw. Keep in mind that this isn't a recent issue. Back when the 2080 came out I already had this problem. This was many years ago. At least once or twice a year I check on with affinity to see if it improved. 

[NotMyFault]

I observed periods of Affinity being unusable in any version on any platform, and out of the blue all is fine again.

Reasons for crashes are multi-fold. Publisher is worst as still having bugs caused Immediate crash.

Photo works fine mostly, except

• On iPad, adjustment and filters stop working / updating extremely soon. Only full reboot helps temporarily 
• histogram and scope panel stop after some time (10 minutes or so) on all platforms
• HDR stacks and Panoramas may stuck
• any operation may stuck and even crash any Affinity app. Most crashes are random/not reproducible

it helps to reboot the PC at least once a day. Sleep mode can amplify issues. 
Apple M1 HW has specific bugs in Affinity apps, never solved in years.

On Mac Photo becomes unusable slow after long edit sessions, only reboot of Mac helps.

All performance issues can occur no matter which HW acceleration is active or not, or WARP is used. 
100cpu utilization can occur often, sometimes no issues, sometimes UI gets laggy.

Affinity Apps are simply unpredictable. It is often not possible to find one or more specific causes. But there are numerous specific issues leading to crash or bad performance. Use a good glass bool to distinguish which case is yours.

 

[NotMyFault]

View quality best can cause redraw lag. It says Affinity must draw in full resolution before updating the screen. 
Sorry mixed up retina rendering and view quality. Retina rendering should be automatic.

[NotMyFault]

3 minutes ago, Sulsa said:

It happens in any resolution and size.

I‘m asking because of document format. RGB/32 is extremely bad for performance 

[NotMyFault]

I would recommend to activate HW acceleration. If inactive severe slowdown is possible. If you run into serious bugs while it is active, Photo is effectively unusable and you must change HW.