Severe performance issues on windows 10

[pragmatic_robot]

I have the latest version (2.6.2) and have been facing major lag issues while using the following functions:

- Liquify live filter

- clone stamp with low flow, set to 'current layer and below'

haven't really done much heavy editing before now, this was going to be my first full photo retouch following a tutorial

I'm on Win10, with a 3070 and 64GB of RAM

 

Now the embarassing part: I installed the trial version of the competitor software - that which must not be named - in a virtual machine, so it's not even using the video card, and it was actually clone stamping and liquifying like nobody's business, no lag whatsoever! used clone stamp on an empty layer and played around with opacity/flow. Also used liquify as a smart filter to approximate as close to the AP use case as possible

I don't know what's causing the issues with AP, but if another software running in a VM doesn't have lag, and AP having full access to system resources does, it's a problem with AP!

[carl123]

Can you go to...

Edit > Settings > Performance

and upload a screenshot of that dialog

[pragmatic_robot]

Sure thing, here's the screenshot. Standard fare, didn't change anything

[carl123]

Try it with Hardware Acceleration switched off

[NotMyFault]

I would advise to keep HW on, but set view quality to automatic. 
This will allow Affinity to render 4 times faster (if 1/2 resolution) while drawing, and render full resolution when finished drawing.

life is a compromise.

check your document resolution. Above 24 mpix, Affinity slows down noticeable for all those compute-heavy filters.

Affinity and you HW can process a fixed amount of operations per seconds. Any blur filter incl. liquify requires thousands of operations per pixel.

Affinity uses mipmap rendering to „cheat“ wherever possible, but all these performance tricks have their limits.

[carl123]

18 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

but set view quality to automatic. 

There is no Automatic setting for View Quality on Windows

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, carl123 said:

There is no Automatic setting for View Quality on Windows

I always  mix this up. It is rendering quality, and already set to automatic based on screenshot.

[pragmatic_robot]

I don't mind lower resolution render while working in exchange for speed, but that's not happening

I am using large RAW images (50MP), but other apps have no lag issue. Only AP

[NotMyFault]

I can only confirm that 24 MP seems a magic limit, larger sizes lead to noticeable performance degradation for bitmap layers. 
when this happens you must adjust your workflow, there will be no solution from Affinity.

• After finishing an edit phase using CPU/GPU heavy filters, merge visible and deactivate all lower layers. Keep them for later re-edits.
• in severe case, copy that layer and paste from clipboard. Close the other document and keep, it as backup. Restart Photo to circumvent memory management related issues.
• be careful with all blur, sharpen, noise live filters. If you need a radius larger than about 50, you will run into performance issues sooner or later. In many cases this blurs are just convenience. E.g. using a shape with solid color and blur can be replaced by larger shape with gradient over alpha.
• blend mode divide is heavy to cpu/gpu.
• never use RGB/32 except required for HDR.
• RGB/16 is 1/2 speed of RGB/8 (but required for any grading)
• keep you files well organized and clean. 
• use save as occasionally to get rid of clutter and reduce file size. This eliminates history.

Affinity can handle extreme large vector files, but this won’t help for pixel content.

 

[pragmatic_robot]

Thank you for the tips! I took note of them.

The fact you said there will be no solution from Affinity really worries me though. Your tips are great, but It's a janky way to do things and would seriously interfere with any professional workflow. Affinity won't be seen as a viable replacement for you-know-what until they have reliable performance. Especially for being a photography-focused software, the fact that it can't handle resolutions beyond entry-level camera resolutions is not good.

For now I think I'll keep my other subscription (Grrr!) and use Affinity for lighter work 🤷‍♂️

Thanks again!