Progress Bars

[Jackrhn]

Hi I'm new to this and all forums so sorry if i break some rules as I learn.

 

I'm loving my experience with A.D. the speed difference between A.D. and Photoshop when saving a document is worth 10x the price of the app. 

 

But when opening and exporting a file not having progress bars is really off putting. I find I'm usually bouncing over to Activity Monitor to see if something is happening. 

 

I get that the hope was that things would be so fast that it didn't need them but thats not been my experience.  I am probably pushing the upper limits. For me a standard file is 1.5 gig worth of embedded documents and I'm heavy on blending modes. 

 

So if you could add progress bars on larger longer operations that would be awesome. 

[retrograde]

+1  user feedback is the kind of clutter we like  ;)

[AshTeriyaki]

Totally agree

[Raskolnikov]

Just to know if the app got frozen or it's still alive :D

[Ben]

We plan to improve progress bars very soon.  As you say - very useful when exporting.

[DavidMac]

Yes please. Not just long loads and saves but all time intensive operations. Stacking for example. I thought that AP had hung when doing a large image complex stack.

[rainwilds]

+1 for progress bars when opening/importing/exporting.

[paristo]

Challenge with the progress bars is that you need to be accurate with them, and you need to know the ending time. 

 

Everyone should be familiar with the infamous Windows progress bars where it hangs at 5%, 6%, 7% and then suddenly jumps to 98%, 99% and sits there half of the time until gets to 100% and still rolls?

 

How to calculate the process then? Okay, you have 45 frames focus stacking, should we split the 100% to a 90 frames so first you show progress when a frame is processed for alignment so then when all 45 frames are aligned, you end up 50% part and then is focus stacking started. So after every frame is processed and added for the stack, you progress the bar?

Sounds easy right? But it aint'... 

 

How to calculate process when loading an image? By the amount of data read from disk, or by the processed the data in memory or what?

 

Then when it comes to simple "processing" informations like a circling balls in Windows now, or a circle going around like Google etc, it is as well not so good. As the animation is a own thread running, but doesn't tell that thread doing process hasn't hanged! So you can be in infinite loop in data processing, but the animation "I am working!" is as well in infinite loop. And ain't better from "Loading 1 Document"

 

One of the easiest really is the data input/output about reading and writing data to disk. But that too is very far from reality as there can be many complex background operations waiting to be processed. Like if you save a file to a memory stick, it can take anywhere from 180 to 720 seconds that the data is actually flushed from the RAM to the actual memory stick so it is there when you pull it out! Even when the application doing the writing says "100% completed"! That is why the correct drives ejection is required as you tell the OS that specific storage device is about to be removed and it needs to flush the data from RAM to it so it is there correctly. 

 

I worked with a few dozen Affinity Photo files last week in one day over a network drive. The Affinity told that the file was saved and then I went to make a phone call that lasted about 4 min and came back and shut the laptop and went away. Later on I opened the files on a another computer from the network drive, only to find out that the layers with TIFF files were corrupted by few pixels rows. Every single one that I had saved in a batch, had the similar effects, from few rows to tens of rows. 

The fault was mine, as I didn't follow my standard procedure, save first locally and only then copy the files over network drive and check the disconnection. 

I knew better, I just wanted to trust that things would go right as I didn't have time. And now, by trying to save the couple minutes, I wasted days! (Okay, I didn't as I had backups from the process elsewhere). 

 

Even when a simple "Save Dialog" gets closed as "Save is Completed", it doesn't mean it is! So how you make a progress bar for that?

 

 

 

 

 

[Tr48]

Well, I wonder if I am doing something wrong but it is 2022 and I still don't have a progress bar when stacking 40 images.  The help page says stacking is designed for tens of images so I am wishing guidelines.  I wanted to test a stack of 50 images and thought the program had simply decided not to do it!  I did a test of three and that worked ok.  I tried again with the 50... and then in the middle of doing something else the two big stacks made an appearance one after the other... that's about five minutes later I guess, not that I was counting the time.  Please either tell me if I have not switched it on or give us a progress bar...

Thanks

[GRAFKOM]

I have the impression that the IT people who started to create the Affinity suite no longer work at Serif.
8 years ago, when the Affinity package was created, there were many very interesting ideas for the development of this software, there were fresh ideas and work started, but a lot of functions stopped at the very beginning of the program development and so far have not been completed, including the progress bar , 8 years have passed and what? and still no progress bar. I'm sure there aren't any more people in Serif who can do it.
It's a pity, I have been using this program professionally for 7 years and I would even like to pay extra for this function and many more.
Give Serif an account number, I will transfer a donation to develop the functions or hire new fresh IT specialists who will be able to complete unfinished functions.