Canvas updates as a grid of tiles

[Jamon]

In Affinity Photo, when an adjustment is made, the canvas is rendered in steps, where large tiles in a grid are updated. The first tiles to change are often near the middle, where they then randomly update in an outward motion.

 

Affinity Photo tiles updating.mov

Is it possible to provide an option to only update the screen after the entire grid has finished rendering?

Perhaps the individual tiles do not need to be displayed as soon as they finish updating, but can be calculated independently, and then all of them switched simultaneously after the last has completed?

I find the jagged steps to be uncomfortable. I would prefer to see no changes until it can update the entire screen at once. That would remove the harsh motion of square boxes updating all over the screen.

When you're focused intently on an area, and attempting to make subtle adjustments, seeing many sharp corners flashing all over becomes painful after a while. It feels too distracting for serious work.

It also seems as though performance is lacking, where one might expect adjustments could be made fast enough where these updates aren't visible to the eye.

Creating a new UHD document, filling a single layer with a solid color, and adjusting HSL, the Xeon CPU at 100% cannot keep up, and the Quadro M4000 shows a maximum of 50% utilization. It is slower with GPU acceleration disabled, or in the LAB color format. This is in Windows with both 100% or 200% scaling on a 10-bit UHD display.

For comparison, on the same machine in other software, the hue of UHD video can be smoothly adjusted while it plays, and it appears like a soft fade without any boxes no matter how fast I move the slider.

 

( If the video doesn't play, rename it as "mp4"; the forum software denied that extension. )

[Jamon]

The new Affinity Photo for iOS appears to update faster than my Windows 10 workstation. But if you pay close attention to the video, it also updates with the same large blocks.

 

 

I guess this is just how the Affinity engine works, and as much as I would've liked the software otherwise, this is a major fundamental problem for me, as I am uncomfortable without fluid updates. The sharp edges of tiles updating feels harsh and unhealthy to the senses, where it's a severe disturbance to workflow when there's any delay in screen redraws and the sharp edges become noticeable.

 

I'd liken it to relaxing on the beach, feeling thirsty and drinking from the Affinity water bottle, only to feel sharp shards of glass in the water. Other software updates smoothly, without any sharp edges where some tiles update before others. This is a major human interface design flaw.

 

Not everyone will notice or care. Some people have higher sensitivity. Like how I do not like to work on an LCD screen with slow PWM backlight, as I see strobing effects with sharp lines in the image too. I am using a $2,700 display for faster flicker-free updates, and I'd pay a lot more money for an Affinity suite that offered a more biocompatible style of screen redraws.