Performance?

[roddy]

Hi roddy,

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Thanks!

[MattP]

Hi roddy,

 

Thanks for that. Yes, it's always advisable to be on the most recent beta version so I'd definitely update if I were you :)  Anything you email to us will always be kept in confidence and will be deleted as soon as we have fixed the issue it is associated with, so don't worry from that point of view :)

 

With regards to your image sizes - they're certainly big files - one is 28MP and the other is over 110MP so I wouldn't expect the selection brush to be without delays, but it shouldn't be of quite the same order that you're seeing. Can I ask if other operations like painting on these images without a selection is fast? I'll pass these comments along to the team and see if they have suggestions

 

Thanks again,

Matt

[roddy]

Hi roddy,

 

Thanks for that. Yes, it's always advisable to be on the most recent beta version so I'd definitely update if I were you :)  Anything you email to us will always be kept in confidence and will be deleted as soon as we have fixed the issue it is associated with, so don't worry from that point of view :)

 

With regards to your image sizes - they're certainly big files - one is 28MP and the other is over 110MP so I wouldn't expect the selection brush to be without delays, but it shouldn't be of quite the same order that you're seeing. Can I ask if other operations like painting on these images without a selection is fast? I'll pass these comments along to the team and see if they have suggestions

 

Thanks again,

Matt

Matt,

I updated just now. Basic color painting anywhere on the image is almost instant. But all the other brush types: Selection, Erase, etc. still take a considerable amount of time to respond. As does quitting the program,: 5 to 8 seconds to quit.

Please let me know if you received my Affinity Photo file.

[greyscale]

I'm still getting some really quite severe performance issues. Everything from selection masks to zooming issues to even other apps slowing down noticeably at times. As most around here are raving about how fast AP is, I'm wondering if there's something wrong at my end. Any ideas?

[greyscale]

So at this point AP is just excrutiatingly slow and buggy on my machine, and I can't justify paying for it. I love what you guys are doing, and I'll keep updating the app in hopes that at some point it starts becoming the uber-fast tool that others are claiming it to be. But for now, I have work to do, and AP is just slowing me down far too much.

[MEB]

Hi greyscale,

I'm sorry to know you are having performance issues with AP. It's in Beta for a reason. If you could provide us with specific situations/files where the problems arise i'm sure we can get to the bottom of those issues. Hopefully things should become better as we move forward with the development.

[greyscale]

Thanks for your kindness, MEB. As I posted above, marching ants at larger zoom levels bring AP to a crawl, and sometimes even seem to slow down other apps. Applying the lens blur filter causes AP to crash. The fact that nobody else seems to be bothered by the ants issue makes me wonder if there's something that could be specific to my machine or configuration that's causing the problem.

 

I'll add more slowdown details as they arise.

[MattP]

Hi greyscale,

 

Please don't think that nobody is bothered by the issue - it's definitely not actually the case, it's just that it's really hard to fix something that you can't see going wrong so it's especially hard to guess what the problem might be when you can't see for yourself what things affect it... In this post yesterday I described that I was able to provoke performance issues on my MacBook Pro Retina and looked into it and have fixed the problem - I am hoping that your issue and this are the same problem and you should actually find (hopefully) that your issue will be resolved in the next beta. Please do let me know if it isn't and I will continue to try to find the cause.

 

The lens blur crash is not something I've heard of before, but we can obviously try to reproduce it. If you happen to be able to supply us with a sample .afphoto photo file that crashes when you apply a lens blur then that would be amazingly useful? :)  If you are able to create one then please just send it to support@seriflabs.com - we will obviously only use the file for the purposes of fixing this bug then delete it afterwards.

 

Thanks again,

Matt

[greyscale]

Gents, thanks for your patience in responding to my rather frustrated post yesterday. I'll send the file that is giving me the lens blur issue.

[billtils]

Almost two weeks, and no one has an answer or suggestion?

Also, I just finished editing a photo, looks really nice on the screen, but when I click on "Print", the print preview, as well, as the printed photo, looks like the original photo before any of my editing. All the colors look washed out as in the original photo. Yet, if i export the image as a TIFF or JPG, and open it in Mac OS X "Preview" app, it looks as it does in Affinity Photo when I edited it. I don't understand why this is happening.

Roddy, what do you mean by 'print preview'?   Do you mean the image that appears in the print dialog window, or what you see in the 'soft proof' window?   If the latter, make sure that you select your printer (BTW, what printer and colour management are you using?), and the display will match what will be printed.  Whether or not this will be close to what your on-screen edited image looks like depends on your printer and colour management settings.  (There is some good info on this site if you are not too sure:  http://profilesbyrick.com).  

 

(AP is a great photo editor but rendered useless for those of us who want to print the splendid results of our editing efforts, because of its skeletal print UI.  I've complained more than once but the response is "it's not in the current plans", well, AP will not be in my future plans unless this shortcoming is fixed).

[roddy]

Roddy, what do you mean by 'print preview'?   Do you mean the image that appears in the print dialog window, or what you see in the 'soft proof' window?   If the latter, make sure that you select your printer (BTW, what printer and colour management are you using?), and the display will match what will be printed.  Whether or not this will be close to what your on-screen edited image looks like depends on your printer and colour management settings.  (There is some good info on this site if you are not too sure:  http://profilesbyrick.com).  

 

(AP is a great photo editor but rendered useless for those of us who want to print the splendid results of our editing efforts, because of its skeletal print UI.  I've complained more than once but the response is "it's not in the current plans", well, AP will not be in my future plans unless this shortcoming is fixed).

billtils,

I was referring to the image that appears in the print dialog window, not the soft-proof that appears on the bottom right hand corner of Affinity Photo. The actual printed result looks the same as the one in the print dialog window, and not anywhere close to the edited image in Affinity Photo. I also stated, that when I open the exported image from Affinity Photo in Mac OS X "Preview" app, the image looks as it should, the print dialog image looks as it should, and the printed result looks great, as it should. So the issue is within Affinity Photo.

 

I am still waiting for confirmation if they received my Affinity Photo file from two weeks ago.

As a side note, I get the feeling that most everyone is expecting Affinity Photo to have everything, and be able to do everything that Adobe Photoshop does, incorporate features/functions that Photoshop users wish it had. In no way am I saying this as a negative comment. If all this will be achieved along with a better user interface, have faster more efficient processing, then great. All in all, once all the bugs have been taken care of, and what the Affinity team wants to incorporate into Affinity Photo is included and working as it should, I know it will benefit and gladden users.

[billtils]

Sorry roddy, what you describe doesn't happen here (or not yet  :lol: ) so can't really help. 

 

Re your side note, the current version of AP does everything I want (apart from my on-going gripe about the print UI; and of course theses comments reflect my personal spin on what I want/need).

 

Good luck with your print preview issue!

[roddy]

Well, a bit frustrated that I have another strange issue that I forgot to mention before. When working with Layers, some of them turn completely black at random, although I can still see the small image in the bottom right hand corner of the screen in the Navigator window. I have to quit and re-open the document to be able to see it again.

I noticed this working with a different photo than the one mentioned in my original post. This photo is a Tiff image [1169 × 1759 at 300 dpi]. I selected a very small portion that I wanted to paste into another photo in another open tab within Affinity Photo due to the fact that I am trying to create a composition. When I went to the tab where I had made the selection, that's when the entire image went black! I closed the other tabs, but it did not fix the issue. I was able to copy the selected image and paste it into the other tab with the other photo, but as I stated before, going back to the tab with the selected image caused the entire photo display to turn black (though visible in the small Navigator window).

It's quite difficult to work like this having to keep quitting and restarting the program whenever I make a selection in a Layer.

[MattP]

I am still waiting for confirmation if they received my Affinity Photo file from two weeks ago.

 

Hi roddy,

 

Just wanted to offer my apologies that I haven't responded on this so far. Yes, we have definitely received your file and I'm looking into what's going wrong. I agree that there is definitely an issue here. Interestingly, I can copy the contents of your document into a new blank document and it will print correctly, so it's taking a while to find out what's special about the document you sent me!

 

Thanks again,

Matt

[MattP]

Hi Roddy,

 

Can I ask you to try something for me? Would you be prepared to try to print that file again from Affinity Photo, but this time click 'Show Details' on the Print dialog, then go to the Paper Handling section (or whatever options your printer driver allows) and find the checkbox that says "Scale to fit paper size" and then choose A4 paper (or whatever actual paper size you are printing to).

 

Does that produce the right colours for you? I have a printer on my desk that prints correctly this way. The other printer I have tried printed out correctly right from the start!?! I think it has something to do with your printer's built-in response to receiving data which is larger than its print size. When it decides to scale this data to fit its printable area it is applying some sort of colour profile - that's my best guess...

 

At this stage I'm simply trying to establish that this is definitely the problem - and if you're able to validate that your printout is correct with these settings then I can try to make the right changes to make this always succeed.

 

Thanks again,

Matt

[greyscale]

I'm having some performance issues with teh Refine Selection window. On some images, it takes so long to load the overlay that I give up. Perhaps on larger images only. I'll keep investigating.

[MattP]

Hi greyscale,

 

I'm honestly hoping that the next beta of Photo will fix a lot of these issues for you - the selection issues that were fixed yesterday will all be contributing to the things you are seeing going slowly. Even after this, I'd still expect Refine Selection to be one of the slower things in the program because of the work it is doing, but it shouldn't be such a poor experience. Let us know how things are when you get the new update next week :)

 

Thanks,

Matt

[greyscale]

That sounds great, Matt. I'll be fastening my seat belt for the next beta :D and will keep investigating. Thanks.

[roddy]

Hi Roddy,

 

Can I ask you to try something for me? Would you be prepared to try to print that file again from Affinity Photo, but this time click 'Show Details' on the Print dialog, then go to the Paper Handling section (or whatever options your printer driver allows) and find the checkbox that says "Scale to fit paper size" and then choose A4 paper (or whatever actual paper size you are printing to).

 

Does that produce the right colours for you? I have a printer on my desk that prints correctly this way. The other printer I have tried printed out correctly right from the start!?! I think it has something to do with your printer's built-in response to receiving data which is larger than its print size. When it decides to scale this data to fit its printable area it is applying some sort of colour profile - that's my best guess...

 

At this stage I'm simply trying to establish that this is definitely the problem - and if you're able to validate that your printout is correct with these settings then I can try to make the right changes to make this always succeed.

 

Thanks again,

Matt

Matt,

 

I did as you instructed, but it did not produce anything near what is seen on screen. I do not believe the issue is with my printer since it prints out the correct colors when I open the exported image from Affinity Photo into the Mac OSX Preview app and print from there. It continues to print out the same way it looks in print preview window within Affinity Photo, and not as it looks on the screen, or in the Navigator window. As stated before, the exported image does print out correctly in Preview app.

 

If possible, please also look into the strange behavior I mentioned in my last post above about layers turning completely black at random.

[MattP]

Thanks for trying that for me, Roddy :)

 

I'll carry on scratching my head with that for a while then - in my testing, the Print output did not match what was seen in the Print dialog preview, but the 'Save as PDF' version from that dialog when opened in Preview would look as the preview showed in the Print dialog. Printing from Affinity would generate the wrong colours, but printing that PDF from Preview would generate the right colours. When I set the print option in Affinity to scale to fit to the actual print output size it suddenly generated the right colours even though it was going through exactly the same code with the same numbers in Affinity.

 

This doesn't sound like the same thing you are experiencing though from what you've said, so I'll fix that bug and also keep trying to find something else, sorry...

 

When you say that the layers go black, do you mean that certain layers in your document change to black while others are fine, or do you mean that the whole view turns black? If the latter, do you know what graphics chip is in your machine? (it wouldn't happen to be a ATI X1600/X1900 chip would it?) You can find out by clicking the little Apple icon in the top menu and choosing 'About this Mac...'

 

Thanks again,

Matt

[roddy]

Thanks for trying that for me, Roddy :)

 

I'll carry on scratching my head with that for a while then - in my testing, the Print output did not match what was seen in the Print dialog preview, but the 'Save as PDF' version from that dialog when opened in Preview would look as the preview showed in the Print dialog. Printing from Affinity would generate the wrong colours, but printing that PDF from Preview would generate the right colours. When I set the print option in Affinity to scale to fit to the actual print output size it suddenly generated the right colours even though it was going through exactly the same code with the same numbers in Affinity.

 

This doesn't sound like the same thing you are experiencing though from what you've said, so I'll fix that bug and also keep trying to find something else, sorry...

 

When you say that the layers go black, do you mean that certain layers in your document change to black while others are fine, or do you mean that the whole view turns black? If the latter, do you know what graphics chip is in your machine? (it wouldn't happen to be a ATI X1600/X1900 chip would it?) You can find out by clicking the little Apple icon in the top menu and choosing 'About this Mac...'

 

Thanks again,

Matt

Matt,

 

This is the graphics spec:  AMD Radeon HD 6970M 1024 MB.

Here is what I mean with the layer turning black. By the way, it seems the culprit continues to be the Selection Brush.

 

1) One photo is open in one tab, and a different photo opened in another tab.

2) Using the Selection Brush, a selection is made within the photo in one of the tabs.

3) Switching to the other tab where no selection is made and no additional editing performed, and switching back to the tab where the selection was made, makes the entire photo black in the tab where the selection was made. It looks as if the entire photo was filled in black.

4) The photo is still visible in the small Navigator window in the bottom right hand corner of the window.

 

I experimented selecting and even immediately de-selecting before switching to another tab, and going back to the original tab where the selection was made, and it made no difference; it was still filled black.

A restart of Affinity Photo must be made for the photo to be visible again. But once a selection is made, the issue happens again. Therefore, it is impossible for me to work on a composition with this issue.

[roddy]

Just installed today's update (1.1.2.24216), and unfortunately the layers turning black after using the Selection Brush is still happening, as well as the print dialog preview within Affinity Photo. No change.

[Justin]

Hi Roddy

 

Sorry to see you are still having problems. Regarding the layers turning black issue, does it get any better if you lower the RAM Usage Limit in the Preferences dialog to maybe half your  system RAM?

 

Thanks

Justin

[roddy]

Hi Roddy

 

Sorry to see you are still having problems. Regarding the layers turning black issue, does it get any better if you lower the RAM Usage Limit in the Preferences dialog to maybe half your  system RAM?

 

Thanks

Justin

Justin,

 

Just tried reducing it to 4GB from 8GB, and no change. Selecting with the Selection Brush>Go to new Tab>Return to Tab with selection (marching ants)=the layer turning completely black.

I really need to solve this soon. I have several photos that need to be finished and I can't work if I can't make these selections and compositions if it continues to turn black.

 

Side Note: Does Affinity Photo have a "deskew" feature?

[Justin]

Roddy,

 

If you make a selection with one of the marquee tools rather than using the selection brush do you get the same problem?

If you turn off "Snap to edges" in the context toolbar before using the selection brush does that make a difference?

Does the frequency with which you get black layers depend on how many documents are open or how long the application has been running? 

 

Regarding a "deskew" feature, you can shear things using the Move tool - the cursor will change to two opposing arrows when the cursor is just outside the sides of the selection box. Alternatively the perspective tool or mesh warp tool might suit your needs.

 

Cheers

Justin