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I have a 2017 iMac (5K Retina) with the 3.5Ghz Intel Core i5 processor, 8 Gb of Ram & Radeon Pro 575 4Gb graphics.  My workflow is to download my Fuji X-Pro2 raw files in Lightroom CC Classic, convert to Dng & then after minor edits in LR, use the Edit In function to transfer the files into Affinity (V. 1.6.7) as a plug-in to LR in order to use the Tone Mapping Persona to complete my work on the file.  They start out processing with no problems & relatively fast to completion.  But after working on a series of files, things begin to slow down considerably & often results in freezing my iMac so that I have to shut it down & restart to recover the tone mapped file & send it back to LR.  Is this normal behavior due to my stock amount of only 8Gb of Ram, & would this situation improve if I increased it to at least 16-24Gb of Ram?  Or is there some other reason that this is happening only when I work on a series of images in succession without closing Affinity & restarting this application?  Does using Affinity as a plug-in to LR make any difference in how the Tone Mapping Persona will function?

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You might want to run Activity Monitor (AM) to monitor Memory usage. In older versions of Activity Monitor you could get AM's Dock Icon to display Memory Usage so that you could minimise AM and continue with your work and be able to keep an eye on the memory usage. In High Sierra that option seems to have gone, you can only display CPU usage/ history, Disk Activity or Network Usage.  

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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Thanks for this helpful response to run Activity Monitor to see what is going on with my memory usage.  I haven't tried it yet as since I am using High Sierra (10.13.3) I assume that this option may not actually be available for me to do.  Is that true?

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Dr. Cleaner was very easy to download & use.  After running it for the first time it reduced the amount of memory being used when only the desktop was open with no applications running from 55% down to 34%.  So hopefully this will be able to be used to monitor memory being used when both Lightroom & Affinity are open & being used to edit images.  But I also suspect that it will make it clearer that I need more than 8GB of ram to do the things I am wanting to do in post processing.

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@jedorme You can still monitor the memory usage by clicking on the Memory tab, it just means you can't have it conveniently showing as an icon in the dock, why they removed that feature I have no idea?  

 

Don't forget that the system has to take a certain amount of memory, then any third-party apps you may have running in the background, once they've grabbed their share you also have cached files, so, 8GB can soon be gobbled up in a modern system. I always say, add as much memory as you can afford.

Memory may not make things quicker per'se, I think a more appropriate word would be smoother.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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11 hours ago, firstdefence said:

@jedorme You can still monitor the memory usage by clicking on the Memory tab, it just means you can't have it conveniently showing as an icon in the dock ...

The key thing to watch in Activity Monitor when it is set to monitor memory use is the "Memory Pressure" graph at the bottom of the window. As long as it stays green you should be OK with whatever amount of RAM you have installed. Because of how memory management works in the Mac OS, just having a lot of memory in use is not a sign of a problem -- in fact, the OS will try to keep things in inactive memory for as long as it seems likely that it might be reused or until that memory is needed for something else. This is done to improve performance because it takes much longer to pull data from disk storage than to mark data in inactive memory as active again.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I wonder why they pulled "View Memory Usage" dock icon? seems an odd thing to do. Anyway, I've found a small utility app called Menu Meters that lives in Preferences i.e. you download  menumeters.prefpane, it can display the memory pressure info in a small Usage bar on the menubar at the top of your screen, its very discreet too. it works with HighSierra 10.13.4.

 

5ac0b33b1f015_ScreenShot2018-04-01at11_21_43.png.342bc680f88c30790197bbb6e38fae2b.png

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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2 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

I wonder why they pulled "View Memory Usage" dock icon?

Just a guess but maybe it was because they decided there was not enough space in the Dock icon to show a useful amount of info? I just checked the help topics for Activity Monitor in High Sierra & noticed that the Touch Bar apparently can be set to display memory pressure when Activity Monitor is running. Regardless, the Help Topic "Determine If Your Mac Could Use More RAM" explains how to use the graph in the app for that purpose.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Just now, owenr said:

Since you earlier said that the key thing to watch for is that the memory pressure stays green, surely just displaying that colour on the task bar icon would be useful, don't you think?

I am not sure how useful that would be in practice because it is the shape of the graph over time that provides an overview of memory use efficiency. A color coded icon in the menu bar or Dock could only show the last sample so it would be easy to miss a brief spike into the red.

 

But like I said, it is only a guess. Apple may have removed the option for the Dock for some other reason.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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2 hours ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure how useful that would be in practice because it is the shape of the graph over time that provides an overview of memory use efficiency. A color coded icon in the menu bar or Dock could only show the last sample so it would be easy to miss a brief spike into the red.

 

But like I said, it is only a guess. Apple may have removed the option for the Dock for some other reason.

I asked on Apple support but I've not got an answer, which speaks volumes really, probably forgot to add it to the new display, Menumeter does show a Usage History Graph which equates to a green bar an inch long at its max but not high enough to make any credible judgement. In the bin it goes. 

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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I have a similar issue, not necessarily related to tone mapping. If I open one or sometimes two photographs, the fan on my 2017 imac starts running loudly and affinity photo freezes. I have a 3tb drive and 32gb of ram. I have memory management software which reports more than 30% of ram available. It is an intermittent problem, that is it does it only with very large sized high resolution images and is a real pain when it occurs as it is impossible to save anything done to the open image.

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