Anyway to speed up Affinity Photo w 24GB RAM

[blackxacto]

Moving from top to bottom of documents is a slow process that reminds me of the old Photoshop 2 days, where the screen would crawl. I have 24GB of RAM in High Sierra on a 17,1 iMac which ought to zoom when moving around a document. But Affinity Photo crawls at times. Is it unable to use the RAM I have installed? What's the problem with the disgusting crawl?

[IanSG]

AP's pretty frugal with memory - 24GB should be more than enough (assuming that nothing else is competing for  resources).  I'm a Windows user, but the performance issues I've had were all caused by having lots of adjustment layers that had to be reapplied whenever an image was moved or zoomed.  If your workflow allows it you could try merging adjustments as you make them or you could try merging the visible layers and working with that.  As with any performance problem, it's a good idea to use your performance monitoring tools and see what they're telling you.

[Gabe]

Hi @blackxacto,

 

Welcome to the forums. 

 

Quote

OS X has a limit on the number of sandbox resources for security purposes which is shared by all Sandboxed applications

 

If you're using other sandbox apps at the same time with Affinity, you will share the same resources. Try a reboot, run only AP and see if that makes any difference. 

 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[blackxacto]

How does one know what app is running in "Sandbox" and what is not?

There is a second delay to any action I take, painting w a brush, erasing, painting a selection. Why do I have to paint then wait, then paint then wait. Is Affinity not capable of using my 24GB RAM? This happens with one layer and with many layers. So don't tell me my document is complex. What is the best setting in Preferences for using memory?

 

I tried painting on a MASK with the bush tool. I tried painting in black then painting white. BOTH painted (ADDED) on to the mask. 20 minutes into this frustrating session, the brush tool switched to paint black, then delete with white, which is what I thought painting on a mask is supposed to do. Why the long delay in what a tool is supposed to do?

 

 

[IanSG]

16 hours ago, blackxacto said:

How does one know what app is running in "Sandbox" and what is not?

Use the Activity Monitor - the View menu allows you to show whether or not a process is running in the sandbox.

[blackxacto]

So I am to go to Activity Monitor and shut down all processes? Is that what you are saying? How does a computer run without processes? Tell me how you know which processes to shut down in Activity Monitor/Sandbox? Did you mean to say to Hold Apple+Option+Escape to get the Force Quit window? Ive done that w Finder and AP as only apps running, and I still got the AP move wait, move wait, move wait.

[firstdefence]

Regardless of the image, it shouldn't do that. I'm on a 2011 with 12GB and Affinity runs fine, no stop start when scrolling. 

 

They have suggested Activity Monitor to see if you can see why the system is behaving like it is and it's not necessarily Affinity that is the problem. In activity Monitor this panel at the bottom of the screen gives some basic info about memory, When I took the screenshot, I had both Affinity Photo and designer open, I had iTunes playing some mellow tunes, I had Yate (ID3 Tagger) running plus surfing the Internet.

 

So, something ain't right on your system if you have the spec you have and Affinity is displaying that behaviour. 

 

In Affinity's Preferences, what settings do you have? (take a screenshot of that) by opening Preferences > Performance Pressing Cmd + Shift + 4 then pressing the Space Bar to set capture to grab the window you mouse over and upload it here.

 

In the Performance tab check to see if you are using Metal and not OpenGL

[blackxacto]

Please tell me if I not set up AP Performance correctly? See attached image

 

Here are my stats:

17,1 iMac

Processor Name:    Intel Core i5

  Processor Speed:    3.3 GHz

  Number of Processors:    1

  Total Number of Cores:    4

  L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB

  L3 Cache:    6 MB

  Memory:    24 GB

 

Chipset Model:    AMD Radeon R9 M395

  Type:    GPU

  Bus:    PCIe

  PCIe Lane Width:    x16

  VRAM (Dynamic, Max):    2048 MB

[smadell]

blackxacto...

Try setting the "Display" pop-up menu to either Metal (if you're using 10.12 or higher) or OpenGL. You might see an immediate improvement. This (below) is from the AP Help file:

[smadell]

To add to my post above, my Performance Preference is set to "OpenGL" (as I am using 10.11). I changed this to "Software" and restarted the program. I created a new document and did NOTHING other than use a simple brush to draw a single stroke. There was a noticeable, and awful, lag. Using OpenGL in the Performance Preference dialog made this lag disappear.

[blackxacto]

I think I had RAM usage way off. If I have 24GB total, then I changed the setting to 20GB max allocation, leaving 4GB for system and other apps. I think that was causing a few issues. Tell me if that is the wrong assumption.

Then added Metal setting for Display.

I upped the setting to Bilinear.

No Dithering.

Rendering: Hi quality

I will also watch the size of my documents/resolution, that may have been an issue as well.

Will report back.

Thanks for your responses, guy's.

[smadell]

If you want the fastest performance while you are working on a document, (i) allow dithering; (ii) set View Quality to Nearest Neighbor (I am assuming it says "fastest" for good reason); and (iii) let the rendering go to Automatic. All of this should improve the speed you experience while you are working, and I sincerely doubt that it has any actual impact on the quality of the document itself.

Obviously, any increased viewing quality (whether it's rendering, not dithering gradients, etc.) takes its toll in processor time. Eventually, and maybe quickly, you will sense this as a lag while you are working. Note that I'm not talking about the actual resolution of the document - only the quality of the screen drawing.

[R C-R]

@blackxacto your screenshot shows "Display" set to Software. If you changed that to Metal (or to Open GL) note that you have to quit & restart the app for that to take effect.

 

The RAM usage limit should have no noticeable effect unless it is set to a very low number (like far below 16 GB). My old iMac (specs in my sig below) has only 8 GB of RAM installed & my Affinity Photo RAM usage limit is set to use all of it. Regardless, the OS would never allow any app to use RAM reserved for system use & according to Activity Monitor I have never seen Affinity Photo use more than about 5 GB, even with multiple large files open in the app.

 

As per @firstdefence's comments above, all that really matters in this respect is that the Activity Monitor 'memory pressure' graph never climbs out of the green, regardless of how many apps & documents you have open.

[blackxacto]

The View Quality was bothering me as I worked. I’ve reset to higher quality redrawing. To see my work slowly render was frustrating. Adding Metal will help too. I think the Metal setting will eliminate the white boxes I was receiving as the screen would not redraw completely.

 

Thanks for everyone’s responses.

[firstdefence]

No wonder it was slow, on Display: Software it wouldn't be very good.

 

Glad you got it sorted 

 

just for your info, what Metal does: https://developer.apple.com/metal/