MichaelG Posted August 31, 2018 Share Posted August 31, 2018 Dear Affinity Team, First of all, thank you for this beta release. I have a few initial observations that I will post today. I have noticed that the launch times for all Affinity apps is very long when a large number of fonts installed. System: Fujitsu Celsius workstation. Core I7, 6 cores, 16Gb, SSD, Windows 10. (Not a slow machine by any means). Fonts installed: 5857. (As these products are targeted at professional designers, I don't think this is an unrealistic number). Measured launch times as follows... Affinity Publisher: 4m 38s PagePlus X9: 14s Adobe Photoshop CS6: 13s Adobe Illustrator CS6: 26s Adobe InDesign CS6: 25s Affinity Photo 1.6.4: 8m 55s Affinity Designer 1.6.4: 9m 5s Each app was launched separately and then closed before launching the next. It can be seen that the Affinity apps take significantly longer to launch than the competition. I would be grateful if you could pass this information to the Affinity Photo and Designer teams. Thank you, Mike. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petar Petrenko Posted August 31, 2018 Share Posted August 31, 2018 Launch times for Designer and Photo on my machine (see the footer) are about 40-50 seconds. All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows. 15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 ● Windows 10 x64 Pro ● Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) ● 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) ● NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 ● 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD ● UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display 32” LG 32UN650-W display ● 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 ● Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated ● 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort 13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) ● Ventura 13.6 ● Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) ● 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 ● Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB ● 500 GB SSD ● Retina Display (3360 x 2100) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted August 31, 2018 Share Posted August 31, 2018 For me, Publisher enumerates the fonts much faster than Photo or Designer do. I have hopes that the 1.7 versions of Photo and Designer will have the speed improvement that Publisher shows narrationsd 1 -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petar Petrenko Posted August 31, 2018 Share Posted August 31, 2018 Yes, Publisher launches faster than Photo and Designer. All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows. 15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 ● Windows 10 x64 Pro ● Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) ● 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) ● NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 ● 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD ● UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display 32” LG 32UN650-W display ● 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 ● Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated ● 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort 13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) ● Ventura 13.6 ● Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) ● 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 ● Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB ● 500 GB SSD ● Retina Display (3360 x 2100) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelG Posted September 1, 2018 Author Share Posted September 1, 2018 Hi, Since my original post I have upgraded both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer to V1.6.5.123. The launch times for those apps now are: Affinity Photo 1.6.5: 8m 50sAffinity Designer 1.6.5: 8m 50s So not much change from the earlier versions. So the observations are: Affinity Publisher launches in approximately half the time that Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer do. Publisher is significantly slower to launch than either PagePlus X9 or any of the Adobe CS6 products on the same computer. For what its worth, Adobe seems to build its own local font caches for each product. Each product folder has one or ore AbobeFNTnn.lst files, which are the local font caches. This may be why the Adobe apps can enumerate fonts very quickly. However, PagePlus X9 is also very quick to launch, and comparable to Adobe. Thanks, Mike. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petar Petrenko Posted September 1, 2018 Share Posted September 1, 2018 I think the Adobe has added some code for font cache on OS start, so it needs very little time to start any app of its own. All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows. 15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 ● Windows 10 x64 Pro ● Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) ● 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) ● NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 ● 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD ● UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display 32” LG 32UN650-W display ● 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 ● Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated ● 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort 13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) ● Ventura 13.6 ● Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) ● 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 ● Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB ● 500 GB SSD ● Retina Display (3360 x 2100) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted September 1, 2018 Share Posted September 1, 2018 22 hours ago, MichaelG said: Fonts installed: 5857. (As these products are targeted at professional designers, I don't think this is an unrealistic number). The general consensus so far has been that that Affinity's behavior with large numbers of fonts needs to be improved (which it has been with the 1.7 beta of Publisher). But in general it may remain true that one should use a font manager, and only keep the fonts needed for the specific projects one is actively working on installed. A good font manager allows browsing of, and dynamic activation/deactivation, of fonts as needed. -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted September 1, 2018 Share Posted September 1, 2018 22 hours ago, MichaelG said: Fonts installed: 5857. (As these products are targeted at professional designers, I don't think this is an unrealistic number). I don’t think that’s an unrealistic number of fonts to have. I’m not a professional designer, and I have twice that many; however, I don’t keep more than a few hundred permanently installed. If you have a good font manager, as I do, it’s easy to load fonts as and when you need them. The Affinity apps automatically detect any changes and update the font cache accordingly. Alfred Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fritz_H Posted September 1, 2018 Share Posted September 1, 2018 23 hours ago, MichaelG said: Dear Affinity Team, Fonts installed: 5857. (As these products are targeted at professional designers, I don't think this is an unrealistic number). From my experience Pro-Users do not work like that. They use Font-Management-Software to sort their Fonts and to create Font-Groups containing only those fonts to be used with certain Projects or Clients. (helps to avoid using a not CD-conformal Typeface) In the old days the Adobe Type Manager Deluxe was the de facto standard, some preferred Extensis SuiteCase. Today, on Windows Google lists "NexusFont" and "FontBase". LinoType offers FontExplorer X (€), SuiteCase is also still around among others.. kind regards Fritz Alfred and narrationsd 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
narrationsd Posted September 1, 2018 Share Posted September 1, 2018 I suspect it's all true about volume-experienced using font managers, and in fact I've been evaluating NexusFont and FontBase myself. But I also suspect Affinity would benefit from having significantly cache-speeded opening on all apps, as this is the one thing that's uncomfortable right away for new/test/trial users. And because it's sure to be remarked by those doing reviews. With a few hundred fonts, it seems to me that Publisher does open markedly faster than even new or beta versions of Designer and Photo -- so this is a very good step indeed. Apparently not as effective fo thousands, but again that may point to sensible use of a font manager. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MichaelG Posted September 2, 2018 Author Share Posted September 2, 2018 Hi, Thanks to everyone for all the feedback. I accept that using a font manager may be a way to alleviate the prolonged launch times. I do actually have NexusFont installed so I may try that approach. However I have not used a font manager in the past to activate a only subset of fonts, simply because that has not been necessary for acceptable launch performance with my existing apps. The fundamental fact here is that InDesign launches in under 30 seconds and Affinity Publisher Beta launches in approximately 4.5 minutes on the same computer. (Let's leave Photo and Designer out of it for the moment, as I suspect there is a common code base for many components). I make that an increase of approximately 900%. I therefore suspect that there are some optimization opportunities that have yet to be utilized, and others have alluded to this too. Remember also that PagePlus X9 launches in 14 seconds, and that is Serif technology. My purpose in making this post was to make the developers aware, so they can consider whether or not this is an issue worthy of investing some development time. For me its not a show stopper, just a moderate inconvenience. Kind Regards, Mike. Rubyjim 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris_K Posted September 5, 2018 Share Posted September 5, 2018 Hi MichaelG We do innumerate fonts on app launch which does slow it down a bit. It has already been addressed slightly as you can see from the time publisher is half the time of the other two apps. the team will continue to find methods to reduce this time as we go on Serif Europe Ltd - Check the latest news at www.affinity.serif.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petar Petrenko Posted September 5, 2018 Share Posted September 5, 2018 6 minutes ago, Chris_K said: Hi MichaelG We do innumerate fonts on app launch which does slow it down a bit. It has already been addressed slightly as you can see from the time publisher is half the time of the other two apps. the team will continue to find methods to reduce this time as we go on Maybe cacheing during the OS start up? I guess Adobe does this. All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows. 15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 ● Windows 10 x64 Pro ● Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) ● 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) ● NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 ● 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD ● UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display 32” LG 32UN650-W display ● 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 ● Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated ● 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort 13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) ● Ventura 13.6 ● Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) ● 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 ● Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB ● 500 GB SSD ● Retina Display (3360 x 2100) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jörn-jören jörensön Posted September 5, 2018 Share Posted September 5, 2018 12 hours ago, Chris_K said: Hi MichaelG We do innumerate fonts on app launch which does slow it down a bit. It has already been addressed slightly as you can see from the time publisher is half the time of the other two apps. the team will continue to find methods to reduce this time as we go on Good to know, thanks! : ) 12 hours ago, Petar Petrenko said: Maybe cacheing during the OS start up? I guess Adobe does this. Other users might see it differently, but I think it is terrible to have programs doing things at OS start (without letting the user know), just in case the program could get used later. For me, I may be a little extreme here, this would be a reason not to install and buy a software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts