ncJohn Posted November 9, 2018 Share Posted November 9, 2018 I've been using AP for quite some time and have never had any problems printing and I'm not sure what's relevant to this problem so I'm just going to post as much info as I can about what's going on. The bottom line is it's taking so long to print this image that it seems to be freezing up, and during the process it's taking up 50-60% of my total RAM and up to 100% of my CPU, with no other programs running. (I have a core i7 CPU and 24 GB of RAM.) There are 20 layers active in AP, plus the "merge visible" layer recommended in the printing tutorial video. Total file size of the image on the disk is 447MB and on the info line above the image in AP it shows 6.47MP and approximate 3000x2000px. I've tried this over and over with the same result. I tried restarting the pc to free up RAM and it doesn't make any difference. When I flatten the image it prints just fine, no hesitation at all, but I don't understand why it won't print if I don't flatten it. I keep thinking it has something to do with the size of the file but that's not based on anything, it's just a guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted November 9, 2018 Share Posted November 9, 2018 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted November 9, 2018 Author Share Posted November 9, 2018 2 hours ago, >|< said: Since the document has a "merge visible" layer (presumably at top of stack), group the underlying layers and hide the group. Does that print quickly? Yes. With the group showing it's the same as before, but with the group hidden, it's pretty much instant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted November 10, 2018 Author Share Posted November 10, 2018 This solves the problem of how to print it, but does anyone have any idea why it's taking so long otherwise? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted November 10, 2018 Share Posted November 10, 2018 Because Affinity is having to render all that extra data to prepare the final image to send to the printer, and isn't doing it very efficiently? Quote -- 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...
lepr Posted November 10, 2018 Share Posted November 10, 2018 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted November 10, 2018 Author Share Posted November 10, 2018 So is it normal to have to do this when working with images with a large number of layers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted November 10, 2018 Share Posted November 10, 2018 34 minutes ago, ncJohn said: So is it normal to have to do this when working with images with a large number of layers? Depending on the kind of layers, yes, unless/until the developers improve the processing needed to print them. As >|< mentioned, Live Filter layers, in particular, can be problematic in that regard. A question for you: Do you see a similar slowness if you use File > Export to export a PNG version of the image when those layers are visible? If you do, then that's just how things work (for now, at least). If not, then it would seem that the Print code could be improved by adopting some processing from the Export code. But that would still be viewed as an enhancement, not a bug fix, I think. Quote -- 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...
lepr Posted November 10, 2018 Share Posted November 10, 2018 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted November 10, 2018 Author Share Posted November 10, 2018 24 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: Depending on the kind of layers, yes, unless/until the developers improve the processing needed to print them. As >|< mentioned, Live Filter layers, in particular, can be problematic in that regard. A question for you: Do you see a similar slowness if you use File > Export to export a PNG version of the image when those layers are visible? If you do, then that's just how things work (for now, at least). If not, then it would seem that the Print code could be improved by adopting some processing from the Export code. But that would still be viewed as an enhancement, not a bug fix, I think. Exporting is interesting. Exporting as PNG, JPG, or TIFF is fine. It refuses to export as PSD; takes an unspecified error after a too-long time of trying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted November 10, 2018 Author Share Posted November 10, 2018 12 minutes ago, >|< said: Exporting a PNG is afflicted with the exponential computation of live filters, as is the merging of layers and simply zooming or panning the view. Are you saying that merging layers and zooming my view should be as slow as printing? Because that's not the case. By the way, the only live filters I'm using are two instances of vignette and one of blur. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lepr Posted November 10, 2018 Share Posted November 10, 2018 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncJohn Posted November 10, 2018 Author Share Posted November 10, 2018 Okay, well thanks for the tip about grouping the layers and hiding the group. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R C-R Posted November 12, 2018 Share Posted November 12, 2018 On 11/10/2018 at 2:06 PM, walt.farrell said: Depending on the kind of layers, yes, unless/until the developers improve the processing needed to print them. As >|< mentioned, Live Filter layers, in particular, can be problematic in that regard. The obvious 'old school' way to improve the process is to pre-render the result of every non-destructive operation & only re-render when necessary instead of doing it on-the-fly for each operation, but for large pixel dimension documents with lots of non-destructive edits that generates huge amounts of data that have to be stored somewhere. I am reasonably sure that is how Pixelmator Pro does it, & the result in that app is a huge memory footprint. On a computer like mine that does not have tons of RAM installed & does not boot from an SSD, all the memory paging that causes results in sluggish behavior, not just with that app but also with other processes running on my Mac at the same time. So personally, I hope whatever improvements the developers can make in this respect do not have the same effect. Quote 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.