Affinity awfully slow on iMac 27“ Retina 2017

[Stefan G]

Hi there,

I am absolutely new here and hopefully you are not bored hearing my concerns.

My wife‘s got a Macbook Pro 13“, 8GB, SSD, i5, early 2015 and workes with latest version of affinity. When loading more than 7 RAW files, nothing goes on and system hangs up. Due to the fact, that this MacBook is proberly not one of the most perfomance, she bouht an iMac Retina 5K, 27“, i5 3,5GHz, 8GB RAM an 1TB Fusion Drive, late 2017.

First perception: Loading pics in RAW is about twice as fast as the MacBook when loading between 1 and 6 pics (5 pics: 20seconds vs 40 seconds). But the disappointment follows immediately: When loading more than 6 pics (i.e. 10 or 14), than the iMac also hangs up. That seems to be the same on MacBook and iMac. So, what is going on? Do we need more RAM, i.e additional 32GB? Need your advice !! I don‘t think, that a much more performance machine would help, i.e i7 am 64GB mit 1TB SSD. That would be the most performance iMac.

To pre-answer your questions, why she needs so many pics parallel at the same time: she wants to use it as a picture browser to choose, which of the pics is worth to work on. I think, there must be another way to do so. Is there a picture browser embedded to affinity?

So, hope to hear from you soon. Thanks in advance.

Stefan

[catlover]

Go to View > Media Browser

[v_kyr]

4 hours ago, Stefan G said:

...why she needs so many pics parallel at the same time: she wants to use it as a picture browser to choose...

Well opening full size RAW files in parallel here in AP is a pretty inefficient and much memory hungry method for judging which photo to use then. She better uses a tool like Apple Photos, the Media Browser or ...

• digiKam
• XnviewMP
• ...etc...

... in order to preview, compare and judge the images. Afterwards then loading just the choosed RAW file she really want's to work on.

[Stefan G]

Thanks to catlover and v_kyr. That‘s what I guessed. Both (iMac and MacBook) are running out of memory (RAM).If so, than it would help to have more than 8GB of memory.

But the question for me is, whether there is a hard boundry or limit for opening not more than 6 pics parallel?  Doe anybody know more about it? Maybe this is only a limitation of Affinity on Apple?!?!

Thanks for further help.

Good night to you

Stefan

[v_kyr]

Well having more or enough RAM is always good to have, no matter on which OS or which app you are finaly using, since you won't run out-of-memory that soon then and so no slow SSD/HD swapping would occur. If you close unneaded other running apps and processes from the OS you might get slightly more RAWs opened in parallel. - There probably is no limit of opening RAW files in parallel, as far as you have enough physical memory for such tasks, so the app doesn't block or performs OS memory management related disk swapping then.

However but as said before, it's more or less a general memory consumption problem here to the real physical available memory. So try to open in parallel 6-10 RAW files in your cams supplied RAW processor software or some other imaging software which opens and processes RAW files (...we are not talking about just showing up the JPG thumbnail preview portion of RAWs images here, but instead the full RAW contents). You will see that usually every software will need much more memory now and will also slow down rapidly in processing speed then. Also depending on how huge the cam related RAW files are, the memory will fill up sooner with fewer opened images in parallel.

Thus we advised to use a handy image browser to preview all RAW images first, those image browsers usually allow to quickly show up only the JPG portions of captured RAW images which is memory efficient, so you can decide what RAW image is worth for a development in AP then afterwards.

 

 

 

[Stefan G]

Hi v_kyr, wow, this was a real detailed answer, Now I feel confirmed regarding my thoughts. My conclusion is to get an image browser first for judging the pics which are worth for working on it. But I also learned, that more memory is definitely helpful by working with huge raw files and that there are no technical limits regarding affinity, when opening more than 6 raws parallel.

But you are absolutely right, there‘s no doubt about getting a pic browser first.

So thanks a lot and have a good night.

Stefan