I don't see the blurry/vibration effect/issue on whole canvas any more. Or is it me ?

[SrPx]

Hello,

While painting, one of my biggest concerns since always has been that due to the nature of the engine, the whole canvas' pixels would kind of vibrate/pixelate or move around somehow, for I believe, engine optimization reasons. While I see it fine (and common in other apps) when zooming, while just laying brush strokes, painting, I quite very much dislike it. Still, am painting now with Photo .293 customer beta, and I'm not noticing any of these effects. Has that been -happily- removed, this optimization? Or it just depends on the case or illustration, and I might not be noticing now ? 

Would be important to know this. Everything is working great. Is performing really (outstandingly, even) fast on a really large canvas (yes, in this bad machine). But wouldn't love to find out the "effect" appears in some situations later on, or gets noticeable then.

Thank you.

[James Ritson]

Hey SrPx, the shimmering you describe sounds like the initial low quality draw pass followed by the higher quality pass. Under certain circumstances, like if you have a complex layer stack and you're doing brush work, Photo will only redraw with a high quality pass on the canvas tiles that are affected, and will use a render cache for the other tiles so as to avoid redrawing the entire layer stack.

As I understand, this performance-saving technique was disabled for a while (including build 293), but has actually been re-enabled since it was slowing down more complex documents. Have you tried a more recent beta (e.g. 331) to see if the shimmering now appears again?

Of course, you might not be seeing the shimmering regardless because there have been some huge performance improvements for 1.7 on Windows—big improvements in threading and memory management—that might mean the redrawing is fast enough for you not to notice any shimmering. If that's the case, great! 

Build 293 is quite old now, so it's worth trying out the latest beta and seeing if your experience is the same. Hope that helps.

 

 

[Patrick Connor]

20 minutes ago, James Ritson said:

Build 293 is quite old now

In beta terms perhaps, but it's replacement is only 4 days old...

[SrPx]

Thank you, it is indeed very useful to know it might be triggered (hypothetically) with larger documents, and to know why it used to do that. Anyway, my machine is really low and old, and currently very overloaded. If it can be generated in a particular computer, mine is clearly an extreme scenario.  I was not able to produce it anymore with .293, and I will be sure to test it tonight, but now with a larger document and my average number of layers when I am working in a detailed illustration.  I will try to help with my report on this, later on, using .331.  Thank you very much for a great response, both of you. Painting with Photo is becoming a joy, for me.

Cheers,

[SrPx]

EDIT:   TL;DR version. Nope, no shimmering that I can notice (and I'm quite obsessive for that) not in .293,  neither .333.  Have not tested 331. Average-big canvas. Very, very low machine (it's an intel i7 first gen from 2009, low in RAM, slow mechanical HD, just a 1050 non ti 2GB) .

---
Apologies as I didn't test it the other day. Is just am absolutely swamped in work. (reason why am also less around here, before I would came in free time moments, no real free time anymore ) 

I'm actually using the beta with my most important project right now (yep, I know I shouldn't. Wont blame you if I have crashes  ) , which is a big painting canvas of  12.700 pixels x 7.800. 8 layers, but 3 hidden, currently (for painting traditionally I rarely use many layers, specially in big canvases.  It takes it very well, allows me painting very fluid with the machine in my signature. 293 does not have this shimmering while painting. Perhaps it does not do it as, being so big, I'm always in some sort of zoom, and several of the painting issues happen when zoomed out anything farther than 100%.  No, wait... checking with .333, and I can't notice neither in super zoomed in, averagely zoomed in (most of the case when I'm painting on a big canvas), but neither on fitting the entire canvas to desktop. So, neither in very zoomed out. If it does it, I don't notice. Is easy to be sure is not doing it at quite a zoom-in, as you are seeing the pixels, and how they don't move a single  bit. But in a wild zoom-out... neither, all image is smooth and steady as the brush paints, but as not seeing stuff in pixels,  harder to notice. Paying a lot of attention to it, now I am not able to notice anything in 333, like the other day and today in 293 ( I installed just now 333)

Of course it pixelates when zooming in-out with the wheel, specially first time of loading the image. I just now it takes like a second or half a second (actually, seems less) with this image so big, and crappy machine, to stop optimizing. It does not get in the way. Also as I am not constantly zooming in-out, I work in a area for minutes, then paint in global view minutes, or in-out for just checking, etc. I am not seeing issues.

Also, I am not using a very CPU heavy brush, but yep a intermediate one faking traditional media :  an oil/gouache dry brush (low in oil/ liquid), not sure if of the collection I bought to Paolo's daub brushes or one you included in the beta, as just tested many and modified quite one I liked) and goes very fluid. Only a very slight lag when working full canvas with a large brush. is not a prob, as for blocking I use a more basic/fast brush. And same scene, similar brush, lags also slightly in other apps, so...

All good, it seems.

Cheers, and congrats on development.