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Very slow zoom


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Hi,

I've opened a panorama (approx. 15000 x 2500 pixels, RGB 16 bit) which was saved as afphoto file with the last 1.6 version (it was the last file I had worked on with 1.6). It has 2 pixel layers and one tone mapping layer. I can zoom in with the "alt" key and the scroll wheel and it's reasonably fast. When I try to zoom out again, I get an extremely blurry image, which looks like a scaled up version of the first (fit-to-screen) view of the file. It takes a second or two until I get a sharp image. On the same file in 1.6 zooming with the scroll wheel happened pretty much immediately.

iMac Retina 5k 2017, Radeon Pro 570, Mojave 10.14.5, 24GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, default Affinity Photo 1.7 preferences (e.g. metal is activated).

Kind regards

Thomas

Edited by paschulke2
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I am pretty sure that yesterday I had the problem when zooming out after having zoomed in. Today I can reproduce the problem by simply zooming in. Please see screen movie attached.

The afphoto file (created with 1.6.7) has 537MB, 15692 x 2375 px and is RGBA/16.

Kind regards

Thomas

 

Edited by paschulke2
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Hi Thomas,

I've just tried it with a 28,215 x 7, 350 px panorama RGBA/16 and it was zooming flawlessly. This was with Metal compute enabled. The only way I can get it to go slow is if I set the Renderer to 'Software' in Preferences.

I wasn't quite seeing the 5-6 second delay like you were though. I'm not 100% sure what may have changed but if you could upload your 1.6 file to this private Dropbox link, it may help me figure this out.

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Thank you for uploading it. Unfortunately I still cannot get this delay that I can see in your video. I'm using a late 2015 iMac and I've tried it on a late 2013 iMac and it's fine.

I've just tried changing the different rendering settings but to no avail. I think I need to speak with the developers so we can eventually get you back on 1.7.

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I have two iMacs with the same specs (at work and at home). Now I'm back home with 1.7.0. The problem is clearly related to metal rendering. I have just turned off metal rendering in the Affinity Photo 1.7.0 preferences and the problem went away.

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4 minutes ago, paschulke2 said:

I have two iMacs with the same specs (at work and at home). Now I'm back home with 1.7.0. The problem is clearly related to metal rendering. I have just turned off metal rendering in the Affinity Photo 1.7.0 preferences and the problem went away.

Hm, I have it enabled... 
Screenshot 2019-06-07 14.04.49.png

To clarify, do you mean Metal Display or Metal compute?

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Hey Chris,

while this may be a usable temporary fix, it's certainly not a satisfying solution.

To quote from your Affinity Photo 1.7.0 announcement:

On 6/5/2019 at 4:49 PM, Patrick Connor said:
  • The core processing engine in Affinity Photo has been rewritten to take advantage of the powerful discrete AMD GPUs in modern Mac hardware. It will now automatically use any compatible discrete GPU, alongside the Intel GPU support present in 1.6. Typically this improves compositing / editing performance by at least 1000%. Performance when using integrated Intel GPUs has also been massively improved.
  • Multiple GPUs are supported - if you have more than 1 GPU (ie. Intel + AMD in MacBook Pro, or Intel + eGPU in other Macs) Photo will use them all, at the same time, to improve performance. There is no limit to the number of GPUs which can be used.

 

  • The brush engine in Photo has been rewritten to use the new GPU architecture described above. With GPU support, even huge brushes with 1% spacing will perform well. All brushes / brush tools are accelerated.

RAW

  • The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. It also takes advantage of the GPU architecture changes described above.
  • RAW files now load much more quickly - especially if you have a compatible GPU.

So you say that an iMac 5k (2017), i5 3.4GHz, 24GB RAM, Radeon Pro 570 (this is a "powerful discrete AMD GPU in modern Mac hardware", right?) does not profit from these changes? What kind of Mac hardware would fulfill the promises made in your announcement?

Monday morning edit:

[…] for your setup, disabling Metal compute seems to be the best configuration

I beg to differ. Metal compute on my old rusty Quadra 650  iMac Retina 5k speeds up (or should I say "makes them less slow" …?) actions like live filters noticably. Disabling metal compute is therefore not a good solution and it's certainly not the best configuration on my iMac.

Kind regards,

Thomas

Edited by paschulke2
Statement added.
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Hi Thomas,

Development have asked me to get a file from you that you are having issues with. We are trying to establish if the issue you are experiencing with Metal compute enabled is more related to what is in the file, such as a combination of raster and vector data so we can see how this is being passed back and forth between the CPU and GPU.

I've made a private Dropbox folder for you to upload a file into.

 

 

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Hi Chris,

you already have the 500MB 16bit panorama file with the zoom problem, don't you? I don't have any other file with this problem, but I can still easily reproduce the problem with this file. With this huge file zoom in will always "hang" when zooming for the first time and with metal compute enabled—sometimes a second, sometimes even longer. Otherwise I see a performance increase with Metal compute enabled (but a decrease in quality, see new thread).

Kind regards,

Thomas

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19 hours ago, paschulke2 said:

you already have the 500MB 16bit panorama file with the zoom problem, don't you?

Hi Thomas,

I do yes—I just wondered if there might be any more files and possibly with a more comprehensive layer structure. I'll just pop the panorama over to dev.

Could you also clarify what processor you have as I didn't see it with your other specs.

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