Random Slow/Freeze When Saving in Photo

[Doren Sorell]

Doesn’t happen often, but sometimes Photo just either freezes or goes on a slow crawl when saving. 
 

The long way I can bypass this is by making a Merged Visible layer of all my work, then turning off all but that Merged Visible layer ... then it saves quick and easy. 
 

Again, this only happens randomly. But quite annoying. 
 

I'm on 1.7 (downgraded from 1.7.2 since the grouping masks issue is something I have to wait to be fixed because I use it all the time) 

[MEB]

Hi Doren Sorell,
Are you saving the file to the internal/system hard rive or to an external disk/NAS or any cloud sync folder? Do you have any document where this happens consistently when you try to save that you can provide for us to check?

[Doren Sorell]

I'm saving to an internal Mac hard drive, although I've also work via an external. 

 

It happens to a few documents, and I think it's after I use Live Filter, but not sure yet. I've been using Affinity Photo for a few months, a few dozen intensive edits, and only now started to encounter this, or any, problem. 

 

The TIFF file is attached (I work in Capture One before going into Affinity, and create a TIFF from Capture One). 

 

I also attached a short video showing you that it freezes on Save (it goes on for minutes but I cut that part short), and then me making a Merged Visible layer on top, and then turning off all the layers below, and then saving and it does so immediately. 

 

Lago_di_Braies1403_copy.tif

[MEB]

Thanks for the file Doren. I'm seeing the same behaviour here - it does save the file (for me) but takes way longer if the group with live filters is visible as you noticed. I'm logging this and passing the file to the dev team for inspection.

[MEB]

Out of curiosity, are there any reason to work/save directly from a TIFF file other than the need to eventually move it back to Capture One or other third party app for editing? In other words if you export from Capture One and finish the work in Affinity, why not save the file as an affinity photo document?

[Doren Sorell]

First off, thank you for checking and then passing this onto the dev team for inspection. Much appreciated. 

 

Yes, I do have a reason: roundtrip is important to me because I use Capture One as my DAM, and I can only view (and do more work on, if I choose) TIFF, JPEGS, and PSD files in Capture One. And I've been doing this workflow for years with Photoshop, and have been doing this exact workflow for months in Affinity -- until this hiccup that started happening just recently. 

[Doren Sorell]

I also did an experiment:

 

I tried different files, new files, altered files, etc -- all TIFFs -- and it seems to happen the most often with Live Filters. And some Live Filter layers still saved but would take 2, 3, 5 minutes to save, especially if it's multiple Live Filter layers. Now, looking back for a few months I seem to have used very few Live Filters, or just one or two, on most of the files I worked on, so maybe that's why I have not dealt with this issue before. The one I uploaded here earlier in this feed/post had 3 Live Filter layers --- and, as you know, would not save at all. During my experiment today on other files, new and old, once I had about 3 Live Filters and up, it would either take minutes to save (using Command S), or just not save at all ... or, to be more accurate, I'd just Cancel the saving after 5 minutes and up -- so, it maybe could have saved EVENTUALLY. 

 

But, still, with any of the above, I find it a very odd and frustrating thing. I believe it should save no matter how many Live Filter layers are there, or no matter what the layer count or types of layer there are. Right? 

 

Writing all this so you can pass it on to the dev department. 

 

I did make a non-audio video about it, but it's about 45 minutes long, thus I will not post here, but I do have it in case the dev dept wants to see it. 

 

Thanks a bunch!! 

[Doren Sorell]

And there was an error report generated for Apple that I thought I'd include here for the dev dept. Attached. 

Error Report.pdf

[Doren Sorell]

Tried some more things and I've noticed it's definitely the Live Filter layers that is causing this, even in 1.7.2 (yet I'm still mainly using 1.7.1). 

 

It took over 10 minutes to save 5 or more Live Filter layers, as opposed to no Live Filter layers but a bunch of Adjustment layers, which took under a minute. 

 

Just so the dev's know: 

 

  Model Name: iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)

  Model Identifier: iMac14,2

  Version: macOS Sierra 10.12.6 

  Processor Name: Intel Core i5

  Processor Speed: 3.2 GHz

  Number of Processors: 1

  Total Number of Cores: 4

  L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB

  L3 Cache: 6 MB

  Memory: 32 GB

  Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1024 MB

[Doren Sorell]

And thank you @MEB

[Doren Sorell]

And just a basic Google search doesn't yield anyone else having this problem. Weird. 

[MEB]

Hi Doren Sorell,
Thank you for the additional information provided. Yes, Affinity should save all live filters/adjustments/whatever no matter how many do you have used. There's definitely some issues with  how Affinity data is being saved on TIFFs (live filters) - I'm still waiting for devs reply on this issue. If you save the same exact file in our format you will see it saves almost immediately (as it should). This wasn't noticed sooner probably because most users aren't working with TIFF's as an interchange format - they simply use TIFFs as an end export format without including Affinity data i think.

[Doren Sorell]

8 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi Doren Sorell,
Thank you for the additional information provided. Yes, Affinity should save all live filters/adjustments/whatever no matter how many do you have used. There's definitely some issues with  how Affinity data is being saved on TIFFs (live filters) - I'm still waiting for devs reply on this issue. If you save the same exact file in our format you will see it saves almost immediately (as it should). This wasn't noticed sooner probably because most users aren't working with TIFF's as an interchange format - they simply use TIFFs as an end export format without including Affinity data i think.

First off, again, thank you so much for taking the time with all this. 

I did an experiment, and tried the Live Filters on an exported-from-Capture-One PSD, as opposed to TIFF file, and it was the same thing: 6 Adjustment Layers and 6 Live Filter layers yielded literally 5 minutes each to save. And, yes, the afphoto file with the same aforementioned layers took seconds to save. 

Sad, because I do like having the "roundtripedness" from Capture One, merely for being able to view and manage the before-Affinity to after-Affinity and compare, etc. Plus, I sometimes like to try a few different color grades on my after-Affinity files in Capture One (I love their color grading options), hence why I liked using TIFFs for the roundtrip. But since Affinity takes a very long time to save PSD and TIFF files with lots of Live Filters, I might have to rethink my workflow. 

Now what? LOL

[Doren Sorell]

I hope Affinity can easily fix this with TIFFs and PSDs. 

[Doren Sorell]

And another experiment: 

With the aforementioned TIFF file with all the Live Filters ... I tried making a Merged Visible layer, which also took a long time, around 4 minutes, and then I unchecked (hid) all the layers below the Merged Visible, and it saved within seconds. 

Yet, since making the Merged Visible almost took as long as the initial TIFF save, I see no point in this workflow to save TIFFs that have many Live Filters. 

I thought too of doing this: 

>Head into AF via Capture One edits, making a TIFF

>Then saving my work initially as a afphoto file, so it's quick and easy. 

>When done with my AF work, exporting a flattened TIFF back into Capture One just for the management aspect, the maybe-add-color-grading aspect, and comparing aspect (before and after)

Yet, if I did the above, and if I wanted to make further changes back in AF, I'd have to go to my Finder (on Mac), search for that afphoto file, open it from there, make new adjustments, re-export and update (replace) the former TIFF file so I could see and manage it in Capture One. 

Kind of sucks. 

[Doren Sorell]

By the way, since this is an obvious problem with TIFFs and PSDs with multiple Live Filter layers, is there anything I can do to speed up the fix? @MEB

[MEB]

Hi Doren Sorell,
I'm checking the PSD issues (and trying a few things with TIFF's) as we speak. There's nothing you can do for now other than changing your workflow a little bit to circumvent these limitations until this is looked at/fixed. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you.

[James Ritson]

Unless I'm missing something, the reasoning behind write-back to a TIFF/PSD being so slow is because you're using multiple live filters stacked on top of one another. Live filters are expensive (slow) to render at export time on the CPU, and they have to be rasterised when writing to a format that doesn't support them. Affinity Photo supports layered TIFF/PSD write-back and will of course write its layer data into the files, but no other software supports its implementation of live filter layers, therefore it has to create a full resolution composite that can be shown and also edited in this other software. With the native .afphoto format it doesn't have to do this, it only needs to write a small resolution thumbnail for file browsing.

 

Looking at your screen grab, you have live Clarity, Shadow and Highlights and Noise Reduction layers—Clarity and Noise Reduction are almost certainly slowing down the export time significantly because you'll likely be CPU-limited. I don't believe your GeForce GPU is supported for Affinity's Metal compute hardware acceleration, as this would reduce the save/export time dramatically—likely no more than 5 seconds on a moderate AMD GPU found in the recent MacBook Pro models (2016 and newer).

 

As you've discovered, doing a Merge Visible operation also takes a similar amount of time, as it's essentially doing the same thing—merging a composite layer that has the filter effects baked in. If you go to File>Export and try exporting to any format, do you experience the same export time?

 

If round-tripping is an essential part of your workflow, it's not the most elegant solution but I would recommend trying the old school non-destructive approach to filters: duplicate your image layer and apply the destructive filter to it. It's not ideal, but short of upgrading to a more recent Mac system that supports Metal compute, I'm not sure if there's an immediate solution. Live filters are great for non-destructive workflows, but are hugely taxing on the CPU with large resolution documents.

 

I've tested and confirmed my above explanation on a 24-megapixel 16-bit TIFF file with just live Noise Reduction, Shadows & Highlights and Clarity filters. On a Core i9 (mobile) CPU, writing back as a layered TIFF takes about a minute. It appears to hang (beach ball) for 10 seconds or so, then continues with the export. Whilst this is quicker than your 4-5 minute export time, the CPU architecture is more mature and powerful, so would explain the difference here (plus I didn't have additional adjustment layers and other layer work).

 

If you're able to, however, there is one thing to check based on the GPU you've listed in your specs. Could you go to Preferences>Performance (under the Affinity Photo menu, top left) and see what is listed under the Hardware Acceleration checkbox option? Is it greyed out, or is your GPU listed with the checkbox enabled? I'm fairly sure it won't be supported, but if it is, that GPU only has 1GB VRAM, which will be insufficient for 16-bit large resolution document work and may actually be causing a performance bottleneck. In this case, I would try disabling Metal compute and seeing if things improve.

 

Hope the above helps—apologies as it looks like the round-tripping workflow you're wanting to use is subject to limitations. These can be worked around, but it's not ideal.

[Doren Sorell]

4 hours ago, James Ritson said:

.........

Hope the above helps—apologies as it looks like the round-tripping workflow you're wanting to use is subject to limitations. These can be worked around, but it's not ideal.

@James Ritson ~ First off, you are the reason I chose Affinity Photo (which I love). Your tutorials are fantastic, so thank you for that. 

Also, thank you for your detailed response. Now it all makes sense. 

What's good on my end is that I usually don't use more than one or two Live Filters, and it's usually at the end of my workflow, and with only a one or two Live Filters, thus most of the time this will be a non-issue. And if I ever discover I need many of those layers on a project, I will adjust accordingly. 

Now I'll just save up for a brand new maxed-out computer. LOL...

Again, thank you for your detailed and kind reply. 

[Doren Sorell]

6 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi Doren Sorell,
I'm checking the PSD issues (and trying a few things with TIFF's) as we speak. There's nothing you can do for now other than changing your workflow a little bit to circumvent these limitations until this is looked at/fixed. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you.

Thank you, @MEB. Much appreciated.