Opening, editing and closing many images after a while freezes Photo

[sveto]

I usually have to postprocess a bigger amount of images from a job. I open between 20-40 images at once, striving for uniformity, editing, switching between them, saving, and then closing everything. Then i repeat that with the next 20-40 images. I noticed that the loading of the images gets slower each time.

On the 3rd, 4rd or 5th batch Photo freezes completely. I have to end the process in task scheduler.

Looks like a memory leak. But i'm no programmer, just a photographer.

The images i open are just 1300px wide. I shudder to think what will happen if i try this with full size images.

My hardware is Intel i7 6700k, RTX 2070 Super graphics card and 16GB RAM that has worked for 3 years without a single hiccup. Nothing is overclocked, and the mainboard is a popular MSI model.

[Chris B]

Hi sveto,

Have you been monitoring the Task Manager whilst carrying out this workflow?

I've just done 10 lots of 40 images (scribbled on a few or added some filters and closed) and although my CPU/Memory maxes out during opening, it settles down to about 50% memory and 20% CPU when the images are closed.

If after every 2 or 3 groups of images, does it help to close down Affinity and then reopen it to begin the next groups? 

[sveto]

Sorry, i saw your reply just today. I'll try out your suggestion and report the results.

[sveto]

OK, i did the test. I did 4 batches of ~40 images (1300px wide, with 2-4 adjustment layers each).

I simulated my usual workflow, but without any editing (if i edit, i think the issue happens sooner).

1- selecting images in explorer

2- "open" from context menu, waiting for loading and until CPU goes down from 100%

3- going through all images and resetting zoom to 100% because images are shown to fit by default (very bad behavior! just imagine editing icons or similar small stuff!)

4- closing everything down one by one (because there is no "close all" functionality in aPhoto, unfortunately)

5- back to step 1 for the next batch

The memory utilization in Task Manager never got above 35-40%. BUT, on the 4th batch the program crashed (closed silently) while loading the images.

And to answer your question: Yes, if i close and reopen the program regularly i can prevent those crashes. But that's not a workaround i can accept as someone who uses this software professionally.

[Chris B]

Hi sveto,

I just tried this with 40 images at a time and managed to open/close them all about 7 times. CPU usage was moderately high and so was RAM usage. I then did 200 at once and everything maxed out and it started using the hard disk. After it began loading the images into the app, it crashed. A crash should never happen but I was really pushing it.

I would not expect you to restart the app each time you wanted to load a bunch of new images—though it would probably be quicker than closing each individual open document. I could really do with a crash report which you can find from here:

%AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\CrashReports\reports
%AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0 (Beta)\CrashReports\reports

I assume you're using 1.7.3 and not the beta but both locations are listed above in case you are using both.

[sveto]

I attached the most recent one (from yesterday when i did the test), i hope it helps.

My thoughts about this issue: I have sometimes freezes when i batch process with "parallel processing" enabled. I learned that i need to disable it (i wish Photo would remember my selection!), and the reason is simple: i use a normal hard disk for my files. With parallel processing the app tries to access multiple files at the same time and everything actually gets slower. Parallel processing of files is meant for SSDs, not for HDDs. I suspect this as a culprit for the crashes when opening and closing many files.

IMO parallel processing should be an option that the user can disable. That could probably take care of another issue - not keeping the order of the files when opening multiple ones:

But this is probably a topic for the request forums.

edb019fc-e018-4509-befc-bcba900a1c84.dmp

[Chris B]

We often advise to uncheck 'parallel processing' as it has been known to cause issues in the past... The app should still not crash though. I'll pass the log over to dev. Thanks sveto. 

[sveto]

Chris, unfortunately there is no choice to disable parallel processing globally (for opening multiple files). Or is it?

And if you advise to disable it when batch processing, why not make it the default? We all know that Affinity still doesn't remember tool and filter settings (i hope this gets adressed in v2.0  ), so it's easy to forget to untick it and freeze the application.

[Chris B]

Sorry I was referring to the parallel processing in batch. There is no global setting.

Well I know this has been suggested and people need settings to be remembered. Hopefully we will see this kind of improvement in v2.