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Raw`s still slow to load!!


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Hi Ian

On my HDD. The same raw`s load instantly in Paintshop pro x9 and also a few other apps I have,- Aftershot Pro 3 etc. Its just making AP a bit of a pain to use and I tend to use other quicker apps first, guess its the speedy times we live in ;) .

Steve

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Hy,

 

there are much people saying, that AP is very slow, especially when loading Pictures/RAWs. For me this is the main reason to use other Programs and I hope they will work with high priority, to make AP as fast as it's competitors.

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New to the forum, so hopefully this comment will add to the conversation.  I was surprised to see the comments regarding slow RAW loading and thus went back to AP to see how I compared to the results posted.  I have a Pentax system and have shot recently in DNG format.  Loading time was from library display was close to 23 seconds (i5 processor).  I was flabergasted.  I then tried loading the Pentax native raw format PEF and loading was about 14 seconds.  Not good for professional processing, but ok for me as I do onesy/twosey stuff for pleasure.  What I was not happy with was that my raw library displays DNG, and JPG mini previews, but my PEF's were only icons - not previews.  My camera (K-3) is listed amongst the models that are supposed to work with the software.  Is this a fluke? or a bug?

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I'm a Pentax user too - AP has no problem processing PEF files but the icon / thumbnail display seems to depend on whatever the OS will display natively.  I had to install an additional codec to get DNGs to display in either AP or Windows Explorer.  I stopped using PEF when I realized that Light Room was just converting them to DNG, so I've never bothered with PEF, but I'd assume the solution is the same.

 

<edit>

 

The assumption was correct!  I use the Fast Picture Viewer codec and get thumbnails for both DNG and PEF - without it I get icons.

AP, AD & APub user, running Win10

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What I was not happy with was that my raw library displays DNG, and JPG mini previews, but my PEF's were only icons - not previews.  My camera (K-3) is listed amongst the models that are supposed to work with the software.  Is this a fluke? or a bug?

 

As Ian suggests, it's an operating system issue, not an Affinity Photo issue.

Keith Reeder

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  • 3 weeks later...

As Ian suggests, it's an operating system issue, not an Affinity Photo issue.

 

Correct, we openly provide thumbnails for afdesign and afphoto files. We rely on Windows explorer to provide thumbnails for any other image format, and Windows has limited native RAW library. 

Serif Europe Ltd - Check the latest news at www.affinity.serif.com

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tried 1.5.2.62 today hoping that the raw speed loading times might have improved but seems to have maybe knocked a second or two off so not there yet but going the right direction!. I tried the Affinity Designer trial and loaded the same Raw file in 4 secs as opposed to 11 secs with AP?? . Any chance the Designer guys could chat to the Photo guys please ☺?.

Regards

Steve

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Tried 1.5.2.62 today hoping that the raw speed loading times might have improved but seems to have maybe knocked a second or two off so not there yet but going the right direction!. I tried the Affinity Designer trial and loaded the same Raw file in 4 secs as opposed to 11 secs with AP?? . Any chance the Designer guys could chat to the Photo guys please ☺?.

Regards

Steve

That's really interesting, couple of things I'd like to know

 

Is this a fair apples to apples comparison ?

Could someone try this comparison with CR2 files please ? (I don't have AD)

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Tried 1.5.2.62 today hoping that the raw speed loading times might have improved but seems to have maybe knocked a second or two off so not there yet but going the right direction!. I tried the Affinity Designer trial and loaded the same Raw file in 4 secs as opposed to 11 secs with AP?? . Any chance the Designer guys could chat to the Photo guys please ☺?.

Regards

Steve

I made a similar test. Loading a CR2 file in AP latest beta took 18 seconds. Opening the same file in AD latest beta took 8 seconds. But in AD there is not much I can do with this RAW file.

-- Window 11 - 32 gb - Intel I7 - 8700 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
-- iPad Pro 2020 - 12,9 - 256 gb - Apple Pencil 2 -- iPad 9th gen 256 gb - Apple Pencil 1
-- Macbook Air 15"

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I'm sure the Affinity developers are working on this as they have said, but I'd like to chime in (and be notified when a fix is made) too.  I use Nikon (NEF) raw files and load times (from SSD on a fast system) are about 10 seconds.  All other software (Irfanview, Aftershot Pro 3) loads these in a "blink" (too fast to measure).

 

This is an important concern for many users and potential users so hopefully it is getting a lot of attention.  This is an operation that is done EVERY time a photo is worked on, any other feature may or may not be used on a photo but this is something we encounter 100% of the time we use Affinity (which I love).

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I have updated my system recently to a core i7 7700k with 3200Mhz DDR4 ram and my CR2 raw opening times dropped from 22 seconds to 5. A movement of the photos from HDD to SSD did not change opening times. So the bottleneck is not I/O, at least not when getting data from disk.

 

It seems that the raw data processing algorithms are CPU heavy. While opening a raw file all logical cores are busy, so Affinity splits the job on all cores already. It feels like it does too much to set up its internal data structures compared to other tools or it does not use the preview which is stored in raw files to display an image fast and analyze the raw data in the background while the preview is visible. I have installed IrfanView just for fun. Displaying the RAWs there does not consume noticeable CPU time.

 

On the other hand my CPU is not used fully when opening a RAW file in Affinity, while it is when I move the sliders after the file is loaded. So there is some other aspect. Analyzing the RAM usage I can see, that the software allocates 1GB(!) of RAM for each RAW file I open. Allocation of big buffers in a fragmented environment can cause big delays also. The memory consumption on opening the files in IrfanView is difficult to measure but not more than 100MB.

 

But even if the allocation is not the problem, building a data model of the size of one GB can consume much time. This is not needed in IrfanView because you cannot develop RAWs there.

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Hi Asser82, do you feel then that the critical part of a machine spec would be the number of cores available rather than whether it's an i5 or i7 ?

Looking at MEBs topic on performance I was kind of getting that feeling. Or is it primarily how the data model is getting built ?

 

If it's the first at least I can factor that in to my buying decisions if it's the second then may as well hold tight and see how thing progress!

 

Regards

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