PSP X8 standard brush maxes out CPU

[voom]

In PSP X8 the standard brush quickly maxes out the CPU, I can observe in the task manager how cpu usage builds up until the brush starts to lag massively and eventually pause for several seconds. This happens within seconds, thus rendering the brush useless. Other tools like the eraser, the art media brushes etc. do not show the same behaviour. Art media brushes e.g. never exceed 25% of cpu usage. Also on X4 the standard brush works fine on the same system. Other software like Photoshop or Krita also show no brush lags at all.

This is a new system with a strong CPU i7 6700K. Though there is only integrated HD 530 graphics it should not be maxed out at a task as simple als drawing with a brush. Is this a known bug that is being adressed already or is there sth. known that can be done?

[hartpaul]

I cannot understand the need to use a large brush. Yes it lags when using a large brush on a large image. But using a large brush means you must be trying to fill a large area with a color. Surely to avoid the lagging brush issue it would be faster to select the area quickly and then apply the Flood Fill tool. The result will be the same and you can then use a much smaller brush to do the more intricate areas.

One area for a large brush may be in using a custom brush to do something like clouds or nebulaes .

[trueblue]

Any software will lag using a very large brush on a large canvas. Like hartpaul says, if you are trying to paint a large area use the fill tool.

[voom]

I am not talking about large brushes, I am talking about ANY brush usage. I have even tried very small sizes like 5px - and very large steps etc. on very small images like 300px by 300px. It is also not so much about the lag, after a little longer brushstroke the brush stops completely until the CPU usage goes down again and the brush produces an unwanted brushstroke afterwards. Stepping back would take back the whole stroke thus the brush cannot be used. Also any other software does not exhibit this behaviour and even the other PSP tools work ok even in large sizes. X4 works nice in much larger brushsizes than those tested in X8. Tried the X8 32bit and 64bit-versions, same thing. This all points out to a massiv bug in the programming of that single tool in X8.

[voom]

Heres a quick screenrecording of one of the symptoms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCJbuMqwGns

When the cursor stops, it is not me stopping, this happens 90% of the time when CPU is over 60% or so. When the brush is "released" again you see it making a straight line, so the movement after that is not preserved like in a lag, but the program fills the line between the two points before and after the forced halt.

With larger brushes (like 200px or so) CPU quickly goes over 90%. Quick movement like in the video would not even be possible after 1 second or so then.

[hartpaul]

I tried too duplicate your pause on a Toshiba Satellite Pro M300 laptop with Intel Core Duo 2.20 Ghz processor. 3 Gb Ram 1 Tb HDD.
I used the 300 x 300 transparent canvas on Win 10 . Had brush size set to 25 and the most CPU usage I could get was 80 % with no pause.
Besides which the demonstration was rather out of the ordinary. If using a small brush to paint I would usually be doing small brush strokes for accuracy at that level. I guess that would not provide any problems.

[voom]

As I said I tried all kinds of settings and had different amounts of problems with each and every one of them. Always only with the standard brush, why would the conditions be so different for the airbrush or aquarell brush? Those work fine in every size and setting.

Also I get the same pauses when making many short strokes, as long as those are made quickly.

Also again: no other software including PSP X4 exhibit the same behaviour under the same conditions.

In X4 I can use the same standard brush stroke for several minutes without a break and the CPU never goes above 12%!

The Airbrush in X8 even with a brush size of 2000px never goes to more than 20% CPU, no lags no pauses.

In Krita a large brush on a huge canvas non stop never above 5% CPU usage!

It may well be that there is a conflict that relates to the combination of PSP X8 and the standard brush and the HD 530 Grafics. At one point during the "pause" the grafics driver crashed.

This is a massive bug and my main question is: are the developers aware of that and will there be a fix. It makes no sense to me to be told how to not use the function as it is meant to be while it is obviously not supposed to be that way.

[flagpole]

It does this for me too. modest sized brush and canvas. specs ---->

I'm not entirely surprised tough. It's trying to follow the input from the mouse as closely as possible. if the cpu is faster then the more effectively it can do that.

it's a bit like when you play a computer game and your cpu maxes out. Get a faster computer and it's still maxing out the cpu.

in x4 it was probably not multithreaded, so it could only max out one core. similar the air brush in x8 appears to be running on two threads, hence on my quad core it's using 50%

[voom]

So actually it would be a solution to give X8 an option to NOT use all cores or sth. like that? I would rather not deactivate multithreading for the whole system just to fix the brush in X8

[flagpole]

So actually it would be a solution to give X8 an option to NOT use all cores or sth. like that? I would rather not deactivate multithreading for the whole system just to fix the brush in X8

Fo Shizzle, for diagnostics at least you can right click in task manager, select Set Affinity, and select which cores you want it to run on. Since yours has hyperthreading you would need to be disabling in pairs like 0 and 1, 2 and 3 etc.

[voom]

I just did that and also tried a software called "Process Lasso" and now the brush goes quickly to 50% and pauses there. (Process Lasso would among other things enable setting the affinity for an app permanently).

In general: could it be that in this case the stronger the CPU the bigger the problem? Because the more PSP tries to use that power but in a bad way?