Very slow loading

[sunnyrio]

It takes me about 30 seconds to start PSP 2021. To perform a resize or other operation is also painfully slow. I'm using a Ryzen 9 3900XT (about the fastest CPU you can get), 24 cores, 64GB RAM, SSD, a graphics card fast enough to play the latest games.

How long is it supposed to take to load? I made sure nothing else was running before I launched it.

Paintshop Pro 7 back in the 90s on a computer 100 times slower was instantaneous! What am I doing wrong here, surely you can't all be drinking a cup of coffee per operation on a photo? Nothing would ever get achieved.

[LeviFiction]

How is Ryzen9's single core performance? Loading of programs is rarely a multi-threaded affair. PSP7 was never instantaneous for me. It took roughly 30 seconds for the splash screen to go away and give me access to the UI. On my far more modern laptop (5 years old now) running an i7, PSP 8 takes roughly 30-40 seconds to load. And only a little bit longer for PSP 2020. Initial loading of tools is a bit slow but after that initial load everything speeds right up. It's not on every operation. With 2021 it's only really slow resizing if you have AI resize turned on as all things AI/Machine learning are usually slow.

[sunnyrio]

Yeah the single core speed isn't quite as good as my i5 8600K, but it's still unbearable on there, there simply isn't a CPU with single core speed that would make PSP 2021 fast enough. It needs to be coded tighter or use multicore, multicore CPUs have been around for ages, and GPUs can help too. No other program is like this. I can't believe anyone finds this sort of time acceptable, I guess I have to find an older version, or some freeware which is programmed better. For goodness sake it took 30 seconds to resize a photo. That used to take a seocnd or two on a slower machine. It's not doing anything more, it's just useless.

[Andy2011]

My i5-7200U with SSD takes 8 seconds to load to Edit window. (For a subsequent load - I suspect first load after boot takes a fraction longer.)
Have you looked at Task Manager / Resource Monitor to see if you can spot a bottleneck?
I see CPU usage jump from ~5% to peak at 70% during the load, indicating both physical cores are in use. There is also network traffic - PSP phoning home?

[sunnyrio]

I tried to stop the phoning home by pulling the internet cord. Made no difference. It's not my PC. My PC is fast at everything except this one program. I've actually installed an old JASC PSP 9 to compare. I did the same thing with both, I launched it by double clicking a jpg file, then resized that file to 300%. Yes, I know, weird thing to do, but I was just testing the speed. The result:
PSP 9: 5 seconds to launch the program, 2.5 seconds to resize the image.
PSP 2021: 30 seconds to launch the program, 1.5 minutes to resize the image.
I'm sorry, this ain't my fault, this is very very inefficient programming. Corel has broken a wonderful JASC program, and I won't be using it anymore.
And it isn't just me, a Google search shows others complaining about the same problem, including in here, and with one of the admins admitting it's slow, and he "got used to it"!

[LeviFiction]

When resizing the image what mode is it set to? If it's set to AI Resize it's going to be slow. If it's set to Bicubic or Smart Size it should be much faster. If you use AI Resize try turning on GPU acceleration. Also it should be noted Corel made a questionable decision to force you to use AI Resize when upscaling (say by 300%) and you have to manually choose one of the faster methods.

[sunnyrio]

Too late, program deleted. 30 seconds to start it is beyond a joke. There's better freeware.

And seriously? GPU acceleration has to be turned on manually. I give up.

[LeviFiction]

Not everyone has GPU acceleration or wants it on, in some cases it can even be unstable, so making it the user's choice makes sense, and it usually remembers the choice after activating it. Also it's only useful for the AI Resize mode. If you change it to the standard Bicubic or Smartsize that older versions of PSP, like 9, defaulted to you won't need it anyway.

[sunnyrio]

This doesn't explain the absurd loading time which I don't see on any other program, including photo editors, admitted to in this very forum by an admin who uses the program himself. This is clearly a major programming flaw. This is 2021, I don't expect any program to take half a minute to load on a brand new high spec PC.

[LeviFiction]

This may be a flaw but it's not a universal flaw and it doesn't happen to everyone.

On my Computer 40 seconds to a minute is common for all programs across the board: Photoshop, PSP 9 - 2021, Gimp, Krita, Affinity Photo, Lightroom, AfterShot Pro, Canon Photo Editor Professional. All of them do this, this isn't a single one that doesn't and PSP is no slower than the others. You also saw Andy in this topic mention they get it to load in 8 seconds. So it's not universal, whatever the problem is that's slowing things down on your computer it's with how PSP works with your computer not just PSP in general.

Not trying to argue in favor for PSP, it won't be for everyone, just saying that it's not a universal issue that requires more looking into by Corel to figure out why it's "slow" on your system.

[sunnyrio]

As I said, this is the only program that's slow. And it's reported by many. It's clear where the blame lies.

[LeviFiction]

And yet it's still complicated because it's also reported by many that there isn't a problem. Yes, it's something Corel needs to fix, but they kind of need people to contact them and get it worked out since, again, it's not everyone. And on forums like this, you get more people complaining than not, so it's a biased sample.

Is it the new AI engine they added for their AI features? Is it the new chromium web browser they use for their Photo and S2S workspaces? Is it their store? Is it none of these and more how the individual computers react to certain loading practices that they can change up once they're aware of it? *shrug* Couldn't say. Only Corel can. And they need people to tell them so they can find it.

[sunnyrio]

Since it's only one program that does it, and no other program does, then I'm afraid I can't spend time working on it with them. If I thought it was my computer's fault because other programs were slow too, I'd spend time on it. They should not have released a program without proper testing. I'm now happily using PSP 9. I wonder if the word JASC at the start is why it's faster....

[LeviFiction]

They did test, they have an entire Beta testing team with different computers for months. But they can't cover all scenarios. It also depends on the testers speaking up about slow load times. If most people don't have an issue with a 30 second load time it's probably not brought up, or if very very few people actually experience the problem that'll also play a role.

You don't have to waste time on the current version of PSP but if you're ever interested in seeing how the beta tests are done you can try signing up to be one. It's a two-year-old topic but there is an announcement about it at the top of these forums. I assume that means they'll still accept new ones. We're still a few months away from when they normally do the betas for the next version. So there's time if you want to help make PSP better.

[migf1]

As I said, this is the only program that's slow. And it's reported by many. It's clear where the blame lies.

How long does it take for Photoshop to load on your system? In my tests (reported in other topics) Ps takes longer than PSP to load.

As Levi said, slow loading times have been reported by many ppl, but it's not the same for everyone. Try for example with muted internet and muted antivirus. As an example, in my tests Kasperksy affects loading times of almost all my image editors much more than Avira did (which I have recently replaced with Kasperksy for other reasons).

PS. Btw, it's not exactly wise to compare launching times between versions that have like 30 years difference.