PSP 2023 every action is incredibly slow

[MalVeauX]

Hello,

I tried searching but nothing as specific as this came up with any sort of answers.

I'm operating in Windows 10 64bit. The system is modern, Ryzen 3700x on a X570 based motherboard with 32Gb of DDR4 memory, the OS & software are all on SSD/NMVE with lots of extra capacity (several terabytes) and they're not full.

I'm running PaintShop Pro 2023. I got this as an alternative to my very aged Photoshop CS5.1 that I'm trying to wean away from due to its age and inability to scale with modern OS and interface and I refuse to pay Adobe at this point. PaintShop Pro seemed like a good pixel editor alternative with similar functions. So I bought it. I've had it a while now and used it a little, but I always run into the same issue with larger images. It just runs incredibly slow when applying a new action or adjustment and renders the preview. I have narrowed it down to the preview being what is slowing it down so much. The software is totally frozen while it renders the preview which I can see happening on the image in large blocks moving top to bottom, left to right. Every adjustment takes forever and the larger the image and more complex the layers, the worse it gets. Basic adjustments on one layer are fast. But when I have 10 adjustment layers on a large (say 8k by 8k pixel) image, it takes 30 seconds to several minutes on every single adjustment as it build the preview and hangs on that so I cannot even stop it or move to another adjustment option before it starts trying to render the preview and just sits there frozen doing that on every single adjustment. This is not usable in this state at all as work flow is just halted. I assume there has to be a way to address this or this software just wouldn't survive. So I'm probably setting something incorrectly as there's no way this is a hardware problem, it has to be a memory handling or setting problem. Even if I start a new adjustment layer with no value change, it re-renders the preview on the entire image and it takes forever, despite it having no actual change. Then when it finishes and I do make a value change, it takes forever to render that preview but I see it trying to do it in blocks top to bottom, left to right. But it takes forever.

I'm not sure what setting to even begin to adjust for this. I have went through the preferences but nothing seems to be an option for changing the preview type or render type for previews, and I've tried turning on and off the hardware acceleration option with no change.

I'm probably missing something obvious.

Any help appreciated.

Very best,

[Radim]

How is your CPU and system disk performance when you run a PSP with such "slow" operations?
example - https://postimg.cc/gallery/CKVNhjf

You can also use a more detailed Sysinternals tool - https://learn.microsoft.com/sk-sk/sysin ... s-explorer

EDIT:
You can try reduce undo/redo and disk usage in preferences to see differences in performance - https://postimg.cc/tZXmLnvF

[MalVeauX]

Hi,

Here's some screen shots of the CPU, memory and the OS SSD and scratch disc SSD while it's duplicating a layer adjustment on a large 8k x 8k pixel file, about 9 layers in, and the crawl time becomes 45s to 60s at this point. It becomes just completely unusable to do anything in this software like this.

I'm pretty convinced it has to do with the preview rendering; I can see it chewing through this in the background on the image, in square blocks going top to bottom left to right as it does the processing and moves to the next block. At this point I just want all the previewing to be turned off so I can just work through the layer adjustments and then view the results. The preview rendering is horribly slow. It gets worse the larger the file becomes or more the layers are used, etc. Plenty of resources available to it, and my screen shots here show the system is not being taxed at all with plenty of memory and it's barely asking anything of the hardware. It's the software I think.

Very best,

[MalVeauX]

Here's how the preview window on the image looks when I make an adjustment and you can see the change happening block by block top to bottom left to right, it takes forever. When I change the layer blend mode to lumianance for example, just previewing (not even clicking luminance yet) it does that entire rendering preview on the image and I can't stop it or do anything during this. Then when its done it's unfrozen and I can actually click luminance to apply it or apply something else, each move requires a full re-render preview in the image window. This is ridiculous.

Very best,

[MalVeauX]

To test more, I just reduced the file to a 2000p x 2000p size file. It's much faster. I get to about 12 layers before it starts to lag. The lag lasts 5~10 seconds at this stage. Instead of a minute.

It's not the hardware; it's how the software uses the hardware. In other software I'm not having lag like this on full size large files with lots of layers in the 3~6 Gg size range.

So basically this software cannot handle large files, in 2023.

Sigh.

Very best,

[Radim]

That 8 adjustment layers seems like a lot of computation. SW or HW?

---
I thied about six 5k images put in one canvas and move it around in PSP 2022 and there is a slight delay about 0,5 sec.

[MalVeauX]

It shouldn't be a lot.

Latest version of GIMP handles this instantly on this hardware, same processing that I'm doing. And a 10+ year old version of CS5.1 handles this same processing and layering that I'm doing on this same file without delay. I'm testing all 3 together right now on the same machine. PaintShopPro is the only one that cannot handle this size file and layers like this without becoming incredibly slow. It's very frustrating, I thought maybe it was a setting or something. I wouldn't have bought it if I knew it wouldn't handle large files and layers. What's the point of a pixel editor suite that cannot handle large files and layers. Sigh.

I'm happy to try any setting changes to see if it's just a setting though. I'd love for this software to work for more than just super minor basic edits. But it's useless if it crawls on large high layer images with plenty of resources in the machine.

Very best,

[Radim]

It shouldn't be a lot.

Latest version of GIMP handles this instantly on this hardware, same processing that I'm doing. And a 10+ year old version of CS5.1 handles this same processing and layering that I'm doing on this same file without delay. I'm testing all 3 together right now on the same machine. PaintShopPro is the only one that cannot handle this size file and layers like this without becoming incredibly slow. It's very frustrating, I thought maybe it was a setting or something. I wouldn't have bought it if I knew it wouldn't handle large files and layers. What's the point of a pixel editor suite that cannot handle large files and layers. Sigh.

I'm happy to try any setting changes to see if it's just a setting though. I'd love for this software to work for more than just super minor basic edits. But it's useless if it crawls on large high layer images with plenty of resources in the machine.

Very best,

Corel only minimally announces the latest HW support and improvements with a new version release. As far as I know.
Usually they just talk about general speed-up of "some" operations, like: image resizing is now 30% faster, etc.

---
This is quite different what Adobe or MAGIX does, for example.

[MalVeauX]

Sigh, ok, thanks.

Very best,