Making good use of memory
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There are times when On1 slows down dramatically, and I'm wondering the best ways to manage available RAM. I'm guessing that the slowing-me-down culprits are (1) defining multiple masks, (2) multiple layers, and (3) lots of retouching. I know that it helps to (a) create a new stamped layer and/or (b) export a TIFF file, then edit directly from either (rather than continue editing the original file). I have 16GB RAM (2018 MacBook Pro, getting ready for an upgrade). Would appreciate any recommendations on how to optimize memory usage. Thanks in advance.
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BTW, I am not using catalogs, as I'm wary of using a feature that may demand more CPU/RAM; would rather focus my use of available RAM to enable more-complex edits.
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Cataloging is used only during Browsing and even then only during searching. It has no affect at all on the Edit module's ability to use memory. While the Catalog is being built there will be very high resources usage as the program reads then renders each image in the background. That process also affects mostly the Browser; it gets throttled back while editing so it doesn't impact our ability to do work at the same time.
Keep in mind the Editing Pipeline - the order in which the program applies the edits. (See page 74 in the User Guide.) Basically it goes Develop pane, Local Adjustments, Effects and from bottom to top in the stack. If you add a Local Adjustment after adding some effects, each of those effects has to be re-rendered with each edit you make. This happens live when painting masks.
Then there are the kinds of Effects you may have used. Something like Dynamic Contrast is a heavy GPU user so with it turned on brushing anything below it in the rendering pipeline will be affected. I sometimes turn it off temporarily when things get too bad.
Another factor is the the GPU is used to track brush movement so you're asking it to do double-duty while painting. The Preferences > System > Video Card Strength slider can help with this. (pg. 264) It tells the program how to balance its time between tracking the brush vs rendering. Lower settings means more time tracking the brush. Turning on Fast Preview will also limit the rendering done while brushing. You'll see a slightly less "sharp" image onscreen. Fast Panning does the same for panning while zoomed in.
When working with multiple Layers, after using the Merge to New Layer command, I will turn off the lower Layers so the program doesn't spend anymore time rendering them while I'm woking on an upper Layer. (I don't know for a fact it does render them but it just makes sense to me to turn off their visibility when they've been completely hidden by an upper layer.) Personally, I don't like rendering to a pixel format just to continue editing. Merging Layers bakes in all previous edits so we can keep working with the RAW file. If you're working with a single Layer you can Duplicate it then Merge the two together to bake in the current edits. This will create a new .onphoto file even though there is still only one Layer.
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Thanks much for your many specific suggestions on how to better manage available memory (page 74 offered a fascinating discussion). Will experiment...
Exactly what I hoped for; much appreciated.
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For anyone else following this thread, looks like the very relevant discussion of Preferences > System > Video Card Strength appears on page 262 of the PR-2023 manual.
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