Loading Layered Files, Switching Layers and File I/O or This Makes My Disk Spin!
I've been working through Scott Davenport's new book for PR 2019. In working through an example where we create layers to serve as a frame, I noticed a really (really!) long lag when switching layers. Having read that .onphoto files are large I returned to the browser and opened Windows Explorer (via the handy context menu item).
The raw file I'm working with is about 35 MB. The .onphoto file, containing, presumably, not much more than 3 full raw images is over 500 MB. Over 14 times as large as a single raw file! I have no idea what On1 keeps in there (a backup of the Library of Congress?) but it takes a ridiculous amount of space.
So I wanted to see how the PR uses the disk when it loads my image. I opened trusty old Process Monitor and used the event filter I had created earlier to monitor PR, excluding everything but file reads. Over the roughly 11 seconds it took PR to load the file and become responsive, it read from the .onphoto file 64,044 times. Most of the reads were in 4K or 12K blocks, but a few were as small as 2 bytes. Wow!
Why the long lag between layers changes? I have 3 layers in my image. Starting with the topmost layer selected I clicked on the middle layer, then the bottom layer (slowly ‘cause this takes a while). The result was a total of 1,267 file reads!
In C:\ProgramData\ON1\ON1 Effects 2019\FilmGrains, PR reads Kodak® T-Max 100.tif, lford® Delta 3200.tif and Kodak® T-Max 400.tif incrementally, often in small chunks.
From C:\ProgramData\ON1\Extras 2019\Borders\Antique\Small it reads Antique Round Top.png and from C:\ProgramData\ON1\Extras 2019\Borders\Emulsion\Small\ it reads Emulsion 002.png.
Why is it reading these files over and over? No idea. I only have 2 filters in my image, a Blur and a LUT. No Borders or Film Grains.
Now, I don’t know how much of this file I/O is responsible for the long delay in switching layers – CPU spikes at about 70% shortly before the UI becomes responsive again although the GPU doesn’t seem to be doing much.
This is suboptimal and is one of the things I'm sure On1 is working. I don’t mind waiting 10 or 15 seconds to open an image – I’m going to be working on the image for a lot longer than the few seconds it takes to load.
The time it takes to switch between layers is a much bigger irritant, at least for me. If I have layers I tend to switch between them often, in flurries over short periods. A 3 – 5 second delay is truly annoying.
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As On1 claims it is non destructive it might be that all the effects you ever tried and removed are stored in the .onphoto file thus saving the history of your changes. Did you try the film emulations?
But I agree with you it is a bit over the top to store a complete tiff-file. There should be smarter ways, I guess..
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I've never used film emulations. I don't think the large .onphoto file size is the result of using filters and such. If you look at the size of the sidecar files PR creates, they're small even if I use lots of filters.
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