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Freezing refine brush after a while (perfect eraser, sorry)

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41 comments

  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    What kind of Mac are you running Subias? Have you disabled any automatic anti-virus or malware scanning of your photos drive and the ON1 program's cache location? Have you moved the program's scratch space to a dedicated SSD? How much free space is left on your boot volume?

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  • Subias Gilles

    Thanks !

    my Mac is an late 2012 iMac, I have still 978Go free on my 1,12To HD; SSD is internal from factory:

    APPLE SSD SM128E

     AppleAPFSMedia

    prefs ON1 are :

    system usage and VRAM usage 80%

    Scratch folder: default location

    Cache size (.../PerfectBrowseCache): 9421 MB.

    Something to change ?

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    I recommend adding a dedicated SSD for ON1 scratch space and PerfectBrowseCache. There's just too much I/O happening on one drive when the OS, program, your photos, and ON1's working space are all on the same drive.

    I'm running a 2017 MacBook Pro with a 256GB internal SSD & 16GB of RAM. My photos are on an external drive and I've added a 2nd small 120GB SSD for ON1's scratch and cache. I do not have any problems with crashing. After doing a lot of brushing actions the program's memory usage starts to climb pretty high at which point I will return to browse mode to flush the caches and save my work. Then when I return to editing things run more smoothly again.

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  • Subias Gilles

    Thank's Brian (I'm Gilles !)

    Maybe I'll buy an external SSD 500Go dedicated to photos folders and ON1.

    As I don't speak/understand english very well, what do you mean "I've added a 2nd small 120GB SSD for ON1's scratch and cache", your ON1 program is not on this SSD, only scratch and cache -I don't know what scratch means/involve, sorry- ?

     

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    Don't put your photos and scratch space on the same drive. You want the scratch space to be on a dedicated drive where nothing else uses it. Otherwise you wind up with the same I/O issues; i.e., the program needs to swap parts of the photo in or out while also reading/writing to the cache. I've seen the in use LEDs on both my external drives flashing simultaneously while I'm editing. If the photos and the cache were on the same drive things would slow down as only the photos or the scratch space could be accessed at one time. 2 smaller SSDs would be better in my opinion. Also, you do not want them sharing a hub for the same reasons, all I/O would pass through it creating the bottleneck you are trying to avoid. I have my photos drive connected through a hub while the scratch drive is connected directly to the laptop.

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  • Subias Gilles

    Ok, I understand your explanations, thank's; now waiting for the 2020 beta... and final release.

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    You asked, "what do you mean "I've added a 2nd small 120GB SSD for ON1's scratch and cache", your ON1 program is not on this SSD, only scratch and cache -I don't know what scratch means/involve, sorry- ?"

    The scratch space is temporary storage space the program needs during editing, kind of like the scratch paper you used in school when taking a math test to work out the problem's solution then you just write the answer on the test paper.

    ON1 renders all your images and caches those renders for use by the browser. This can grow quite large, even larger than the setting you specify in the program's preferences. That setting is for memory usage while the program is running. The size of the cache will depend upon how many photos you have and how you've set up any Catalogs.

    The SSD I purchased for the scratch space holds no data or programs or anything of my own. Its entire purpose is for ON1's temporary usage. (I've also told Photoshop to use it for its scratch space too.2 I moved the Perfect Browse Cache there because I needed to free up the space it uses from my internal SSD which is pretty small at only 256GB. Since we don't use the browser while editing and we don't need the scratch space while browsing they can share the drive without creating any of the I/O conflicts we are trying to avoid.

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  • Subias Gilles

    My brain is quite old (I'm 72!), so I think a bit slowly; one more thing I imagined now: as my iMac has an internal HD + SSD APPLE SSD SM128E AppleAPFSMedia, do you think there is a way to use it for the ON1 scratches and cache ? Settings in ON1 prefs ?

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    No, I don't think that won't work. I suspect that what you have is a fusion drive, essentially a spinning hard disk with an SSD cache. The drive's firmware moves the files you use most often from the spinning platters to the SSD cache for faster access. You would have to completely reformat the drives, splitting them into their two respective pieces and I'm not sure that is even possible. In any case, you're still in the same position of everything being done on one drive with only one I/O connection to the system. Do you see one or two hard drives in the Finder?

    I bought my SSD for under $50 with a $20 USB3 enclosure, less than $70 total expenditure. Small SSD's are not all that expensive these days.

     

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  • Subias Gilles

    You are right, Fusion drive, so I'll purchase an external SSD.

    Thanks again for your help ;-)

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    I hope it helps. Let us know how it goes.

    I also use a program called Memory Diag which puts an icon in the menu bar showing me the system's memory usage. It has controls to clear and release unused memory back to the system. When ON1's memory usage starts to climb too high I will Quit programs background programs I'm not using use it to free up what space it can. You'd be surprised how much memory Safari holds on to even when no pages are open.

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  • Subias Gilles

    Back again; I bought an external SSD, move the scratch and cache to it (it took about 45 mn !), my photos remaining on iMac HD, then open ON1, about 3 hours to get my cataloged folders re-cataloged !!!

    Anyway the issue seems solved (I made many refine without freezing problems), but I think is not so fair to have to add a SSD  make ON1 working fine with separates HD/SSD etc, like if you have a click and point/shoot game you were contraint to buy more drives to play (I don't play games, but you may understand what I mean).

    Now my question is in ON1 pref: what's best: gpu disable or not, considering my graphic card is

    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2 Go ?

    Thanks

     

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    Do not disable your GPU. From page 181 in the User Guide:

    "If you have a discrete graphics card (GPU) installed with your system, the GPU Render option will utilize that card instead of your CPU for some tasks, making them run faster. For example, your video card will help speed-up common processes like returning to Browse, copy/pasting layers and masks as well as some exporting and plug-in usage."

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  • Subias Gilles

    Ok, I had read this in user manual, but as my GC is quite old, I submited this question.

    Thanks

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  • Rick Sammartino Community moderator

    My Graphics card is 10 years old and still works fine. You should use Geforce Experience to update your drivers, it's the best way to keep them up-to-date.

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    GeForce Experience is not available for Macs.

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  • Rick Sammartino Community moderator

    Ok, so what's the equivalent?

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    There isn't any that I know of. The download is an .exe file and won't run on a Mac. I don't see anything on the Nvidia web site that allows Mac users to update drivers. Everything is for Windows.

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  • Rick Sammartino Community moderator

    Ok, after some poking around (since I'm not a Mac guy) it looks like Apple itself is the equivalent. I'll keep it in mind.

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  • Subias Gilles

    I'm back after some more use of refine (repair) brush; even now my scratch and cache are on separate SSD, the issue is back; after erasing many dots about 10 px, ON1 freeze, hangs, and I must force to quit.

    It's very frustrating when you just spend  10 mn to erase the dots then all redo the work.

    I don't know how  to join here a photo directly  with no publish it via dropbox or other, I could send one and let you try this issue.

    My previous messages show my iMac specs and prefs system/ON1.

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    I'm sorry the SSD didn't solve your problem Subias. I'd be glad to take a look at your file if you like. You will have to post it to some public sharing space such as Dropbox, Microsoft Drive, Sync, etc. Upload your image to one of the sites then paste the download link for it here.

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  • Subias Gilles

    Ok, I'll try to join a photo later (maybe tomorrow); anyway I'm asking me if this problem might come from the limited (I suppose) number of (unseen) layers created each time I'm erasing a dot ?

    The photo is not guilty, this occurs with many others, and I've still about 300 to develop ! So I think sending you one of them will not help.

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    I don't think using the eraser creates new layers but I could be wrong. Does the memory use climb as you are  doing the erasing?

    I don't think it has anything to do with the photo either but I wanted to give it a try to see if I have the same problems.

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  • Rick Sammartino Community moderator

    Subias, if you want to experiment, there are a couple of things that you could try when the program gets slow.

    1. Go back to browse and close/restart the program. If there is some issue that slows the program down over time, this should reset it.
    2. If you think your refining is creating layers which are slowing everything down, duplicate your layer then immediately merge the two layers together again which will flatten those layers. You'll want to do this before you do any other editing as that will get baked in as well.
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  • Subias Gilles

    Thanks, tomorrow I'll post a photo via Dropbox, you'll test it (you can test with any of your photos having many "dust dots" to erase, or a  night sky with plenty of small stars, try to erase 20 or more of them, it's more or less my problem).

    My interrogation about layers was just an idea, in this case of erasing I don't use them, but I know that the number of layers in edit mode is limited (64 ?) I'm not sure, erasing mode limited to x actions ?

    @Rick: Going back as you says is unavailable because ON1 hangs and force to quit; I must search in the on1 sidecars the right photo to come back were it was modified, but I lost many of previous erased dots.

    @Brian: I don't know about the memory use, I just want to have my work and ON1 ok !

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    You can use Activity Monitor to keep an eye on the program’s memory use or the MemoryDiag I mentioned above. It would be interesting to see if the hanging is related to memory needs. It would also give support a data point for the engineers if it seems to be related.

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  • Subias Gilles

    Sorry I said refine brush but it is Retouch > perfect eraser.

    So here is a B&W photo, you'll see many white dots and lines I want to erase, after many erasing ON1 hangs > Force to quit.

    My iMac is 32go Ram, so memory should'nt be the problem ?

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/kj3w7ey5vdbuda5/Madavaram%20Franciscain001.jpg?dl=0 

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  • Rick Sammartino Community moderator

    I took a look at this photo. On my old PC with 8gb ram it takes about 6 seconds per click with Perfect eraser. The speed was consistent all the way through and no lagging or lockups. Whatever is happening is either a Mac problem or a problem on your PC specifically.

    Subias, if you want, I can send the edited file (Orig + on1) back to you so you don't have to do it again.

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  • Michael Burke

    I downloaded your picture and used the retouch brush instead of the perfect eraser and made many changes and it worked fine. I have an older Windows 10 machine with at GT710 graphics card. the brush worked much better than the eraser. Much faster and no lag.

    I do have a question for Rick. I am thinking of getting a ssd drive but I only have USB 2.0 ports. Is there any benefit in doing that or will the speeds be too slow?

    Mike

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    Great minds think alike Rick. I've been working on this for about an hour now. I was going to post it for Subias too. :)

    Subias, I've got 16GB of RAM in my MacBook Pro. After 15 to 20 minutes of erasing perfectly ;) Memory Diag would give me a warning that memory pressure was getting high. At that point I'd have less than 100MB of free RAM left. Returning to the browser would not release the memory. (It's my opinion that there are some serious memory leaks with the perfect eraser in particular but also in other tools.) I would then Quit the program and relaunch it for another 15–20 minute session.

    I highly recommend Memory Diag and not just for ON1. It wasn't very expensive, about $20 comes to mind. It allows me to easily monitor memory usage without having to launch Activity Monitor (Memory Diag is a MenuBar app) and when things get tight it can release all unused but still locked up RAM back to the system. It will also do this in the background when you quit an app.

    I'll put my edits up on your Dropbox in a minute.

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