Sluggish performance on Windows 11

Magnus Wilson

March 30, 2022 08:09
Edited

Hi,

I've been fighting the same types of issues for the past years and ON1 releases (even after upgrading to "super HW" in 2019, see below). I'm still on Win10, but sorry to say, I see similar timings as you do. Sometimes it's slightly better, sometimes it's worse. I've also tried every remedy suggested by On1 and other users on this forum. Even my sliders have a terrible lag, even when in Tone & Color in Develop tab.

My latest finding was to play around with Windows priorities, which made my ON1 run much smoother. At least for the first 3-4 hours. Then it gradually becomes slower and slower. CPU often goes to 100%, GPU seldom reaches more than 40-50%, whilst RAM is pegged at 80% when working with ON1 Develop (never goes beyond, but often falls back while progressing through my workflow). Restarting ON1 seems to fix that issue (no reboot needed).

I first started to manually change the CPU Priority using Task Manager->Details (right-clicking -> Set priority->High). Now I'm experimenting with the Process Lasso https://bitsum.com/howfree/ where I also could tweak Memory and I/O. This helped me to shave off like 50% of the figures mentioned. My sliders feels also more responsive, almost to the point I once remembered (supporting the left-right-left-right maneuver to find a good starting value per slider). I cannot recommend this as a general remedy yet, since I've only tested it for 2 weeks, but it looks promising.

So my take away (in a suggested prio order) as to remove sluggishness:
- Do the settings Justin stated
- don't forget to set per Application to use "High performance" (Control panel Display->Graphics settings)
- use M.2 drives if possible. Minimum, divide ON1 disc setup in 3 parts: C: , ON1 scratch& cache, and the photos to be edited
- Remove anti-virus paths connected to the ON1 application (if you dare)
- Use windows troubleshoot for Windows Update (yes...it has made a huge difference at times when I had strange, intermittent problems with ON1)
- Check & Fix for Corrupt Windows 10 System Files (SFC and DISM)
- Change mouse setting to remove lag, stutter, and freezing e.g. How to efficiently fix a lagging mouse in Windows 10 and 11 (windowsreport.com)

That's my 5 cents. I still feel ON1 is right for me and I do not regret leaving LR

My config:
Win10 build 19044, I9-9900K@3.6GHz, 32GB, DELL U2713HM @ 2560*1440, DELL U3216HM @ 3840*2160, Quatro P4000 8GB (slightly worse than my previous 1080Ti), Intel M2 disc (1TB, two partitions, boot with application, and scratch & cache on the other), SSD disc for editing photos, and WD 3TB for archives. Wacom Intuos Pro M, AVAST antivirus with ON1 paths removed, now 0 Cataloged Folder (before 170 000pics in 500 subfolders on a trad HD), mainly shooting Sony A7R2 compressed RAW @ 42MB/file

For a typical Raw photo, I use Lens correction and have approx 4-6 filters with 2-3 Luminosity masks, e.g Dynamic Contrast, Color Balance, Curves, Color Enhancer. I also use new NoNoise for most photos with ISO >1600. If I use more filters, I can notice a bit more lag on sliders, and if I work zoomed in to 100%, then ON1 is way more sluggish.

/Magnus

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Justin Martin

March 30, 2022 09:58

Magnus,

Many thanks for your detailed comment. I have just tried setting the priority and adding an exception into Bitdefender. Sadly it made no discernible difference for me.

I was just doing some timings in Edit with a filmstrip navigator at the bottom. It is taking 12 seconds to changes photos and apply the edits, that's just unusable.

I am perplexed as to why some users seem to have timing issues and others don't. You shouldn't have to go to the levels you specified (and with your hardware) to have usable software.

My other concern is that as they add more features, eg Resize coming into PR, it will get worse, not better. Surely they should be investing more time into performance? My interaction with Support was two cut and paste answers and then washed their hands of it.

The other day I reinstalled Lightroom and started updating my catalogue. It does max my CPU but run rings around ON1 for performance.

justin

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Carl Traub

March 31, 2022 03:37

Justin,

Like you, I'm surprised at the wide variance in performance seen by users. I've always been in the very poor performance camp as well. RAW 2019's performance was so horrible on my PC that I returned it for a refund. My mouse would be unresponsive for minutes at a time. LR performed great on slower harder, so the difference was hard to understand.

With 2020, I disabled all cataloging, and it was usable but still poor. I now have PR 2022 and have upgraded to a Ryzen 8 core/16 thread 5700G. The performance is quite a bit better, but still far below that of LR on much older hardware. Using the healing brush to fix a tiny spot causes a 2 second delay.

I have my OS and apps stored on an M.2 NVME drive, PR temp folders on an SSD, and my pictures on a separate hard drive. Unlike you, my CPU and GPU rarely show much usage, even during slow response.

Magnus suggested the 2 other fixes I was going to suggest - setting "High Performance" in settings, and disabling antivirus for some of PR's working folders.

I've given up hope of ever using cataloging. You might want to try disabling cataloging to see if that matters. For me, cataloging seem to run continuously. I left my PC run for days to finish, and it never got any better.

But even with no cataloging, PR's performance is sub-par. And like you, I find that tech support always gives the same 2 canned and useless answers, and then gives up. I have several tickets that I can't responses on. And I've been reporting random video corruption since 2019, and they always blame my up-to-date video drivers.

It's very frustrating, and management doesn't seem to care. Nobody with any real knowledge of the inner workings of the product has ever been involved in one of the issues I've had. I've been writing software for 35 years. When level 1 support can't solve a problem, they should be able to get developers involved. That doesn't happen with On1.

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Magnus Wilson

March 31, 2022 05:48

Hi again,

I found one more remedy worth trying. Now ON1 is performing a lot more responsive and predictable, see below.

- if you use the Slideshow as Desktop background, and it's set to change often, it can freeze/stutter your system for 1-2 seconds ever so often. I still don't know why, because it doesn't happen every time the background changes, but changing my setting from 3minutes to 6hours, and VOILA :-)

I always start in Browse and let ON1 stabilize (CPU < 10%). I use Dual mode (2 monitors), of which my 4K monitor is the main, and I show the Grid mode on my 2K screen. First time launch of Edit module takes roughly 10 seconds. Subsequent opening of 42MB Raw photos now takes between 3-4 seconds (2-3 sec for the blue progress bar to disappear and additional 1 seconds until all "Develop menus" are ready, and you can start editing. Jumping back and forth between 2 photos is faster (probably due to the cache introduced in 2020 I think).

Responsiveness in Edit:
- Develop slides are smooth, (before almost impossible to move just 1 step)
- Crop is instant to launch (could take seconds before) and smooth to operate, but sometimes it still "lags" when adjusting
- NoNoise, 1step until screen updated and ready to press Apply takes 12-13 sec, and pressing Apply takes 3-4sec
- Zoom in/out is close to instant (with many filters it could take several seconds). Dragging at 100% is a bit laggy at first, but after initial lag it's ok
- Retouch (new spot healer) movement is smooth and applies instantly at Fit-zoom level, and takes 0,5-1.5 sec at 100% zoom
- Masking brush movement is always smooth and applies instantly at Fit-zoom level, but lags substantially at Zoom 100%
- Switching from Develop tab to Effects (5 effects, ColorBalance, HDR Look, Dynamic Contrast, Color Adjustment, Curves, 2 luminosity masks) is close to instant (less than 0,5 sec) and switching between filters shows the same response. Individual sliders are generally smooth for each filter.
- Switching to Local adjustment takes slightly longer, 1-1.5 seconds, and sliders are almost as smooth as in develop

However, after editing some 40+ slides it feels ON1 gradually starts to return to it's famous sluggishness. Restarting ON1 fixes that though, so that is a simple solution (you probably need 1 minute paus from editing anyhow ;-)

@Carl, when I used Catalouged folders (approx 170 000 pics) it took less than 24hours to catalogue all of them. I haven't used Catalogues with 2022, since I've re-installed ON1 etc trying to locate the sluggishness (since often, the catalogue is destroyed by re-installation). I also did try Hierarchical keywords, but that was a no-no. Using my bought structure of keywords (60 000++), ON1 simply hangs. Luckily I have not been needing to search all my photos for keywords for some time now, but I can't say I've experienced a big performance degradation due to Cataloguing folders. Lucky me ;-)

Background
So, writing off my frustration in this thread inspired me to look further as to what can be my root problem(s). Why? Well, a lot of users are actually happy with the performance (what ever that means and how it translates to our situation), so my take away (I'm also a SW guy) is that ON1 is a very "sensitive" application and highly dependent on that the Windows platform promptly provides whatever resources needed (IOS reports much fewer issues on ON1 performance). So, inspired with new energy from this thread, I did notice that the Explorer.exe often showed up in the top list of CPU usage for no valid reason. With that, it was easy to find a remedy via Google :-). Thanks Justin and Carl.

/Magnus

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Justin Martin

March 31, 2022 21:27
Edited

Magnus/Carl,

Thanks for your responses and I guess I'll make up the triumvirate of (ex) software developers :-). I did it for 25 years before moving into management.

However, with all of my teams, performance was king and we made a point of addressing technical debt as a high priority. We hand rolled some telemetry to help us pin point performance bottlenecks. Which leads me to ponder what ON1 do behind the scenes. Seeing announcements for new features leads me to the conclusion that performance will only degrade further as they pile new features in and doesn't really seem to be a priority. I'm looking for ways to try and move this up the chain via product managers, but getting their details is problematic.

I will have another go this weekend with your suggestions, but have already spent a bit of time updating my Lightroom catalogue in preparation to going back to LR. What a shame.

justin

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Justin Martin

March 31, 2022 07:37

I noticed a miniscule improvement w/o catalogues. However, any photo with AINoNoise applied is a minimum of 10 seconds, usually higher.

I just see this as a lost cause now. You shouldn't have to expend this much effort, jump through hoops etc for what should be "out of the box".

justin

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Peter Campbell

March 31, 2022 10:09

Oh dear , make that 4 ex developers. I junked 2019 a couple of days after installation due to performance. Yesterday I upgraded to 2022.1 and today I have just read this thread and it seems my assumption/hope that after 3 years performance would no longer be a problem is misplaced. Can I be bothered to spend the time learning how to use the software again only to find I need to junk it?. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and spend the money to subscribe to the latest version of LR, from the old classic 6.1.

Pete

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Brian Lawson

Community moderator

March 31, 2022 14:29
Edited

There's some bad info in this thread, particularly that about support. When support marks a ticket closed that does not necessarily mean that the problem is no longer being looked at or worked on. It only means that support is no longer involved in whatever it is. Once they pass something along to the engineers as far as support is concerned that problem ticket for them is closed.

There have been times when they have wanted to quit working on a problem I've reported but after I've walked them through exactly why the problem exists and why it should be fixed they've passed it along to the engineers. In multiple cases I've worked directly with the engineer responsible for the relevant portion of the code. In fact, I'm currently running a newer version of the program than has been released after working with one of them on the problem of lost edits. This fix will be in the next release. I'm also a software engineer having worked on the Space Shuttle Launch Processing System during my career. There are a lot of us using Photo RAW.

One of the best things you can do to improve the program's performance after you've tuned the Windows performance and graphics drivers and settings is to add a separate drive for the Scratch space. I also put the PerfectBrowseCache on mine to remove the storage space load from my boot drive. This is very important for laptop users who may not have a very large C: drive to start with as both the PBC and the Scratch space during editing can grow to fill the drive.

Magnus suggested dividing the boot drive into 3 pieces and putting the Scratch space and PBC on one of the partitions. Do not do this. There are 2 reasons for having the Scratch space on its own drive. 1st is that the scratch space will be limited to the available space on that partition. When it fills up the program crashes. Hudson Henry discovered this and was the one who suggested adding the ability to move the Scratch space to a different drive. By putting it on a dedicated, fast drive you give the program plenty of room to work with. I was working on a 1.92GB pano file the other day with no speed issues at all. But then I'm also on a Mac M1 Mini which absolutely flies. I'm not trying to start any flame wars, or talk anyone into switching systems; that's not what this comment is about. I'm only pointing out that the program does work well when it has been configured properly.

The second reason has to do with I/O contention. By putting the Scratch space on a drive that is not being used by any other programs (at least while editing with Photo RAW) the program does not have to wait its turn to access the drive. It's the only one using it so it has immediate access and doesn't have to wait its turn for other I/O that is already queued up for that drive the way it would be on a partitioned internal boot drive. One thing the scratch space gets used for is brushing masks. When I added the external SSD to my previous MacBook Pro all the brush stuttering went away.

If you want to drive a Ferrari you have to expect a lot of trips to the shop to keep it properly tuned up. 😀

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Magnus Wilson

March 31, 2022 15:52

Hi,

thanks Brian for getting involved providing detailed "under-the-hood" information.

I have some question related to performance for you, but first just a small clarification concerning your interpretation of my Boot drive divided into 3 sections (as I sloppily wrote, "divide ON1 disc setup in 3 parts: C: , ON1 scratch& cache, and the photos to be edited"). Sorry for being unclear, but as I also stated in "My Config:" part, I have divided the boot disc (1TB M.2) into two partitions (C:, and Q:). C: is the traditional windows boot partition including all applications etc. Q: is dedicated as a fast tmp area for ON1 (scratch & cache). The 3rd disc is a separate SSD (G:) where I store all the photos (and .on1) files during my editing sessions. After some months, I copy those edited files to a slower, traditional spin-disc for "archiving of the negatives" (which I include in Catalogued Folders). Copying speed of files between SSD & M.2 (G: and Q:) reaches 3-400 MB/s using a normal explorer.

ON1 "under-the-hood" questions
@Brian, so what I understand, for me, it would be better to move the Scratch area away from the Q: drive to a separate, fast SSD to improve brushing, simply due to the potential I/O bottleneck towards one physical disc drive (M.2 drive or not). However, I have just separated the cache from scratch on two physical disc via Preferences->System settings. To my surprise, it did not make any noticeable difference.

As I said earlier in this thread, at Zoom level-Fit, brushing is almost instantaneous, but at 100% Zoom (on a 4K screen) I still have a large lag before the brush starts to move, and then there is still heavy stuttering while brushing. So Brian, how large space is needed for the scratch area (currently I only have 29GB free on that SSD disc). Is that enough?

@Brian, is my experience and conclusion correct, that it's not really the photo file size as such that mainly impacts perceived performance during editing, but rather the screen resolution + Zoom-level vs photo pixels, like in my case a 4K screen and 7952x5304 (since I see little difference between Raw compared to "half the size" JPGs)?

@Brian, today I have 32GB RAM in my rig, and ON1 is pegged at using max 80% of system RAM. Is my performance likely to improve (given my pixel dimensions) if I increase my RAM to 64GB?

@Brian, when looking at optimizing the choice of GPU for ON1 performance, should I compare graphic cards based on the 3D benchmark rating or the 2D benchmark rating? I understand from previous advise that the more RAM in the video card the better ON1 performance. Today, I have an 8GB card. Would a move to 12GB card improve my overall ON1 perceived performance, or there is some "threshold level" below 8GB that is more critical for the performance? Again, I would guess that the pixel dimensions would determine the optimal GPU RAM size, correct?

@Brian, another small comment/suggestion (and I might have missed ON1 have already addressed this suggestion ;-). One or two years ago there was an excellent write-up (by Hudson I think) how to gain maximum performance from ON1. Is that one updated with this brushing stuttering hint? Even better, if all these hints and tricks are collected in one place and pointed to from User Guide and other documentation, like "Read this first before you install". Also, if such a thread is "pinned to the top" of user forums, I think it would save a lot of time for your support guys. During my many years with On1 (since 2008), I have gradually collected this information, of which most parts have been provided by and shared with the support team and in your forums.

Thx in advance Brian, and again, thx for the best application (for my needs) /Magnus

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Brian Lawson

Community moderator

March 31, 2022 17:00

[I]t would be better to move the Scratch area away from the Q: drive to a separate, fast SSD… Yes but not just brushing. That was just one example I could think of where you can see the effects. Tracking the brush movements is also handled by the GPU.

I have just separated the cache from scratch… I'm not sure what you mean by cache. There are 2 of them and there are settings for each in the Preferences but it isn't clear from that dialog that you are dealing with 2 separate items. The PerfectBrowseCache holds the previews for all the images in your library. It will grow without limit as needed. This is the one we can move to a different location. I put mine on my Scratch drive because it has plenty of room and I'm rarely using the PBC while editing. The only time I can think of where they would both be used at the same time is when the Filmstrip is open while editing. I keep it closed until I need it so there isn't any I/O conflict there.

The other Cache is the one controlled by the Size slider. That cache hold previews for the Browser to use. Previews for images not in a Catalog are shuffled in and out of this space as needed. Older previews are removed to make space for what you are currently viewing in the Browser.

It took me a couple of readings of the Catalogs and Caches - ON1 Photo RAW 2022 & ON1 PHOTO RAW 2021 document before I got a grasp on the differences.

I can't speak to why you are not seeing any difference in performance, sorry. All I know is you can search the forums where this topic has been discussed in the past and read post from many users who have seen the improvement. It could be differences in hardware. That would be my first guess.

[H]ow large space is needed for the scratch area…? I don't know but I would think 29GB would be plenty. All I do know is that the program will ask for as much as it needs until it runs out of space from what Hudson Henry said in one of his recent Plus videos.

[I]t's not really the photo file size as such that mainly impacts perceived performance during editing… I don't know the answer to this. You'll have to ask support to ask the engineers about it.

I have 32GB RAM in my rig… More RAM never hurts but how much it will help depends upon how hard you're currently pushing the 32GB. It should reduce the need for scratch space and the inherent lags that come with waiting for I/O to happen, shared drive or dedicated. Have you monitored the actual usage? That is the gauge I would use. If you're frequently filling it up while running PR then more would probably help. If not, it would be a waste of money as it sits unused.

[S]hould I compare graphic cards based on the 3D benchmark rating or the 2D benchmark rating? I don't know. Being a Mac user I haven't investigated this aspect of performance. I would ask support. Again, with the VRAM, more is generally better but I don't know how to monitor its usage like we can system RAM. Other Windows users may have some advice here.

As for the pixel dimensions question, again I don't know the answer, sorry. I don't know how the program manages VRAM usage.

One or two years ago there was an excellent write-up (by Hudson I think) how to gain maximum performance from ON1. Your best bet here is to check out Hudson's YouTube Channel.

Thanks for the thanks but it is misplaced. I do not work for ON1. This is why I am unable to answer some of your detailed questions; I don't have access to the code. I've learned what I know from talking with support and the other users here and from observation of how the program is performing on my system. One of Hudson's videos is where I first learned about moving the Scratch space to a dedicated drive.

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Magnus Wilson

March 31, 2022 18:14

Hi Brian,

thanks for your time and efforts and I'm sorry I took your for being affiliated with ON1. I have one more question for you if I may ask for a bit more of your time?

@Brian, on a Mac system, do you have the same brush performance when you work in "Zoom Fit" vs. "Zoom100%"?

@Justin, on a Win system, do you have the same brush performance when you work in "Zoom Fit" vs. "Zoom100%"?

My conclusion of this thread so far:

"I have just separated the cache from scratch… I'm not sure what you mean by cache."
I mean the two settings available in Preferences->System

a) Scratch Folder location: Initially on Q:, now moved to P: (separate SATA SSD with only 29GB free)
b) Browse Cache, stored in Q: (available space 300GB, on a M.2 disc, which also contains the C: partition with another 150GB free space) with slider set to 10000 MB (max)

During installation of ON1, there is a question where to store "extra resources". I use the Q: drive here too (to install everything that is not put on the C: drive by the installation script). So, my Q: drive (M.2) contains the following ON1 specific folders - ON1 Photo RAW 2022 Cache, PerfectBrowseCache (7.8GB), Common 2022, Extras 2022, and ON1 Photo RAW 2022

All other sliders in the Preferences-System are "full", except the Video card strength, roughly set to "80%"

"The only time I can think of where they would both be used at the same time is when the Filmstrip is open while editing. I keep it closed until I need it so there isn't any I/O conflict there."

So, basically what differ your system from mine (beyond the obvious ;-), is that I use the Dual screen mode and use the "Grid view" on my 2nd screen while editing. Sometimes I think I can see a slight performance degradation, but mainly not. In the Edit screen, I'm however careful with closing the Left panel (with all the Presets) to avoid the extra rendering of each individual Preset.

I will read the provided link a few times too ;-)

"It took me a couple of readings of the Catalogs and Caches - ON1 Photo RAW 2022 & ON1 PHOTO RAW 2021 document before I got a grasp on the differences."

"I can't speak to why you are not seeing any difference in performance, sorry. All I know is you can search the forums where this topic has been discussed in the past and read post from many users who have seen the improvement. It could be differences in hardware. That would be my first guess."

OK, good, then I will continue my research on the forum and with Tech support.

"I have 32GB RAM in my rig… More RAM never hurts but how much it will help depends upon how hard you're currently pushing the 32GB."

I'm pegged to the 80% system RAM level according to the Resource monitor (when working with ON1 editing). Without ON1, I rarely go above 40%, so I think it will be worth to extend to 64GB totally.

"One or two years ago there was an excellent write-up (by Hudson I think) how to gain maximum performance from ON1. Your best bet here is to check out Hudson's YouTube Channel."

Good idea, thx. I will now contact ON1 support with the remaining questions while continuing my research, and report back with my findings.

/Magnus

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Brian Lawson

Community moderator

March 31, 2022 18:27

I very rarely have any brush lag anymore. When I do it is because I'm working on a large file with multiple Layers and lots of internal layers (Effects & Local Adjustments).

When I do see it happen I am usually working on a layer lower in the Editing Pipeline (see page 72 in the User guide) so the changes I'm making have to get re-rendered back up through the entire stack. If lowering the Video Card Strength doesn't help then I'll temporarily turn off things like Dynamic Contrast (a big hit on the GPU for that one) or localized sharpening and that usually clears it up.

Here are my Preferences > System settings.

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David Kick

March 31, 2022 21:23

If this has already been mentioned in this thread please forgive me.

One key change with Windows 11 is Windows decides how the video card is used and not the graphics card software. You should setup the Nvida control panel correctly but it is CRITICAL to go into the Win11 Graphics settings, add On1 to the list and set it to always use High Performance for On1 - do not let Windows decide.

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Carl Traub

April 01, 2022 01:51

It would be great if the installer did this so that users didn't have to remember to.

[I just posted a suggestion for this on the Ideas page. I would have put a link here, but after sorting by date, the newest posting shown is from December 2021.]

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Roy Gaylard

April 12, 2022 05:32

These are all very interesting and I thank the contributors for their input and attempts to help us solve these issues. We need to remember that we are not all software engineers - we are mostly artists, so much of this is lost to us.

What we are is paying customers who don't need this hassle - we pay for a product and expect it to work or we go elsewhere. I too have found that as ON1 improves, performance gets worse. I would hate to have to leave, as I really enjoy using the software a lot more than LR and PS. I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that if there is no real improvement by the time 2023 is ready for release, I will have to say goodbye to ON1. The price advantage that ON1 had is starting to diminish, which unfortunately makes LR and PS more attractive, and they function flawlessly.

As an artist who used many different graphics software for many years, it is very obvious to me that the problem is memory management - what is commonly referred to as memory leakage, When software gets more and more sluggish over time and re-starting and rebooting solves the problem, the engineers need to be looking at memory management.

Just my five cents worth - and I really hope they do something about the performance of ON1 !

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Justin Martin

April 14, 2022 06:00

Just an update on this from my side. I decided to write to support expressing my frustration and was asked to submit sample photos, videos showing the slow performance and log files and was told that these would be passed to a developer. I did that two weeks ago but have had nothing back.

Support did say that the developers are always reviewing performance, but it would have been more beneficial to say that in the earlier correspondence, rather than just shrugging their shoulders and giving up, which for me is a poor customer experience.

I don't have much confidence that I will get any sort of resolution and continue with updating my Lightroom catalogue. All new photos will go straight to Lightroom now, which is a shame.

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Justin Martin

April 14, 2022 22:38

So, it appears it is the end of the road for me using ON1 as my primary editor. A great shame as it has excellent functionality, hampered by so so performance. I received the following which doesn't augur well for a solution any time soon. And I will state that, yes, it is bad with AI no noise applied, but I notice slowness on files w/o that applied.

"Our dev team has indicated that NoNoise processing has been applied to the files, and that when you re-open a file back into Edit, it has to re-run the NoNoise process.
This is currently how the app will function and will cause slower loading times.

Hopefully with a future version we'll be able to improve NoNoise processing and performance."

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Oddvar Næss

May 18, 2022 08:18

Just want to add my experience with On1 PhotoRAW 2022 so far as well.

I've been trying to find alternatives for LR6 for a couple years now as I refuse to accept their subscription model. Coming from LR6 I've been trying On1 PR2022 now for about 6 months. Comparing features and specification I would say On1 PR2022 seems to be the best LR6 alternative I've come by so far. However, after actually using it I have 3 major problems with it that I have reported to their support:

- Sluggish performance (I've tried all possible solutions I've come by till now without any significant improvement on my computer - Win 10/11, 40GB RAM, 1TB NVM SSD, Nvidia 1050Ti and AMD Ryzen 4600 6 core/12 Threads)
- Highlight recovery (PR is not able to recover highlights from my NEF-files while LR6, Affinity Photo, Luminar 4 and Exposure X7 have not problem at all)
- RAW files from my Panasonic GX880 are rendered with crazy pinkish colors not possible to correct in PR. (Workaround is to convert to DNG with Adobe DNG Converter before processing in On1.)

Of these 3 issues I have I must say that the general performance is what's bugging me the most. I feel like I use twice as much time doing general edits after a photo shoot using PR compared to LR6 and most of this time is used on waiting for photos to load properly in "Edit Mode", Saving changes and Exporting. What I don't understand is how LR6 from 2015 is able to perform so much better than a brand new version of PR2022 when doing general RAW editing (no DeNoise AI etc.). LR6 is even performing better than PR2022 on my old intel laptop with iGPU and 8GB Ram.

Support feedback have been "We've let our developer team know". That's it. No followup or any further information. Hence, as a user, I have no idea if they ever plan to invest any of their time on my problems.

I'm going to await their 2022.5 June update. I really hope they will focus on improving quality of existing sw-base and performance instead of new functions and AI-stuff etc. However, I'm not convinced so far.

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Justin Martin

May 18, 2022 09:23

They clearly know performance is an issue hence the non committal response from Support. I "apparently" had my case reviewed by a developer who just said that as I had applied NoNoise, it was going to be slow to reapply. 10-13 seconds to open each image to be precise.

But I tested it again after the announcement today of the impending 2022.5, and even on photos with limited changes, it is still 2-3 seconds to change photos in Edit mode. That's just not acceptable on a good spec'd laptop.

I've gone back to Lightroom which has no performance related issues and just use PR for occasional edits. I've used On1 software for about 9 years or so and it has never been performant. I bit the bullet late last year and migrated my catalogue from Lightroom. I wish I hadn't!

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Magnus Wilson

June 08, 2022 08:18

Hi guys,

some time has passed, but I just want to report back, that the support I've receive has been really excellent on these very tricky performance issues. The technical guys are really helping me understand what is happening and the complexity of re-producing faults. Today, they fixed a very strange thing where edits seemed to have disappeared. With that fix, to my happy surprise, the performance also went from "bad and very frustrating" to "nice to work again". I can now do the "left-right-left-right-left" slide maneuver again etc. (without the need for a complete re-installation) :-)

So, my advice related to this thread, if you can, be patient and stick with the most capable & complete Photo SW currently available (my personal opinion based on my needs for a solid balancing and packaging of Photo mgmt, with Development & Creativity features, together with professional photo output facilities). Help them to help you. Try to systematically identify "peculiarities" when working and improving on your workflow. Contact support and provide them with as many details as possible so they can re-produce your specific context. Try to relate back to old tickets as you provide them with more and better information.

I can only agree with Brian's earlier statement on Support. My personal experience is that they are doing a great job and are very eager to support you.

So, as part of a solution to parts of this long thread, support announced to me a new version coming very soon incorporating many fixes. I look forward to a bit better performance, more stability and the new great AI-based features in one package. I can really see the potential in ON1, but I can also understand the difficult continuous balancing act ON1 needs to do.

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Carl Traub

June 09, 2022 02:29

I think I'm with Justin on his decision to give up on PR. I have not a single good interaction with support or engineering. The standard "Trash your settings, reinstall PR, and see if that helps" response has worn me out.

A few weeks ago I reported a problem where the Levels histogram pane shows corruption each time a slider is moved. I recorded a single 30 second video showing the corruption happen roughly a dozen times. This problem does not occur in the image itself, just in the histogram. This also did not happen before I installed PR 2022. Support 'consulted' with engineering, and determined that AMD's top of the line CPU with integrated GPU was causing the corruption , despite no apparent testing on such hardware. (My Windows 10 OS and video drivers are kept up to date.)

They also blamed the corruption problem on the fact that the loaded image came from a physical hard drive rather than an SSD! (My OS and all programs are loaded on an NVME drive, exceeding their SSD recommendations.) Blaming a physical hard drive for impacting active editing doesn't make any sense. When I questioned how many times the one image that I am editing must be loaded from the HDD to affect video performance, and why that would be occurring, I got no response. They aren't referring to PR's cache location, which is on an SSD as recommended - they actually blamed image LOADING for the ongoing corruption of the histogram.

This is just one of many support tickets that have gone unresolved. I've had undefined export problems; image corruption; invalid Program PR entries in the Windows registry; crashes while running Resize; crashes while Browsing; image corruption in Browse, Edit, and Export modules; and more. I've submitted crash reports and gotten no response.

They told me there is no solution to the performance or corruption issues that I see other to upgrade my hardware. Yet they will offer no details on to how much of a performance increase can be expected, or whether it would truly have any impact on the problems. Will a $500 GPU fix the constant video and program corruption problems, or will it just make them happen a little bit faster?

They also stated that 2022.5 would require even more GPU horsepower, implying that I should expect the problems to worsen.

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Brian Lawson

Community moderator

June 09, 2022 04:55

You have some misplaced expectations and you are directing your disappointment onto the software in place of recognizing the flaws in your thinking.

An integrated GPU is never going to perform as well as a dedicated video card of the same age. They just are not as powerful and you have shared memory in place of dedicated VRAM which puts additional stress on your system.

I agree that the use of a spinning hard drive is not the cause of the problems. All that means is that the program cannot read the files as quickly as it can from an SSD. It should have no affect on corruption issues of any kind.

It is also unrealistic to expect the engineers to know the answers to the questions you ask about adding specific pieces of hardware. ON1 is a small company and simply cannot afford to buy every combination of motherboard/CPU/GPU that exists in the Windows world. I doubt even Adobe can do that. Without the hardware to do specific tests with and to make the required performance measurements it just isn't possible to answer those kinds of questions. Even if they did there will be users whose experience, for whatever reason, doesn't measure up to the the hypothetical answers given and they would complain and accuse the company of lying. It's a no win scenario for them.

You haven't defined "histogram corruption" nor your system specs. You also have not specified which $500 GPU you are looking at. No one here is going to be able to offer any specific advice under those conditions.

Yes, 2022.5 is going to require more horsepower, especially in the GPU area. All that AI and neural networking needed to make it work requires a lot of processing power. It's my personal opinion that the company is pretty generous in their minimum system specs. The program may run on a system that poorly configured but it won't perform very well. I believe they should up those requirements, especially once the .5 update is released.

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Brian Lawson

Community moderator

June 09, 2022 04:59

When you are doing your editing do you leave the Presets column and/or the Filmstrip open? Doing that is adding more stress to your system as all the preset previews have to be re-rendered for every edit/brush stroke. The same goes for the Filmstrip preview of the image currently being edited. If those are closed the system has less rendering to do and will correspondingly improve in performance. How much? Hard to say but on a low powered system it could be significant.

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Magnus Wilson

June 09, 2022 05:36

Thx Brian, yes, I always remove these additional "power gulpers". 90% of my time in ON1, I use a 4k monitor together with a 2k as 'Dual monitor'. When the system is too slow, I also close down the Dual Monitor, but most often not.

In Browse, I usually display Gridview on 4k and Single View on 2k, and always leave the Search window up and visible.

In Edit mode, I use the 4K for Edits in single view (no Filmstrip, and the Preset left side pane closed) and on 2K I show a gridview (often quite small thumbnails). I also use the 2K for a quick compare between 2-3 photos during my edit sessions (select the photos in the gridview and press 'c'). That compare is not as 'handy' as the Browse-mode compare, but it is faster, since I do not need to leave Edit mode and then re-enter Edit mode ;-)

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Justin Martin

June 09, 2022 08:06

I'm with Carl in that my interactions with Support have been disappointing, whilst accepting that it is extraordinarily difficult to diagnose issues when there are endless permutations of hardware. But as I said previously, I received two copy and paste answers and then a shrug. When I made a louder complaint, I put together a lot of evidence for a developer and was finally told that AI Nonoise takes time (12 seconds) end of story. But I had also highlighted that just opening regular files takes 3 seconds and this was ignored. I didn't have the energy to keep plugging away for some additional feedback.

I've been back in Lightroom for a nearly a month with no issues and just use PR as a plug-in (again), which is a shame as I do believe that PR is the superior tool. That said, I will install the new version when it drops and run some tests although I am not holding my breath.

So Brian, as a community moderator, do you have any interaction with the product team (eg Dan H)? I understand this is peer to peer, but surely there must be some valuable insights on the various threads?

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Bernd PALMER

June 09, 2022 10:10
Edited

I am surprised by these types of problems; I haven't encountered any of them so far. They certainly have nothing to do with Windows 11. I'm running ON1 Photo on 2 different laptops under Windows 11 Pro Insider

1) DELL G7 7790 Intel Core i7, 16 GB memory, SSD 256 GB (programs), HDD 1 TB (photos), GPU NVIDIA 2060

2) DELL XPS 9310 Intel Core i7, 16 GB, SSD 1 TB, Intel graphics processor

Admittedly I'm not doing overly complicated layers, but I can run NoNoise AI and Resize AI and stitching comfortably.

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Brian Lawson

Community moderator

June 09, 2022 13:05

Justin,

First of all let me say I'm sorry your interactions with support haven't gone as well as you would have liked.

About the "copy and paste" responses: you get those because they resolve the majority of the problems that support sees so they are the very first thing to be tried. You should make a habit of doing them yourself before submitting a support request and letting them know up front that you have done so. It will save everyone some time.

Yes, NoNoise AI does take some time because of how it works. The image has to be analyzed during (before? I'm not sure exactly) the demosaicing or de-Bayering process and there is no way around it. If you want better performance you need better video hardware. It is just that simple and complaining, your word, not mine, isn't going to change anything. Once that has been told to you what more would you expect them to say about it and how much of their time do you expect them to spend repeating themselves when there are other people with problems to help?

When I took a class on machine intelligence last year the projects where we had to write neural networking machines took the longest time. Our regular homework schedule called for projects to be submitted the next class period. For those project we were given a week or more as it could take 3 or 4 days of 24 hours per day processing just to build the AI and another day to run them. This is one of the reasons Apple has included specialized Neural Engine processors in their M series chips — to speed up that process.

Comparing the performance of opening an image in Adobe products vs Photo RAW is a false analogy. The programs work in completely different ways. Adobe's programs convert your RAW files into pixel images right up front and all the editing is done on those pixels. This is what CameraRaw does. Photo RAW maintains the raw data throughout all your processing. Every time a photo is opened it must be analyzed and demosaiced all over again then rendered into the RGB image we see onscreen. Adobe's programs are more CPU oriented so faster processors provide better performance. Photo RAW makes more use of the GPU so video card performance is the determining factor.

My Community Moderator status doesn't provide me any special access to the engineering staff, only to Kahlie in Customer Service. As a beta tester I do have some access during beta testing periods but after that I go through Tech Support like everyone else.

I do have some direct access to Dan. He and the president held a video conference call with me last year to discuss my thoughts on the company's progress and direction. It is a privilege I don't want to abuse but every once in a while I will write to Dan directly.

I have had direct contact with the engineers when a problem I've reported through channels was directed to them and they needed more information from me to help resolve the issue and when they had bug fixes for that problem that they wanted me to test. I've been running a newer version than 2022.1 for several months now related to fixes for the disappearing edits issue. I haven't had any lost edits since installing it and that fix will be in today's release.

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Magnus Wilson

June 09, 2022 19:05

Just tested the new version 2022.5 and after my first 10 edits, I'm very satisfied with the performance. Again, the AI NoNoise does an amazing work! Can't wait to test ReSize.

With my 70-300mm, at ISO6400, 1/500, 5.6, I took indoors of a kitchen island with a toothpick holder amongst other stuff. Then I cropped it hard only to get the toothpick holder left in the crop. Super nice details and almost NO noise. Amazing technology, just comparing 3 years ago, when my ISO 6400 photos rendered on my 4K screen was "almost useless". Now I can even crop them hard and still virtually no noise. With the new ReSize, I think, I do not need to buy the Sony FE 200-600 lens for greater reach. The original 7952x5304 pixels (Raw) seem to deliver plenty of detail even at hard cropping in ON1...

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Magnus Wilson

June 09, 2022 21:05

After spending another 2hours editing, the speed and consistency I have in my user experience is sooo much better. I'm starting to seriously like this version :-).

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Justin Martin

June 09, 2022 22:52

Brian, in my initial query I outlined that I had reinstalled all my drivers plus ON1 and the first suggestion I get is to reinstall all the drivers.

I purchased a new laptop specifically for photo editing and assembled the best components that I could afford. 32 GB RAM, dual SSD, 6GB nvidia and 11th gen 17. I assumed this would be sufficient but clearly I misjudged. I have now installed 2022.5 and anecdotally edits with NoNoise now load 4 seconds faster (from 12 to about 8). Pervesely, loading photos with basic edits has gone up from 2 to 3 seconds. They do claim "Ultra-fast browsing and file opening and exporting.", but not processing and I personally find LR faster to export to JPG when I need it.

Thank you for outlining the differences between LR and PR as I was unaware, but for me, I will continue to use LR as my primary tool as it does 80% of what I need and PR as a plugin.

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Sluggish performance on Windows 11

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