Levels and Color Tool - very slow after 8.0.137 install

[MarkT]

Hi,

Have experienced a significant slowness when using Levels and Color Tool after installing 8.0.137. I compared the same operations on the same image on 8.0.134, and with the new version. Painting the mask, and also switching between XX% mask overlay and transparent mask overlay all exhibit degraded performance.

My first attempt using Levels and Color Tool actually locked-up my PC. I tried to bring up Task Manager but everything was frozen. I waited a little over 4 minutes, and TM finally opened at which point PWP shut down and re-opened all by itself.

Same basic experience on both my desktop and laptop, so I don't think it's anything to do with my hardware...

Update: After minimizing the transformation window and then recalling it from the taskbar, changing the mask overlay transparency forced the window to a minimized state.

[MarkT]

Running Task Manager I see the following Memory Usage:

open PWP, no image: 3.3MB
open 1 36MP jpg image: 113.9MB
open Levels and Color Tool: 356.3MB
paint a small mask at 0% overlay: 634.0MB
switch to 50% overlay: 910.0MB
switch to 100% overlay: 1186.4MB
switch to 0% overlay: 1462.9MB
erase mask: 1967.8MB
cancel Levels and Color Tool: 114.3MB

I guess I find it odd that simply by switching the mask overlay % the memory usage would continue to increase.

[jsachs]

Maybe something to do with the change to minimizing windows as I didn't change anything in the Levels and Color tool. Also, it works fine here.

[jsachs]

Here is a replacement exe file without the minimize to task bar feature. Let me know it this works any better. The memory usage reflects the growth of the undo list as you add strokes.

https://www.dl-c.com/Documents/Picture% ... .0.138.zip

[MarkT]

So pretty much the same memory usage as previously described. As you say, probably due to the necessary undo copies. Only I didn't think switching the overlay transparency would need to be remembered...

Only this time, when memory went past 2400MB, the transformation window disappeared from view. At least with the "minimize to taskbar" I was able to restore the smaller window.

In comparison, if I use the Levels and Color transformation with a mask, I can switch the overlay transparency back and forth with no change to the memory usage. After several mask alterations with various selection tools, memory usage did not exceed 750MB.

[jsachs]

I went over all the code changes since 134 and I can't find anything that should cause what you are seeing. The only changes to the Levels and Color tool since Aug 1 were to add support for 16-bit masks back on build 127 and a very minor change for minimize to task bar just recently.

Are you having problems with any other tools or transformations?

[MarkT]

I ran through the other Tool transformations and didn't see anything similar in terms of memory usage. Levels and Color Tool was the only one that used up over 2 GB, and got as high as 6GB before I stopped.

So I can forge ahead sticking with the standard Levels and Color transformation, and maybe reserve the use of the tool for very small alterations.

Still seems odd to me that changing the % of mask overlay would use up RAM in the tool but not in the main transformation.

[jsachs]

There was probably a bug in the undo logic -- in any case, I have changed the way undo works in the Levels and Color tool so it does not try to save all the previous image patches that get overwritten but just starts over and replays the saved strokes from the beginning instead. This makes Undo a little slower, especially if you have a lot of strokes but it makes painting faster and saves a lot of memory. I also removed some code that was forcing a screen update after each mouse motion, but there still seem to be cases where the program has trouble keeping up with the mouse when painting for no apparent reason. Still not sure why this would be an issue only with the latest versions or why it should only happen some of the time, but Windows may be doing something else in the background that is stealing a lot of cycles.