Speed of filter processing – FIXED

Yeah... I suspect something extremely similar occurring here with mine. I was using Filter Forge and made myself a filter in the Windows version using Bootcamp*. Once the Mac beta was released I transferred the filters (ffxml files) into that so I can use them directly.

To me, the Windows version clearly rendered the same filter much faster than the Mac version.

I am using a 2.6GHz Intel Core2 Duo Mac Book Pro with 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

*Bootcamp runs directly off the same Mac. Spec-wise, it should be the same.

Turning off the anti-aliasing can often speed things up (rendering) by a considerable amount (up to 2X) and I believe (not 100% sure) that FF defaults anti-aliasing on everything to 'edge' and '5 samples' when putting it in the library.

jffe

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Vladimir Golovin wrote: Speed optimization is a common issue with community-made filters.

----Hey now ! And some of ours are funner too

jffe

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Skybase wrote: Another thing I figured was that the Mac PS Plugin seems to be EXTREMELY slow compared to the Standalone copy.

Now this is very interesting.

Could you please post some measurements? To measure rendering time in Filter Forge, check the 'Show Elapsed Rendering Time' checkbox in Tools > Options > Rendering.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Skybase, thanks for the measurements. We're looking into it.

We've fixed this -- the plugin and standalone versions now have the same rendering times. The fix will be rolled out with the next update.

oreosPaul, please refrain from posting the same complaint in multiple forum threads.

Any chance of any feed back on this?...any idea on when this will be adressed?.. And I don't think posting about a similar complaint is unreasonable if its relevant to the threads.


Even though I'm sure it can be inconvenient for those interested in making more sales of this software, .... as it probably has more chance that more people will be warned off buying it, guess the easiest way to shut me up is to actually get this software finally working.

Does this happen only on the Mac version or is it also on the Windows version?

I remember having made a thread about the difference, although I think that maybe is not related to the same topic of this thread

What are the differences between using FF as standalone and as plugin?

Paul, have you tried using Substance designer? If you're looking for speed that tool will get you speed. It's just that it's aimed at a different market, not photography / graphic design but for 3D and texture editing. But either way with a bit of clever usage it can be used for general "filterforge esque" work. I highly recommend it for those who just can't FF's render times. But it does come at a cost of it being very technical and specific to the 3D market.

At the moment, I really don't see anything like FilterForge in the market. It's kinda like either do it manually or do it procedurally. Both methods do take time!

As a tip for anybody who kinda wants faster renders, if you have FF pro, go into it, and just cut away the relative areas you don't need, and render what's necessary. A lot of what's done in FilterForge is also doable outside of it, just manually.

I'm a FilterForge Mac user since 1.0! And while there are minor speed differences that I've observed between the PC and Mac... it's never really bothered me so much.

==== Some err... mildly off-topic discussion from here ====

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As a standard,.. Photoshop plugin's will respond and render instantly nowadays, if not maybe within a few minutes tops. Hell why not even 30 mins to an hour. Not days and days?

Right, it's actually because some of Photoshop's plugins are written specifically to do a specific task. Basically, if you ever write a program, and that program does 1 thing, it's gonna process that information quickly. But have a ton of variables, now you have a complex program that'll take a bit more time before it reaches an output.

FilterForge has a ton of things going on. You can have thousands of parameters, hundreds of inputs and outputs and with double precision numbers being crunched and given the output quality, to me, the render speeds seem mildly reasonable. But don't get me wrong, I do want faster renders myself lol.

But that's I think one explanation. The other is simply that most user filters here aren't optimized. So I'm saying strip away what's unnecessary and you'll get much nicer render times. To me, what's doable in Photoshop manually should be what's stripped away.

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Ok ,..what do you consider acceptable time wise?....

So ok, what's a nice render time? To me, 30 minutes IS OK. 15 hours is when you wanna start thinking about taking a filter apart and manually achieving a portion of the effect. Honestly, I'm too used to seeing slow renders across many programs. I am a mo-graph designer, 3D artist... so on.

This is pretty relative so to me, what you think is acceptable is your standard, but the software also does have it's intentions and purposes. Programs are, after all, built for a certain market. From the very beginning it seems like FilterForge was a texturing tool. FilterForge 1.0 didn't support non-square ratios. The output had seamless tiling, and many filters which were created were texture generators. So the market was intended for people doing 3D / game design so on. Later in FilterForge 2.0, we finally see non-square ratio images being supported. That adds a whole shift in paradigm from one market to a broader market. FF as of now seems to be heavily dominated by photography enthusiasts who are used to Photoshop's plugin responsiveness than 3D folks who are used to watching renders pass for hours.

The thing is this: FilterForge was intended to be part of a process. Just like any of those Photoshop plugins it's not intended to be the one-stop filter-tool that finishes up your image. It's a process, and users are probably supposed to do a bit more on it. But over the years many filters here have presented that you can use FilterForge as a one-stop shop for generated work. But that comes with the cost of time and processor power.

But that's probably what FF's about. At least to me. I donno... to me it's just like ... figuring out a good way to handle it. I've been saying to many folks over the years that you can really take render times down significantly... and make exactly what you need / want. But it's all up to people on that.

I do agree about the speed of some filters. Since FF is an open community, users can do whatever they want and there really isn't much quality control. I try to use some of the filters on print res 4K+ images, which is impossible for some, as I don't have 10 hours to wait. What I do suggest is a rating system, usage information or some sorta set of guidelines that helps optimization of FF.

Substance designer is super cool, however not for this forum as it's a comparison of apples and steak.

dp