Merging Layers Taking Forever

[lionsilverwolf]

In AR4, lately when I've been merging layers with any kind of blend effect it takes forever. We're talking like five minutes. It does get it done eventually, but this came up out of nowhere and is sticking around thru some PC restarts and several different paintings. I'm not worried, but it is annoying. It's not slowing anything else on my PC down either.

[HwyStar]

I don't know if merging layers down requires the program to use your hard drive. If you see the hard drive light constantly lighting up while it is merging then you may want to perform a chkdsk on your windows computer's hard drive. You can also check the drive from windows explorer, right click on the drive, properties, tools, check hard drive. Use the default options and see if your drive is okay. I am writing this from my iPad and I may have these steps not exactly right.

How much free space do you have left on the drive that ArtRage is installed on? HHD? SSD? RAM available? Etc. Inquiring minds want to know and there are better professinals out there who can do a better job than I can at helping you with your issue.

[lionsilverwolf]

How much free space do you have left on the drive that ArtRage is installed on? HHD? SSD? RAM available? Etc. Inquiring minds want to know and there are better professinals out there who can do a better job than I can at helping you with your issue.

No visible HD light so no idea on that, but it's a 3.someoddTB SSD with the better part of 3TB free and 32GB RAM. Friend built it as a beast for me to work on.

[HannahRage]

Memory would normally be the issue here; either working with large files, or your computer running out of space. If it's neither of those things, then either something in the background is sucking up memory, or something is actually broken :D

Are you seeing any difference between a mostly empty test painting with two layers at the default canvas size and a much larger more complicated image?

[nekomata]

In AR4, lately when I've been merging layers with any kind of blend effect it takes forever. We're talking like five minutes. It does get it done eventually, but this came up out of nowhere and is sticking around thru some PC restarts and several different paintings. I'm not worried, but it is annoying. It's not slowing anything else on my PC down either.
are you merging them one by one, or merging a bunch of grouped layers together?

I had this happening when merging a large number of layers with different opacity values (i.e. 40, 90, 30, 75, etc, and a couple completely opaque layers thrown here and there)
I'm not sure if it's a bug or the way artrage is intended to work, but this doesn't happen when dropping layers down to a 100 % opaque layer individually. a bit more keyboard work, but it's much faster - I actually had no idea the merging actually gets done eventually,
I just used to kill the app after a few minutes of process stuck at 80-something % complete state with no response.

[lionsilverwolf]

Memory would normally be the issue here; either working with large files, or your computer running out of space. If it's neither of those things, then either something in the background is sucking up memory, or something is actually broken :D

Are you seeing any difference between a mostly empty test painting with two layers at the default canvas size and a much larger more complicated image?

Let's see. Testing time!

Okay I've narrowed it down to this specific instance: Grouped layers, not visible. Layers above the grouping, one with some blend mode applied. Opacity does not matter. Merging the blended layer with any layer while above a non-visible group (not interacting with the group at all). Size has an effect however it is significantly slow all the way down at 200px X 200px.

[HannahRage]

Oh yes, I see. Thank you for tracking that down, and the very clear steps! I've passed this on and we'll see if it's something we can fix for you.

[RedSaucers]

I have also just come across this same issue and have a .ptg just before I did the merge which means I can duplicate the problem any time if that would help

[Bertrude]

lionsilverwolf - I just wanted to thanks to you for posting this as I've run into the same problem recently with AR4 taking ages to merge 2 layers (about 15-20 mins each time).

It was driving me nuts but having read your post I moved an invisible group (which also had several other groups within it) above the two I wanted to merge and they now merge happily and at a suitable speed. What a relief! Thanks so much :)

[DarkOwnt]

Yikes... does anyone know if AR5 might have the same problem? Do I need to worry about whether my groups are invisible and where they are in the stack?

[Bertrude]

I've just tried to recreate the problem in AR5. It doesn't seem to be a problem :)

[HannahRage]

If it IS a problem, then please tell us! We can actively fix most new bugs that you might find in ArtRage 5, so the more quickly you find them all, the better :)