Fresco Lag after a few hours

Report · Dec 28, 2020

So, I use Adobe Fresco alot. I very much prefer it to drawing in Photoshop, the interface is quicker, the touch controls are more responsive. It's just a better place to draw.

Except.

That feeling only lasts about an hour or so. After an hour or so (a few if I'm extremely lucky and there are super limited layers), once multiple layers and strokes have been made, once groups have been grouped and blend modes have been applied multiple times... something terrible happens. It just... chokes. Suddenly, the smallest adjustment takes many seconds to apply. Zoom freezes. Brushes lag.

There is ALWAYS a lag on eye-dropping colors, which is weird and almost like it is going online for such a simple task, but I can sort of get used to that, especially if I have a library of the colors I want to use. But once this hour or so limit is hit, the whole program is unusable.

I used to run into this a little on my iPad Pro (2017), but I chalked it up to limited ram. When I saw that Fresco was available for the Surface Studio 2, it seemed like a match made in heaven. Big screen, smooth drawing... And it is!

For about an hour.

If I close out and get back in, sometimes that will make things better for a bit, but the problem always comes back. This is huge because, while it's more stable, drawing in Photoshop is just not as fluid as drawing in Fresco. It's just barely laggier in normal use, just a little jankier. Fresco is obviously a new and better drawing engine that works awesome with touch.

For about an hour.

Obviously, this doesn't really work for a professional environment. When I work on a book, I need to be able to work for hours at a time and really get in a flow. I need to build out layers, move sliders, copy and paste (another issue with Fresco is it's RIDICULOUS copy and pasting, the option is so buried).

I see complaints about this across devices, so it doesn't seem limited to the Surface Studio 2.

But, speaking of the Studio 2... This shouldn't be happening at all. I have 32 gb of RAM, a tb solid state drive for a scratch disk with almost nothing stored on it (I clear off finished projects onto an archive when they're done).

PLEASE make Fresco usable for extended periods. I love the interface (besides the hidden copy paste that takes too long to use). I love the drawing engine. It's just so great.

For about an hour.

Report · Dec 28, 2020

One thing that has always lingered in the back of my head... Does the "work in process" video that is recording in the background have any effect on performance as the drawing goes on? Is it possible to disable the recording of that video? I don't really care about having it and would rather there was a little check box when I start a new project to activate the feature rather than have it default. In general, any options that would allow Fresco to be more self contained, less connected to ongoing processes like auto save to the cloud or background video making, would be really helpful when it is used as a desktop drawing program rather than a mobile-first app. Professionals, I think in general, would prefer better performance to things like WIP videos and autosaves. It just seems natural that these things would start to effect performance as a project becomes increasingly complex.

Report · Nov 13, 2021

I'm on the same boat on a Surface Pro 8. Exact same issue... It's a shame.

Report · Nov 27, 2021

Same here. Would love some input from Adobe team.

I have a Surface pro 8 with 256gb SSD (gbGB of free space remaining) and 16gb of RAM. It is fluid for 30 to 60 minutes and starts to get supper laggy (strokes appear after one second, chaning tool takes ages,...).

I'm doing only small drawings (canvas size = screen resolution), with only pixel tools (no vector), and 2-3 layers at most. Seriously, nothing I do is supposed to get the app to lag so much.

The worst I guess is the eyedropping tool. Even before the big lag appears, there's always a small delay when picking a color! When using photoshop, I tend to use this A LOT for blending. It's just impossible to use in fresco. Will this be fixed?