Inkscape

rendering to bitmap is very slow

Asked by zivag

Hello and thanks to everyone who created Inkscape!

I've created a graphics 1050x1050 pixels with 5 layers and numerous objects. On many objects I use blur and opacity features.
At a certain point - as more objects were added, Inkscape became very slow. I use it on Ubuntu 7.10 Lunux, 32 bit, 3GHz CPU, 2Gb RAM with Matrox Sundog.
By very slow I mean - I move some object or change zoom level on an image and it takes 10-15 seconds to execute.
And when I tried to export this graphics to bitmap with 4200x4200 pixels res., it took around 3 hours to complete about 10 percent of image at which point I terminated the process.
Is there anything I could do to speed things up?

Thanks,

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Ryan Lerch
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Ryan Lerch (ryanlerch) said : 		#1

which version of inkscape are you using? the current development versions are a lot quicker in these areas:
release notes for 0.46: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/ReleaseNotes046#Speed_and_interactivity

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zivag (akoulaev) said : 		#2

Hello,
I am using 0.45.1-1

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zivag (akoulaev) said : 		#3

OK, I've read up on those changes - looks like all my issues has been addressed.
I'll give it a try and see what happens. And post the report.

Thanks for reply Ryan, and all the best

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Best Ryan Lerch (ryanlerch) said : 		#4

try downloading a current development version and you should notice a big difference, especially in bitmap exporting...

http://inkscape.org/download/?lang=en

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Ryan Lerch (ryanlerch) said : 		#5

whoops, sorry, i posted that last one at around the same time as you... :)

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zivag (akoulaev) said : 		#6

So here's the report.
I've installed the last version and my exporting time went down 20x. That is - before it would take me almost 5 hours to export 2100x2100 pixels sized .png, whereas now it takes me under 15 minutes!
Didn't see that much of improvement on workflow though. Maybe a bit faster. However I've read other hints on the subject and now I just placed all my blurred objects in separate layers, and when I don't work on them - I just turn those layers off. It's only blur that slows things down. I can live with that.

Thanks again!

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zivag (akoulaev) said : 		#7

Thanks Ryan Lerch, that solved my question.