Hello,

When I use some of the filter effects (Stone Wall in particular but it happens on others too) the effect disappears if I zoom out at all. I have to be zoomed in to at least 105% which ends up making the object way too large to work with because the filter effect also slows down the program. And saving the bitmap of the design is a problem too because it is way too large for the size I need it to be (it won't save the filter effect when it disappears on the canvas). I am mainly using these filter effects, like Stone Wall, on the stroke, not the fill.

I am using Inkscape version 0.48.4 and have had this issue for quite some time, but I am now using the filters a lot more and it's becoming unbearable. My computer processor is an Intel Core i5 CPU M520 at 2.40 GHz, and I have 4 GB RAM, and I have about 18 GB of unused space on my hard drive (not sure if processor, RAM, and hard drive space has anything to do with this issue or not but wanted to include that info if that helps).

Thanks in advanced for any help anyone can give me on this!

(Better late than never? )
Could you upload the SVG file somewhere and post the link here, so we can see what it gives on our systems? (Or give the steps to reproduce the problem starting from a new document).

Do you have the problem with Inkscape 0.91?

I don't know if this has anything to do with it, but 18 GB of hard drive space seems very little to me, how big is your hard drive in total?

Well, I guess no one answered this originally, because we answer this type of question so often. And it's not usually a simple explanation. However I'll briefly give some comments, and searching the forum can f ill in the gaps.

Not always, but most likely it's related to the file being larger than what Inkscape can handle on your computer. There are some settings in Inkscape Preferences that can help with t his. I can't remember exactly where they were in 0.48.4 (it's getting late here). It might have been under Filters. In 0.91 it's under Rendering. And also, version 0.91 has a new renderer, which helps with some of the filter display issues. So upgrading might help too -- although it may be that you just don't have enough RAM to handle this file, no maatter which version.

Anyway, those settings in Inks Prefs are: Gaussian Blur Quality for Display (set to "Best") and Filter Effects Quality for Display (also set to "Best"). However, as indicated there, it makes take longer for the filters to render.

The other one....I can't remember where it was in 0.48.x either (it might be on the same page -- it IS on the same page in 0.91, but I seem to recall it's not, in 0.48.x). It's Number of Threads. You can set that to the number of cores you have. Although this will ONLY help if you're using a computer with multiple cores (usually a laptop), and you have the 64-bit version of Inkscape installed.

However, as I said before, if the limitation you're hitting is because of your RAM vs the file size and content, these settings will do very litle to help.

Also, here is a topic about things you can do to prevent performance issues, like it sounds like you're having: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12160

And finally, File menu > Vacuum Defs to attempt to reduce the file size and improve performance.