How do you make Clip studio paint run better on a cruddy laptop?

[BobbyjoeX]

so, unfortunately my computer took a dump and now i am unable to work on my comic.

i figure i can use my Asus Laptop that was barely used to maybe try to get some money to replace the graphics card in my main computer. i would work on my comic but i dont have any of my usual assets so thats a no go...

heres the issue, this computer is MASSIVELY SLOW. so slow that drawing on it is near impossible and honestly uncomfortable and frustrating

to people that are possibly using a laptop to do their art and stuff... how do you make Clip Studio run better or is there a free decent art program that doesnt take too much processing power to run?

[cjjoughin]

Couple things: How much strain is the program putting on your computer? Are you trying to run anything else at the same time? If you can. go into preferences, go to performance, and adjust the percentage when it says allocate to application. This should help with how smoothly the program works.

The only thing to be careful of: If it is causing a lot of strain on your computer to run the program, then unfortunately there might not be a whole lot you can do. Upping the amount of memory allocated can help with things like pen lag, etc. but it also means using it will put more of a strain on your system.

Sorry if you've tried this and already knew, it's just what I do to make CSP work better on my machine! Good luck!

[fever]

Man I can totally feel you. I have asus laptop too, and it's not that old, in fact it's been for only 1 year. But it doesn't have the best specs per se, and it kind of average. And CSP still massively lag in it. I've asked the same thing on this forum before, and concluded the best way is to save money to get better hardware and going back to using SAI since it's lag free, and i like it so much and comfortable with it. It's not free, but you can get it free, iykwim, i don't recommend it tho. Also, there's medibang that's similar to CSP except that it's totally free, but it's just a bit less heavier than CSP.

[BobbyjoeX]

i might have to switch back to sai for at least a little bit, its just so i can get some owed art done and possibly some commissions

[Birdwrong]

Dang, I was praying for a miracle cure here!

I've been struggling along with Clip Studio on my creaky old Asus laptop for far too long now. It's okay when working on simple pieces with few layers, but whenever I want to attempt anything more ambitious (or, basically, any comic page) it chugs along so slowly.

The worst is when trying to paint big areas - it can sometimes take upwards of ten seconds to compute a single brush stroke!

I've tried tweaking things, but it has kinda just become something I have to just deal with for now. I want to upgrade to something a lot more high-end in the future (when I have money haha!), and I look forward to seeing how my art will develop when I am not restricted in this way! But until then... good luck to us all u_u

[Shanny8]

Weird...before my new laptop(that is now 2 yrs old) I was using CSP on an old laptop and never had any issues. It was actually Photoshop that was murdering my laptop's performance; when I ran CSP I could do that and still have other things running as well(music, streaming, internet)- couldn't do that when I was using Photoshop...I could only listen to music that I downloaded(and sometimes that wouldn't work).

If you are trying to do 600- 1200 dpi pieces on the laptop, you may wanna lower the res to 300. I worked at 300 on my old laptop, but went to 600 when I got my new one

[Birdwrong]

lowering the res is definitely something I should consider!! I'll give it a try next time and see what a difference it makes Thanks!

[feardeer]

FireAlpaca was made to run on low-end computers, so that's an option. I used to use FA exclusively, before I got CSP, and I'll still use it to do quick animations sometimes. It's definitely decent.

[Draconic]

Within 100$ you can make your laptop runs way faster!
Most budget laptop are upgradable, unless you're using the super cheap 200$ laptop or ultrabook.

If your laptop is running on Intel 4th gen Core i3/5/7 CPU or later, those are still good to use.
You just need to upgrade HDD to SSD, and RAM to 8GB with budget of 100$.
With that, I guarantee you can keep using that laptop until it's dead from "old ages".

Find someone you know who's good at computer, and ask them to help you with this.

[indigodrawing]

1. RAM, and lots of it. As the old saying goes, memory is like grenades. You can never have too much. (If a laptop doesn't have enough memory, it will begin a process called swapping, where it will move a block of relatively unused data out of memory and store it to the hard drive/SSD to make way for some new data. The less RAM you have the more swapping occurs, and secondary storage is a lot slower than RAM)
2. Quit any software you don't need running, especially anything that has graphical output and/or has a large demand for memory. Close your browsers down, quit your video players, you might want to temporarily disable any anti-virus software you're running (and disconnect from the internet if you're worried about getting infected, etc). Most laptops have Intel integrated graphics, which are basically barely good enough for driving the screen. They can't handle demanding graphical software very well. Additionally quitting other apps will free RAM, another way of alleviating the swapping issue described above.
3. If you have a modern laptop with Thunderbolt 3 then maybe an external GPU is an option. These let you offload the job of rendering the display to a traditional desktop GPU card, which have far more graphical horsepower than Intel integrated graphics
4. Try a less demanding graphics package. CSP has quite a lot of features which are quite demanding on a system. What's more it's written in Java, and while Java apps can be pretty decent in terms of performance they can never match something written in a language like C. I can't really recommend anything specifically because the only other package I have significant experience with is Photoshop, which is even more demanding than CSP is.
5. Buy a better laptop! Preferably one with an nVidia or AMD GPU instead of (or in addition to) Intel's integrated graphics.

[Draconic]

@indigodrawing You underestimated the power of Intel Graphic. It's not that bad.

You don't need external GPU for Clip Studio Paint and 2D drawing.
Intel HD 4400 is good enough to use CSP, unless you want to use the 3d features.
Clip Studio Paint only requires fast hard drive and many RAM.

And I can assure you that any Thunderbolt 3 (Intel's technology) laptop has no problem with CSP at all!

This is what I'm using for work:

To comparison, this Intel UHD 630 (441.6 GFLOPS) is better than Nintendo Switch (384 GFLOPS).
Unless you want to play game, editing video, or working on 3d graphic, you don't need an external GPU.

If you really need an external GPU for 2D drawing, an Nvidia GT1030 or MX150 is good enough.

I'm a tech enthusiast with a passion of drawing comic.
I hope this may help you won't over budget yourself in the future.