Lag in Composition Mode when using backdrop image

I’m noticing a pretty significant lag in composition mode when using a background image.

Some things I checked (in two different projects):

  • light and dark mode
  • various text scales
  • different fonts
  • selecting the image either “from disk” or “from project”
  • different images - both JPG and PNG, and anywhere between 200kb-5MB

All caused the same results - the only thing that fixed it each time was removing the background image.

(Choosing the image as a texture within Preferences doesn’t cause the lag, but obviously that causes the image to repeat a bunch instead of just being full screen.)

I just upgraded from Version 2 because I moved to Catalina, and now the exact updated file is lagging. It was flawless and speedy on my 2011 MBP and now on my new 2019 16 inch MBP it’s lagging with 64gb of ram. It takes half a second to respond before even scrolling with an image in composition mode. This is starting to feel like a serious downgrade in basic usability from version 2.