Mystical

Read through every page. I feel more optimistic than my original reaction a few days ago. I use Affinity Photo literally every day since the v1 days. I am just a hobbyist but still have a decent passive side income from some of the work I do/did in the program, so not sure where I rank in the level of 'importance' as a customer to Affinity. In all honesty Canva probably sees my value as negative 0 since their subscription users as 'worth' more to them. Probably the same way no one will read this post. So obviously its a little powerless knowing the tools you enjoy and have fun creating fun stuff with could change in the future in a very dramatic way. I mostly use the Affinity programs for fun non-monetary projects in gaming so I've become quite attached to the Affinity programs (especially photo) in my project pipeline. I once was just as attached to Adobe products being the biggest fan as far back as the 'video collection' CS bundle days and the same way I was a huge supporter of Alias' Maya. Sadly both Adobe and Maya (when Autodesk bought them) went the subscription route so I dropped them. I got lucky with Substance Painter though when it came on the market. I owned it but also owned 3D Coat and took a liking to 3D Coats painting system more so feel I dodged a bullet when Substance Painter got bought by Adobe and removed perpetual. Technically you can buy a standalone of Substance on Steam ... but lets be honest, you still have to log into a steam account to use the tool, not not 'true' perpetual. This is one loophole of 'yes we have perpetual' Affinity doesn't do where they require you to log into a 3rd party program like steam to buy a 'perpetual' license. It was hard for me to imagine a world (in this case a computer I owned) without Maya, Adobe, and Substance Painter installed but it eventually happened. It was a few months of transition having to search and research new programs finding the right fit and honestly it worked out well. With Blender releasing their major 2.8+ release I was able to still do competent 3D Modeling work with even Maya interface friendly add-ons so I felt right at home. With Affinity its non-destructive and good performance made me more happy then I ever was with Photoshop. I also have Davinci Resolve to fill the void of Adobe Premier Pro and use Hitfilm Pro as my stop-gap for the minor motion graphics but still hoping one day Affinity could make an After Effect competitor which lead me to my final topic. Now that Affinity has the funds and support I'm not just hoping the current programs keep receiving great new updates and features but hope this means the affinity toolset can expand as well. An After Effects motion graphic program made by affinity would honestly but the best outcome of this acquisition for me. It feels like the next logical program in Affinity's wheelhouse to create, motion graphics programs were the hardest to find alternatives to for me. Only time will tell of course what we see Affinity release in the future but for now I will remain more optimistic than worrying about having to find alternatives again.

I'm not familiar with Canva but a quick look at their website it shows they do some sort of video editing. Hope of a motion graphics editor in Affinity suite would be the best outcome. As others have said, if they move from perpetual for subscription that would be the end, especially since its the reason I got rid of Adobe and support Affinity. I'm not going to get all doom and gloom assuming the worst but I will be keeping an eye out now that things have changed.

Really glad Live mesh warp now works with multiple Outline FX, really looking forward to using it often now.

Would be cool if you could favorite export types and those would appear at the top in icon form like classic Photo v1 and the rest are in a list. Best of both worlds.

I really did like the v1 icons at the top. Was pretty cool and easy for me to switch between.

Unfortunately this method does not work with all software. If I try and choose a non-exe in 3D Coat as my external editor program it denies the file (Bat and shortcuts to photo 2). Likewise if I choose the windows app Photo 2 exe located in: WindowsApps\SerifEuropeLtd.AffinityPhoto2_2.0.0.1640_x64__3cqzy0nppv2rt\App the program never launches. So for now I am stuck using Photo 1.0 still as my external layer exporter from 3D Coat until the Photo 2 exe can somehow be recognized as a normal program exe.

I love being able to stack effects like multiple strokes on the same layer. Something I've wanted for years even before Affinity existed and I was still using Photoshop.

I honestly do not see the issue being treated as a new user or having to pay the same price as anyone else for v2. Its a literal steal compared to other subscription models like Adobe where after just 2+ months you'd already be paying more than Affinity Suite. On top of that you still will never have the enjoyment of perpetually owning the Adobe products no matter how many years go by on top of the constant payments. Its not like you need v2 right now anyways and can wait for bug fixes and additional features which I am sure the 40% discount would come around in the future. With all that said the moment the website refreshed for v2 launch I bought the whole suite no questions asked. Been an Affinity user for a good 3+ years.

awesome thanks, I'm excited to use this feature once it has been fixed in a future update 😀

Unfortunately the bat file workaround does not work for me. The program I use (3D Coat) requires an exe and it does not recognize the secondary 0kb exe's from Photo 2 in the Local Appdata section. I can only use the exe from WidnowsApps version when choosing the exe. However, doing so Photo 2 never launches when I choose to export layers from 3D Coat for Photo 2 (like I was doing with Photo 1.0 where it works)

Similar issue for me with a program called 3D Coat where I regularly export all the layers to an external paint program which was Photo 1.0 While I added the Photo 2 exe as my new external export editor for layers it literally does nothing now when I choose to export. Its like Photo 2 being a Windows App in that directory blocks everything and not sure how I can fix it so I have to keep using Photo 1.0 for now, save the file in Photo 1.0, close Photo 1.0, then open it in Photo 2.

I agree. No online always subscription fees and only having to pay for big version number updates is ok by me.

Yep I see same issue, I needed to live filter mesh warp some text with an outline to curve it a bit and it just corrupts it like crazy. Simple Arial font with black stroke, easily reproducible: (Windows 10)

Affinity Photo has always been so stable for me and was shocked when simple actions started crashing it. Glad its not the program. Hope Microsoft can sort this out sooner rather than later.

This is the most unstable version of Affinity Photo and I've been a user for a good while. If I have one 4096x2048 image open with maybe 30+ pixel layers my PC's RAM goes straight to 100% freezing the program. I need to point out I have 64 GB of RAM lol. Even in super large affinity files in the past versions I wouldn't even have 50% of my RAM used. Something is definitely off with this version. I hope they can fix it soon. I also have Windows 10, Nvidia SUPER RTX 2070 too but its my RAM that seems to be skyrocketing for me.

Awesome update, look forward to the new improvements and changes.

That is good to know its optional and also Affinity will continue to support offline mode of the tools. It is one of the huge reasons I left Adobe and bought all the Affinity products in their place. As long as the online sign in stays as merely an extra option and has no impact on offline tool use I am ok with it. I have more faith in Affinity than adobe, though I will admit I've seen similar things happen with like substance painter where they said they wouldn't remove perpetual licenses and do just that a year later backtracking their promises. So I will stay vigilant when it comes to any required log-in features for a program I bought that previously didn't use it before.

I'm definitely still hoping one day DDS support can come. They added TGA support last year and it has been invaluable for me. Right behind JPG and PNG I pretty much am exporting files with the TGA format daily. I'd definitely get good use out of a robust DDS export format as well.

Awesome as always to see new updates for Affinity Photo.

Hello, Yes after I raster the grouped folder I zoom in 100% at least and I can see the raster issue. I've also noticed that if I zoom in closely the issue does not appear to happen on the one I am looking at but some of the other layers out of view do have it always occur. However with larger canvas sizes (like the one I uploaded) its not possible to stay zoomed in on all the layers so the issue happens no matter what unless I re-raster again, then they all magically seem to look ok.

I searched all over and could not find any issues reported similar to this so not sure if Affinity team is aware of it. Essentially when I rasterize a group of layers that are in a folder group (usually these layers were scaled down and there are multiple grouped together) some odd raster effects appear. What is even more odd if I undo the raster operation then right click and raster again it completely fixes the issue. If I undo the operation but use the history panel instead and apply the first raster I did the same issue will appear. I am not sure how redoing the same raster operation fixes the issue but here is what is looks like: Incorrect first raster where it is all pixelated: (sometimes it makes it half pixelated) Undoing the raster and re-applying it fixes the issue where everything appears smooth: I have plenty of memory and with the affinity project file open its only using 16% of my ram and 0% cpu usage so I don't think its a processing power issue where it cannot raster correctly. I am using Affinity Photo windows version 1.8.3.641 I have to constantly re-check everything I raster becasue this seems to happen almost 70% of the time especially for images in groups that were scaled down. I don't think its a particular file format either as I've seen it occur with SVG and PNG files in the same grouped folder and it randomly will affect different ones in a raster.

Very cool to see an update so quick, been looking forward to this one.

Thank you for continuing to investigate the issue. The brush resizing issue has definitely been plaguing my work on 1.8. I have lost count how any times Affinity has froze on me where I had to restart the program to regain control. At least I now know my freezing issue is not an isolated incident and others are able to see it at least. I'll have to try the beta version when I get time and see if there are any improvements.

I've noticed if I just open a document and resize it usually freezes but then a few seconds later I will regains control. If I have had a document open for quite awhile working on it then try to resize the program just hardlocks completely and I have to close it with task manager too. Again, this issue never occurred for me in 1.7.3 and I have always had my performance set to GPU using my Nvidia 2070 Super so pretty sure the issue is from something in 1.8 changed. I've just been fighting through it by saving my documents very often so I don't have to do any work again if the erase brush resize crashes the program.

Yes I am using a mouse when this happens as well. I hold alt+ctrl + left and right mouse buttons to expand or decrease the radius and freezing begins to occur.