Digas

Hello, Today, I upgraded all my Affinity software to vers, 1.8.4. Designer Failed. I've been here before so I persevered. I eventually updated successfully by restarting my computer and running the .exe file as administrator. Wonderful. I would now update Publisher but would not be caught out. I would run as administrator at the get go. Publisher failed. I restarted my computer again ran as admin and this time I was successful. Photo would not get me. I restarted my computer ran the Photo .exe file as admin, waited with baited breath and hey presto it failed! I restarted my computer, ran the .exe file as admin and it updated successfully. The answer was to let each program fail then restart the computer, run as admin and all would be well. The only thing that caught my eye was that on each initial run of the update, the tick box option for putting a link on the desk top was not there. It was there after the restart. Each failure reported not having the necessary permissions. I am the only person to use this computer and am set as administrator. What is going on? What should be a few minutes update time was multiplied ten fold because of the failures and computer restarts. Please Serif. Sort it out.

I am so sorry this is such a late reply to your post. For some reason I missed a notification of your post and as I thought my problem was solved I have not looked at the topic until today. The adjustment tab has the button to alter the levels on it. I moved this tab from it's docked position and then closed it. I then couldn't find how to get it back. Old Bruce showed me the way to restore it to it's original position. I am such a newbie that I not only got the terminology wrong, I am still using the software as it came "out of the box" and have still not tried to arrange the layout into any other groups. I must confess I am finding this software a bit of a challenge but I'm sure I'll get there eventually. Anyway, thanks for putting me right and hopefully other newbies will learn from my mistakes.

Thanks so much for your answer, Old Bruce. For the sake of anyone else who has the same problem it is in fact View > Studio > Adjustments The levels is on the Adjustments tab. Your answer jogged my brain into action and it was only as I was following your instructions that I remembered that Levels was on the Adjustment tab. I had completely forgotten the Studio connection. So once again, thank you. Without your answer I would still be searching the program. Digas

Hello, I moved the levels tab from it's dock in Photo and then just clicked on the x to close it. I have now lost it and can't remember how to get it back to it's docked position. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hello, As per my original post, the new update 1.8.3. failed. Salvatore beat me to my commenting when his installation failed. I tried again a few days later as admin. This too failed. I tried again just now, as admin and the installation was successful. I don't want to have to try 3 times over a few days before the install succeeds. What is happening here? Surely it must be possible to create a rollback option if the update fails. Luckily I have Designer on my Mac which I bought after the first failure. I shouldn't have to do this. I also cannot believe we are the only two folk this has happened to. Come on Serif, this is just not good enough. I've never had so many failures on updates from one company. In fact I can honestly say that in all the years I've been using computers, updates rarely fail and this includes Microsoft updates.

You're a star Callum. I didn't think to keep on trying to download the apps but this time both Designer and Publisher have downloaded perfectly. However I did notice that the downloads are now 1.8.2 not 1.8. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would think Serif found there was a problem with 1.8 and within a few days issued a fix. Of course I didn't have notification of this fix as both apps where not on my computer. Anyway, thank you so much for replying to my request for help and being concerned enough to ask if all was OK.

Thanks for asking Callum, Yes, nothing has changed. I no longer have Designer or Publisher access. As far as I can see they are not even on my computer to uninstall! I have just emailed Serif and am waiting for a reply. I don't want to upgrade Photo in case the same thing happens! As a last resort I will go into the registry and delete all things Serif and then try downloading from my Serif account again but I'm not too happy about doing that as more damage could be done. At the moment I'm getting very disillusioned with Serif. I've used their software for probably 20 years but at the moment I'm not a happy camper.

After posting my last reply, I found that someone else was having a problem with the upgrade (not the same as me) and it was suggested they go back to the last 1.7 upgrade. I thought this was a good idea to try. I did this, got the options to repair or uninstall so tried repair which went well and completed. However, I still cannot open Designer and now Publisher has gone the same way! How! I didn't touch Publisher! Looking via Control Panel, Programs and Features it would appear that I no longer have either Designer or Publisher installed. BUT I can't download them from my account with Serif Affinity. The downloads don't work. I have however attached the latest files as requested. Setup.log SetupUI.log

Hello Callum, Thanks for your reply. I have closed down and restarted, right clicked on .exe file and "Run as Administrator". One thing different happened. I got the message - COM Surrogate must be closed, which I accepted. The update appeared to go ahead but ended with the message - Set up failed, as before. I have never ever seen the message about COM Surrogate before and have no idea what it is. What is more frustrating is that I downloaded the Installer from my own account with Affinity so I now have no access to Designer which I was well on the way to learning how to use and understanding.

Hello, Dell 64bit i7, 16GB RAM SSD HD., Win 10 The upgrade 1.8 for Designer failed and wiped the original program from my computer. I have tried to download the program from my account and this too fails. I have always upgraded whenever available and this has never happened before. I also have Publisher and Photo on this computer and Photo on my MAC. I am now wary of upgrading. Has anyone any ideas?

Thank you gdenby and v_kyr for your replies. I totally agree about the versatility of Designer, unfortunately I am still at the learning stage trying to manipulate the software. My Craft Studio is really quite basic, hence my purchase of Designer. Having never used professional graphic design software before I am finding it is a huge learning curve. Possibly more so because I don't know the correct terminology. Layers, masks etc are new to me and the "symbols" tool being another such example. I didn't even know it existed until Callum pointed it out in his video. The Context Free software also looks interesting and I will certainly try it out. However, I am determined to conquer Affinity Designer and hopefully I will not have to jump back and forth between apps too often. Once again, thank you all for the replies.

Thank you Callum. The first tutorial was very informative and I learned some new things too. I must confess in the past I just copied, pasted and dragged the images into place. Grouped them and then repeated the process. Obviously using the align functions as necessary. The other software that I use makes the process so simple that I just assumed I was missing something obvious in Designer. Perhaps in the future they too will have the facility to just drag a jpg onto the page, click a button and then drag to cover the page. Thank you again. Your help is very much appreciated. Digas

I use My Craft Studio Elite to design papers for card making. It has the function whereby I can import a jpg., resize the image, hit the tiling button and then drag the image across or down to create a page of multiple images of the original jpg. Is there anything in designer that would let me do this. I have looked at the Fill tools but I can only find how to manipulate colours not images. I've checked the forum but nothing quite seems to cover this seemingly simple task. It can't be too difficult because the software I use is free. It would be more convenient not to have to use 2 different apps. I have attached an image created in the My Craft Studio software. The original jpg was of 1 mandala image.

Thank you so much. I've just tried this and it worked perfectly. I've been trying for about 2 weeks and only just plucked up courage to use the Forum. I think I've got my work cut out to get up to scratch with this software!

I am not only new to Affinity Photo I have never used professional graphic design software before. I am also not very artistic! I want to import a scanned image or picture, create an outline of the image and export the outline as a jpg. I have learned to use the selection tool to create the outline but cannot turn this outline into a solid black line to export as a shape/picture. Is it possible? Any help would be very much appreciated.