kamanderside
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Posts posted by kamanderside
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2 hours ago, wonderings said:
Why would Affinity and Linux be a great pair? One is closed the other is open, I don't really see anything that says these companies are like minded.
I think that it is always the balance of need vs want. If I needed to do certain things the OS would be less important to me as I would care more about the software I need to use. I would use the OS that supports the software that lets me get the job done.
2 hours ago, thedrumdoctor said:To be fair, you could ask the same question of the company who produce Insync cloud syncing software. They are 'closed' yet they support Linux which allows users to sync data with Microsoft, Google and Dropbox. Similarly, Cockos who make the incredibly popular music creation DAW, Reaper, port for Windows, Mac and Linux. There does seem to be an increase in software vendors bothering to make versions of their software for Linux, but the creative world is still poorly served in this area of development. I do take on the principle of your point though, in as much as the roots of Linux are not embedded in the commercial world and have different goals.
Looking at other replies on this thread, there may be some sort of agreement between Affinity and Microsoft and Apple not to port Affinity products to any other platforms. Affinity don't port to Android either yet there are plenty of large Android tablets with pen support. Clearly, there is potential revenue from both Android and Linux users, but it has to be either ROI or fall-out with the market desktop-dominators which prevent them from developing.
Another example of non-open source creative software that runs spectacularly on Linux is DaVinci Resolve. Resolve is an all-in-one video, audio, and special effects editing software that's become an industry standard, and if you only need the basic tools it's... free. If you need the full shabang, they, like Affinity, offer a buy-once license. It's $300USD and continues to receive updates.
Why would people want to do video editing on Linux? Linux as an OS is waaaaay less resource intensive, freeing up system resources to use instead on programs you want to run. That's why Affinity would be great on Linux. Imagine how many more layers they could have eked out of that demonstration of the 1.10 Designer beta.[edit edit]: It's nuts and bolts, but Linux isn't a company - layman's terms, it's the thing that all the different Linux distributions are built off of, and the different Linux distributions may be made by anyone, company or coding enthusiast. It's a rabbit hole to explain fully, as many here know.
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As the title says, the ability to darken the transparency background. I work in a really dark environment and have dark mode on everything. With all that going on, the transparent bg is blinding in comparison.
Temporary solution of course is to throw a dark layer on the bottom until I'm done working, but yeah. Having an option would be nice.
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23 hours ago, IanSG said:
The fact that I can't run Win 11 on my old system doesn't make my system unusable, it makes Win 11 unusable. I can't be the only one whose looked at 11's new features and thought "so what?".
That's the point. In 2025 they're dropping support for Win10. If my box is still working well at that point, I'll either have to upgrade Win11 and deal with the crappy performance, buy a new computer and run Win11 on that, or...
...just use Linux, which is usually free with the option of donating to the distributor of whichever Linux OS was picked. But Affinity doesn't run natively on Linux, and I need it for my personal work. I could just go back to using GIMP or some other free/open source solution, but I'd rather not.
Honestly Affinity would be a great pairing with Linux - breaking with the Adobe model they've done, why not break with with the Mac/Windows OS model and offer a Linux option as well? (Not denying it could be a ton of extra work to do it, and last I checked they're strapped for programmers as it is).
I'm at the point where I'm just going to nab another ssd to throw POP! on and start dual booting again. Throw the 10-day Photo demo on WINE and see what happens. -
On 9/30/2021 at 2:22 AM, IanSG said:
Why "useless"? I've seen nothing to suggest I'd want to move to Win 11, even if I could - 10 still works and support will be available for years.
Win11 is essentially putting the kabosh on older processors, and that's including relatively recent ones that are younger than my AMD FX-4###. It will still be useable, but performance is going to be quashed severely.
On 9/30/2021 at 3:27 AM, Pufty said:Heh, seeing Win11 was the final step to fully committing to Linux
I think the 10yr old computer still got a good shot of being useful. Not that I know for certain, but people on Linux have more control on what they want to see on their PC, so a lot of background bloat can be cleared.
Windows 10 was fine at the start, could get rid of stuff I didn't use at all, could clear background processes that changed nothing in my usage, but pre-installed items always appearing after the mandatory, unskippable updates became more annoying with the cool addition of not being able to Uninstall certain programs anymore. Started using a debloater (giving long strings of code in a console admin rights from a random source online, lol), but that was becoming regular too. Updates kept adding everything back. Compared to Linux, I took things for granted on Windows (like video codecs, editing and designing software working out of the box), but was also given the shaft at the same time 😬Was dual-booting Ubuntu on my Vista laptop back before I built my desktop :P. Only fully switched back to Windows when I got a copy of 7 through school and started playing games on Steam.
But yeah, been watching quite a bit of Linus Tech Tips (LTT) lately, esp. on Win11 and the new Framework laptop (option to come as a DIY kit and can install your own components/OS). Even if the Framework startup company were to fail, one can still do a lot of the repairs/replacements that would be near impossible to an end user on a typical laptop.
Linux distros have come a long way in being user-friendly recently (use it on our entertainment PC that's hooked up to our TV), and even Steam gaming is getting serious about cross-compatibility with Linux, adding functionality without having to use WINE. If I were forced to get a new computer, the Framework Laptop running Pop! Linux would be my current go-to. My copy of 10 is locked to my current system, so either way I'll have to buy a copy when I'm someday ready to move to more recent hardware, and just making a donation to my fav Linux distro would be so much nicer.
Linus of LTT was going to give Linux as a daily driver a go to see if he could handle a full-time, perma switch from Windows, something I'll be watching closely. -
I'll be frank, with Steam moving to make Windows/Mac games compatible with Linux out of the box, Affinity's the only program holding me back from switching back to Ubuntu again. Especially with the upcoming Win11 release that will likely render my 10-yr-old computer useless, because I'll need to upgrade the motherboard, to upgrade the processor, to keep it compatible.
I would be willing to purchase new Affinity license keys for a Linux version, really, instead of dumping money on what would essentially be a new computer when Win11 comes out.- Snapseed, Bez Bezson, blackbird9 and 1 other
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I think it's safe to say this one is solved. Been working/saving in Designer all morning (the other program that was having issues saving to the server) and not one save hang to speak of.
TL;DR
It seems the issue was the security software on the Windows Server was getting overly concerned with the Affinity file extensions (.afphoto, .afdesign, .afpub) from the repetitive save actions through working on the file. Security software kept scanning them, leading to Affinity being unable to save over the old file version, as it was in use by said security software. It crashed not only the open Affinity program but also Finder and necessitated a hard shutdown every time it happened.Solution was to whitelist Affinity file extensions in the security software.
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On 7/22/2021 at 9:47 AM, Dan C said:
Many thanks for the information provided here, this is very helpful!
This certainly sounds like a potential cause of the issue you're seeing and I hope the change in security sensitive helps here, please do keep us updated.
Should you continue to have issues with the Affinity app hanging, please do let me know and we can look to create a Console log which will hopefully have some more in-deth technical info for our devs to investigate
So far things seem nominal, but I haven't had an opportunity to do a big batch of images all at once yet. Will update again after I get such a batch.
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- The server address is in this format - smb://192.168.100.### - with no other characters, and withheld the last numbers for security reasons, even though I know it shouldn't be an issue, but still.
- There's usually a notification if the server disconnects. I haven't had it disconnect after not being used for a bit that I can remember.
On that topic I noticed a seemingly random moment where I was browsing the server and it booted me back to the root folder for permissions reasons, but didn't actually disconnect. Talked to the IT guy and he seems to think it was related to our security software, so he decided to whitelist the affinity file extensions (.afphoto, etc) in the security software to see if that would help. The hypothesis is that the software was being overly thorough and when it checks a file it's "in use", so it's possible that trying to save over the version that was being checked was crashing Affinity and Finder. Other people with different programs have been having this issue with the security software on occasion, apparently, but they're all on Windows so it's possible the problem was presenting differently.
- Connection on MacOS - it's just the server address at the top of this post typed into the "connect to server" dialogue. There is a shortcut set up on the desktop to connect it quicker.
- Connection Physically: I'm connecting on-site via ethernet cable plugged into the wall, which is a direct connection to the server. Granted my office phone is acts like relay between that connection from the mac to the wall, as there is only one ethernet jack at my desk and both devices need it. IT guy said it could be a problem, but it's unlikely.
I am also using the 10.0 beta now to see if it's a version issue as well, but given the IT guy made some changes on his end, I should go back to using 1.9.3 for a bit to see if that fixed it.
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Working from the server wasn't causing issues up until the last month, which again, IT guy posits that maybe an update to the security software running on the server itself started flagging .af_ files. I certainly see the value in saving directly to disk, but my boss and IT want everything on the server so everyone's using the same version of files. -
Running Mac OS Big Sur 11.4
I've encountered this issue suddenly in the last 4-6 weeks. Clearing defaults seemed to only work temporarily, it extended the time I was seeing the issue by a week or so.
Saving to disk is fine it seems, but saving to our local server is when it happens. I haven't used Publisher as frequently lately so not sure if the issue extends to it.
What happens:
- save file
- save hangs a little over halfway through the loading bar
- saved file is corrupted
- have to force-quit program
- program won't start again
- Finder-related things are janky or crash while the program is in this state.
- have to shut computer down
- Computer won't shut down bc somehow the program is still running in the background, though it doesn't appear in the Activity Monitor, hangs with desktop bg visible but everything else gone.
- Hard shut-down via power button
- reboot - everything's fine again for an unspecified amount of time, thankfully the program's had a recovered version of the file each time.Oh yeah, and it doesn't generate a crash report.
I've gone back and forth with our IT guy, he's certain the server itself isn't causing it, there weren't any recorded events during those times. I still suspect it to some degree, as it's a Windows-based server and I'm the only Mac-user saving to it regularly, and the save issue seems to happen at random (I don't have an event to tie it to on my end), but that could just be bias. I don't have any other programs that I save directly to the server with, so hard to check if it's only Affinity Photo/Designer doing it.
I'm going to start playing with the most recent Photo Beta, just to see if it keeps happening there. In the meantime, let me know whatever I can provide to help with this... -
I'mma +1 this as well. I work side-by-side with our engineers, a measuring tool would be indispensable when they send cad drawings to have decals made.
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I had this issue with a linked .aphoto file, while in separated mode.
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Would be valuable to learn the decimal equivalents, then one can just enter the exact value for guides and such, instead of guessing at it. I use decimals for everything so I never noticed the markers weren't all that great.
EX -
.125 is 1/8
.25 is 1/4
.375 is 3/8
.5 is 1/2
and so forth.... -
Was working fine in 1.9.0. Copy/pasting simple shapes/lines to create cut file templates. Granted they're rather large files but I had no issues in the previous version.
Happens when alt-dragging to copy and paste, and also with regular copy and pasting.
Tried starting a new file and bringing in a single object from the old file to create a new template from and getting the same result.
Different file of similar templates of a different shape is acting fine, but it originated via save-as from the file that's having the issues.
Also started a template from scratch and it is having no issues, to the problem seems to lie with how 1.9.1 is handling the curves in the file from the previous version.
I'm not certain if this problematic file originated in 1.8.6 or 1.9.0. It was initially created from an opened pdf from a different software (non-Affinity) with the stickers that needed cut lines created and the sticker images/objects were deleted out after the cut lines were created.
TL;DR - Program was being slow with a file from pre-1.9.1, problem revolves around the paths drawn in the file. Copy/pasting paths into new file didn't solve issue. Solution was to start new paths in new file from scratch. Willing to send along the problematic file to the Dropbox.
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On 11/11/2020 at 4:15 PM, Bradders 567 said:
Has there been any progress or resolution of this fundamental issue?
I've had luck with it today - I'm running Publisher 1.8.6 on Mac Mojave (lol I know) and successfully copied multiple cells from Excel (.xlsx file) into a table (more than 1 cell selected).
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Fractions in typography for more numbers. Like 3/8, 9/16, 15/32, etc. I work on a catalog that uses imperial measurements on their products and it would be a big time saver.
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I'll give it a shot. Thanks!
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I have sent project file I'm working on. Funnily enough this morning on opening the file again it's allowing the export dialogue to appear, and I've been able to export a copy. The only thing that's happened between now and then was the computer was shut off overnight. I did reboot the computer yesterday to see if that would help, and yesterday it didn't. So yeah, maybe some sort of cache issue or something that needed more breathing time to clear out?
I believe it's unrelated to the export issue, but I was able to nail down what was causing page 66 to behave like an image in .pdfs, the inner glow fx on a rectangle layer that was masking some other layers was causing it.
Another couple of things maybe worth mentioning -
- The links for the document are stored on an external disk drive. Prior to that they were on our company server, but I've been working from home because of the whole virus thing and the server is pretty slow over the internet, so I moved copies of the images to the drive and relinked everything.
- Publisher for this file had been running extremely slow, especially when editing text, so I ctrl-started the program to reset things and it took care of the slowness for the most part, but I started getting the "Persona" disk space warning dialogue when opening the file. -
I am having a similar issue, when trying to export. The weird thing is I exported a version of it earlier today and it was fine. I've made some edits since then, but I'm not sure what edit is disagreeing with the export function. What's odd is force quitting isn't generating a crash report window. Don't know if that sounds like what you are dealing with, @Dride.
I'm dealing primarily with placed .psd and .afphoto files for imagery, but none of the edits I made since exporting in the morning involved images besides changing some vector crops and deleting/replacing an anchor and a hyperlink. I'm more inclined to believe it's stemming from either some objects/curves I changed, or even a few master pages I took off one particular page that were unnecessary (which I've been trying to figure out why all of the objects on that one page are exporting as a single object, can't even search the text on that page or anything, and wanted to export to see if I'd fixed it). Worst case scenario I'll pull a backed-up copy and copy/paste changes over into it to see if I can replicate the issue.
ANYWAY, Using ctrl at startup to clear settings hasn't fixed it and I can export other files. The size of the file I'm dealing with is 1.32GB, if that's relevant. -
I realized after the fact that the wrap outline could be adjusted (prior to the replies, but I still appreciate them - found the outline button by accident).
Still, it'd be handy if mask transparency or layer visibility was accounted for, but maybe it's something to be considered further down the line when bigger feature requests and things are addressed, or maybe not at all, as adding it would possibly contribute to bloating the software. -
Currently have to completely rasterize layers and delete original layers out of linked files for text to wrap close to the desired image. Necessitates different versions of the same file, especially if one wants to go back and bring back parts that had to be deleted or rasterized. Ideally text would wrap around visible layers from a file only. Even better would be if the layer masks didn't need to be rasterized to the layer for text wrap to work properly.
First image shows the layer contents of the file, second image shows the text going bye-bye, as it believes it's over the edge of the image. -
Yah. Thanks for your help, though.
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If you still have the button for .afphoto files in 1.8, I probably just need to reset the program. No fun, given I'll have to rearrange the workspace again, but if it brings the button back it will save some other trouble. I'll try that and then put the results below.
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First off, .afphoto files are fine. It turns out that the .afphoto files that I thought were .afphoto files were actually .psds. The reason being is they are product photos initially edited in Photo, but exported as .psds to send to another guy to cut out because he has Photoshop and sent back to us, and we waited to get Publisher until later, so we needed to be able to place them in InDesign.
So linked .psd files don't get to be edited anymore, in-program in Publisher, it seems. This is rather counter-intuitive? I know they weren't truly placed, but now I have to go and re-place all of those as embedded, or convert them all to .afphoto. There's like over 500 photos I just did myself in the year since I got hired here, and probably twice that or more in .psd product photos that were taken since 2016. I also don't want to embed them, that's a lot. Working on a file saved on the server is slow enough already and the file size is gonna balloon like crazy. -
MacOS Mojave 10.4.6
After checking, the problem is for linked psd. files AND .aphoto files.
All files are indeed linked (although as changes to the files in Publisher 1.7 weren't reflected in the originals, they may have been behaving as embedded, anyway), as they already exist on the server we save the document to, and we're trying to conserve space. It's going to be a lot of work to go back through those files (a task I'll have to do sometime down the road, anyway, but would prefer to not do now).
We have a bunch of .psd product photos from before we got Affinity, and being able to just turn off the background layer from Publisher was super handy and time saving, without having to go back and forth between programs. -
I assume it was intentional? If so, where is this button/functionality now? Do I need to reset the app?
When I import some psd/afphoto files, I need to hide some of the layers on those files as we use those file in multiple applications, and don't wish to edit the main file. Thanks.
Affinity products for Linux
in Feedback for the V1 Affinity Suite of Products
Posted
Maybe we should get Affinity for Linux crowdfunded at this point, so Serif can hire the extra peeps they'd need to port it / make it compatible with WINE or Proton.
I mean, if we're serious about wanting it to happen, we could help invest in it, yeah? //wishful thinking