Nox

Adobe products use OpenCL on AMD GPUs, they have zero issues running on there. DaVinci Resolve uses OpenCL, but surprisingly it doesn't have any issues on AMD either.
Blender switched from OpenCL to HIP on AMD GPUs, because this API is more reliable, versatile, faster, future proof and very similar to CUDA. Also OpenCL as a whole has really big problems in general, it's hard and annoying to implement for hardware manufacturers, that's why everyone sticks to 2.0. OpenCL 3.0 is a big reset which makes most features optional because Khronos (standardisation organisation) has realized 2.0+ was a big mistake.
Serif has 3 options to handle this:
- fix the OpenCL bug like all other creative apps, make use of OpenCL 3.0's feature query function in the future.
- think straigh forward, future proof and switch to a better API (HIP and CUDA)
- or just do nothing and blame AMD for not supporting a broken API
Obviously the latter option does not fix anything.

Adobe products use OpenCL on AMD GPUs, they have zero issues running on there. DaVinci Resolve uses OpenCL, but surprisingly it doesn't have any issues on AMD either.
Blender switched from OpenCL to HIP on AMD GPUs, because this API is more reliable, versatile, faster, future proof and very similar to CUDA. Also OpenCL as a whole has really big problems in general, it's hard and annoying to implement for hardware manufacturers, that's why everyone sticks to 2.0. OpenCL 3.0 is a big reset which makes most features optional because Khronos (standardisation organisation) has realized 2.0+ was a big mistake.
Serif has 3 options to handle this:
- fix the OpenCL bug like all other creative apps, make use of OpenCL 3.0's feature query function in the future.
- think straigh forward, future proof and switch to a better API (HIP and CUDA)
- or just do nothing and blame AMD for not supporting a broken API
Obviously the latter option does not fix anything.

Blender uses HIP on AMD hardware, which is a CUDA competitor. HIP runs on AMD and Nvidia GPUs, it even has an automated CUDA to HIP source code converter, so there is absolutely no excuse to not include this acceleration technique in your application if it already has CUDA support!

And yes DaVinci Resolve has zero issues with AMDs OpenCL driver, it performs a lot better on my new AMD GPU compared to my previous Nvidia 1060.
The fact that the Affinity suite is the only software collection which has these problems makes me believe that this is not an AMD problem at all, just an excuse to not bother fixing the bugs for which Serif don't care much about.

Blender uses HIP on AMD hardware, which is a CUDA competitor. HIP runs on AMD and Nvidia GPUs, it even has an automated CUDA to HIP source code converter, so there is absolutely no excuse to not include this acceleration technique in your application if it already has CUDA support!

And yes DaVinci Resolve has zero issues with AMDs OpenCL driver, it performs a lot better on my new AMD GPU compared to my previous Nvidia 1060.
The fact that the Affinity suite is the only software collection which has these problems makes me believe that this is not an AMD problem at all, just an excuse to not bother fixing the bugs for which Serif don't care much about.

please follow up with that other applications have somehow fixed this problem so how is it still on AMD's side if others made it work?
I still don't understand why the silence here.

Can't disagree with that, the low entry price make it easy to jump in. Also the big sale point was that designer (that I use mostly) perform 10fold better and utilize the modern hardware, unlike adobe illustrator that refuse to see more than a core (not that designer use them all the time, but I have noticed way more utilization and many times hit 100% of CPU usage).
But the hardware that is having problem now is not some cheap intel integrated GPU, are top tier AMD cards and that's what it bites hard.
And atm I honestly believe that AMD GPUs are offering a better value than nVidia (that had the audacity to charge 200 euros for 1630). That being said I don't disagree that changing GPUs is not the way to fix to the problem, if you are not about to upgrade anyway.
Anyway, the biggest issue here is the lack of input from serif themselves, they don't say anything about it here, they don't even bother to upgrade the system requirements so people at least know, they still state that all you need for GPU acceleration is a DX 12.0 GPU.
And honestly I think the apps now are leaning more heavy on GPU than on CPU because with no GPU acceleration the performance is horrible, something that I didn't noticed before they introduce GPU acceleration.

Well lets be honest here, the vast majority of the people who have bought AF products did so because they are astronomically cheaper than Adobe products and do a similar job. Those people wont have 20-30 times that amount of money to buy new graphics cards or new computers just to run Affinity products. If they did, they would have stuck with Adobe products. Yes there are exceptions, but it's the low cost that brings almost everyone to AF products.
Not totally related to what you've said, but slightly. It also addresses someone further up who was suggesting buying a new NVidia card for ~£1000 for a product that costs £25 when on sale. Crazy.

Yep, they need to fix this. I’ve switched over to a 3080TI and still can’t have OpenCL activated. It just keeps crashing. Coming from a 5700XT, I thought it would fix my issues. 

Hi dmstraker,
Go to the Channels panel, right-click the respective mask channel and select Create Greyscale Layer.

Ok this is really helpful, now I understand how this works. I took a look back into the document, checked "Show Orientation" and immediately saw what's wrong, thank you so much!

It’s standard practice for the main outline of a glyph to be drawn clockwise but for the counters (‘holes’) in the glyph to be drawn in the opposite direction.
That would be my first port of call in a case like this.

Layer > Fill Mode

Sure: 40fbc4ad-trimmed.afdesign (I just removed the non-relevant layers)