cgidesign

Hello support, any news on this?

Hello Support, any news regarding the issue?

So, no new trial within the launch offer period? Is there still a two weeks money back guaranty then? If I buy on the 14th I would be frustrated to find out the following week that the msi version is as buggy and crash prone on my new PC as the current 2.0.3 is for many other users. On my old notebook V2.0.0 trial worked ok, but following the forum with all those post about crashes, slowness, bugs I fear buying the software without prior testing is like gambling.

Sorry, no more ideas from my side. I don't know if there is another way to get support from Serif than posting in the forum.

Foreword: Maybe wait till Serif offers a new version of V2. A lot of users in the forum post about V2 being slow, sluggy, not even starting, not working or crashing with and without hardware acceleration. Maybe you are also affected by this on your old PC. Maybe once Serif has analyzed those reports they can give a description what is causing those issues (maybe os, hardware, or V2 itself). With that information it might be more easy to decide whether at a new PC is needed. For reference: here are Serif's official system requirements for Photo: Windows-based PC (64 bit) with mouse or equivalent input device (Windows 20H1, build 19041 or later) Hardware GPU acceleration (Direct3D level 12.0-capable card) DirectX 10-compatible graphics cards and above 8GB RAM recommended 1GB of available hard drive space; more during installation 1280x768 display size or larger I suggest to not follow those but wait till they update those to more realistic values. Beside of that, all what RichardMH wrote. Example configuration: something like the below or similar: CPU: Intel Core i7-13700KF ~ £ 420 Mainboard: MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4 ~ £ 220 RAM: 32 GB DDR4 Ram: ~ £ 120 Storage: M.2 ssd 2 TB: ~ £ 200 GPU: RTX 3060 12 GB: ~ £ 390 PSU min. 700 watt: ~ £ 100 ~ £ 1450 (I have taken middle prices from idealo not the cheepest ones) CPU fan: ~ £ 50 (a high end model like the Noctua NH-D15 would be ~ £ 100) plus case, case fans etc. Notes: CPU: The i7-13700KF is extremely fast, has 18 cores and offers max. 24 threads. I use it in my new build and can say it is a lot faster in daily operation than the AMD Threadripper 3960x I used before. For Affinity it might be overkill. If you don't need the build in GPU you can go with the i7-13700K (not ...KF) which comes without gpu and is a bit cheeper. Alternatively an Intel i7-13600K or KF is a bit slower, has a few less cores but is cheeper. Mainboard: It is a DDR4 not DDR5 board and has one Lan port 2.5 GB speed. If you need two Lan ports or 10GB speed, expect higher board prices (as I wanted a 10GB connection to my NAS, I simply bought a 10 GB Lan card for 87 € and put it in a free PCI slot - this was way cheeper than to go for a board that comes with 10 GB build in). DDR4 ram is expected to depricate in the next years. So, if you go with DDR4 (Ryzen 5 is also DDR4) buy the needed ram timely to not get hit by limited supply in the future. Alternatively go with Ryzen 7000 series or buy an intel board with DDR5 support (e.g. MSI PRO Z790-A WIFI DDR5). But board and ram will be more expensive. If want to go for Intel and you assamble the PC yourself, read about "LGA-1700 bending issue" before you do so. Regarding the Intel LGA-1700 socket: Rumors say, the 13th gen of Intel CPUs is the last one to use the LGA-1700. It is expected that the next gen of Intel CPUs will require a new mainboard with a new socket. AMD: Same situation with AMD. Ryzen 5000 series uses socket AM4. The new Ryzen 7000 series uses socket AM5. So, if you buy a ryzen 5000 CPU now you can't just replace the CPU with a Ryzen 7000 in the future. You need to replace the mainboard as well. If you prefer to have a simple upgrade path (just replace CPU) it might be better to go with Ryzen 7000 and not Intel 13000 or AMD 5000. Ryzen 7000 uses AM5 socket and AMD wrote they will support AM5 at least until 2025 with new CPUs. Dissadvantage is, that Ryzen 7000 needs the more expensive DDR5 ram and the AM5 mainboards are also more expensive than the older DDR4 boards with socket AM4. RAM: see mainboard Storage: If you want to use it for many years you might want to read about experience with long term use before buying something. I personally have good experience with Samsung and Crucial SSDs and M.2s but that was just luck maybe. GPU: The RTX 3060 12 GB is considered the sweet spot of processing speed, vram and price theese days. Alternatively there is the RTX 3060 Ti. It is faster but has less vram and costs more. For use in Affinity the speed does not make a relevant difference in my experience (I tested an RTX 2070 notebook GPU with the V2 trial and it was ok speed wise - in V1 the GPU acceleration did not work at all). In case of a decision I suggest always go for more vram instead of more speed. PSU: Don't go for the cheepest models. The most simple models tend to fail more early than higher end products and they could struggle with power demand peeks form the PC (CPU and GPU can request way higher watteges from the PSU than their official TDP values suggest - those peaks are only lasting a few milliseconds but very simple PSUs might cause a PC shutdown or blue screen because of it - it is rare, but it happens). Some vendors offer extended warranty for their higher end models. E.g. I got a 10 years warranty for a Corsair AX1600i PSU.

One solution is "OO ShutUp 10". A nice free tool to disable a lot of the "spying" in Win10 and 11. It also contains an explanation for each entry that tells you what that Windows setting does. https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Sorry for that; I meant decade not century. I fixed that in the post.

How I understood it. Please correct me if I am wrong. .aphoto files getting bigger and bigger with any save. They do this because the app does not save the complete file (overwriting the existing file) but adds the changes as a "delta" to the "end" of the already stored file. Advantage: Saving changes is faster because only the delta needs to be written, not the whole file. Disadvantage: The files get bigger and loading a file takes longer. At some point in time, when a threshold unknown to the user is reached, APhoto automatically decides to make a complete "overwrite" of the file when save is used. In that case the file size decreses again. Let's call this "flushing". There was a feature request to add a user controllable "flush" button to the save dialogue. This way the user could trigger the full overwrite and reduction of file size. As there is no roadmap we don't know if this will be implemented. When you save to a new file (save as), APhoto stores a complete new file without all the deltas -> smaller files. I understand the idea behind this concept of writing files, but I am unsure whether in times of insanly fast SSDs and M.2 drives the speed of saving a file is still a benefit in relation to the extra space needed. But the Affinity apps are from the mid of last century decade and at that time SSDs and M.2s where not the norm, so implementing a fast save concept was beneficial then. Regarding compression: I don't know if the apps do any compression in the .aphoto file format. If they convert e.g. a compressed tiff 16 to an uncompressed format when embedding it and save it like that, it would add to the file size of course. On top comes the file management overhead any app specific file format has.

Thanks, I got the email as well.

will there be a new trial?

Is there a feature request about the topic?

Do you mind posting what you don't like about the tool? I have not used it so far but am interested to do so. I would appreciate to read about details in advance. Other users seem to like the tool.

I dare to have the opinion that variable font support is base feature that any professional graphics software should have today. And of course I ran into the issue to find out that Affinity does not.

Question to those with AMD Ryzen CPUs. Is your ram at bios default (around 2133) or at 3200 or faster? Ryzen CPU speed is known to scale well with ram frequency.

This is so weird. For me V2 even works when I limit my notebook CPU to base frequency. It not super fast but ok then. Do you use an Nvidia or AMD GPU? Several posts in this forum indicate that there might be issues with GPU opencl acceleration in V2. I am not sure but it might be more often with AMD GPUs. Anyway. Check in: [Preferences]->[Performance] and disable [Hardware acceleration] Maybe that helps. Or if you use an Nvidia GPU: Maybe installing driver 526.98 solves it without disabling hardware acceleration (you find the drivers on the nvidia.com homepage). I am using 526.98 Studio driver and it works on Windows 10 21H2 (every nvidia driver between 517.48 and 526.98 has opencl issues confirmed by nvidia but I don't know If those issues are relevant for Affinity). Furthermore I am using my PC as an Administrator but don't know if it makes a difference using it as a standard user.

Interesting: I found this affinity article regarding hdr capabilities of the apps (version 1.7). https://affinityspotlight.com/article/biggest-ever-affinity-updates-bring-unrivalled-speed-power-and-extensive-new-features/ ... And in a market-first for photo editing and graphic design apps, Affinity Photo and Designer now come with full support for the latest HDR / EDR monitors, including the newly-announced Apple Pro Display XDR. This allows photographers to see new levels of the detail captured in RAW files, while designers can push colour intensity in graphics far further than was possible before. Using Affinity Photo with an HDR monitor offers a simply stunning experience. It’s amazing the detail and dynamic range the latest SLR cameras capture when shooting in RAW, and Affinity Photo now offers the opportunity to actually see all that depth while editing on an HDR monitor. But this isn’t just for high-end photography. As more and more graphic content is being consumed on HDR displays, it will start to become important that designers are using an app which can both work in a 32bit colour space and render the results on an HDR monitor. Affinity Designer is the first professional graphic design application to do both. ... Weird. The tests seem to show that there is no 30 bit output to 10bpc display but the ad says it can even do full HDR? Any news on this?

It is in [Preferences]->[Tools] not [Preferences]->[Performance] It is called Tablet input method.

Thanks 👍 It is a bit more tricky though for me. I need to first use the shortcut for "Edit Live Projection" and then the one for "Equirectangular Projection" After that the "3d" canvas navigation is active.

In Aphoto V1 there is "Live Projection" to see a panorama image like being projected on e.g. a sphere. Once this "Live Projection" is active I can navigate the pano like in a 3d application (which is a nice feature). But, once I do something in the Layer panel (e.g. add a procedural texture), the "3d navigation tool" gets disabled - instead the normal hand tool is enabled. To get the 3d tool back I need to go to the menu and choose "Live Projection" again. I have searched the "customize toolbar" function but the 3d tool is not there. So I can't add it to the tools. Does anybody know a way to activate the 3d tool without the need to enter the menu again? Flat projection of pano image: Live Projection: 3d navigation of projected pano:

For me the apps are running well on my notebook which I use while the main PC is broken. I mainly testet Photo. But, the Forum has posts about V2 being slow and crashing for various users. Because most of the threads don't have a solution nor an explanation what causes the issues I like to ask: if users of the forum are successfully using a 13th gen intel CPU with build in GPU coupled by an Nvidia 3090 GPU and have a stable and fast system with working hardware acceleration? Trial is over for me - I can't test V2 with the new PC next week (and parts come after end of launch offer). Alternatively: Are there plans to extend the launch offer and give a new trial once the msi installer version is out? New system: - Windows 10 21H2 - Intel i7 13700K (Intel UHD 770 gpu build in) - Nvidia RTX 3090 24 GB vram - 64 GB ddr4 ram - M.2 SSDs - Mainboard chipset is intel Z790 with ddr4 memory controller

Check Preferences - Performance for hardware acceleration. If it is on, Affinity apps try to use the GPU to speed up their operations (Affinity uses the opencl API). This seems to be not working for various users. Switching it off seems to solve issues for some users. Regarding Nvidia GPUs: Every nvidia driver between 517.48 and 526.98 has opencl issues confirmed by nvidia. I don't know If those issues are relevant for Affinity, but crashes of an opencl function in another product have been reported in high numbers. Maybe installing either driver 517.48 or 526.98 (or newer) solves it without disabling hardware acceleration. For me on Windows 10 it is working so far (only one app hang since I startet the trial).

Welcome to the club of users asking for this. First request I found is from 2015 (asking to implement shotcuts at all and it mentions opacity etc.). Since then shortcuts have been implemented in general (thanks Serif 👍) but opacity etc. are still pending 7 years later.

Is anybody using an intel CPU and has the display connected to the CPU integrated Xe graphic while using a dedicated GPU (Nvidia in my case) for opencl accelaration? Does this work in the A apps?

I have a similar issue when the graphics display and APh preferences - tools is set to Windows Ink. With low or high precision it works ok. Other apps though work fine with Windows Ink. Win 10, Nivida graphics card, Huion pen display.

I guess so, but only Serif knows.