bokchoi

I'm unable to test right now, but for anyone who has had this problem and is able to test it again (by re-enabling OpenCL compute acceleration or installing 24H2): The next time things freeze up, can you try the following keyboard shortcut: CTRL+WIN+SHIFT+B I only discovered this now but it appears to be a debugging shortcut in Windows that is sometimes used to debug and resolve GPU-related Frozen or Black screens (Some people describe it like a "reset" of the GPU but what I've read is that discards the Desktop Surface Buffer and rebuilds the display from the Desktop Windows Manager, though I'm not sure exactly what that means). Importantly, it may potentially generate error logs, which could hopefully help Affinity or Microsoft figure out what's going on. I have no idea whether this will actually work or not for our problem, but if someone is able to test and report back, we might end up that much closer to a fix 🫠

I've been affected by this problem too, and I've been trying to piece together all the information I can from other posters on the forums. If you are running Windows 11 24H2 and an Nvidia GPU, and you are still within the 10-day rollback period, roll back to your previous version of Windows while you can. If you are on 23H2 or 22H2, use group policy or a registry edit to prevent 24H2 from installing, until a known solution arrives. If you are on 24H2, have an Nvidia GPU, cannot rollback, and are having problems with the system freezing and becoming unresponsive, please try the following: Disable OpenCL Compute Acceleration in Affinity Photo's Performance Settings - this seems to prevent crashing, but results in higher CPU usage and reduced performance. Install the latest Nvidia Studio Drivers - update: the latest version is 572.16 released on 2025 January 10; so far, at least some users are still having crashes with this version. When you reach Installation Options, it's recommended to go to Custom (Advanced), and check "Perform a clean installation". The problems that appear after the 24H2 update appear fairly consistent: Shortly after 24H2 is installed, Affinity Photo users encounter random system freezes that cause the entire system to become unresponsive. Most users describe a complete freeze with the image frozen on the screen and no mouse response, though there are also reports of still being able to move the mouse. Ctrl-Alt-Del does not appear to do anything. System fans may or may not spin up (in my case they did). The only way to restore functionality is to power cycle the system. There is no very consistent way to reproduce the problem; the hangups seem to occur in normal usage when doing CPU/GPU intensive tasks such as applying filters, resizing, exporting, etc. There is no consistent time frame for the hangups, though they seem to occur at least once daily for normal AP users, or in some cases, multiple times a day. The crash does not result in a bluescreen. My (uneducated) observations and theories: The root of the problem is likely a driver issue with Nvidia and Windows 11 24H2 The problem does not seem to be CPU dependent (seems to happen with both Intel and AMD CPUs) In one case of my own, Affinity Photo was open but not in focus at the time of the crash, but I was using another graphics program that uses GPU acceleration. The root problem may not be with Affinity Photo, but it does appear that the way Affinity uses the GPU is much more likely to trigger the system hang (So far I haven't found any similar reports of issues with Adobe products) No error logs seem to be created when this happens. AP does not produce any crash dump, and Windows Event Viewer only logs an unexpected system shutdown. Unfortunately, I suspect this effectively makes the problem completely invisible and nonexistent to Microsoft and Nvidia, and gives the Affinity team very little to work with. MS and Nvidia are unlikely to directly address this problem; a fix from them is most likely to come as a result of them fixing one of the many other issues with 24H2. It's a good idea to use the Windows Feedback Hub to let Microsoft know and hopefully have them acknowledge that a problem exists. If you have encountered this problem, and have installed the latest Nvidia drivers and haven't had any crashes since, please post your results to us so others can try that solution! If you have encountered this problem and are NOT using an Nvidia GPU and/or Windows 24H2, please also post in case the problem is something else!

I experienced this same exact issue after updating to Windows 11 24H2 and it was very frustrating; there are a few threads on this problem starting from about the time 24H2 started being rolled out but I think it's been a challenge for the devs to fix as no error logs seem to be generated when the system locks up like this. I wasn't able to reliably reproduce the lockup with any specific set of actions; if you're able to reproduce it consistently with the steps above, hopefully a few of the others can try the same and the devs can use that to figure things out. So far, based on everything else I've read, the common denominator seems to be Windows 11 24H2 combined with an Nvidia GPU; turning off hardware acceleration seems to be at least a temporary fix, albeit with a performance hit. If possible and you're within the 10 day rollback period, try to rolling back to 23H2, which completely solved the problem for me. I had to go into the Group Policy editor to prevent Windows from installing 24H2 again (which it did by itself in January, causing the problems to come back within 2 days of installing before I rolled it back again). If that's not an option, you might want to try updating your Nvidia drivers to the newest Studio version first (the latest version is 572.16, released 2025 January 30) to see if that might solve the problem; I haven't had a chance to test that but if that fixes things for you, please let us know as it could be fix the rest of us need too!

Posted in 2 other threads with similar concerns, but throwing my experience in December into this thread as well. After updating to Windows 24H2 Affinity Photo would completely hard hang up the system (even mouse would no longer respond, system fans would ramp up) necessitating a power cycle (I tried waiting but gave up after 20 minutes); no error logs would be created by Windows or Affinity. Rolling back to 23H2 within the 10-day rollback window fixed the issue for me, but by this point in time I suspect many people might not be able to do so. From what I've read so far it seems most likely linked to OpenCL Hardware acceleration, and possibly Nvidia GPUs in particular. Turning off HW OpenCL acceleration seems to resolve the crashes with the expected performance penalty. If time permits I'll see if updating to 24H2 this month (January 2025) still causes the problem or if a fix might have been made on Microsoft's or Nvidia's end.

Upgrading to 24H2 appeared to have caused Affinity Photo 2 to cause a complete system hang for me (Windows would become unresponsive and I'd have to power cycle the system), and no error logs would be created by Windows or Affinity. I couldn't reliably reproduce the steps leading to the hangups but it seemed to always occur when trying to execute a task like resizing, noise generation, filters, etc. So far from other users it sounds like it's very likely Hardware OpenCL Acceleration related, and possibly specifically for Nvidia GPUs. Disabling HW acceleration seems to resolve the issue but of course with a big performance penalty. The problem stopped completely when I rolled back to 23H2 as I was within the 10 day rollback window, but many people might be past this point by now. This happened to me in mid December, so a fix on the Windows end may have been pushed in an update by now, but I haven't been able to check and test yet.

I can confirm this issue also affected my system; less than 2 days after installing Windows 11 24H2, Affinity Photo 2 would hang the system (usually when activating something like a filter or trying to resize the image). System fans would spin up and the system would hang completely (no response to keyboard or mouse, hard power cycle required), and no error logs would be generated. Crash frequency was about once or twice a day, but not easily reproducible except by using normally. No Asus tweaking utilities, optimization apps (incl. AMD Ryzen Master), or any of the apps mentioned in the post link from AiDon's December 1 post were installed. NVidia drivers were Studio Drivers 472.47 on an RTX 3060. I did not attempt testing with Hardware Acceleration disabled. System hardware configuration was: Ryzen 5 5600 GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 64GB DDR4 3200Mhz WD Black SN850X Asus B450M-A-CSM motherboard Rolling back from 24H2 to 23H2 within the 10 day update window resolved the issue and AF2 has not crashed for me in this manner since then, but this option may not available to most people.

Definitely no offense taken NotMyFault, at the time I made my post I was running 1.8.5 and I was concerned over what seemed to be excessive CPU usage compared to Photoshop, especially when doing things like dragging layers around the canvas or zooming. I'm happy to say that since 1.9.x my CPU usage and fan noise has been much better and more comparable to Photoshop, and I didn't fully understand the role of OpenCL rendering at the time of my last post; I personally haven't run into too many stability problems either with 1.9.2.1035 (Radeon RX580 GPU with recent AMD drivers), and overall I'm happy with how the program performs. I hope everyone gets a chance to read through and update to the latest version to see if that resolves their CPU usage problems.

I've also noticed a similar issue with Affinity Photo and when working with raster layers in Designer (1.8.5, but I noticed it on previous versions too). If I select a group of layers and try to move them around, I'll easily exceed 75% CPU usage and even spike to 100%; performing the same task with the same file in Photoshop does not exceed 10%. In terms of actual performance and snappiness I don't notice a huge difference between the two programs, but the burst of fan noise and heat is definitely jarring. I note that this issue is particularly noticeable when manipulating layers (moving them around, setting opacity and visibility, etc.) and zooming; I'm not as concerned with CPU usage relative to Photoshop when doing tasks like running filters, blur, opening files, etc., but the spike that comes with common operations like layers and zoom seems excessive. For tech info, I'm running Windows 10 2004, an AMD Ryzen 2600X on an Asus B450M, default CPU clock and fan settings except the RAM (32GB @ 2933mhz), and a Radeon RX580 (GPU rendering enabled); the file I tested was a 6600x10200px PSD, RGB/8, 5 raster layers. Hoping this is something that can be investigated, thanks!

I'd like to add my voice to request being able to disable auto-selecting layers; it's particularly frustrating with small objects within groups, as mis-clicking causes you to deselect the current layer, and trying to simply re-click to select what you were working on causes you to select the entire group you were working on instead.

Hi, just echoing that I'm having a similar problem here; the problem also exists when trying to export simple line-and-fill graphics in Affinity Photo. White areas seem particularly affected by the Palettized option; I'm also finding that the dithering turns into banding if I use a larger palette. The dithering disappears when exporting without checking the palettized option, but at the cost of a much larger file size.