cookepuss

I tend to run into a hard crash in one of three different scenarios. If the file size is too big If there's a GPU conflict If I'm dragging/dropping multiple files in at once. In all three cases, the solution tends to be fairly straight forward. Reduce my image dimensions or bit depth. Like you, I've got 64GB of RAM. However, large files can still hang up or crash apps. For this reason, I generally try to restrict my image dimensions to no more than 8k. I've worked with higher resolutions, but things can get a little dicey. This isn't unique to Affinity. File sizes can get big pretty fast - especially if you have multiple layers, alpha channel, and higher bit depths. Mind your math. Disable GPU acceleration. If you, like me, work with other GPU enabled apps in the background then you're eventually going to run into a situation where they're both fighting for control and Affinity loses. I've got a 4090 so having to turn off GPU acceleration is annoying. However, my GPU is a i9-13900k so it "hurts" a little less. FWIW, I find myself having to do this with Libre Office too, turning off the OpenCL functionality. Having it turned on sometimes results in hard crashes under similar circumstances. Don't drag in multiple files Drag-n-Drop with Affinity can be hit or miss. It works well sometimes, but hard crashes the app others. Just drag in one at a time. Better yet, use the file open dialogue instead. Check your NVIDIA drivers too. Make sure that they're up to date. It could be that simple. Overall, Affinity is largely stable. Barring the existence of the above scenarios or driver issues, I can't imagine (m)any other reasons why you'd get a hard crash like this.

While I'm not in favor of piracy, it's an entirely valid point being made. When I buy something, I would like to potentially use it until it no longer works; Not because the company stops it from working. If I buy an Altima, I want to be able to drive it until it just dies on the side of the road; Not because Nissan decided that it was in their best interests for me to get next year's model. Just because my car is old and crappy compared to the shiny new bauble that they're peddling doesn't mean that I want to abandon it. If I'm happy with what I have and see no compelling reason to upgrade, I won't. Or maybe I will. I should be my decision though. And that happened to me with the CS series some years ago. Adobe turned off those old servers and pushed everybody into subscriptions. What was supposed to be a permanent license just became an extended loaner. Not what I paid for. They tried to convince us that, "Hey. We're doing it because those old CS versions just don't work on newer OSes." Not true. REALLY not true. Even my older v7 still ran fine. It was all spin and damage control to push the subscriptions after some activation free serial numbers and executables got leaked. To my original point, there has to be some truth in advertising. If you're selling us a permanent license, actually make it permanent. Creating this invisible barrier that can negate permanence seems contrary to what's being advertised. An offline activation scheme involving a serial number or license file might terrify the money people afraid of piracy's impact to the bottom line, but it better serves the actual paying end users. If the developers can turn off the online activation servers then your purchase is hardly permanent, as far as these things go. One last real world point. Take a look at 3DCoat. More specifically, take a look at Pilgway, 3DCoat's developers. They're Ukraine based and developing smack dab in the middle of a war. If they didn't offer that offline licensing file alternative and their online licensing servers suddenly got destroyed, a LOT of pros and hobbyists relying on that software would be left hanging. Online activation benefits the developers, but offline activation (eg. serials) - free of 3rd party intervention such as e-mailing the devs - benefits the end users even more. So, the real question here is, "Whose interests are more important?" IOW, making money is important, but is it more important than the customers giving you that money? The best way to ensure loyalty is to engender it.

Just wanted to post a quick thanks. This solved my problem. It was a time zone thing for me. Gotta say, however, I miss the old v1 system. Online activation is just terrible. THE worst. It's a shame that Serif hasn't gone the license file route that 3DCoat has, and LightWave before it. Self-activation is often preferable for those with spotty internet or admin restricted network issues. Not everybody lives in a net connected world space - even today in 2023. That aside, online activation removes the illusion of ownership. This issue was harshly felt by Adobe CS era users who bought licenses that they thought were permanent, but then found out that Adobe had discontinued activation for their old versions. I'm NOT saying that this will ever happen with Affinity, but you can bet that I'm definitely holding on to my old v1 in case it ever does. Those responsible for making decisions SHOULD revisit this issue though. It makes Affinity just a little less desirable than before. Part of the appeal was this sense of permanence, ownership. Online activation flies in the face of that and, as you can see here, comes with problems that offline (license file or serial) self-activation doesn't. ANYWAY... Rant aside, I still thank you for solving this problem, for me at least.

EDIT>>> I misread. You want tiered discounts to differentiate between new and older users. Eh... Six of one. Half dozen of the other. You're still benefiting the same either way.

Oh. I'm well aware of that. I just find it curious that some REALLY basic things like symmetry and path simplification in AD don't exist even after years of begging; Same with even the crudest, most rudimentary of layer-based animation timelines for Photo, something which has existed in $0 apps for many years. You can go back 5+ years and still see people asking for some of this stuff that other app users take for granted. Honestly? My wish list isn't large. I'm not even asking for groundbreaking functionality that reinvents the wheel. I'm looking for simple things that add more substance to preexisting tools instead of me having to cobble together workarounds using in-app hacks or 3rd party filler. So, when I say that I want a timeline in Photo, I'm not asking for a Moho substitute. A simple ability to preview and scrub though layers flipbook style is more than enough. It's a little feature that can add a whole lot to our workflow with only a modest amount of effort on their part; I've built flipbook playing routines before so I know how little it requires, programming-wise.

Yeah. I mean... It's ridiculous. I was more than prepared to pay 2x that this morning. Saving as much as I did is just icing on the cake. Pricing for V2 is a steal. It may not have checked off my wish list, but I'm sure that there are many people quite happy atm. I'll be honest with you. Thanks to my in-law's employee discount, I could get the entire Adobe CC suite for even less than this discounted price. However, Adobe lost my money the day they started up with subscriptions and the associated "pay to play or go away" tactic; You pay regardless of whether they add new features or not, which is just a bit of a joke. Consequently, I will continue to support the non-Adobe alternatives. A 40% intro discount and being able to buy a perpetual license to Affinity's trio for only $99.99... Like I said, a no-brainer. I didn't even have to read the new features before clicking "BUY". All I needed to see was "Serif" (ie. not Adobe). In a whole lot of ways, even at a nearly $70 full price tag per app, you're still getting WAY more than enough functionality to get the job done and with the least amount of hassle. (I recall paying way more for older Adobe equivalents that had less going on under the hood; Apps that I beat the heck out of and to good effect back in the day.)

40% off seems more than generous. Plus, Serif routinely offers discounts during the year. Anybody who misses out on this intro period will surely catch another sale soon enough. Also, even with the price bump. They're still cheaper than anything from camp Adobe.

Like I said before, no app release can ever live up to the hype. If v2 even checks off one or two items on my wish list then I consider that a win. Even so, Affinity products are already more robust than the Adobe equivalents that were mature enough to earn their keep 20+ years ago. I may have to currently work around glaring feature holes such as the lack of even a basic timeline in Photo, but stability, predictability, price, & permanence are my #1 priorities with these apps. Always. Either way, I'd personally rather not speculate. It's a snipe hunt. As for the 9th... Wouldn't it be something if that's just when they announce the release date? LOL FWIW, nothin' wrong with a backwards hat. It's dang comfortable, even if I'm way too old for the look.

I've been doing CG for about 33 years now. I try not to get too excited about upgrade hype anymore. Too easy to get burnt if you do. These upgrades can't be everything to everybody. If only one or two of my wish list features gets added then I'll be happy. I'm one of those people who knows how to accomplish what I want with as few "shiny" features as possible. TBH, I could still happily chug along with Photoshop v7 if somebody asked me to. When I request a feature, it's usually to fill a preexisting gap and avoid me having to add another program to the mix. Bells & whistles? Meh. U2 fans will get this. For me, I try to live and work according to one basic motto: The only baggage you can bring is all that you can't leave behind.

Apologizing? What kind of agent of chaos are you, Patrick?!?!? You need to work on your maniacal laugh.

I know that this thread is supposed to be fun and its posts in that spirit. Still, at what point does teasing become sadism? 😁Every time y'all post, I get an e-mail notification. I check thinking that it's maybe some legit news and then.... BOOM! Elephant. This thread has become less about conveying important information and more about seeing who's the nuttiest. And then we have Patrick.... You're a bit of an agent of chaos aren't you? 🤪 I'm off to put on some relaxing music to meditate to. Lower that blood pressure. You guys...

I would certainly love a new version sooner than later too. However, I'd rather that they not rush out something buggy just to keep up with Photoshop or Core PSP, both of which have just released their latest upgrades. Don't get me wrong. I'd certainly love for Photo to have a proper animation timeline for pixel art and for Designer to have true symmetry that doesn't require a hack workaround. Still, by and large, I can do 99% of what I need with the programs as-is. Unless the apps are broken, I suspect that just about everybody else is in the same boat. It's really an issue of us being impatient since it's been about 14 months since the last point release and 7 years since v1.0 itself. Understandable, but chanting "are we there yet" won't actually get us there any faster. Best to just keep grinding away - business as usual - until that e-mail notification pops up.

There could be any number of reasons why this would be the case. There are, in my mind, two or three obvious causes for this. 1. If you're saying that it can't find the installation media then this is as simple as going to the BIOS and temporarily setting your boot order so that it looks to the USB first and then, after the first part of the installation, go back to BIOS and set it back to the original state so that it can finish installing it to the HDD. If you don't revert it to the original boot order at some point it'll leave you in a boot loop where it keeps hitting the USB, goes to initial OS installation, and then rebooting to do it all over. You'd have to revert the order for it to finish installation and not hit the USB in first boot position. However, I don't think that's what you're talking about so... 2. It could be a simple partitioning issue. When Windows installs onto any given HDD, it reserves some space for internal operations or data. To do that, it creates a few partitions. When you want to reinstall to that drive fresh, it sometimes complains that it can't install to that location because of that. The easiest solution here is to just delete all of the partitions on that OS drive. Windows will then recognize that install drive/location and recreate the partitions itself during the fresh install. For you to do this, when you start off, you would have to do a Custom Install and select the relevant partitions to delete. Windows Installer should take over from there. 3. If you have multiple physical HDDs in your system then Windows might give you a hard time because it doesn't understand which is the primary. Sometimes, the only way to handle this is to remove the non-OS drives and then do your install, which may still require you to do that partition thing after. Once the OS is installed and you're at the Windows desktop, you can safely shut down, reinstall the other HDDs, and then start things back up. Not a hard to do operation. Just tedious and maybe a little intimidating if you're not used to digging into the hardware stuff. (I have a tool-less case with dedicated bays and the drives pull out without me opening the core case, but most cases aren't that simple and require at least a screwdriver.) Anyway, I know for a fact that all three of these tactics work - alone or in some mix of the three. Have had this issue many times over the years. However, for MY own protection, I am forced to issue the following disclaimer: "WARNING: The above post is intended to illustrate one user's problems and solutions. This example and its proposed solution are provided with no guarantee of success to anybody other than the person providing it. Back up all your data and ground yourself from static whenever dealing with internals. Messing with hardware and/or the BIOS can be tricky and should only be attempted by somebody with experience. I am NOT responsible if things go horribly wrong and you lose data, fry your hardware, or you suddenly find yourself back in the Jurassic era and step on a bug. Proceed at your own risk. Try not to undo humanity." Just wanna keep myself in the clear here. Not that I don't trust you. :)

Yikes! That really is a frustrating situation. Sorry about that. Well, seeing as how you're still licensed to use Win10, go to Microsoft and download the media creation tool to create a new Win10 installation USB/disc. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 If you're 100% sure that the problem is Win11 then this should be your fix. Just don't upgrade to Win11 when presented with that option during your routine updates. The latest version of Win10 is also labeled 22H2, but ... y'know... different. (Gotta love how MS goes out of its way to not confuse people. ) OT: Odd that recovery didn't roll you back to Win10. Something probably deleted the GBs worth of recovery data necessary to roll back, making Win11 "permanent" and you only being able to roll back to the last Win11 version instead of Win10. Neither here, nor there, but that's probably what happened. Had that happen to me too when I went from Win8 to 10. Wanted to pull my hair out too. I feel ya'.

Not sure if there would be any requirements to prevent this, but... Have you tried running them in Win11 safe mode yet? It's the most old school method of weeding out the problem, but it can surely tell you a bunch. If it runs fine there then the problem would almost certainly be due to a driver, service, or startup program causing the issue. Certain services and startup apps won't load or work in safe mode so that would eliminate a number of potential culprits. At that point, it'd just be a (tedious) process of elimination to see who's the jerk keeping Affinity from opening. Like I said, I honestly can't see why it wouldn't be working. Works here on my end with Win11 (22H2) just fine. Hope things work out for you.