yaywalter

Yeah:

It won't let you just put affinityphoto2.exe as the path?

So that's a yes, it's just pseudo-DRM?

Or they can get a refund anyway, even if it's fixable.

What's the reason for installing the app like this instead of in the Program Files folder like normal? Is it just meant to be pseudo-DRM? If so, putting the onus on other apps to support execution alias files is kinda frustrating.

I found a solution... forget about specifying any paths, just running "affinityphoto2.exe" works. Still rather annoying and disappointing that they've decided to go about it this way. You can email affinityreturns@serif.com with your name and order number to initiate a refund if you'd like.

It does not launch. But I know I have the path right, because if I paste it into Windows Explorer and delete "photo.exe" it goes to the right path. Can't launch it by double-clicking or right-clicking and running as admin either. Looking at the permissions of Photo.exe, it looks like something's corrupt with the permissions as expected. Even considering the possibility that I borked the permissions when I gave myself access to the WindowsApps folder by changing the owner of the folder to Admin instead of SYSTEM, I've even now tried completely uninstalling Photo 2 and re-installing it. Still no good. I can launch the program from the taskbar and start menu, but anything else still won't work.

Great for you. Windows Apps have always been a hot mess permissions-wise, so there's probably something borked for me. I also tried pointing it at C:\Users\[MyUsername]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\AffinityPhoto2.exe and get an error saying "The file cannot be accessed by the system" even though it looks like the permissions are in check. Also using Win 11. So again... should've just been a regular windows program and we wouldn't have had any of this headache.

Not for me, it's not. I gave myself access to the WindowsApps directory and tried pointing HoneyView to Photo 2 as its default image editor, and no dice... nothing happens when I try to send an image to the editor. Not sure why they felt the need to lock down v2 down like this, but it's really annoying... it should just install like a normal windows program that goes in the regular Program Files directory