CALDesign

Affinity Photo refuses to open images. Neither dragging onto Photo icon nor opening from the File menu works. This is a fairly recent development and applies to all the usual filetypes. Help/advice please...

Hi, Dennison - I could not agree more with what you say. I've now ditched the whole Affinity suite and am warning people about what I've experienced. But I'm still registered on the this Forum so have been kept aware of the frustration this 'bug' is causing to others. They clearly don't care at all because last year I was in frequent contact with Gareth at Affinity development who admitted the issue was affecting a lot of people. He claimed it was Apple's fault and a problem caused by Apple's permissions régime and sandboxing. But I have never heard of any other software developer being affected this way - so I now don't believe him. Since then no one from the company has, to my knowledge, ever acknowledged that they are selling goods of "un-merchantable quality", nor that we deserve at least a refund. It's really pretty disgraceful - they should be ashamed of themselves.

Hi, Dennison - I could not agree more with what you say. I've now ditched the whole Affinity suite and am warning people about what I've experienced. But I'm still registered on the this Forum so have been kept aware of the frustration this 'bug' is causing to others. They clearly don't care at all because last year I was in frequent contact with Gareth at Affinity development who admitted the issue was affecting a lot of people. He claimed it was Apple's fault and a problem caused by Apple's permissions régime and sandboxing. But I have never heard of any other software developer being affected this way - so I now don't believe him. Since then no one from the company has, to my knowledge, ever acknowledged that they are selling goods of "un-merchantable quality", nor that we deserve at least a refund. It's really pretty disgraceful - they should be ashamed of themselves.

Vickski - Thank you very much for this… good of you to share it. After the very rude response I had from GaryP (whoever he may be!), this is encouraging! I’ll pour myself a brandy and soda this evening and try your ‘solution’ with fingers crossed! Best - C [Dennison, please report how you get on...!]

Dave - Sorry you too are having this problem. I've had to give up on the Affinity suite (very sadly) because I have to work to earn my living even if Serif's Affinity products DON'T. There has been no response from Serif to my frequent posts and it's clear others are finding the same. How tragic that they set up this Forum but that they either don't read read what we write or just don't care that they've sold us products that don't work. If anyone has any personal contacts with anyone at Serif, perhaps they could ask them why this is... Bon courage, Dave, as we say here in France...

So sorry you are having the same problem as me and many others, Dennison. For me this has been going on for well over a year and there's been no solution. I think it's only out of a sense of (misplaced?) loyalty that I haven't asked for my money back on the grounds that the apps supplied were "not of merchantable quality". I've been using  computers and software since the late 1980s and these are the only apps that ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WORK for me. After all, the barest minimum that you require is that you can open a file and close it, saved. The fact that nothing has been done about this suggests that: (1) they don't read our feedback on these pages; or (2) they have no solution; or (3) they don't care... Sad...

So sorry, not Brendan... GARETH... sorry Gareth... end of a hard day (not using Affinity sad to say...)

I feel your pain! I have only the standard fonts issued by  (+ four others) - so it has nothing to do with too many fonts. Brendan from Affinity was very helpful for a while but in the end none of his suggestions made any difference (sending him several Console reports, re-installing, granting new deep level permissions, etc.). So, I cannot rely on Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo, although Affinity Publisher presents no problem. I suspect that it depends on whether you buy you app directly from Affinity or whether you buy it off the  App Store as I did for Designer and Photo. If this is indeed the problem, Affinity should be simply allowing us to re-download the app from them - but this option seems not to interest them. It's so sad that a really excellent suite of apps do not work for many of us and that we have to go back to horrid, expensive Adobe in order to be able to work reliably. I DO HOPE BRENDAN READS THIS (good evening Brendan!).

Thank you, Sean. I have no evidence that it returned after installing Big Sur - it may have been there earlier. Owing to Covid I have only recently been able to work again with my principal client for whom I use Designer a lot. However I have been using Publisher on an almost daily basis ever since you launched it and never had this problem. I don’t use sexy fonts in my work so I only have the standard macOS array + four others used in my client’s house style. It seems I’m not the only user affected this way, but I may be the most vocally irritated by it. In addition to lost work my greatest frustration is that for a long time I have relentless promoted Photo, Designer and (more recently) Publisher here in France and probably won you a great many customers. However, I haven’t seen anyone from Serif trying to help or keeping us informed. It reminds me of the blank silence many of us met at  when MacBook keyboards simply didn’t function for hundreds of thousands of users (2016-2019). Many then said goodbye to Mac. If you want your existing customer base to be your best ambassadors you really need to help us to help you and give us products that WORK and allow us to work! Corny phrase: “You only had one job - let people save their work”. Best - Christopher LONG

Still not a word from Serif... so I suspect they don’t read what we say and this forum is just a play-pen (sand-box?) for us users... Sad, because I had such high hopes that a British software developer would show the way into the future...

Just a quick question... does anyone from Serif read our comments and queries on this forum or is it just read by users? If the latter and Serif in unaware that its products don’t work for some/many of its customers, then the situation is truly serious. My solution for today will be to use a friend’s computer but I suppose I’ll have to go back to Adobe by the end of this week.

Thank you, but I’ve seen these explanations in the past. My work doesn’t involve any special fonts so the only ones I have are the standard ones supplied with macOS. Affinity surely can’t can’t be expecting me to buy a font manager in order to use Designer. And in any case, Publisher manages without that... and so does every other sand-boxed and paid-for app on my computer. And if Designer only works if you buy it from the publisher, it ought to be withdrawn from the App Store. What we need is a fix. Otherwise the product is totally useless and a waste of €50.

I have just lost three hours of work because of this problem and although I have been a super-loyal fan of Affinity I really could not now recommend Designer to any professional working to a deadline and a budget. This problem first arose for me about two years ago and has now re-emerged under MacOS Big Sur (Beta). I now cannot save any Designer file anywhere on my hard drive. It's really depressing that Affinity products (that so many of us have tried so hard to support) let us down so fundamentally. You do the work AND YOU CANNOT SAVE IT!!! Please tell us NOW, in words of one syllable, how to fix this at our end or else fix it yourselves in an update SOON... but if you want us to carry on using Designer, FIX IT...

Affinity Serif is a British software development company of which most of us are very proud... and which  regards very highly indeed.

Affinity Serif