Frozen Death Knight

Yep, great change. Though, I also hope they add the ability to sort in reverse order for date (I like sorting by newest down to oldest first) and alphabetical, not to mention manual ordering, but that last one might be unnecessary since I can just put numbers like 1 at the start of the name to put it at the top of the pile. Still, a good start! ^-^

Hey! Well, maybe some of them have, but from my experience of using the Beta I am still noticing issue 1, 2, and 5 on a regular basis. Number 5 especially is incredibly noticeable and is very, very easy to reproduce (what you see in the Beta part of the video is the actual speed of the same type of brush strokes I did in the latest official release, so yeah, very laggy). Here's a direct comparison to the differences in responsiveness with GPU acceleration on and off. Number 1 also happens very often in relation to 5 and can also be shown in the video when I directly hover over the Layers panel and the UI can't respond because it is still trying to process all the brush strokes I drew. Desktop 2021.03.07 - 23.37.04.01.mp4 The only area where GPU acceleration performs better than by using only the CPU is when you are holding down a brush stroke for a longer period of time and when the brush strokes are absolute massive. However, fast brush strokes are very common when drawing, and the lag happens even on very small brush sizes so something doesn't seem to be right here. Also, issue number 2 happens in relation to the unresponsive UI and high processing times of each fast brush stroke, so just pressing undo when issue 5 happens is more than enough to replicate this.

Been trying my best to replicate it for the last hour or so, but to no avail. The only thing I recall that I did beforehand was that I went into the main document, selected a part of a layer I wanted to cut out, then I pasted it into the embedded document and merged it with another layer. After I had been painting a bit on this layer all of a sudden this happened. Don't know if that triggered it, but I can't figure it out as of now since I can't get the bug to appear again despite trying to do the same actions. Here's the document if you want to experiment yourself, anyway. Testing Embedded.afphoto Still, I did manage to find some troubling performance issues and weird interactions while working with an embedded document. Here's a video where my undo history completely refuses to update the canvas and it is in some kind of freezing stage where you can't go back and forth on the timeline using the slider (it resets back to its original position) and clicking on the thumbnails doesn't work either. Not to mention the freezes happening when switching between the main document and embedded document. When I switch between the two documents things seem to work again, but it still remains unresponsive from time to time regardless. Embedded Layers Testing.mov Here's also an error I got when saving my document. Causes the program to freeze for a while and then later the document closes. Pro Tools 2021.03.06 - 17.06.24.03.mp4

I think something is seriously broken in this latest build. Here's a pretty serious graphical bug where the layer I was working on got corrupted completely while inside an embedded document. I had GPU acceleration deactivated as well. Desktop 2021.03.05 - 21.42.23.01.mp4

Been greatly enjoying the new Linked Layers feature added in 1.9. So many possibilities that it has unlocked for all three softwares. However, if there is one thing I wish was changed with the current iteration, it would be the Opacity & Visibilty links you can make for your layers. Personally I find this aspect a bit limiting, since linking layers together so I can toggle visibility on and off on multiple layers would help add a bit of extra control when working on complex scenes. For instance, what if you have multiple clipping layers attached you have to manually disable each one manually, but because each of them have different opacity settings you can't link them together this way? This scenario could also be reversed where you simply want to combine the opacity settings to be the same across multiple layers to achieve a specific effect, but you don't want to disable/enable visibility of every layer since you want to check how each layer affects the stacked result. I think it makes a lot of sense to separate the two features to enable for control. Would be a pretty nice quality of life change to an already amazing feature. Another addition I would think would be cool would be if you could link the Alpha channel of one to other layers as a way to mask. This way you could use a layer with different levels of opacity as a way to mask other layers that are linked to that specific channel. P.S. I also found a bug where clipped masks lose their linked chain symbol when you attach it to a layer. Should probably be looked at.

I don't know what exactly is triggering this, but while working in 1.9.1 I have noticed that the program occasionaly freezes and crashes when doing simple stuff such as drawing with the Brush Tool. Just now I had Photo do exactly that after having worked for a couple of minutes on a sketch which just didn't happen in 1.8.5. A single line drawn can crash the program even with GPU acceleration off. However, this is a much more minor issue compared to when I have been trying to use GPU acceleration. I am reliably getting issues with it. Here are some of them that I can recall from this week: 1) The UI becoming unresponsive with the mouse cursor remaining like a Brush Tool cursor when trying to use the panels and menus, so you can't interact with anything. 2) Undo commands getting delayed for several seconds before anything happens. 3) Rendering artefacts on brush strokes. A brush stroke can create destructive eraser boxes around each stroke dot which delete anything that are below them, thus destroying anything on that specific layer. 4) Corrupted history states where the only thing that is getting saved is the stroke while the rest of the layer becomes completely blank. Only the stroke data gets saved when pressing undo, but anything else on said layer gets destroyed, and it happens to every single history state except for the latest history state for some reason. 5) Delayed brush strokes which are slower than when just using the old CPU method. This is noticeable when you attempt to draw multiple strokes in a row fast. They also seem to trigger some of the bugs on this list from time to time. 6) More freezes and eventual crashes. I reported on a bunch of these problems back during the 1.9 Beta. Some of them I actually thought had been solved, but after having worked in Affinity for a longer period of time after the official release I can say with absolute certainty that all those old reports are as valid now as they were back then. If I sit down and work on something for at least a couple of hours or so I can pretty much guarantee that any of these bugs and issues can appear. However, there is no reliable way for me to properly trigger them since they can happen after just a few minutes or even hours into a project, thus feeling pretty random. All I know is that there a some really serious issues with the feature on Windows and that something has to be done to fix them.

@Gabe Okay, so apparently a new Beta came out yesterday and actually did fix the crashes I was experiencing, so I am able to test this now. Just assumed it was still unstable because the only change mentioned was unrelated to the crashes, but hey, it works. Anyway, I have done some testing and my conclusion is that closing the main document still crashes Affinity in the Beta version. So yeah, still a problem I'm afraid.

The live editing is a nice feature to have for some I suppose, but on my end this is a big problem since it makes my desired workflow pretty unstable. Back when I used Photoshop I didn't have to deal with lag spikes and freezes when switching between documents since updates to the main document only happened when I saved the smart object document. When I try to do the same in Affinity I can lose a lot of work because switching between the embedded and main documents can lead to perma-freezes. If I can't access the main document without freezes to save my progress, all of it will be gone. I hope you at least consider an alternate way of allowing the user to save from the embedded document so that potentially hours of work don't get lost because of one crash. Also, please allow an option to disable automatic updates to the main document so performance is more reliable. The latest Betas are very unstable for me with near immediate crashes, so there is no way for me to try this I'm afraid. Will have to wait till a more stable one comes out before I attempt such a thing.

You are right about it working the same in 1.9 and earlier versions after doing some extra testing by reinstalling 1.8.5. However, I know for sure that the results for using Affinity now is different this time around than it was in the past. I did some extra digging and found out the true reason why the behaviour was different: I switched web browsers fairly recently. When I booted up Firefox again which used to be my standard web browser and attempted the same drag and drop action, the feature worked as it should. However, with Google Chrome and other web browsers based on the same architecture (i.e. Opera and Brave) this functionality changes to Affinity just copying the URL. Here's a video demonstration: Desktop 2021.02.19 - 03.36.45.02.mp4 So in this case I accidentaly stumbled upon different behaviours and thought it behaved the same across all browsers, which was not the case. Because of this I would like to retract my previous report and replace it with a report about how dragging images from different browser types produce different results, i.e. Chrome vs Firefox architecture. If possible I would like to see this changed to the Firefox behaviour on the other web browsers as well, since it is a pretty useful feature. Maybe even give different settings options for how this drag and drop behaviour should behave if people prefer the other behaviour?

This build is really unstable for me. Nearly immediately crashed first time I opened it and second time it crashed shortly after opening a document. Just now the program crashed once again after just grabbing my tablet pen and moving the cursor around without even touching the canvas or any buttons.

One aspect that I have come to really appreciate about the Affinity Suite as an artist is the ability to quickly create your own reference boards within your documents by dragging stuff directly from your web browser into the programs. With artboards in Designer this feature has been an absolute joy to work with because of the near infinite canvas available. However, with 1.9 this single feature no longer works as it should. Instead of importing the actual image when dragging it into Affinity it instead imports the URL link on a text layer. If this change just happens to be intentional, I would highly appreciate it if you reverted the change by adding in an option to import the image as an image layer like it used to. To me this is a great quality of life feature by not having to browse online every time to look at specific references you want for a project, so I would be really sad to see it go. Desktop 2021.02.19 - 02.49.54.01.mp4

I have recently been trying to implement embedded documents into my workflow inside Affinity just like I used to when I used Photoshop regularly as a way to improve performance of my projects. Although I have managed to figure out a workaround to add an embedded layer into my documents so I can start using them to optimise my document performance, I am now starting to notice some big problems with this workflow that prevent it from being viable. Here are the main problems: 1) Any edit done to the embedded layer will automatically update to the main document. This might not sound too bad at first, but with the document sizes I am currently working at, this is a massive headache because it makes it so that the switching quickly between documents is really, really slow. On multiple occassions I have had Affinity freeze for several seconds because the main document has to update every time I switch from the embedded layers. Sometimes it even permanently freezes the entire software and I lose ALL progress I have done inside that document with nothing saved (you can't even save inside the embedded document, which makes this problem even worse). 2) You can't save inside of the embedded document, as mentioned previously. To me this is a problem, since the current live editing of the embedded layer preview is very, very taxing for my PC and I would vastly prefer it if the main document only updated itself when you saved your progress inside the embedded layer. This would make working with tons of embedded documents a lot more feasible and make sure that performance is consistent across the board. 3) Closing the main document while the embedded document is open freezes Affinity. Been trying it multiple times and I keep getting very consistent results here. 4) Performance is overall quite unstable when I edit an embedded layer for longer sessions. For instance, when I paint I often get random lag spikes and freezes, which is most likely caused by the live editing in the main document. Even with just one layer in the embedded documents the performance can nosedive in an instant, even when you aren't doing anything special. Here's a video of some of the problems I mentioned. Desktop 2021.02.13 - 02.24.34.03.mp4 This feature really needs the option to disable the live editing of the main document and allow you to save your progress inside of your embedded document which then updates the main document with the changes. Until this happens the feature simply creates more performance problems than it is actually supposed to solve.

Fully agreed. I do hope that these issues will be a high priority fix for 1.10 now when they have a dedicated team specifically made for dealing with the new account downloading system. This new account feature is a nice convenience, but it most certainly has a lot of room to grow. The devs at least seemed interested in this feedback during the Beta period, so let's see if they are able to deliver for the next major update.

Export Timelapse was removed from the release because it simply wasn't ready yet. Things like HEVC encoding were broken on some PCs and because of a lack of video quality settings the images were extremely low quality across the board with grainy artefacts. Not exactly the ideal state to release a pretty cool feature in. They might bring it back in a 1.9.x update, but that is just my own speculation.

This is probably my favourite release out of the last 3 major content patches that have been released since I started using Affinity. Linked Layers, Pattern Layers, Hardware Acceleration, Studio Presets, brushes from pixel selection, Live Liquify, and better canvas rotation controls are to me the highlights of this update. Also a fan of the new account store feature, which I appreciate that you listened to our feedback during Beta and adjusted to something a lot of people would be happy with. Linked Layers I honestly think is an absolute killer feature, since it opens up an insane amount of control when dealing with complex documents with a lot of moving parts. Even though it is primarily a Photo feature with its current design, I have actually been using it a bit in Designer, which has allowed me to do live symmetry with vector shapes, which was simply not possible before. I do hope the devs will keep working on this feature to support Designer type of work fully, since the feature is incredible when it does work (currently doesn't support linking between vector layers for grouping). Again, great job with 1.9! You managed to set a pretty high bar which I hope you will meet again with 1.10! ^^

I concur. Right now it is simply not ready for an official release, but the potential for this feature is great. Just give it some more polish by addressing the feedback people have given on it and I think it will be a pretty amazing addition to Affinity. Looking forward to the final 1.9 release!

Downloaded the latest patch to see if this problem had been addressed yet, but I noticed that it was still present. The Navigator panel also gets affected by this bug as well. Here's a video demonstration as well as the file where I encountered this rendering bug. Desktop 2021.01.23 - 00.44.51.01.mp4 Designer 1.9 Testing.afdesign

Pretty sure the program was still on when I copied it. Can try again. Log.txt Don't know if it makes any difference, but I tried rendering out a new HEVC video before I copied the log again. Weirdly enough the Date Modified clock didn't seem to update for Log.txt after I did multiple things afterwards. Edit: The log seems to have updated after I closed the program, so here's the latest version below. Log.txt

Just did. Didn't work. Have to wait till the devs figure out what's wrong on my end. ^^

Just purchased the same codec and I am still getting 0-byte files. Something seems very off here. The problem was likely solved on your end since I recall you saying you had the "N" version of Windows in some other thread, so this HEVC codec solved your issue but not mine. Also, I was afraid of that. Video quality from the rendering has a very low bit rate which creates really ugly artefacts. Until more settings are allowed to be changed that improve bit rate in particular it will be hard to find practical use of this new feature.

Nope, I get the same results as you man. 0-byte files all over the place. The strange part is that rendering takes about the same time as using H.256, so something must be happening. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Mark Ingram This file? Log.txt

@Mark Ingram Apparently I have something like that already installed when I tried to check other versions of that online. However, I only end up with files like these. The format should be supported by my VLC player, but I only get errors when opening the file. This video is broken also when I upload it to this website. More value practicing 6.mp4

Are you able to replicate the Z-key bug? If you press Z the controls for your mouse/tablet pen change drastically from what you wrote down here. At least it does on my end.

Anyway, some feedback time! Right now the zoom values are inconsistent in that it is not possible to get 100% zoom with regular scrolling consistently. Apparently changing export size of your final image affects the % values for your zoom. When I typed in 2k in height for one project the zoom values became even so I could get 100% zoom values, but when I changed the values some more the base % values became uneven again, which makes you unable to get the desired 100% zoom value to check for any potential rendering artefacts (unless you break the controls by pressing "Z" on the keyboard which unlocks the values completely by zooming in every 1 percent instead of ever 10 percent like it is now). Another piece of feedback I want to give is in regards to the lack of feedback on the Preview window when the program begins rendering based on settings changed for a specific file format. When you switch between file formats you get this swirly loading bar at the bottom of the window, which is really nice, but when you do minor edits that can take a while for a specific file format (i.e. changing settings like Resample, Size, etc.) the only feedback you get that the preview is rendering is in a small section called Estimated File Size which says "Calculating...". I would honestly like it if the swirly bar at the bottom appeared in those cases as well, since at first I got very confused when I tried different Resample settings and nothing seemed to happen until I saw that small "Calculating..." text, which I think is inconsistent with the UI that has been created when switching file formats. P.S. I tried to upload a video of these problems, but got error -200 on the forums.