[Exporting a project to file is not saving modifications without exiting the app then reopening it.]

4 hours ago, smatthews30 said:

On my iPad, If I open a project and and modify it then do an export and save image, the changes don’t save.  But If I exit the Affinity Photo or Designer app and reopen the project then export and save to file the new changes are saved. 

Are you using the iPadOS 15.4 beta as that is a defect I can see as well.

Apple are changing the ways apps access memory to give apps like Affinity greater access to the extra RAM on M1 iPad's so I suspect there is a problem with the export buffer only being written to once, requiring the app to be closed and restarted before the next export works.

[iPad Pro 256 or 512 GB - opinions appreciated]

54 minutes ago, Alfred said:

9 GB isn’t much when you have 256 GB, but my iPad Air 2 has only 64 GB and my docs from two Affinity apps take up at least 9 GB each (not to mention about 2 GB for the apps themselves, and the same again when there are current beta versions). Add another 10 or 12 GB worth of files stored in Documents by Readdle and there’s soon very little space left.

Yeah 64GB is a little low for the iPad agreed.

My iPhone is 64GB and also has access to all my 2TB of iCloud documents and photos but usually keeps about 17GB free automatically for software updates, which are every other week for me as I'm on the IOS beta program as well. I also use the Offload Unused Apps for my 107 apps on the iPhone and 151 apps on my iPad. which I think is a great idea, saved me having to decide which apps to delete from all the ones I've collected since 2010.

[Refine Selection too not working.]

6 hours ago, NashvilleNewman said:

I’m trying to clean up the edges around this picture, hair, profile. etc. I’m using the refine selection tool exactly as I saw in the tutorial but it’s not working. I’ve attached a movie. Anyone have any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

Thanks!

You don't appear to have made a rough selection first using the selection tools. Then use refine selection around the rough edges as I show here.

[iPad Pro 256 or 512 GB - opinions appreciated]

37 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Unfortunately, ‘Optimise Storage’ only applies to the Photos app. By far the biggest space hog for me is my large collection of Affinity documents.

That is strange, all my documents are in (iCloud 142GB)and take up very little space on my iPad (9GB). I do store in my own private folders though and not the app created folders.

 

[Battery drain]

On 3/13/2022 at 1:55 PM, SandMagic said:

thanks for replying. if the only app I have open is affinity designer and the battery is draining much faster than if app wasn't open, then wouldn't the problem be with the app? 

No, it also depends what is going on in the background which is entirely in Apple's control. 

[iPad Pro 256 or 512 GB - opinions appreciated]

I concur, 256GB is more than enough, to be honest I never ran out of space on my older iPad Pro 128GB but that is because I use iCloud which is much more cost effective and practical than a larger capacity iPad. Just remember to turn on Optimise Storage.

[Affinity Designer iPad PSD > AE issue]

17 minutes ago, Kwyjibo said:

Hi there.

Thanks for the reply.

 

I have tried both of those options both on the initial file select but they never import the separate layers. Only a single image. But I am able to retain all separate layers when saving as a PSD via Procreate and AI via my iPad so I have no idea what is going wrong.

 

I recreated the image I wanted to use on the AI app yesterday but I much prefer Designer! However, the PSD saved via Designer will simply not work as intended.

 

I'm using After Effects CC.

 

 

Try changing your export options to preserve edit-ability. 

[Battery drain]

Pretty sure the battery issues are more to do with iPadOS15 than Serif.

[Does Affinity Photo on Ipad have bevel/emboss effect?]

58 minutes ago, Kunkaniteiei said:

Hello!
I am currently interested in getting Affinity Photo for work and stuff. But I’m wondering if this app has bevel effect or not because it’s a feature that I wish to use on other graphics applications but couldn’t find one. If Affinity for Ipad has this effect, I would definitely buy it. 

Thank you in advance for your answer!

Yes.

[Please change API method of accessing Apple Photos on Mac]

I have a very large photo album (>50'000) in my iCloud Photo album which I can access perfectly on my iPad version of AP but the API method that Affinity on the desktop uses is very poor and often times out and vanishes from the Finder like interface currently used.

If you take a look at the app 'Raw Power' it shows all my albums as easily as opening the photos app. I know Raw Power was written by an ex member of the Apple team but whatever inside knowledge he has needs to be transferred to the Serif team.

I use an 16GB M1 Mac Mini, an Intel Macbook and this has been like this on all macOS since I first changed over to Mac in 2016. Currently on macOS Monterey. I also have optimise storage turned on but even when I used to download all to my Mac the Affinity Photo interface to photos was very slow/unusable. 

Screen recording comparing Affinity Photos trying to access iCloud Photos and Raw Power app doing the same.

[Invisible >100GB Affinity Designer file(s) blocking iCloud Backup]

12 hours ago, Affinity Rat said:

Painful update, 

I just discovered that the afdesigner files displayed in the Ipad storage for Affinity Designer are files stored in the “Affinity Designer” folder. Files edited outside of the Affinity Designer folder will not be displayed in Ipad storage for Affinity Designer.

Even files residing in the Affinity Designer folder that have been saved and closed, will still be displayed in the ipad storage, deleting them from here they will be lost and unrecoverable.

 

My apologies, I  should have highlighted what I said in bold,

" the nuclear option of saving everything you can to a private iCloud structure (to avoid it being deleted accidentally)"

[Imported edited RAW files from Apple Photo app are highly pixelated.]

3 hours ago, rbruno said:

Paul,

 

I imported from the files app this time. Here is a RAW file .  First time posting to this forum so it’s a little trial and error for me right now. So below should be the Nikon file. It’s 23.2 mb and it is a NEF. These import fine.  After editing them they no longer import properly. This issue just began after lasted update. After editing and importing , it is reduced to a 120 x 160 file.  Highly pixelated. 

DSC_2930.NEF 23.21 MB · 4 downloads

Hi, thank you for the NEF file, I can confirm when imported into photos then imported into Affinity it becomes severely pixelated. When imported from iCloud it works correctly into the Develop persona.. Also if you create a new blank document and place the image from photos it comes in as a high resolution image but obviously skips the develop persona which is not ideal.

Hopefully a QA person will be along shortly for  their opinion.

[Imported edited RAW files from Apple Photo app are highly pixelated.]

@rbrunoUnfortunately that is not a Nikon .NEF raw file you uploaded it is a JPG. You should be able to use the share option in the photos app and then select save to files which should export one of your unedited .NEF raw files you could upload.

[Imported edited RAW files from Apple Photo app are highly pixelated.]

2 hours ago, rbruno said:

When importing edited RAW images from Apples Photo app into Affinity photo iPad version leads to a highly pixelated image of 160 x 120. The Edited photo App file should be 5568 x 3712.    The original unedited RAW file imports fine.  I’m using the latest iOS and this issue occurs on both the new M1 iPad Pro and the iPad Air 3. There is plenty of storage available. Everything worked fine prior to updating Affinity app.

Welcome to the forums !

Sounds like you are loading an optimised JPG version of an image, some additional details would help.

1. How are you loading into Affinity app, via import from  photos, via drag and drop from photos or from the share interface via a shortcut from photos?

2. What camera model are your raw images from and can you upload an example here in raw format for others to investigate with ?

[Invisible >100GB Affinity Designer file(s) blocking iCloud Backup]

1 hour ago, Michael A. Lowry said:

On my iPad, iCloud backup has not been working for a long time. I opened a ticket with Apple Support several months ago. This past week, Apple developers finally narrowed the problem to a file or files created by Affinity Designer.

According to Apple, there’s at least one file over 100 GB on the iPad that belongs to Affinity Designer. And because iCloud Backup does not support backing up files larger than 100 GB, this large file is preventing backups from completing. (iCloud Backup misleading reports that there is “not enough storage available” even though there is plenty of space available in my storage plan.) If I disable backing up files from Affinity Designer, iCloud Backup works fine.

I was unable to find any such large files on my iPad by using the Files app or by browsing the iPad’s content from the Finder on my Mac. However, using a third-party file system browser, I was able to see some additional details, such as file creation/modification dates and folder sizes. Based on this information, it seems the Designer folder on the iPad is taking up more than 300 GB even though the files under the folder add up to just 228.81 MB.

Evidently Affinity Designer is using more than a thousand times more storage than can be explained by the listed files.

Apple developers were able to read some metadata about the >100 GB file that is preventing the iCloud Backup from working correctly. In these metadata, they found what looks like a date & time stamp: 20190516103049. (It might be part of a file name, but I’m not certain.)

I have read several older threads about similar problems. It seems a work-around might be to move all Affinity Designer files to other locations (e.g., iCloud Drive or a computer), and then remove & reinstall the app. I would prefer not to do this unless absolutely necessary. I would also like Serif to help investigate this problem so that a permanent fix can be found.

The problem you have is the bug may already have been fixed by an App update OR an iPadOS update, but the space taken may well remain until you take the nuclear option of saving everything you can to a private iCloud structure (to avoid it being deleted accidentally) and re-install the app.

[Affinity (designer and photo) cannot open any cloud service - greyed out]

On 2/23/2022 at 12:02 PM, heartstonks said:

+1

I can open affinity designer files using the open from cloud (which will allow me to save said file back to the cloud), but I don’t see an option to create a blank canvas that’s saved to the cloud. Also export persons doesn’t let me select OneDrive cloud locations.

1. iCloud demo.
2. Onedrive demo.

[Affinity on iPad crashes when opening file from Photos]

2 hours ago, PeteB said:

I spoke too soon. After a couple of apparent successes opening from Photos, I seem to be back where I started. On opening from”+” the images in Photos are displayed but as soon as I start to locate the image I want, the app shuts down.

Check under Settings -> Privacy -> Photos -> Photo -> All Photos.

If that is ok, then try closing all open apps and do a Forced restart

[question about freehand selection tool in Affinity Photo for iPad]

2 hours ago, Karina said:

Hi, can somebody tell me how to do the following in Affinity Photo for iPad: On the desktop version I frequently use the freehand selection tool to select part of a raster layer, then I subsequently copy and paste the selected area so part of the image will be on a new layer. I use CTRL + C & CTRL + V for the copying and for creating a new layer in the desktop version. How can I do this in Affinity Photo for iPad? Thank you in advance, not being able to find this feature is driving me nuts.

 

Make sure your selected layer is a Pixel layer, rasterise it if needed then switch from Selection Persona to Photo Persona on the Persona Toolbar at the top then use Commands -> Duplicate Selection if you do not have a keyboard attached. If you do have an external keyboard attached use CTRL+C, CTRL+V as per desktop.

[Undo develop raw photo in affinity photo?]

5 hours ago, Nicole_edits said:

I was messing around with different settings in affinity photo in the develop mode on my iPad and it suddenly went to photo mode. I can’t figure out how to undo and the original raw file in the files app on my iPad is now saved with all of the settings I had changed in develop mode. I googled the issue to find that affinity photo on the iPad uses a destructive method for editing raw, is this true? I can’t believe that a photo editing app wouldn’t have some kind of warning before overwriting a raw file. How do I restore my raw file to the original and if that is not possible, how do I go about getting a refund for my affinity apps?

Welcome to the forums.

When you edit RAW files in affinity you would never normally overwrite your original image as the option is not there. If you save the file it will be saved as a .afphoto file. If you exported the file then it can take on several file formats such as JPG, PNG, TIF, PSD, PDF but not any RAW formats etc

It would be helpful if you could provide additional information as to what type of camera and RAW images you were using e.g. Canon .CR2, Nikon .NRW etc. 

It would also help of you described the steps you took and where you were loading your images from, Apple Photos? an iCloud folder?, On my iPad folder?, an external drive etc?

 

[Autosave - always losing work of last 5-10 minutes if forgot to save]

On older iPads with limited RAM best to set autosave interval to minimum value 30 seconds. The reason is nothing to do with Serif and everything to do with how multitasking works on iPadOS and how iPadOS handles memory. Affinity uses lots of RAM so when you switch to another app that also needs RAM iPadOS terminates Affinity's use of that RAM hence data can be lost when task switching. You may find it also helps to close any other apps you are not using as they may be holding onto RAM that Affinity needs. On newer iPads, like the M1 iPad Pro that I have just migrated to it does not occur because it has more RAM. But on my 9.7" iPad Pro this happened very often.

[Grouped gaussian blur live filter generates glitchy artefacts and halo]

Yes I can repeat that, so not a problem with your iPad, definitely odd and never come across that before. Weird but easy to work around at least. The Dev's will either already have this logged or will soon !

[How to clean Affinity Designer and Photos storage on iPad? Even if I closed or delete elements inside my projects, the storage stay the same.]

11 hours ago, Mosab Qadan said:

How to clean Affinity Designer and Photos storage on iPad? Even if I closed or delete elements inside my projects, the storage stay the same.

I tried to make iCloud backup, the same problem. 

I tried to offload the app and try again and its the same. 

The storage I have is more than 100 GB and its only few projects open and its only vectors. 

Did you check the On My iPad Affinity folders as they will be included in the calculation.

Last resort is to uninstall app and re-install it so long as you have saved all your work outside the app.

[Affinity designer upgrade failure]

6 hours ago, germansmacias said:

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough, but the app doesn't allow me to edit images, it gets stuck and I have to be restarting the application. I have an iPad Air 2, with iOS version 15.3.

 

Ah, this looks like you must have turned on 'Protect Alpha' on the context toolbar, try turning this control off.

NOTE: When screen recording, if you turn on 'Show Touches' temporarily under preferences, we can see where you are painting and which on screen buttons you are using if this solution does not fix the problem for you.  

 

[How to increase size of small layer to be the same size as canvas without enlarging image on the layer.]

On 1/20/2022 at 10:19 AM, Affinity Rat said:

I guess my point is, Place does NOT create a layer but an object.

Layers have no boundaries. 
 

Anyway, there are a multitude of ways to deal with it, I just assumed I was missing something.

Once you rasterise the 'object' it becomes a limited by canvas layer. With that layer selected and rasterised try painting outside the old 'object' boundaries and it will be part of that layer.

[Why no import from file option?]

On 1/20/2022 at 2:16 PM, Affinity Rat said:

Using the shared folders on my desktop sure is handy, works great as long as connection maintained.

Once connection lost, AP seems to want to access it, even when trying to import local file, AP hangs.

 

 

I use iCloud on Mac, PC and iPad and work seamlessly between all three platforms. All you have to remember is to save then close a shared file on one platform before opening on another. If the file is still in your iPad Affinity home screen sandbox then it is still open and must be closed for seamless interchanges between platforms.

EDIT2: Updated, thanks @walt.farrell