Dewey

UPDATE : It's almost a year after I first encountered this " Levels Disappears from Adjustment Tabs" bug June 2021, and not receiving a fix from Serif or anyone else after reporting it in July2021 . The issue seems to occur only on macOS Mojave (and maybe theprevious Sierras) . It is persistent...it ALWAYS happens if you leave Aff Photo running all day , as I do. I can understand why Serif wouldn't put a whole lot of time into fixing a bug that appears on OS's no longer supported by Apple. They've moved on . I'm still stuck in the vintage Apple orchard...with Affinity 1.9.3 I just this week -late April 2022- I found a workable solution by chance. If the Levels tab disappears, just click and hold down the Adjustments pallette and drag it out of the right column Studio panel list. You'll immediately notice the Levels tab reappears as you drag it into the app working window. Just hold it for a few seconds then release the mouse and drop the pallette. If the Adjustment tab sticks and stays present , just drag the whole Adjustments pallette back where it came from in the right column Studio , and yer good to go. If it disappears again , just repeat this procedure until it doesn't. Only 10 seconds of downtime to fix this annoying little bug.

Followup questions: when upgrading to AffPhoto 1.10.x from v1.9.3 , is that a rolling update of existing Affinity codebase 1.9.3 ---> 1.10.x , or is it basically a clean install of 1.10 ? Would it require reinstalling the Nik plugins all over again , or are they retained ? 32 bit plugin circular arguments aside, my MAJOR question about moving up to version 1.10 from my existing 1.9.3 on Mojave macOS is whether the promised speed and performances features actually do occur. (My Mac Mini 2012 runs an Intel i7 quad core SSD, with 16 Gb of RAM). I see posts from users who claim 1.10 didn't deliver the promised performance, and in fact graphic performance got slower, not faster. ( Intel Mac Mini's do not have a separate GPU and the video card has no dedicated memory, it robs from the system RAM ). I'm quite OK with existing performance and version 1.9.3 on Mojave. Who can tell me with certainty that updating to 1.10 makes good on the performance promise on an Intel/Mojave system ? I'm too old and financially famished to even think about moving up to all new Mac Silicon , and the DXO - Nik bundles are not affordable to me, either.

Let me rephrase the question: IF while using macOS Mojave , I upgrade my Affinity Photo 1.9.3 - currently using old Nik 1.2 plugins - to Aff Photo v.1.10 X ... will those older Nik plugins still work ? Mojave was the last OS that still runs both 32 and 64 bit code. I have never even heard if it is worth it to upgrade to 1.10 from Affinity photo 1.9.3 to get the promised speed and performance gains. I've seen arguments both way on that.

Does Affinity 1.10.x retain 32 bit compatibility , as v. 1.9.3 does ? The reason I choose to remain with macOS 10.11.14 MOJAVE is 32 bit compatibility . I have manyolder Mac apps that are 32 bit only , including the older free Nik Software bundle of plug-ins for Affinity Photo. Will updating to the Affinity 1.10.x series from 1.9.3 affect my 32 bit usability, specifically the Nik plugins? ( I refuse to buy the DxO Nik bundle that costs 3 times as much as the software it plugs into .... )

Well, it has been more than six months, and I still have the disappearing Levels adjustment . No resolution. Seems the Affinity gremlin hunters have moved on... Two questions--- 1. does this missing Levels bug occur only in macOS Mojave 10.14 ( and possibly Sierra or High Sierra ? ) but not in Catalina 10.15 or later ? Might explain why Affinity won't bother fixing it since Apple no longer supports Mojave. 2. I also never updated my Affinity Photo from version 1.9.3 to any of the newer version 1.10. Is it possible this disappearing Level adjustment has been fixed or does not happen in AffPho v.1.10 and newer ? What is gained by upgrading to Affinity 1.10.x anyway , now that it's been out long enough to be tweaked ? Nobody ever made me a convincing case that upgrading Affinity from v . 1.9.3 to 1.10.x really gained that much on my older Mac, and I still run some vital 32 bit software , not the least of which is my free Nik Plugin bundle which I use in Affinity Photo often. Which is one reason I choose to stay with macOS Mojave since its the last OS that runs 32 bit code. Oh well...

GraphicConverter is a robust and talented File Browser and digital asset manager. It is how I catalog and access my 300,000 digital photos going back 25+years . Well beyond a " bitmap editor" , It just happens to be called a " converter" because it does that exceptionaly well. But grew way past that early on. Don't judge it by the name. GC is really a Swiss Army Knife image app. Like doing GPS, accepting Photoshop plugins , running AppleScripts , Facial Recognition , and hundreds more things I have not even gotten to yet. I'll never make it to the other end of all it can do.

GraphicConverter also shows high fidelity previews of Affinity Photo files in its browser, and all metadata is available and editable. The only thing GC won't do is directly open an Affinity file, but that's not Thorston Lemke's fault...Serif's file format is proprietary. I do note that NeoFinder while similar to Graphic Converter does a lot less and costs a little more and comes with 'restrictions'.

To each their own . Thorston Lemke's Graphic Converter was the second app I acquired for my Macinstosh , back in 1995. Photoshop 2.5 was bundled with the UMAX flatbed scanner I bought first. I consider Photoshop to be bloatware, then and now. graphicConverter is indispenable for any Mac-based graphics and photo user. it is not available on Windows Your Raw Power app would live down in one corner of GraphicConverter ( which is only for desktop Macs, not iOS phones and tablets) . GraphicConverter works splendidly with AP. It also does very many things no other image processing app offered by anyone can begin to approach , and works with dozens of distinct file formats coming and going. Goes way beyond RAW anything. Costs $ 35.00 , with the fastest tech support anywhere. GC is not for everyone since the learning curve is steep due to thousands of editting permutations possible, but I've grown up alongside it these past 25 years . GC and AP work well together. I leave both apps open all day every day

I have ZERO use for anything made by Adobe on my Mac workstations these days , including Bridge , since installing Affinity 1.7 three years ago . I have utterly banished Adobe products over their harsh marketing and licensing requirements. I had the Creative Suite 5.5. I banished Adobe for being greedy , basically . No more.

Looking for a DAM , media browser or whatever to navigate to/from Affinity Photo or manage archives dynamically ? I'm very surprised none of you have suggested (Mac only ) Graphic Converter from Thorston lemke's team at LemkeSoft ( $35 perpetual license; shareware; free trial ) . GraphicConverter's outstanding Browser and built in encyclopedia of image processing and editting tools is a perfect companion to A.Photo. I leave both programs open 24/7. GraphicConverter does things no other image editor can , besides working with what seems like ten dozen file formats. Lemke provides the best support and troubleshooting of any app I have used the past 25 years. No Mac user who works with imagery should go without it . I have no connection to the Lemkesoft company other than complete satisfaction The marriage between GraphicConverter and Affinity Photo is solid.

18 days after original post, and I note the issue of LEVELS disappearing from the Adjustment tab is still present. The 1.9.3 app opens clean and works fine at first , but after editting for half an hour or completing 3-4 images, LEVELS vanishes, and the app must be closed, Quit, and reopened new. Does not occur with any other setting ( and I am not planning to update to version 1.10 any time soon . Sorry ---reading too many reports of performance issues . Will wait for a few incremental fixes, as I always do ) ------- AffPhoto 1.9.3 , Mac Mini 2012 , SSD + 16 Gb ram , Mojave os 14.6

This bug occurs daily for me. At least once. Sometimes more repeatedly. I do minimize Aff Photo 1.9.3 to the Dock between uses , but the app itself remains open. This began happening about 3 weeks ago if I recall. It was not occuring in the 1.9.2 version or earlier . ( running macOS Mojave )

- here is a better screenshot of my absent LEVEL adjustment tab. No other adjustment is affected, just LEVELS at the top of the column. This bug is annoying, but not critical, since quitting and restarting Aff Photo clears it up .

I have this exact same issue . The LEVELS Adjustment will disappear completely from the top of the adjustments column. No functionality. Quitting Affinity Photo and restarting clears it up, which is not useful for the document you are working on at the time. ( The Levels in New Adjustment Layer remains functional ). Screen shot below. I leave my Affinity Photo 1.9.3 open all day , and use it frequently. At some point during the day the LEVELS adjustment will disappear, and I cannot tell you what I did to cause that, since no action was being taken . It...just ... happens. I am running macOS Mojave 14.6

Answer: when I originally bought the Affinity software, Apple was still using the iTunes Store alongside the App Store. The original purchase was inf act thru thru iTunes. Seems ridiculous then and moreso now. Apple has since evolved away from iTunes store , to just Apple Music and App Store separate. It was never a brilliant marketing scheme...iTunes was is and remains a bloated whale carcass washed up on the shore....

Original poster of " App Store cannot process orders " failure to update Affinity Photo. I spent over an hour chatting with Apple Support to no resolution. My Affinity Photo purchase 1.6x via the Apple App Store from 3 years ago updated just fine , till now. A eyar ago I bought Designer and Publisher directly from Serif, and they had no problem updating to 1.9 from the In-App update. The issue was and remains with Apple. My solution ? Since Affinity Photo was on sale for half price, I just bought it again and started over with a clean re-install. All good now. Having the in-app Auto-Update feature is worth it to me. My advice to all : Do not buy your Affinity apps from Apple's App Store. Get them directly from Serif, who will deservedly get to keep all the purchase money instead of just 70 percent of it. I will be wary going forward of buying from the App Store. I think the issue may have something to do with me still using Mac OS El Capitan 11.6 , which Apple quite supporting quite a whiole ago. i think they don;t want to have to deal with supporting the older OS , but they also don;t seem to place a high value on a loyal Apple customer whose been using nothing but Macs since 1996. Apple deprecated mealog with the operating system.

FYI to Nik users on MacOSX ---> Affinity Photo Customer Beta update to v 1.7 starts out fresh. Preferences will be blank ( all of them ! ) . That means you have to install the Niks back into Aff Photo manually . The Beta of 1.7.1 will not access your existing Photo version 1.6 Photoshop Plugins folder after installing . It's an all new app. You can of course use your existing Nik plugins from their home folder , such as the directory named " Google" if you installed the free Niks in the past two years or so. No need to uninstall and reinstall a new set of Niks , unless you want to . But why ? They are already there... Here is the best tutorial I have found for getting Nik 1.x to work with Affinity Photo: https://www.photography-raw.com/install-nik-collection-plugins-affinity-photo/ SInce you likely already have the Niks onboard in a home folder, you can ignore the first series of steps. Go straight to the section called ' Setting up the Plugins in Affinity Photo ' . Pay special attention to that second step called " Add plugins folder " , where you direct your Aff Photo to go all the way to root on your system drive to enable all the Nik plugins ( for some reason not all of the seven Nik apps work the same in the core Mac OSX system, which is why we had this ' Updating Fonts ' SNAFU in the first place ) . This requires a very short safe hack to allow your Mac to find and use all of the Niks. Be sure and check the box under the left setup column titled " Allow Unknown plugins to work ' . For some reason I remember having to also check ' Authorize global ' over under the righthand column at some point as well. FInally , you will be prompted to restart Affinity Photo for all this to take effect. ----- Although the Nik apps themselves did not change, they certainly do seem to run better and faster in Affinity 1.7 than 1.6 or 1.5 ! Even on my 2009 Mac Mini running El Capitan on a spinning hard disk ( not an SSD ) , this was quite noticeable. We owe the Serif coders a great debt of gratitude for taking care of this nasty little Nik bug in a week. In fact, the v 1.7.1 Beta did a lot of work under the hood and improved many things. Great job.

I am thrilled that a beta fix has been issued for the Nik bug and other improvements. ( re : the GM seed of 1.7.1 out today ) My question : how does one install an Affinity beta release if I purchased my Photo app via the Apple App Store ? Do I have to wait till Apple blesses it and makes it available ? < groan >

Original Poster : I bought Affinity Photo thru the Apple App Store. [ Henceforth I will give Serif all the opportunity and money ] Apple is notorious for DEPRECATING their own software over time ( not all that is new is progress) and demanding others do the same , for various reasons not all of which are defensible - unless you believe in Gordon Gecko's ' Wall Street ' quip that " greed is good. I certainly hope it was not Apple that monkeywrenched Affinity, but I suspect it probably is . That Xcode 10 SDK thing. Others posting say that SOME of the Nik apps still work in AfP v.1.7...such as the very useful DFine . I haven't tried since the ' Updating Fonts...' debacle. I only desire that Color Efex 4 work. It is at the least very weird to me and at most a little sinister that some of the Nik bundle still worked, and some did not , after the Affinity 1.6--->1.7 update. I checked to be sure that everybody was on the same Bit plane.... all were and remain 64 bit apps; and the older Niks were installed cleanly. To Wit: my Photoshop CS 5 ( which I have not opened in a year thanks to Affinity supplanting it ) ran the Nik bundle just fine years ago, and CS5 works all the way back to Mac OS Snow Leopard 10.6 and all the way forward to High Sierra 10.13 ( I am stuck at El Capitan 11.6 because my Mac Mini cannot do the Sierras ) I just want the stuff to work today like it did last week after what should have been a rudimentary upgrade. Semi retired on low fixed income means my days of paying $ 600 for full Adobe Photoshop like I did in 1995 are long gone. That would be $ 1500 in current dollars. And I am wella ware that Nik used to sell for big bucks in another epoch. But here and now being able to afford $ 150 for the new Nik v2.0 is not really a financial option.... DXO is w-a-a-a-y down my $oftware wi$h li$t.

The base differences between Affinity Photo 1.6 and the new version 1.7 were not dramatic, mostly incremental. I see NO reason why the Nik plug-ins that worked in v. 1.6 should not also have worked in version 1.7 with proper coding . But I have a theory why it may have gone down this dark path. That the Nik bundle does not work or result in some really bizarre behavior is highly suspicious to me . Honestly- hanging the app and dishing out an alert that says " Upgrading Fonts... " in a horrible loop ? ---WTF do Fonts have to do with anything here ? Macs are really smart about Fonts in most cases. Always have been. This is not a Font issue... it's something else. If after ruling out a simple coding mistake or a previously unknown software incompatibility , that 'something else' could be something a little more sinister. NIK plug-ins a long time ago were a very pricy software bundle. Then Google bought them to acquire the wonderful tech for its own photo editting platform ( Picasa and friends ) to add value to Google's suite of useful docs. Once Google extracted what theyw anted , they CHOSE to make the entire Nik bundle a free app. Gave it away , with the caveat they would no longer support it or upgrade it. Google was done with NIK and gave it all away. Yes, NIK could be installed into Affinity Photo as it turned out, but that was never a snug fit. There were " issues" and many folks were flummoxed by the atypical means required to install any alleged Photoshop compatible plug-in to Affinity ( Meanwhile over at Thorston Lemke's excellent GraphicConverter, all you needed to do was ' Click-Drag-Copy ' the Nik folder into GraphicConverter's own plugins folder, and it immediately and seamlessly worked. I use it there all the time. It is my saving grace for this whole fiasco ) So---enter DXO. They saw an opportunity to acquire NIK and improve it, adding their own features and values, and turn it into a new/old commercial product. Except that DXO is not the most savvy software marketer on the planet. They made it known right away that the NIK bundle would be wothdrawn from the market as a free bundle, and from then on we had to go back to paying for it. Nik went from being a few hundred dollars at first ; a free bundle when Google reissued it ; and finally DXO makes it a paid bundle again.... I believe they sold it for $ 69 or something while they were developing it forward from version 1.2.1 to the latest version 2.0...... which DXO says they will sell at retail for a startling $ 150.00 ( but if you hurry you can get it now for a mere $ 100.00...........twice the price of the Affinity Photo app it can be installed to. During this travail, DXO went into bankruptcy. Yup. They had to reorganize. The Nik bundle was obviously a company asset that came into play, and was worth something. So--- why does the old Nik version 1.2.1 bundle not work in the new Affinity Photo upgrade 1.7 ....??? After ruling out other motives, it comes down to one basic thing. A LOT of people are dumping Adobe CC Photoshop these days and switching over to our beloved Serif Affinity line. DXO is watching a large portion of its market for the Nik bundle evaporate. The Adobe sector. I am going to postulate a theory --- and it's just a theory --- that DXO and Serif came to some kind of arrangement to neutralize Nik v. 1.2.1 going forward. Yes, it still runs in AFP 1.6.7 as we all know. What we don't know is this: Was Nik purposely deprecated by the new version of Affinity Photo ? That could only have happened by Serif and DXO colluding to make it so. DXO needs to make money ...that whole bankruptcy thing, plus just plain old general business in an increasingly competitive photo imaging world. My theory is the old Nik 1.2.1 bundle was purposely deprecated to not work in Affinity 1.7 and beyond. Purely for monetary reasons, with both software companies looking past one another with a wink and a nod. Serif improved Affinity Photo's plugin handling and feature set, and that is good. DXO needs to make money, and that is desirable and necessary , especially with the specter of Chapter 11 bankruptcy lingering . Although the company exited bankruptcy last year, there have to be consequences met. Serif Affinity probably considers NIK to be a nuisance at worst, or a distant relative's orphan they were forced to adopt at best, so they reluctantly agreed to nurture it , without investing much into it beyond feeding it. Today we have a new deal all around. We Affinity users are forced to purchase version 2.0 of a perfectly good software bundle we already have that was working great last week , but hardly at all this week. I really REALLY want my Nik Color Efex 4.0 to work in A. Photo 1.7 --- I use it several times a week . I also make good use of the other Nik apps, especially DFine. Oh by the way , I am a commercial photographer, so all this goes straight to my bottom line. The frustration with Nik not working for me this week is real. I can still use GraphicConverter 10.7 to do my Nik work...in fact my workflow has both Affinity Photo and GraphicConverter open all the time and I use both together, with Nik commonality. It's sweet. But now has soured somewhat. If it is just a simple software coding fix and we get existing Nik 1.2.1 to work in Affinity Photo 1.7 + , that would be most excellent. The best solution . Just...Fix...It. If however it turns out that Nik won't work in AFP 1.7 and we are forced to purchase version 2.0 of Nik from DXO for what I consider a gouge price of $ 100- $ 150 to get back Nik compatibility, I probably won't buy DXO's version of Nik. Not because it doesn't work , just because I feel I am being played. Taken advantage of. The new NIK from DXO as an Affinity plugin is not and cannot be worth more than the Photo app it is being installed into... the MOST I would ever pay for Nik now is $ 50.00 , tops. Take it or leave it, DXO. If you expect me to pay $ 150 for your new Nik bundle, it is incumbent on you to add a very huge amount of new features , capabilities, and real value to justify that steep price jump. It had better make rainbows out of thin air... Bottom Line : I really hope Serif comes thru with a clean fix for restoring Nik 1.2.1 to Photo 1.7 , and very soon.

I have the same issue. The brand new AF 1.7 hangs when trying to use the older free version of Nik plug-in filters, specifically Color Efex 4. A one line alert box came up " Updating Fonts" with the spinning sprocket. It persisted. No other apps affected, just AF I had to go deep into the MacOS utility Activity Monitor and select Affinity as a process, then Force Quit the AF app using an Activity Monitor menu command called " Send signal to process" . That process showed as HUNG (sigh ) or somesuch. The standard Quit Process command did not work...had to look for another means and found that command under Activity Monitor's VIEW" menu I use my NIK plug-ins a lot, and they were working just fine in AF 1.6.7 before I updated. ----- Serious bug for me

Updated to AF 1.7 . The first time I opened my Nik plug-in to Color Efex 4, Affinity Photo hung . An alert apepared " Updating Fonts..." with the spinning sprocket gear . After many minutes AF was still hung. I had to go deep into Activity Monitor to Force Quit Affinity Photo 1.7. I'm calling this a serious bug, because I use my Nik plug-in filters a LOT... ------- Mac OS 11.6 El Capitan

I just encountered this same exact issue. After updating to new AF version 1.7.0, the first time I opened my Nik filters, AF hung and an alert popped up " Updating Fonts " with the spinning sprocket. After 5 minutes of this, I had to use Activity Monitor to Force Quit Affinity Photo to kill the process. It's a serious bug, for sure.

Does Affinity photo not link to Apple's Image Capture ? That is a system level utility that while it looks like a standalone app is used by a lot of image apps in the background. For instance, I use Nikon Transfer 2 to download direct from my DSLR cameras to the folder of my choice. Activity Monitor shows the Image Capture extension is doing the work. Surprisingly, Nikon's software is the default for getting photos off my iPod Touch tablet , too . Image Capture has ways to set preferences for handling incoming images and devices. I learned that when I needed to utterly blackball Apple Photos from ever showing up on my Macs for any reason. Image Capture is suprisingly adaptable. Dunno why it couldn't be a bridge between Affinity Photo and most scanners. It's worked with everything I've tried. ( But there are better choices. My Epson Perfection 600 flatbed scanner does not play well with anything but EpsonScan except for the most basic quickie scan jobs ) I've heard that Image Capture is not unique to Apple or even created by them . It's generic or even open source, and Apple just appropriated it. There may even be a Windows version , but I'm illiterate and antagonistic to Microsoft

I would very much like to purchase a copy of that huge glossy Affinity photo hardcover workbook. But I understand that an update to Affinity Photo is pending, from the current version 1.6.x to the 1.7 in the near future As much as I use the online video tutorials , they are too often on the arcane side. I feel the hard copy " encyclopedia" would be much more valuable to learn from, and of course as a reference, to supplement the tutorial vids. This is about my only criticism of Affinity ... getting up and over the learning curve. Videos good. Textbook better ! Will the workbook be updated any time soon ?