Duskstalker

This was discussed in another related thread and tested by a number of users using the “unzip to desktop” unofficial install method for the MSIX package in order to negate sandbox. It was learned that there is a significant performance increase when using the same package un-sandboxed versus sandboxed. (i.e. sandboxed == slower) It seems to impact higher end hardware more, but it isn’t clear for sure without more machines being tested. I tested an AMD card in the other thread and it showed a hit, but that card is not that powerful compared to the others. (Feel free to add your own tests below with higher end AMD cards)
These tests are using the official 2.0.4.1701 MSIX installation vs MSI installations.
230127_2.0.4.1701_Sanded-vs-Unsanded-Benchmarks_ALL-MACHINES.zip
I tested with 3 machines using 3x benchmarks for averaging each installation method:

Machine 1 (Main):
Microsoft Windows 10 Home (Build 19045)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X @ 3.8Ghz (-30 all core +200mhz PBO); Mobo: Asus X470 Prime Pro
32GB DDR4 (3600Mhz)
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 3080 X3C Ultra 12GB
Monitor 1&2 4K @ 150%
 
Perf Variance: 16 ~ 20%
Sanded:


Unsanded:


 
Machine 2 (Hub’s):

Microsoft Windows 10 Home (Build 19044)
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6 core @ 3.7Ghz
Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming
16GB DDR4 (3200Mhz)
Gigabyte RTX 3070 Gaming OC 8GB Rev 2.0
Monitor 1 1440p @ 225%


Perf Variance: 15 ~ 21%

Sanded:


Unsanded:



Machine 3 (Living Room):

Microsoft Windows 10 Home (Build 19045)
AMD Ryzen 7 3600 6-core @ 3.8Ghz (-30 all core +200mhz PBO)
ASRock A520M-HDV
32GB DDR4 (3000Mhz)
Asus TUF GTX 1660 TI
Monitor 1 4K @ 225%
 
Perf Variance: 12 ~ 14%
Sanded:


Unsanded:

no crashes, drops, stalls, flickering or other issues. arc has been running really well for me since december driver updates - before that, not so much. but today, in fact, in productivity apps, arc has been ALOT better than radeon. be it capture one, affinity or davinci resolve. the a770 is an extremely good option at its price point with 16 gigs of vram.

just for reference, this is an overclocked 6800 XT with an overclocked R5 5700 and its scoring worse than a gtx 970:

Bump up the topic! Seems to be an old request dated back to V1.
I hope we get the mesh gradient tool in V2 at some point (sooner, I prefer). This one of the top three tools I miss in Designer.
I've just started with Affinity. The way I work with photorealistic illustrations the mesh gradient/fill tool would be a killer feature. Now getting realistic reflections and shading on smooth surfaces is unnecessary complex using dozens of shapes, fills, layers & layer effects. Gradient fill would help a lot.
 
 

We are pleased to announce an update for the Windows release of Affinity Publisher 2, version 2.0.3
We plan to also release this build as a MSI/EXE installer. Please follow this FAQ thread for notification of it's release.
The changes in Affinity Publisher 2 for Windows 2.0.3 (those made since the last release Affinity Publisher 2 for Windows 2.0.0) are as follows:
Fixes & Improvements:
New Document: Custom Document Preset order is not retained between app sessions afpackage fails to find Resources on Open Fixed spurious future version error under certain circumstances Improvements with PDF Import and Layers Fixes for RTF import - font name discrepancies, fields in footnotes Update for HEIF importer DWG Import scaling improvements Opening and closing chapters in a Book can leave the files locked / read only Crash opening a bunch of chapters from a Book simultaneously Colour Panel now remembers user preference for CMYK documents Export Panel UI fixes Preview exported PDF fails on Book exports Fix for export of Books with Bleed Fix for Booklet printing model Fixed some tool drawing issues relating to selections across spreads etc Pen tool tweaks and fixes Fixed hang that could occur composing vertical centre aligned text OpenType handling does not respect lookup flags such as IgnoreMarks Hit box of scaled text could be incorrect Gradients on text strokes don't render unless the fill also has a gradient Fixes for line breaking in some odd cases with punctuation Merge runs of tabs using leaders Resource Manager updates Fixed various issues involving handling of placed document files Placed documents with bleed can fail to render the bleed correctly Light UI Improvements Many and various Layers Panel updates and fixes Clipboard: 32 bit DIB support added Auto Flow Place: Added an option to auto-flow place to replace the content of already populated picture frames More attributes are retained when replacing images in frames Pages Panel, double clicking does not zoom page to view Ensure global colour edits update live Select Same Name should only select objects with user supplied names New clearer icons for stroke properties (cap, join, align) Hidden/Empty columns/rows are ignored when importing xlsx files into Data Merge, causes fields to get out of sync Help & localisation improvements. Licensing and Registration improvements and new help links  
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in Help > About Affinity Publisher ).
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store — each time you start the Affinity Store software it will check for updates and offer any available update. The latest update will install over the top of any earlier version, with no need to uninstall. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "Download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Publisher for Windows) can be downloaded from this link. (those installers are NOT for Windows Store purchases).
If you’ve purchased from the Microsoft Store — Microsoft Store updates are done automatically by the operating system (each time you start the application). If this does not happen for you, open the Windows Store app and click the three dots in the top right corner of the app and then go to Downloads and Updates. Click Get Updates. This should hopefully force the update to show.

the intel cards are way better than amd in any productivity task for the money and also really competitive against nvidia - the a770 is the only good productivity card with 16gb of vram for under $1000. the only pressing issue for arc is game support and some teething issues with the driver interface. ive been using two arc cards for a month - im still getting into it, but for video and photo editing those cards work better than my amd cards already.

for intel arc the scores are good. its an issue isolated to amd. intel arc is so fresh and unoptimized - if amd doesnt work with affinity, it seems the openCL of RDNA is just broken.

AMD Ryzen 5900X, 2x16gb DDR4 3600 CL18, Intel Arc A770+A750 Multi GPU, Win10
For some reason the A750 is the main GPU in this dual GPU setup, even though the A770 is in the first pcie slot and is set as primary gpu in windows and in affinity. the a770 alone scores about 9000.

@Eroica yes, brush performance on amd cards is abysmal, especially with rdna1 and 2 cards.

i got my hands on intel arc A750 - i have to play around with it some more, but with a ryzen 5 3600 @4,3 ghz the gpu scores 8000 points in raster single gpu. gonna upload the screenshot later, its saved on my testbench in the basement.

considering @debraspicher had an rtx3080 score 10500 points here, with a faster cpu, the result for the intel gpu is actually quite good when you look at the price of just $290 for the A750.

5700XT and ryzen 9 5900X.
this is my gaming machine - workstation is running a threadripper 2920X and vega56 - so at least openCL works a bit better. but im quite fed up with radeons for work. davinci resolve doesnt run without stuttering either. capture one has started giving me artifacts with openCL acceleration again (thankfully not baked in when exporting, was a fun time in 2019), even had a gpu related system lockup while editing. time for team green, amd just doesnt care.
 
checked the gpu utilization and the card clocks to its full 3D clocks and draws more power, but the load duration in the benchmark is extremely short. gpu only is less than a second and combined is maybe 2 seconds of load.

i also hate the new install routine - not because its new, but because everything microsoft touches turns sour. a new installer could have been a good thing, instead microsoft takes away all control from the user - you dont see what happens. it feels like installing a trojan horse. after installing for the first time i was scratching my head where the install went.
microsoft is just completely lost with the direction they push windows in. windows 12 will be like android, and windows 13 will be like slot machine. throw money in, use that one key you are allowed to use and be surprised what comes out of it.

i also hate the new install routine - not because its new, but because everything microsoft touches turns sour. a new installer could have been a good thing, instead microsoft takes away all control from the user - you dont see what happens. it feels like installing a trojan horse. after installing for the first time i was scratching my head where the install went.
microsoft is just completely lost with the direction they push windows in. windows 12 will be like android, and windows 13 will be like slot machine. throw money in, use that one key you are allowed to use and be surprised what comes out of it.

5700XT and ryzen 9 5900X.
this is my gaming machine - workstation is running a threadripper 2920X and vega56 - so at least openCL works a bit better. but im quite fed up with radeons for work. davinci resolve doesnt run without stuttering either. capture one has started giving me artifacts with openCL acceleration again (thankfully not baked in when exporting, was a fun time in 2019), even had a gpu related system lockup while editing. time for team green, amd just doesnt care.
 
checked the gpu utilization and the card clocks to its full 3D clocks and draws more power, but the load duration in the benchmark is extremely short. gpu only is less than a second and combined is maybe 2 seconds of load.

i also hate the new install routine - not because its new, but because everything microsoft touches turns sour. a new installer could have been a good thing, instead microsoft takes away all control from the user - you dont see what happens. it feels like installing a trojan horse. after installing for the first time i was scratching my head where the install went.
microsoft is just completely lost with the direction they push windows in. windows 12 will be like android, and windows 13 will be like slot machine. throw money in, use that one key you are allowed to use and be surprised what comes out of it.

I'm working on little program that will handle backing up and also syncing workspaces (from standalone apps to Publisher). Will post about it on forums when it's ready

Just bought the Suite and could not find the installation files so was unable to create shortcuts and worse unable to find a way to run the software! The only way I could launch the software was to double-click on the downloaded installation files which gave me the option to Launch from there. Total irritation and confusion.
However in the meantime after much faffing about through the Forum I discovered to my dismay that these are "App" files and do not install into the Program folder of my C drive and do not appear in my Programs & Features... How do I uninstall them?
I absolutely hate this unexplained change to installing/removing software and am not happy with the way this has been implemented, particularly as no advanced notification (as far as I could tell) was given.
I very much like what Serif is doing with Affinity and love the software but cannot stand this insane change to the standard installation procedure.
Please Serif fix this unwanted installation mess asap. and please retain some independence from the dumbing-down that Micro$oft continually applies to Windows in the so-called attempt to make it better.
I sincerely hope you listen.

Thanks for letting us know @Duskstalker - I will make @stokerg aware that you're also having the issue. Looks like one for the developers.

@Leighi just want to report that with my epson ET7750 i also have issues with printed colors from CMYK publisher documents.

whenever i export to PDF and print with acrobat pro, the colors are correct.

this is where i have issues:

publisher document in CMYK, pictures (jpg) in CMYK, placed (embedded or linked doesnt matter) in the document. when i print the document, no matter what i configure in the affinity publisher printer menu, i always get wrong and oversatured colors in the pictures (vectors created in publisher seem to be fine). theres something going on in the CMYK color management system. that said, all affinity apps also display CMYK clamped in the srgb colorspace, that also produces wrong CMYK screen output (especially on calibrated wide gamut displays).

printing RGB pictures in affinity photo seems to work normal or at least not as obviously broken.

if you need more infos, please just hit me up. i will provide everything you need. i can do some comparison test prints and scan or photograph them.

with this update i see basically doubled openCL performance with my RX Vega 56 compared to previous versions.

the integrated benchmark was 4500 for single gpu raster, now its 9500. feels alot better, too. gonna switch back to openCL acceleration (disabled it because cpu was faster on my machine). thanks, great update

banged my head against the desk to 10 minutes because i couldnt find the transform tools to do it - turns out, they dont exist.
 
cmon serif - this has been missing since 2017. please implement it.

i need this to make advertisement previews on buildings in publisher with the print files placed on top of a photo. i mean i could use a different program, but i really want to do it in publisher because it would be a great workflow. dont wanna switch back to adobe 😕

Hey to the folks in the thread here as well: just so you're all aware I've passed this thread on to my contacts within AMD, so people will be aware of this issue relatively quickly, hopefully. Thanks for your keen eyes on this issue, and thank you to the Serif team for providing some temporary relief. I hope we'll be able to resolve this issue soon!

A quick update. I've filed a bug report with AMD, because it turns out that the AMD driver is compiling each hardware stage approx 10X slower than equivalent hardware from NVIDIA. This is what is leading to the performance problems within Affinity Photo. When I have more information, I will update everyone (it's likely that a driver update may fix this at some stage). For now, our recommendation is to disable hardware acceleration.

threadripper 2920X
radeon rx vega 56 (seriously underperforming, lol)

yep, +1 - i'm a gamedev myself and approve this request.

(...)

i really love the things you do here with affinity - so much stuff is so neatly thought out and more convenient than in adobe products.
but this feature is so important - it really needs to be included.
im a game developer who does texturing by hand, and without the contrained movement its impossible to stack up multiple passes with a brush on an exact line.