Acknowledged pre-1.8 Affinity Photo bug persists in 1.8.1

[iMacatemyphotoshop]

I posted this on a pre-1.8 thread, since that's where the problem was posted by another user. There the problem was acknowledged as caused by a software glitch. If that's still true, the bug persists in the latest Affinity Photo version--so here's its description again. 

 

I have Wacom Intuos pen tablet PTH-651 with newest Wacom driver 6.3.38-3, newest Catalina 10.15.3 Mac OS, and newest Affinity Photo 1.8.1. The adjustment layer presets do not respond at all to my Wacom pen, except one preset that twice turned my document red all over, with no functioning alternatives. The preset thumbnails do respond to my clicking with my Bluetooth mouse, but not to anything I do with the Wacom pen. I bought Affinity after the Catalina upgrade trashed my Photoshop CS6. I removed and then upgraded Wacom's driver so it would play nice with the latest iMac upgrade. That helped. But the threesome of Affinity, Catalina, and Wacom still have the functionality issue described above. Is the malfunction due to unresolved incompatibility between the OS, Wacom, and Affinity software?

 

If so, will Affinity resolve it, maybe in tandem with Wacom designers? Apple upgrades may have caused the glitches experienced by Wacom and Affinity, but Apple seems only to shrug off the messes it makes of nonproprietary apps, shifting the burden of functionality onto the app designers. If I'm experiencing the result of a software bug, I look forward to Affinity and/or Wacom upgrades that make everything work as intended. If what I'm encountering user error, please advise how to correct it. Thank you for your help!

 

 

[Chris B]

Hey iMacatemyphotoshop,

This is a tricky one as some of us can reproduce it and others cannot. Are you able to interact with the rest of the UI when this happens? Or is this all the time?

Can you screenshot your Wacom preferences settings for the pen?

[iMacatemyphotoshop]

Since I'm new at Affinity Photo, I've tried for a bit more experience with it before responding. The good news is, I've discovered that accessing the adjustment options from the B&W moon icon at the bottom of the Studio panel allows me to go directly to the manual tools window of a selected adjustment--that is, I do not even see the thumbnails of the presets. This is fine because the bad news is that the thumbnail presets still do not respond to the Wacom pen. I've tried the tapping with the pen many times since you wrote--once this worked for a very few seconds after I opened a document, then stopped working. The rest of the time it did nothing whether a document was newly opened or not. The documents I've tried this on are all "Affinity" documents converted from jpegs or Psd. The thumbnails have continued to respond to the Mac Bluetooth mouse, but since I generally do not even keep the mouse turned on, using it for this sole purpose is not a great option.

As mentioned before, I'd removed and upgraded the Wacom's driver hoping it would work better with the Catalina upgrade and it has, but not before I reset all the Wacom preferences to the defaults--this was before the problem emerged with the AP thumbnails so I didn't mention it to you. I'm not including the screen snapshot of the preferences because there's nothing to see, the preferences being the default ones with one exception: Since you mentioned the Wacom Preferences as possibly related to the non responding AP thumbnails, I added both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer to the apps listed in the Wacom Preferences (the default was "All"). I discovered these additions did not help the nonfunctioning thumbnails in any way. 

Although the presets are useful as indications of how a doc could be changed, I still wonder if it might be a good tradeoff to remove the adjustment presets since they do not work with the Wacom pen and since they may hog memory. DO they hog memory? My iMac is 21.5" late 2013 with 8 GB memory in two 4 GB slots, each DDR3, 1600 MHz (ok status). ECC "disabled." This Mac's memory is upgradable only by a qualified Apple Authorized Service Provider. Of the 8GB of installed memory, the used memory totals over half--4.25 GB. Affinity Photo tops the list of operations that consume the 4.25 GB. AP uses 755 MB of memory, which is way over twice its memory-eating runner-up, which is Affinity Designer. How much of the AP memory consumption is due to its display of thumbnails for adjustment presets that don't work? Is it enough to make it advisable to remove the useless adjustment presets? If so, can that be easily done by a user (me) who is by no means a tech wiz? And if so, how do I do it? And, also, how do I undo it if an Affinity upgrade makes the thumbnails functional and worth using?

Thank you for caring how well your product works! Truly. 

[Chris B]

Hey iMacatemyphotoshop,

This is a bug. I've compared 1.7.3 to 1.8.1 and I'm seeing the exact same issue. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't get it earlier but it seems I have to sometimes double-click or even triple-click an adjustment preset to get it to activate.

This just needs logging with the developers as a bug, which I'll do right now. 

There's nothing wrong with your machine—at all. Just something for us to address. Sorry to cause you the trouble and thanks for coming back with the additional info.

[iMacatemyphotoshop]

Thanks, Chris.