Affinity Designer was working smoothly on trial but when I purchased a license I started having problems with it.

[Kristine]

On July 25, 2020, I installed Affinity Designer (AD) and used the trial version. During this time, the specifications of my laptop (Dell Vostro 14 5468) are the following:
- Windows 10 (the version before version 2004)
- 4GB ram 
- 1TB HDD
- Intel Core i5 7th Gen

Almost everything was running smoothly when I was using it on trial. It was a bit slow (boot and switching between the personas) because I was still using an HDD as my boot drive. Also, I was having issues when resizing/transforming and moving vectors, pixel, layers, groups (basically everything). Despite this, I still bought a license last August 5, 2020 because I like using AD. Around this time as well, Serif released a new version of AD. So I downloaded it and updated my current AD software. This is when I started having lots of problem with AD. 

Here are the issues/problems/bugs that I was experiencing:
1) AD randomly closes. Sometime I was not able to save my work.
2) After some time (an hours or so) of using AD, I will not be able to click on anything on my screen except my taskbar. The cursor just disappears. Instead I would see this tiny green/red circle as my cursor.
3) Still have that issue with resizing/transforming and moving vectors, pixel, layers, groups (basically everything).
4) Using a brush on Pixel Persona. I can’t even explain it in a concise manner so just watch the video attached.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oFdyHuDtW8IWw-EWN7VPid0VwNxeBInr/view?usp=sharing

I  thought that maybe it was because I was using an HDD and that my ram was a bit low. Therefore, I upgraded my boot drive and ram. 

On August 19, 2020, the specifications of my laptop are the following:
- Windows 10 version 2004
- 8GB ram 2133Mhz
- Samsung 860 EVO M.2 SATA SSD 500 GB (374 GB free of 464 GB)
- 1TB HDD (jus
- Intel Core i5 7th Gen
After I upgraded my drive and ram, I thought that AD will run more smoothly. But no, I am still having lots of issues/bugs. The only improvement that I saw was that opening AD and switching between personas became much faster.
Ever since I started using AD, I am using a graphic/drawing tablet specifically the XP Pen Deco 01 V2.

 

[Sean P]

Hi Kristine,

The 1.8.4 update changed the tablet input to something that uses high precision values. Unfortunately this has had a significant impact on certain graphics tablets and the XP Pen has been one of the worst affected ones.

We've changed this again in the current 1.8.5 beta to go back to the same method that 1.8.3 used with the ability to switch to high precision for devices that allow it. This should in theory fix issues 2-4 you have mentioned.
Please feel free to try the beta available below and let us know how you get on. By default it should be set to Low Precision, but if not go to Preferences > Tools and switch Tablet Input in there. If Low Precision is still problematic when using your tablet give the Windows Ink option a go.

With regards to the first point without any reproducible steps there isn't much we can do about the random crashes. If you do find steps to reproduce the crash then please do let us know and attach any supporting files.
 

[Kristine]

Hi, thank you so much for your help. Before downloading the 1.8.5 beta, I first open my tablet settings and I turned off the Windows Ink options (i also use another program that requires windows ink). Turns out, I do not need to turn on the Windows Ink option when using AD. So I decided not to download the beta version. If ever I experience similar issues again, I am going to try the beta version. Again, thank you so much for your help!