in Publisher image changed from normal resolution to large pixels

[Worker]

I just like to report an event which may point to a problem in Affinity Publisher version 1.8.5.

My environment:
Windows 10 Version 2004 (Build 19041.450), 16GByte RAM
Affinity Publisher version 1.8.5,
afpub-document 136 pages, more than 200 images, size 54 Mbyte

I have been working for weeks with this document without any problems. Today I have had a strange occurrence which happened the first time after I had updated Publisher to version 1.8.5. Five images, not embeddet but linked, lost their resolution and changed to a very coarse pixeled structure. This looks similar to the way picures gradually get more and more detailed when the document ist loading. This process sometimes takes a seconnd or two, but then the image is perfect. In this case, however, the process of refinement does not take place. When I exported the document to a PDF-file the resolution of the pictures remained the same – unusable.

I replaced all these images with the "replace picture" function, using exactly the same path as before, and they appeared correct again. Then I exported the document to a PDF-X/1-a/2003 CYMK file.  After that I noticed some other pictures had been altered in the same way as described above.

Again I corrected all images by replacing them with the same image file and exported this again to a PDF file. This time no more images where messed up and I could not reproduce this problem

In addition I feel that loading of images seems to take very much longer than it used to do in Publisher version 1.8.4.
 

With kind Regards,
Worker

Update August, 28th 2020:

Today I did some more testing on this problem. It seems to me that intermittently Affinity Publisher, while loading this document, gets stuck in bringing some of the images to their full resolution. In the past I never had this problem. It may be pure coincidence but these events only happen since I have updated to Publisher version 1.8.5 yesterday. This document has more than 200 images on 136 pages.

I found that when I close Publisher without changing anything and then reopen it, sometimes all images are displayed correctly, sometimes one or more other images are corrupted in the way shown in the example above.
For me this is an annoying problem because after opening the document I need to check all images for their correct resolution. If I miss one, it will also be shown corrupted in the exported PDF-file.

Since I can really not see what I could be doing wrong in this case, I need urgently some help on this problem.

Thank you very much for any hints or help,
Worker
 

[Jon P]

Hi @Worker,

If it's pixellated like that does indeed seem to be failing to load it, where abouts is this image linked from, a local drive?

If you embed it I assume it then behaves as expected?

[Worker]

Hi Jon P,

I intended to add this reply yesterday but it does not show. Therefore I post it again, hopefully it will not appear twice.

All images are located on my local hard drive.

Each time I start Publisher and load the document, there are different images corrupted, sometimes 5, sometimes 20. So in order to see if embedding images solves my problem I would need to embed all of my images. Since the document contains more than 200 images this would mean to imbed several hundreds of mega bytes of images. I thought that would increase the size of my document to much, therefore I have not tried to embed all images.

In experimenting with this problem I found out:

After loading the document many images are pixelated. Most of them gradually are correctly loaded within a few seconds. When I advance to a new page, most images of this page are also completed more or less quickly. Some pictures, however, stay pixellated, even if I wait for minutes. If I "export" the document to a PDF file at this stage, these images are shown pixelated in the PDF file, too.
If I then do a couple of mouse clicks to a pixelated image Publisher starts to complete loading of this image. This process take many seconds while Publisher seems to "hang". In the top line of the Publisher window there is a Windows message "Application not responding". Finally, Publisher finishes the load process and the image is shown correctly.

My next step would be to return to Publisher 1.8.4 in order to be able to work again.

I am gratefull for any help, thank you very much,
Worker

[Worker]

My problem is still present and I urgently need a solution for it. Could I please get some assistance with this?

When I start Publisher with my 136 pages document there are often, not always though, several of these corrupted images which stay pixelated, even after a longer time. When I "export" the document to a PDF file these pictures also are pixelated in the PDF file, please see the attached screenshots of the afpub- and the PDF file below.

Each time after loding the afpub file I therefore need to scan the complete document for corrupted images. This takes some time in a document of 136 pages with several hundred images. If there are any pixelated images, in order to restore the image and get an uncorrupted PDF file I have to "replace" these corrupted pictures one by one which of course is very time consuming.

When I use Windows' taskmanager to monitor the memory usage I find that sometimes about 15.6 of the available 15.7 GB of memory are used, nearly all of it by Publisher. The size of this afpub file is about 85 MB, the size of the resulting PDF file is between 560 MB and 1.2 GB, depending on the PDF options I use. As I said before, all images are linked from a local drive.

I should mention that this problem has never happened with one of my smaller, i.g. 36 page documents.

Could you please point me to a solution for my problem?

Thank you very much for any help,

Worker

[Jon P]

Hi @Worker,

Apologies for the delay, is it possible for you to load the file in the latest beta and let me know if some images are still failing to load?

Thanks

[Worker]

Hi Jon P,
thanks for your reply.

I have installed affinity-publisher-customer-beta-1.9.0.850.exe and did some more testing. Pictures are still pixelated after loading the document, see "Screenshot_customer-beta-1.9.0.850.gif". This screenshot was taken about 10 minutes after loading the document. When I, however, created a PDF file from this page this very picture was shown correct in the PDF, even though it stayed pixelated in the Affinity Publisher window. So this is different to what I experienced with version 1.85 but then my problem did not occur every time.

Even about 30 min. after the document had been loaded, when I scroll through the document, most pictures are not resolved completely. However, they get clear if I place a mouse click into the picture. Sometimes Publisher takes more than 10 seconds to respond. In these cases Publisher seems to "hang" and Windows says "Application not responding"; finally it responds again.

When I observe the Windows Task Manager, I can see that my 16GB of memory are nearly completely used up and that the disk activity is very high. Please see screenshot "Screenshot_customer-beta-1.9.0.850_03.gif".

Now, while I am writing this text, since loading the document about 60 minutes have passed. The memory usage has decreased from about 15GB to 10 GB. When I now scroll through the document it goes much faster; new pages still appear pixelated but they clear up within about less than a second.

Could it be possible that my 16 GB memory are not sufficient for Publisher to work with this 136 page document? The source file size is about 85 MB and the resulting PDF is 1.2 GB.

Please note that this was only ONE test with the beta 1.9.0.850. Even with version 1.85 this problem did not occur every time I loaded the same document.

Thanks for your assistence in this problem,
With kind Regards,
Worker

[Worker]

Good evening,

are there any news about this strange behaviour of pictures being shown pixelated?

Again, after loading a document, I noticed that one of photo stayed pixelated, even 30 minutes after loding, please see the attached picture. When I, however, created a PDF file the picture was shown correcly in the PDF.

I am working with Affinity Publisher version 1.8.5.703. This time I worked on a small 32 pages document and only half of my memory was used. Therefore memory shortage should not be the reason for my problem.

It would be very nice if this problem could be fixed because if working with a large document it is a nuisance that I need to check several hundreds of pictures each time the document is loaded. This checking is required because I had occurences where the pixelated picture also appeared in the PDF file.

I would be very grateful if I could get a hint as of how to avoid this problem or, if it is a bug in Publisher, if it would be fixed.

Thank you very much,

Worker

[Jon P]

Hi @Worker,

We do have an issue logged regarding documents with a very high amount of pictures causing slowdowns and behavior similar that you describe on certain machines (especially if they are all high res pictures), so this is something we are aware of.

Do you think you could load the file in the latest beta, and choose "Save as Package", zip the saved contents and upload it here? I can see how it performs on my machine and if there's any suggestions I can make.

Thanks

[Worker]

Good evening, Jon,

my current document has only 32 pages, half of them still empty and it contains 35 photos so this is not a very high amount of pictures.

I will download the latest Beta to do the test. But please remember that this is an intermittend problem. I am working on this document since a couple of days and yesterday was the first and only occurence so far.

Can I use the latest Beta for production purposes? I mean will I be able to continue to work with the same source file later with a "production" version?

Reards and thanks for your help on this problem,

Worker

[Worker]

Jon,

could you please point me to the download adress to get the Beta? When I load my Beta (1.9.0.850) it has a "Download" button but this leads me to a forum.
Thanks for your help,

Worker

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Worker said:

could you please point me to the download adress to get the Beta? When I load my Beta (1.9.0.850) it has a "Download" button but this leads me to a forum.

The betas are downloaded from the forums, in a pinned post at the top of the forum.

[mission2d]

On 1/19/2021 at 12:07 PM, Worker said:

Good evening,

are there any news about this strange behaviour of pictures being shown pixelated?

Again, after loading a document, I noticed that one of photo stayed pixelated, even 30 minutes after loding, please see the attached picture. When I, however, created a PDF file the picture was shown correcly in the PDF.

I am working with Affinity Publisher version 1.8.5.703. This time I worked on a small 32 pages document and only half of my memory was used. Therefore memory shortage should not be the reason for my problem.

It would be very nice if this problem could be fixed because if working with a large document it is a nuisance that I need to check several hundreds of pictures each time the document is loaded. This checking is required because I had occurences where the pixelated picture also appeared in the PDF file.

I would be very grateful if I could get a hint as of how to avoid this problem or, if it is a bug in Publisher, if it would be fixed.

Thank you very much,

Worker

This bug still/also exists in MacOS Mojave. Not sure if it propagates through to the latest MacOS version of Big Sur.  And I'm running the latest 1.9.3. version of Publisher.