Affinity Photo Windows Customer Beta - 1.9.0.834

[Mark Ingram]

Click here to download the latest beta

Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: New features, performance, fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.

Changes

• Enable hardware by default, but restrict it to Windows 10.0.19041 (May 2020), and GPUs that support Direct3D 12 Feature Level 12.0 and above (see https://affin.co/WinGPU for further information).
• Fixed crash when resizing canvas or applying a crop
• Added ability to open package files
• Improvements to application registration and content syncing
• Improved Studio Presets management
• Fixed import of some PSD files ignoring the alpha channel
• Fixed ALT+MouseWheel causing the menubar to highlight
• Fixed crash when resizing canvas 
• Fixed Alignment toolbar buttons always being disabled

1.9.0.820 release notes

[neville]

51 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

Enable hardware by default, but restrict it to Windows 10.0.19042 (May 2020), and GPUs that support Direct3D 12 Feature Level 12.0 and above.

Does this mean the enabling by default is restricted to new cards only, or that the feature overall can only be turned on with newer cards? I have a GTX 960 (as well as a GTX 660 in an even older system) and was hoping to be able to turn on hardware acceleration. I also have a laptop with Intel HD Graphics 520. Am I SOL?

[Mark Ingram]

1 hour ago, neville said:

Does this mean the enabling by default is restricted to new cards only, or that the feature overall can only be turned on with newer cards? I have a GTX 960 (as well as a GTX 660 in an even older system) and was hoping to be able to turn on hardware acceleration. I also have a laptop with Intel HD Graphics 520. Am I SOL?

Your NVIDIA 960 and Intel 520 should both be compatible. The older NVIDIA 660 won’t be.

[Fritz_H]

1 hour ago, Mark Ingram said:

• Enable hardware by default, but restrict it to Windows 10.0.19042 (May 2020), and GPUs that support Direct3D 12 Feature Level 12.0 and above.

Are these limitations final or just temporary for a certain phase during development?
or in other words: do you really force me to downgrade from Windows 8.1  to  "Windows-Spy-Edition with built-in Ads and GDPR-violation" - also called "Windows 10" ?

[neville]

2 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

Your 900 series NVIDIA won’t be compatible, but your laptop’s 520 should be.

The GTX 960 is Maxwell 2nd generation, though, so shouldn't it be supported? I've just found this other post of yours which says Maxwell 2nd Generation is supported:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/126698-windows-hardware-acceleration-requirements/

[Patrick Connor]

4 minutes ago, Fritz_H said:

do you really force me to....

No, you are not forced to do anything here. Hardware acceleration is a feature that we have enabled in certain circumstances, but it is not compulsory to use the software. Every build up until 1.9.0 has had no hardware GPU acceleration, and that will continue as before.

[Lincsman]

Affinity photo Beta 1.9.0.834 crashes as soon as I try to open a photo, it crashes when I select a jpg and choose open with.

Windows 10 Pro 64bit 8gb Ram

 

Edit: I am unable to open any document with this beta, the same with Designer.

[Fritz_H]

19 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

No, you are not forced to do anything here. Hardware acceleration is a feature that we have enabled in certain circumstances, but it is not compulsory to use the software. Every build up until 1.9.0 has had no hardware GPU acceleration, and that will continue as before.

Thanks for your polite but not helpful answer; I guess that you understood exactly what I wanted to express - esp. since OpenCL was enabled in previous 1.9-Betas for a wider range of HW and OS.
again:  Are these limitations final or just temporary for a certain phase during development?

Thanks.

[Mark Ingram]

43 minutes ago, neville said:

The GTX 960 is Maxwell 2nd generation, though, so shouldn't it be supported? I've just found this other post of yours which says Maxwell 2nd Generation is supported:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/126698-windows-hardware-acceleration-requirements/

Apologies, I was thinking of the 600 series when I wrote that. I’ve updated my post. 

[Mark Ingram]

45 minutes ago, Fritz_H said:

Are these limitations final or just temporary for a certain phase during development?
or in other words: do you really force me to downgrade from Windows 8.1  to  "Windows-Spy-Edition with built-in Ads and GDPR-violation" - also called "Windows 10" ?

These requirements will be in the retail version. Also Windows 8.1 is out of mainstream support from Microsoft now, so you should consider upgrading to Windows 10 for security reasons. 

[Mark Ingram]

21 minutes ago, Lincsman said:

Affinity photo Beta 1.9.0.834 crashes as soon as I try to open a photo, it crashes when I select a jpg and choose open with.

Windows 10 Pro 64bit 8gb Ram

Can you try disabling Hardware Acceleration in Preferences and trying again? If that works, can you switch HA back on, and attach your log file to a post please. 

[walt.farrell]

Photo beta 1.9.0.834 installed fine, but will not run. Has crashed twice during startup so far. I can upload one or both crash reports if you'd like; I'll probably need a dropbox link.

I've also captured a copy of the Appdata folder, in case it's needed. I haven't tried a Ctrl runup yet; that's probably next.

Edit: Designer 1.9.0.834 installed and starts fine.

Edit 2: Renamed the 1.0 (Beta) folder in AppData, and Photo Beta 1.9.0.834 started fine. I can upload a .zip of the old 1.0 (Beta) folder if you want.

[Lincsman]

10 minutes ago, Mark Ingram said:

Can you try disabling Hardware Acceleration in Preferences and trying again? If that works, can you switch HA back on, and attach your log file to a post please. 

When I disabled Hardware acceleration, it worked fine, as soon as I enabled it, it crashed again as soon as I tried to open an image. Is the the correct file you need?

Log.txt

[mykee]

I have Intel HD 4000 graphic card, but this version closed if running benchmark. Previous version can detected this GPU, and test runned without problem.

Card name missing below OpenCL option. In previous version was there.

 

Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit, 19042.610

Intel driver: latest (10.18.10.5146)

DirectX: DirectX 11.1

OpenCL: OpenCL 1.2

You modified GPU requirements to higher level from previous version? 🙄 Under 820 version was worked...

Log.txt

[Mark Ingram]

1 hour ago, Lincsman said:

When I disabled Hardware acceleration, it worked fine, as soon as I enabled it, it crashed again as soon as I tried to open an image. Is the the correct file you need?

Log.txt 5.32 kB · 1 download

Thanks, that’s the correct file, but it shows a successful start and shutdown of the app. Is that definitely after it crashed with HA enabled?

[Mark Ingram]

1 hour ago, mykee said:

I have Intel HD 4000 graphic card, but this version closed if running benchmark. Previous version can detected this GPU, and test runned without problem.

Card name missing below OpenCL option. In previous version was there.

 

Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit, 19042.610

Intel driver: latest (10.18.10.5146)

DirectX: DirectX 11.1

OpenCL: OpenCL 1.2

You modified GPU requirements to higher level from previous version? 🙄 Under 820 version was worked...

Log.txt 19.19 kB · 1 download

Yes unfortunately we’ve had to raise the requirements in this latest release. 

[Fritz_H]

2 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

These requirements will be in the retail version. Also Windows 8.1 is out of mainstream support from Microsoft now, so you should consider upgrading to Windows 10 for security reasons. 

Thanks for your answer.
Windows 8.1 will receive monthly updates until 2023 - without any risk of buggy feature-updates (which usually add features nobody asked for...)

Perhaps I need to get a second system with "Spy-Windows 10" for image editing and keep my Windows 8.1-Device for work with data I do not want to share with MS, CIA, NSA etc..?

Thanks anyhow.

[carl123]

6 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

No, you are not forced to do anything here. Hardware acceleration is a feature that we have enabled in certain circumstances, but it is not compulsory to use the software. Every build up until 1.9.0 has had no hardware GPU acceleration, and that will continue as before.

Actually, you are forcing people that need hardware acceleration to upgrade their OS because it simply won't now work without doing so.

Upgrading an OS is not a trivial matter, some hardware was not designed for Windows 10, some old programs were never tested on Windows 10 and there is a learning curve associated with a new OS

Personally, I have Windows 8.1 on my main workhorse PC and have zero intention to upgrade it to Windows 10.

Fortunately for me, my use of APhoto does not require any intensive graphics computational requirements so I can quite happily live without OpenCL but for those that have been waiting desperately for this feature this requirement for them to now to have to upgrade their OS may seem like a "kick in the teeth" from a company they have stuck with and supported from the beginning.

Since OpenCL has worked fine for a lot of existing Windows 8.1 users, up until this beta release, could there not be an option for them to continue using that version (of OpenCL) rather than a somewhat dictatorial edict that you must now upgrade your OS to benefit from this feature?

 

[Frozen Death Knight]

Noticed that this build is a little bit more unstable compared to the previous one. When painting and undoing, I had a crash happening. Tried opening the program against and have been able to continue on for a bit longer, but hardware acceleration still has issues of slowdowns of my strokes and uneven performances. In some cases it is super faster, in others, not to so much. Might have regressed a little bit from previous builds, but not sure, since it's the same problems that I have already reported basically.

[Claudio60]

1.9.0.834 installed normally but crashes every time you open a photo, no issue with hardware acceleration off.

f93c6a42-09b3-4eb7-b904-186a82fc7f28.dmp Log.txt

[Lincsman]

9 hours ago, Mark Ingram said:

Thanks, that’s the correct file, but it shows a successful start and shutdown of the app. Is that definitely after it crashed with HA enabled?

Sorry, I tried it again this morning and it crashed on opening a file with HA ticked, this is the log file from appdata folder from this morning

Log.txt

[Powerhorse]

Affinity Photo Beta 1.9.0.834 crashes when opening a new document

[Mark Ingram]

The crashes when opening a document are happening when Hardware Acceleration is enabled from a previous beta, but with the new requirements, the Hardware Acceleration isn't available. A CTRL start should resolve the issue.

[Powerhorse]

I  tried this several times without success

[Mark Ingram]

Thanks for trying that. Do you have a crash report in your AppData?