Affinity and Big Sur problems

[Digitally Fearless]

I have a Macbook Pro 16 with lots of Ram. I updated to Big Sur and then latest Affinity for Big Sur. Now I sometimes have trouble selecting layers. I have to tap them several times. Also Affinity photo is much slower. Help!

[v_kyr]

Hard to tell yet, since most people wait and see what kind of possible software bugs and migration problems this leads to before they update to Big Sur. Meaning most people aren't that digitally fearless or are among the very early adopters. - However, since the latest Affinity apps are now universal binaries some of the architectural differences in code may affect the app’s performance during runtime.

There are generally a bunch of things to take into account and to thoroughly test, as you can see from Apple's porting Apps to Apple Silicon article here. Further Big Sur itself in it's early new versions will have bugs too, thus things have to evolve over time here (as always with software).

[CLC]

12 hours ago, Digitally Fearless said:

I have a Macbook Pro 16 with lots of Ram. I updated to Big Sur and then latest Affinity for Big Sur. Now I sometimes have trouble selecting layers. I have to tap them several times. Also Affinity photo is much slower. Help!

I've just tested on my MBP 15" 2019 freshly upgraded to macOS Big Sur and all three apps start in a flash, so it might be perhaps related to the Apple Gatekeeper related servers being unavailable or overloaded again?

Try with internet connection turned off, if it starts faster, you'll know it might be the issue I've mentioned above.

I haven't done a single job with the updated suite on this upgraded system yet, but will be testing in following days.

[Pšenda]

45 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Meaning most people aren't that digitally fearless

These "pioneers" are not only digitally fearless, but mostly also digitally proficient and experienced. So they can then solve a lot of problems - which always appear when introducing something new, by searching the Internet themselves, or are able to provide relevant clues that contribute to troubleshooting. So not only Help!

[v_kyr]

19 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

These "pioneers" are not only digitally fearless, but mostly also digitally proficient and experienced. So they can then solve a lot of problems - which always appear when introducing something new, by searching the Internet themselves, or are able to provide relevant clues that contribute to troubleshooting. So not only Help!

That's right, though as you already implied, mostly for developers and other IT-aware people here, who also have an urgent demand for this. If you develop and offer specific or MacOS supporting software, you always have a need to migrate early and also offer your services quickly too for the newest OS bandwagons. Beside this, Apple itself also has a huge demand that many third party software runs on their own Apple Silicon platforms and their newest OS version.

However, instead unexperienced common end users tend more to go the safe road way, hence that things just work right without complications, so they get their daily chores done.

[Aurelius]

13 hours ago, Digitally Fearless said:

I have a Macbook Pro 16 with lots of Ram. I updated to Big Sur and then latest Affinity for Big Sur. Now I sometimes have trouble selecting layers. I have to tap them several times. Also Affinity photo is much slower. Help!

I downloaded Big Sur on my Imac (2017) yesterday and my Imac became a lot slower.

In Affinity Photo I have the same problem as TS... Please follow up and see what is possible. Thank you.

[Dan C]

@Digitally Fearless - it may help to reset your app back to default settings, as I've seen this 'speed up' the Affinity apps before, as sometimes files can become incorrectly cached, causing the app to slowdown.

You can reset your app back to its default settings by holding down the CTRL key while launching the app. When the Clear User Data window appears, click Select All and then Clear. The app will now open.

Be aware that resetting your app back to its default settings will lose any custom settings such as keyboard shortcuts and brushes etc. To backup such settings before resetting the app, please watch our Affinity: Exporting User Settings and Keyboard Shortcuts video. - https://player.vimeo.com/video/189596577/

Please do let me know if this helps!

@Aurelius, Welcome to the forums

51 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

I downloaded Big Sur on my Imac (2017) yesterday and my Imac became a lot slower.

If your iMac in general is now slower, you will need to contact Apple support regarding this, my apologies.

[brendanlynch]

I have also noticed a slowing down of 'response time' in Affinity Photo on Big Sur - the reason I searched for this topic. It's working, but it seems to be needing a little longer to process what I'm asking it to do. I can only imagine it has to do with macOS Big Sur, as it wasn't reacting like this on Catalina.

[Digitally Fearless]

So I have been using Big Sur for two weeks now. My slowdown in Final Cut Pro seems to have been fixed, but Affinity Photo is almost unusable. Sometimes there is a delay when moving something. When I select the color box on top, I have to wait for it to open. So many problems that I never had before. Does anyone know if I can go back to a previous version of Affinity Photo? 

[Pšenda]

17 minutes ago, Digitally Fearless said:

Does anyone know if I can go back to a previous version of Affinity Photo? 

Affinity Store? Yes.

[Dan C]

2 hours ago, Digitally Fearless said:

So I have been using Big Sur for two weeks now. My slowdown in Final Cut Pro seems to have been fixed, but Affinity Photo is almost unusable. Sometimes there is a delay when moving something. When I select the color box on top, I have to wait for it to open. So many problems that I never had before. Does anyone know if I can go back to a previous version of Affinity Photo? 

Sorry to hear this! As Psenda has mentioned above, if you've purchased from the Affinity Store then you can downgrade versions as you wish - if you've purchased from the Mac App Store then unfortunately Apple offer no way of downgrading.

Have you tried the reset procedure provided? Have you tried changing any of your Performance settings?

[MarKwar]

I'm also having trouble with Affinity Designer, needing to tap several times when selecting layers. Stated occurring after updating to Big Sur and the latest Affinity for Big Sur. I have a 2 month old, 16" MacBook Pro. Terribly frustrating! Advise if this is a bug or if there is a known fix. Thanks

[Dan C]

Hi @MarKwar,

Welcome to the forums

Could you please provide a screen recording of the issue you're describing, as this isn't something I've had reported previously?

If you're unsure how to take a screen recording, please check out our FAQ linked below - 

Many thanks in advance!

[Digitally Fearless]

I could not repeat some of the issues when recording because they only happen sometimes, but here is a video I captured showing two problems. One shows that when I open a new file the size icons don't always show up. Notice in the video that it reads WEB on top, but no icons below. This only happens sometimes. The second shows that there is a delay (sometimes) from the time I select a layer and the time the transition box appears.  See attached video. Please excuse my voiceover recording. I used my Mac mike.

[Digitally Fearless]

Update: I downloaded the 1.9 beta, and so far I do not have the problems I am having in 1.8.6. I am hoping 1.9 comes out of beta soon. 

[AlejandroJ]

I don’t work on a Mac (I use windows) and I don’t know much about computer systems, but I read in a forum (the one from Topaz Labs) about some having problems with Big Sur and read the comments here as well, so I became interested in getting to know what was going on in relation to the subject and googled a bit.

I found out that lots of people are complaining that they are having problems (and others say they are not) after updating to Big Sur, with programs such as the AI ones from Topaz, Nick Collection from DxO, DxO’s PhotoLab itself, PhotoShop, PhotoShop Elements, Corel Draw, Corel Paint, and Capture One (which were the ones I read about because those were the ones I googled for).

[orion]

Just my 5 cents. I also upgraded to macOS Big Sur and the latest Affinity versions. I'm working with an iMac Pro (octa-core, 32GB RAM and 8GB GPU).
Big Sur is buggy. Latency, airdrop, but it also affected my Affinity Suite. Presets are gone, plugins does not work, latency, live preview of fonts does not work properly (tried different things), etc. I should have known. I was a bit too eager. My solution will be a downgrade to macOS Catalina this evening.
About Photoshop it is even more slower, but I can still work with Exposure and the Nik collection. That was not affected by the upgrade to Big Sur.

[vfxwolf]

I can report the same issue with Affinity photo on Big Sur.  Loaded quickly and lag free on Catalina, now.. it takes forever to start, and drawing with mouse or tablet is erratic and laggy.  Doing the Control reset suggested sped up the load time.. but the lag while drawing is still there...

I've attached a screen cap of the issue..

 

[KjellM]

On 11/15/2020 at 11:17 AM, v_kyr said:

Hard to tell yet, since most people wait and see what kind of possible software bugs and migration problems this leads to before they update to Big Sur. Meaning most people aren't that digitally fearless or are among the very early adopters. - However, since the latest Affinity apps are now universal binaries some of the architectural differences in code may affect the app’s performance during runtime.

There are generally a bunch of things to take into account and to thoroughly test, as you can see from Apple's porting Apps to Apple Silicon article here. Further Big Sur itself in it's early new versions will have bugs too, thus things have to evolve over time here (as always with software).

It is kind of ironic to read this in 2022, when searching why Affinity Designer is unusable at least on Big Sur. What timeframe is this the combination of Affinity Designer and macOS supposed to be save? 😂