Can't Open A Particular File (Affinity Photo)

[grey]

Whenever I try to open a particular file in Affinity Photo the app minimizes and when I open it again the initial splash screen is there and it seems like the app has restarted. If I try to save that file the same thing happen. If I duplicate that file the same stuff happens with the duplicated file. I uninstalled and reinstalled affinity photo, but that didn't change anything. 

There is nothing special about this file that I know of. Just a photo edit the same as all of my others. 

Is there any way to open this cursed file? 

Is there any way to export the file without using the app itself so that I don't have to redo everything? 

Thanks,

David

[Paul Mudditt]

5 hours ago, grey said:

Whenever I try to open a particular file in Affinity Photo the app minimizes and when I open it again the initial splash screen is there and it seems like the app has restarted. If I try to save that file the same thing happen. If I duplicate that file the same stuff happens with the duplicated file. I uninstalled and reinstalled affinity photo, but that didn't change anything. 

There is nothing special about this file that I know of. Just a photo edit the same as all of my others. 

Is there any way to open this cursed file? 

Is there any way to export the file without using the app itself so that I don't have to redo everything? 

Thanks,

David

You could try opening on a desktop version if you have it, otherwise you could upload it here for others to see if they can open it and the Dev's to look at.

 

[DM1]

Hi David, it sounds like the file may have been corrupted. Did you Save the file at any time? If you did you will find an .afphoto file in the Affinity Photo folder on your iPad or in iCloud (depending on you default settings). 
If you didn’t perform a Save, then the file exists only in 'sandbox' and cannot be accessed under normal circumstances. There are some programs for the Mac that can access these hidden files but it gets complicated and the file is likely corrupted anyway.

Good work practice is to always use Save when creating a file. That gets a copy out of the sandbox that can be copied/backed up.

 

[Dan C]

Hi @grey,

As mentioned above, this document may be corrupted - but we can certainly see if we can recover this for you.

Please upload the file to us using the link below and we’ll take a further look at the file to see if we can recover any of its contents. We would obviously also like some additional information to see if we can work out the cause of the problem and stop it happening in future. To assist this process, as well as uploading your file, please can you also tell us the following:

1. Which Operating System are you using?
2. Which version of Affinity did the file last get saved in?
3. What drive type was the file last saved to (select more than one if needed)?
Local disk
USB disk/Flash disk
Google Drive folder
OneDrive folder
iCloud folder
Dropbox folder
Network location
Other (please specify)

4. Any other information you think would help us try to find the problem

We suggest that you check to see if you have any backups of the document available in case we’re unable to recover the file. The investigation process can take some time, but we’ll be back in contact with our findings.

https://www.dropbox.com/request/0fqksexR7m4L91w1KSHx

[grey]

@Paul Mudditt I cannot send anyone the file, because I cannot access the file in anyway that I am aware of. I also do not own a mac desktop. 

@DM1 I created the file, put in a few hours of work, then returned to the gallery and now I can't open it. I could have saved a copy before going back to the gallery, but that likely would have been corrupted as well. Or I could have been saving out copies from the gallery as I worked, but that would be a pain to do for every photo. I don't see a way to save .afphoto files out of the "sandbox" unless I'm in the gallery so this situations seems basically unavoidable because of the unconscionable way files save on the iPad. 

@Dan C

1. I'm using an iPad Pro 12.9" (2017) and it says the software version is 14.2

2. It was saved in 1.8.6

3. It was saved on the ipad itself

4. I'm using iCloud backup, but apparently I would need to wipe my entire iPad to see what is in the backup.... and I don't even know if an uncorrupted version of that file would be in there. 

Unfortunately, I can't send you the file since I cannot access it. 

I appreciate everyone's help. I do hope this can be resolved. 

Thanks,

David

[DM1]

8 hours ago, grey said:

Or I could have been saving out copies from the gallery as I worked, but

Affinity Photo uses the sandbox version for edits. Whenever you open a file (new or .afphoto) you have a sandbox version. The trick is to ensure BOTH versions are kept up to date.

Workflow suggested as follows:

1. Create new file. 
2. Return to gallery and tap 3 bar menu Save to create an .afphoto file in default folder location.  (You can also use Save a Copy within the workscreen Document Menu to create a .afphoto file but, you would need to close the current file and reopen this new 'copy' - this method allows you to select any folder location). If you tap Close on the gallery icon, the sandbox version will be DELETED not closed. Another good reason to have the .afphoto file too. 
3. Work on your file and use Document Menu Save (yes after using Save a Copy or Gallery Save, you will get a Save option in Document menu) to regularly update both the .afphoto file version and the sandbox version. Note that backing out of the workscreen to return to the gallery only updates the edits to the sandbox (so always Save). 🙂

 

[grey]

@DM1 So using this method it would save over the .afphoto file instead of creating new ones every time? 

[DM1]

4 hours ago, grey said:

@DM1 So using this method it would save over the .afphoto file instead of creating new ones every time? 

Yes, although you still have the menu option to Save a copy.

[3DJ]

Sorry to hear about this. I had a similar experience during the holidays with designer on IPad. I also have had an additional problem where my assets disappeared (Again) the other day. I am growing frustrated in Affinity, and the lack of a true support system. I thought that maybe they look over these forums, but I have received no attention to either matters from them and looking at your thread seems the same. 

[DM1]

5 hours ago, 3DJ said:

but I have received no attention to either matters from them and looking at your thread seems the same. 

Dan (serif employee and moderator here) responded (the 4th post) same day OP posted. That’s a pretty quick response.

[3DJ]

7 hours ago, DM1 said:

Dan (serif employee and moderator here) responded (the 4th post) same day OP posted. That’s a pretty quick response.

Great, it’s kind of hard to tell he’s an Affinity employee, atleast from my phone atm. However neither of my posts were visited by an official Affinity employee as far as I could tell. 

[DM1]

8 hours ago, 3DJ said:

However neither of my posts were visited by an official Affinity employee as far as I could tell. 

Mods here generally do a great job but Covid lockdowns and high infection rates in England are probably not helping. The thing that frustrates  me most is the lack of information provided by developers in relation to the priority and current status of reported issues. It sometimes 'seems' nothing is happening when in fact they may be working hard to find a fix. Even mods are kept in the dark regarding progress, and have to keep on re raising reported issues to developers. It’s good to finally see some beta testing going on as hopefully there will be fixes for many of the 'old' bugs and a few new features to keep us all happy. 🙂
 

[grey]

23 hours ago, 3DJ said:

Sorry to hear about this. I had a similar experience during the holidays with designer on IPad. I also have had an additional problem where my assets disappeared (Again) the other day. I am growing frustrated in Affinity, and the lack of a true support system. I thought that maybe they look over these forums, but I have received no attention to either matters from them and looking at your thread seems the same. 

Yeah, I have worked support before and this is fairly hands off. With my particular issue it really does just feel like the verdict is "well, too bad". I'm still going to use affinity unless this starts to happen with higher frequency, but maybe I wouldn't have invested in these products if one of the bullet points was "You may lose access to your files sometimes and that is too bad!". 

Hopefully they fix it in a future update. 

[DM1]

11 minutes ago, grey said:

With my particular issue it really does just feel like the verdict is "well, too bad". I'm still going to use affinity unless this starts to happen with higher frequency,

I feel your pain. Other have suggested leaving assets in cloud and just loading those you need when you need them. Unfortunately iPads still have limited ram to work with compared to desktops and iOS will swap out ram if other apps need it. That’s why I always recommend saving out to a .afdesign file format rather than relying on the working copy only existing in ram and sandbox.

[3DJ]

One of the issues I also often have, is losing the latest state of a file, I thought taking a history snapshot would fix it, but it seems as mentioned above, that doing a save as and putting the file on your iPad is the best practice, then I just do a command S from time to time as I do on desktop with any append I don’t seem to have the issue anymore.

[Dan C]

On 1/13/2021 at 1:25 PM, 3DJ said:

However neither of my posts were visited by an official Affinity employee as far as I could tell

Sorry to hear this, your initial post was created on Christmas Eve and continued through to Christmas Day. Unfortunately the whole company was closed at that time and none of the Affinity staff were available on the forums. This was noted on any page of the forums at the time, but I'm certainly sorry if you missed this.

Once we had returned to work, the information provided by other users in that thread is the same information that an Affinity staff member would have provided - therefore we do not involve ourselves in threads that have been resolved through the kindness of our community help.

Your second post was asking where you should report issues, another user showed you the correct area of the forums to report this and yet I cannot see a thread that you created following this. Bug reports in the section of the forum that Paul linked for you should always be responded to by a member of Affinity staff (usually the QA team) - again unless the thread has been resolved by another users input.

If you are having an issue with your assets disappearing from the app then I recommend posting in the bugs section as recommended and one of our team members can help investigate this for you, which can also help improve the app for other users in the future - rather than applying a 'temporary' fix for your system only.

I hope this clears things up and once again my apologies if you feel you have been ignored here by the Affinity team.

@grey

My apologies for the delayed response and many thanks for confirming these for me. Unfortunately as mentioned by other members it is essentially impossible to recover this document without access to a desktop, as you cannot access the 'hidden files' through iPadOS like you can on the Desktop.

We certainly don't expect any documents to become corrupted and I offer my sincerest apologies from the Affinity team for any work you may have lost.

Our developers are aware that storing Affinity files on the cloud can cause corruption issues and this is something our team is working hard to improve.

[3DJ]

44 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Sorry to hear this, your initial post was created on Christmas Eve and continued through to Christmas Day. Unfortunately the whole company was closed at that time and none of the Affinity staff were available on the forums. This was noted on any page of the forums at the time, but I'm certainly sorry if you missed this.

Once we had returned to work, the information provided by other users in that thread is the same information that an Affinity staff member would have provided - therefore we do not involve ourselves in threads that have been resolved through the kindness of our community help.

Your second post was asking where you should report issues, another user showed you the correct area of the forums to report this and yet I cannot see a thread that you created following this. Bug reports in the section of the forum that Paul linked for you should always be responded to by a member of Affinity staff (usually the QA team) - again unless the thread has been resolved by another users input.

If you are having an issue with your assets disappearing from the app then I recommend posting in the bugs section as recommended and one of our team members can help investigate this for you, which can also help improve the app for other users in the future - rather than applying a 'temporary' fix for your system only.

I hope this clears things up and once again my apologies if you feel you have been ignored here by the Affinity team.

@grey

My apologies for the delayed response and many thanks for confirming these for me. Unfortunately as mentioned by other members it is essentially impossible to recover this document without access to a desktop, as you cannot access the 'hidden files' through iPadOS like you can on the Desktop.

We certainly don't expect any documents to become corrupted and I offer my sincerest apologies from the Affinity team for any work you may have lost.

Our developers are aware that storing Affinity files on the cloud can cause corruption issues and this is something our team is working hard to improve.

I was asking for proper support tickets and was shown where to file bugs. Two different things. Yes I wanted a fix for my issue. I paid for these apps and expect them to work, but I understand things can go wrong. I also expect a proper support system, but that’s on me- I could have easily seen investigated this years ago before I purchased and discovered its a “community” effort. I’ll seek help by asking my peers from now on. Thanks lesson learned. I get the same level of support from Adobe, so I guess I should not be surprised. My 3D software and AstroPad seem to be if higher quality for customer experience regarding any trouble that happens. 

[Dan C]

15 minutes ago, 3DJ said:

was asking for proper support tickets and was shown where to file bugs. Two different things.

My apologies, our support team can either be reached on the Forums or at Affinitysupport@serif.com - this is a direct email to the same team that offer support on these forums and you're welcome to contact us there if you wish.

This information can be found in the Contact Us post here on the forums. Unfortunately all of our phone lines are currently closed due to the pandemic, however we do not offer technical support over the phone.

On 4/12/2017 at 1:45 PM, Patrick Connor said:

While these are both community forums, members of our own team are actively involved and you will often receive a pretty quick response. For critical issue support you may be asked to email support staff directly (AffinitySupport@serif.com), but please start on the appropriate forums, as the regulars here often answer quickly and correctly.

[3DJ]

Thanks for the info Dan. I don’t mean to knock the community either. They are great, I have received help and provided help over the years. I just have been getting frustrated with some issues lately and not having left my house since last March for much at all doesn’t help with the anxiety. 

Stay safe.
-Jim

 

[Dan C]

No problem at all Jim, I certainly understand and I wouldn't want you thinking that Affinity are ignoring your posts here

I absolutely agree - hopefully we can return to some sense of 'normalcy' soon!