filters and effects

[constance550]

Just bought the newest  Affinity. I can't get things like the polar coordinates filter to work. I can't get the warp tool to work. I can't get several other tools to work such as adding a gradiant.  What can I do about nothing working? this program is installed on a PC with Windows 10.

[firstdefence]

What are you applying these filters and effect to in Affinity Photo?

 

[constance550]

To photographs. Now, since Affinity only allows me to post once a day, I will not be able to continue this conversation.  I'm trying to add an effect to a photograph and the filters and tools will not work.

[firstdefence]

It's likely because the image isn't rasterised, try right-clicking on the image in the layers panel and selecting Rasterise, then try applying the filters.

As far as I am aware Affinity forum doesn't limit the posts you make?

 

 

 

[constance550]

dear firstdefence. I was able to rasterize the image and several tools and filters worked, BUT, after trying five things, the screen froze. Nothing was responsive----nothing! I could not close out the image or Affinity. I had to manually push a button on my computer to turn it off. When I tried to turn the computer back on, all I got was the same Affinity page with my image (which should not have happened). Again, all was non-responsive. I turned the computer off again and although the computer was turned off, it turned itself on and off until I unplugged it from the power source. I was able to get the computer turned back on again and immediately went to my installed apps and UNINSTALLED Affinity. This thing was acting like maleware.

[firstdefence]

The affinity apps have a restore system and an autosave so it gives you a chance to recover work, if there has been an autosave prior to a crash, be it an app crash or a system crash, when Affinity is opened again it will normally ask if you want to recover a document. Affinity software wouldn't turn your computer back on, that is BIOS and system level operation Affinity cannot run outside of Windows. It sounds to me like you have more than just a problematic app going on. There could be many reasons why your system behaved the way it did and I can't discount Affinity may have had a part to play but I think you have system issues that need looking at as well. Check to see if windows was updating or tried to update.

I think you need to do some system checking, test your memory with Memtest86, run a full antivirus system scan, from an administrator level command prompt run: SFC /scannow to make sure your system file integrity is OK, check for windows 10 updates and I would also take notice of the system heat, is it overheating? 

Affinity doesn't behave like malware, Malware behaves like malware, I may have been fortunate but everyone I know on windows who runs Affinity hasn't had issues like app crashes, most are pro photographers so Affinity Photo gets pushed pretty hard by these guys and unless they haven't told me, none of them have had Affinity Photo crash on them.

Don't ignore Topaz as being the problem either. Just remember These plugins are written for Photoshop not Affinity Photo, so while the plugin works it may not be 100% compatible with Affinity Photo, a point incase is the EyeCandy plugin that has a glitch where it sometimes reverses the preview fortunately it's just a preview issue.

[constance550]

when Affinity opened, it did not ask me if I wanted to recover a document. as I said before NOTHING was responsive. Why are you bringing  up the fact that Affinity cannot run outside of Windows? I have mentioned I am using Windows 10. Windows was not updating at the time and my Windows is up to date. I do not need to test the memory as I am using a new computer that came installed with 16 gigabytes of memory and the computer is only five weeks old. I have plenty of memory. I do not use Topaz.  the computer is not over-heating.

[Ron P.]

1 hour ago, constance550 said:

Why are you bringing  up the fact that Affinity cannot run outside of Windows?

This is why. Serif staff, mods, developers have posted on here that Affinity is not capable of causing OS crashes. Something may have went wrong with the program, but there's some issue(s) with the operating system or hardware to cause the computer to completely crash, known as kernel crashes.

19 hours ago, constance550 said:

I turned the computer off again and although the computer was turned off, it turned itself on and off until I unplugged it from the power source.

19 hours ago, constance550 said:

I had to manually push a button on my computer to turn it off. When I tried to turn the computer back on, all I got was the same Affinity page

I can't recall ever seeing a computer, turning itself on/off repeatedly. If that's what's happening, regardless of being a newer computer or having X_amount of ram, you have a problem with that machine. I've had brand new memory sticks that were bad, I've had hard drives go bad that were only a month old. New does not guarantee it's flawless. 

[constance550]

 Have had an additional problem. I might have been wrong about something. I said earlier that my Windows was up to date. I did a lot of tests on my HP computer of one sort or another. Everything is fine including the OS. Windows, however, was not. It seems that Windows was stopped from doing an update. I clicked on the button to "try again". Could not get it to work. I ran the troubleshooter and the troubleshooter could not find or fix the problem. I went online to see if I could find any help. As it turns out, I was able to click on something that told me there were six available updates. I downloaded them all. Windows is now updated. I don't know if that was the problem with Affinity but no way to tell at this point. I had early this morning uninstalled the software from my computer.

[firstdefence]

One can never assume that just because something is new that there isn't a component or components that is/are faulty, even if they aren't faulty, being poorly installed can be enough, such as not enough thermal compound, or poorly applied.
I've had new hard drives that have failed after a few hours of use, memory that is faulty - even good quality memory like Patriot, G.Skill and Crucial Ballistic. Faulty memory can cause all manner of intermittent problems, so can bad hard drives, motherboards with dry solder joints, cheap capacitors, loose cables and poorly installed CPU's and underpowered heatsinks can all create a very problematic system, even a simple short because of over tightening screws can render systems unreliable.

The reasons for the suggestion to run some checks was to rule out components as possible causes for your maladies. If, in fact, affinity is the cause of the problems, fixing Affinity would not work if you also had hardware issues so eliminating them as probable causes is just Vulcan logic. I'm not blaming you, it's just logical to eliminate hard issues and then move on to software. Once you know your hardware is solid, windows can be checked for consistency and correct install that's what SFC /scannow is partly for. Updating can resolve bugs but can also introduce problems but the consensus is it's better to update than not.