Affinity Photo (Windows) crash

[i5963c]

I downloaded and installed the latest official version of Affinity Photo (1.10).

I discovered a bug. Not sure whether it existed in previous versions. The bug can be easily reproduced.

Take following steps:

1. Create a new document.

2. Add a new layer with a shape (e.g. triangle). Assign a fill color.

3. Rasterize this layer (in order to use the shape for a pattern layer - see below).

4. Create a selection based on this layer (menu option: Select | Selection from Layer).

5. Create a new Pattern Layer based on this selection (menu option: Layer | New Pattern Layer from Selection).

6. You may modify the base pattern shape (e.g. shear, resize, mirror, ...).

7. Now, activate the Move or Shape tools, and click on the original shape layer and/or on the pattern layer. Probably, it's require to click a number of times

8. Bang!! The application crashes!

I'm not sure whether all these steps are really mandatory for the crash, but I it's not feasible to test all possible combinations of these steps. Just executing these steps triggers consistent crashes. Debugging will reveal what actually happens in the code.

 

Kind regards.

Ivo Vingerhoets

 

 

 

[i5963c]

Some more comments: I'm on Windows 10 (up to date), I bought the Affinity software via the Serif website (i.e. not via the Windows store) and I've hardware accelleration active (NVidia RTX3060, drivers up-to-date).

[Ron P.]

Hi @i5963c, welcome to the forums,

Yep, it sure does crash. If you have a crash report please attach it to this thread.

 

9d88672b-2be6-44c7-82c0-90ef0df18154.dmp

[i5963c]

As requested, please find attached some crash reports related to this bug.

 

a069c27b-2a75-432b-b4f4-7a81d129cf4c.dmp 096c63bf-1868-4a26-b8a6-6e8e85f15005.dmp

[i5963c]

I did some further analysis on this bug. The findings are as follows:

1/ In the Photo Persona of the Affinity Publisher application, it is also possible to create pattern layers (as far as I can see, there is no equivalent functionality in the Designer app). In the Photo Persona of Publisher, the same bug happens.

2/ Switching HW-acceleration off, doesn't change anything, the bug remains.

3/ If you create a new document, add a Pattern Layer, and then draw with a brush in the 'source' area, the application also crashes when you select the Move tool and click on the canvas. So, in this scenario, I don't follow the path of creating patterns via selections. I've included a crash dump for this use case below.

Conclusion: Pattern Layers are basically unusable at this moment in version 1.10!

6b4580b8-2b6a-4a4a-9bf4-6c9beb5a2287.dmp

[Komatös]

Please go to the Microsoft site and download the dotNET repair tool.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/microsoft-net-framework-repair-tool-is-available-942a01e3-5b8b-7abb-c166-c34a2f4b612a

[Lem3]

21 hours ago, i5963c said:

I downloaded and installed the latest official version of Affinity Photo (1.10).

I discovered a bug. Not sure whether it existed in previous versions. The bug can be easily reproduced.

Take following steps:

1. Create a new document.

2. Add a new layer with a shape (e.g. triangle). Assign a fill color.

3. Rasterize this layer (in order to use the shape for a pattern layer - see below).

4. Create a selection based on this layer (menu option: Select | Selection from Layer).

5. Create a new Pattern Layer based on this selection (menu option: Layer | New Pattern Layer from Selection).

6. You may modify the base pattern shape (e.g. shear, resize, mirror, ...).

7. Now, activate the Move or Shape tools, and click on the original shape layer and/or on the pattern layer. Probably, it's require to click a number of times

8. Bang!! The application crashes!

I'm not sure whether all these steps are really mandatory for the crash, but I it's not feasible to test all possible combinations of these steps. Just executing these steps triggers consistent crashes. Debugging will reveal what actually happens in the code.

 

Kind regards.

Ivo Vingerhoets

 

 

 

I followed the steps, clicked 20 times every place possible and never had a crash.

Windows 10.0.19042, Intel i7-11700, GeForce GTX 1660Ti (471.41), 16 GB RAM, Affinity Photo 1.10.0.1127, Hardware Acceleration is on.

[i5963c]

11 hours ago, Komatös said:

Please go to the Microsoft site and download the dotNET repair tool.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/microsoft-net-framework-repair-tool-is-available-942a01e3-5b8b-7abb-c166-c34a2f4b612a

Hello Komatös, thanks for your feedback.

Could you please clarify why I should download and install this tool?

I believe that it's a good practice that I don't want to install programs without knowing a reason for doing so, or without being sure that they will fix any problems.

Can I find somewhere information that explains why this tool would solve my problem?

6 hours ago, Lem3 said:

I followed the steps, clicked 20 times every place possible and never had a crash.

Windows 10.0.19042, Intel i7-11700, GeForce GTX 1660Ti (471.41), 16 GB RAM, Affinity Photo 1.10.0.1127, Hardware Acceleration is on.

Hello Lem3,

Thanks for your reaction.

It's bizar since our systems seem similar in many ways:

• Same version of Affinity Photo. My version is downloaded from the Affinity website. Not sure if your version is from the Affinity site, or from the Microsoft store? I've seen some reports that there are sometimes more problems with the MS store versions...
• Same Windows version. I have the Pro edition, not sure whether this is also the case with you (Pro or Home)?
• Same Nvidia driver version (although our GPU's are different).
• I have 32 GB of RAM, you have apparerently 16 GB. In theory, I would expect that less RAM could give more crashes than more RAM, but this is apparently not the case here.
• My CPU is an AMD (Ryzen 9 3900X 12 core - 3.8 GHz), yours is Intel, but both are certainly adequate to run Affinity.
• Hardware acceleration on or off doesn't seem to make a difference. Normally, I have it switched on, but I checked already with HW acceleration 'off', and it doesn't make a difference for the crashes with the Pattern layers (the crashes persist).

I did some further tests, and I consistently encounter crashes everytime that I run the scenarios that I described above. Apparenly, also Ron P. confirms the crashes.

As far as I recall, I never had such crashes with the previous version.

I have the 3 Affinity apps. As I indicated above, I get the same bug in the Photo Persona of Publisher. Can you let me know whether you also have the 3 Affinity apps on your system?

I installed the most recent versions of the 3 apps in the following order: Photo, Designer and then Publisher. One thing that I can investigate is to uninstall Publisher, reinstall Photo, and see if the bug is still appearing then. If not, it would indicate that the bug would be introduced via the most recent Publisher update.

 

Many thanks.

Kind regards.

[RichardMH]

Also managed to kill it. OpenCL acceleration off.

e50196b3-8f41-4087-8090-f0325c821a95.dmp

[Lem3]

I have Photo (only) direct from Affinity, Windows 10 Pro, hardware acceleration on.

[i5963c]

I did a 2 further tests:

1/ On my main desktop (i.e. my most powerful machine). Also, the previous tests were executed on this PC.

• I uninstalled Affinity Photo 1.10.
• I re-installed Affinity Photo 1.9.2. (i.e. a downgrade).
• I ran the same scenarios many times. Never a crash.
• I upgraded again to Affinity Photo 1.10. Result: the crashes are back immediately and consistently!

2/ I then realized that I also have an old laptop with much less advanced HW resources. On this machine, I hadn't made the upgrade to AP v1.10 yet (AP was still on v1.9.2).

• As a first step, I ran the same test scenarios. I was not able to trigger crashes.
• Next, I upgraded this laptop to version 1.10 of Affinity Photo, and performed the tests again. Result: crashes all the time!

My conclusion: this bug is clearly linked to the latest version of Affinity Photo 1.10.

I have these crashes all the time on two different machines. Two other users have confirmed similar crashes on their side. Only one person indicates that he's not able to reproduce the bug. This is even a bigger mystery to me than the bug 😩...

Hopefully, the developers will identify the root cause and provide a fix. Meanwhile, pattern layers are (unfortunately) useless in AP v1.10.

 

[Komatös]

15 hours ago, RichardMH said:

Also managed to kill it. OpenCL acceleration off.

e50196b3-8f41-4087-8090-f0325c821a95.dmp 7.22 MB · 0 downloads

The Dump is from the Beta, is it?

[RichardMH]

4 hours ago, Komatös said:

The Dump is from the Beta, is it?

It is.

[i5963c]

I also provided 3 dump files (see above for posts with my user ID).

All these dump files are from the 'official' AP 1.10 release.

Apparently, also user 'Ron P' submitted a dump file. I don't know whether this file was generated with the 'official' or with the 'beta' version.

 

Kind regards.

[rbkv]

65c6af0e-5ebd-46f7-8233-9e1462b4e303.dmp

[Komatös]

6 hours ago, rbkv said:

65c6af0e-5ebd-46f7-8233-9e1462b4e303.dmp 4.17 MB · 0 downloads

You are using Windows 11, so it can't be ruled out that there are still incompatibilities with various software packages.

Furthermore, I don't want to exclude the possibility that the Newtonsoft JOSN framework provokes errors.

[Chris B]

I cannot for the life of me reproduce this, however there should be enough dump files for the developers to debug it - thanks to everyone and @i5963c for the initial report! 

[i5963c]

Hello Chris,

Thanks for your reaction.

I can reproduce this bug over and over again. Also on 2 different PC's that I have.

In summary:

• The problem happens in version 1.10. Version 1.9.2. seems to work fine. 
• The problem appears in Affinity Photo, as well as in the Photo Persona of Affinity Publisher.
• I'm on Windows 10. I have no idea about how it works on Mac.

When I looked again at my initial description of the different steps that are required to trigger the bug, I noticed some wording that might lead to ambiguity (English is not my mother tongue...).

In Step 7, I describe that one should click on the layers. What I actually mean is clicking on the layer content on the canvas. Thus, not clicking on the layers in the layer panel!

When I select the Move tool after the creation of the Pattern Layer, and then click on the canvas, I get a crash. Sometimes, it happens immediately, sometimes after waiting maybe 1 or 2 seconds. But, it happened always in 100% of my trials so far...

 

I hope this further clarifies the problem.

Kind regards.

[Chris B]

Thanks for clarifying. Still no luck in reproducing but hopefully the dump files can identify the cause here  

[Tearlach]

On 8/6/2021 at 2:56 PM, i5963c said:

I downloaded and installed the latest official version of Affinity Photo (1.10).

I discovered a bug. Not sure whether it existed in previous versions. The bug can be easily reproduced.

Take following steps:

1. Create a new document.

2. Add a new layer with a shape (e.g. triangle). Assign a fill color.

3. Rasterize this layer (in order to use the shape for a pattern layer - see below).

4. Create a selection based on this layer (menu option: Select | Selection from Layer).

5. Create a new Pattern Layer based on this selection (menu option: Layer | New Pattern Layer from Selection)

{BANG}

6. You may modify the base pattern shape (e.g. shear, resize, mirror, ...).

 

I actually got it to crash between steps 5 and 6, but I was switching back to the instructions you gave to read the next step in the recipe... and I came back to it frozen.

I'm also not getting .dmp files in my

%AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\CrashReports\reports

folder. But I do get a log.txt file during this particular crash. (attached)

Log.txt

[Tearlach]

I can report that the current beta (1.10.0.1127) is not crashing using the above recipe - at least on my system. Purely a data point.

[i5963c]

I was triggered by this last post to perform an extra test, also because I noticed that the latest beta version and the official version both have the same release number (i.e. 1.10.1127), but the downloads of both versions have a slightly different size. I'm not a software release specialist, but this sounds already a bit strange to me...

So after downloading the latest beta release on the Serif website, I tested the behavior of the pattern layers again. On my machine, the application crashes also with the beta release (contrary to the findings of user Tearlach).

Bizar...

 

[Tearlach]

I will add, purely to clarify - since I didn't say before, the test I ran using the current beta release was also on a clean install of that beta. That is to say I did remove the commercial release (using Windows' built in remove program tool) before I installed the beta.

That also reset all my user preferences, and I have not gone to look at the default GPU acceleration settings or any of that yet. (and I'm not in the office right now)

-charlie

[Lem3]

@i5963c ,

Although your instructions are quite specific it may be useful (as in the other thread on this topic) if you attach the actual file you are using which generates the crash.
Also, I suggest you use the DDU tool to completely remove any remains of previous graphics drivers then install drivers fresh.  Note NVIDIA released new Studio drivers on Tuesday, 8/10.

[i5963c]

@Lem3,

As requested, please find attached an example file ('Test pattern layer.afphoto'). This file was created as described in the first 5 steps of my recipe (see my initial message). 

As soon as I open the file, select the 'Move' tool, and click somewhere on the canvas, I get a crash (all the time!).

For the sake of completeness, I also included the dump files for this file.

PS: I'm aware of the new Nvidia driver. My system was updated with this newly released Studio driver, prior to my most recent tests today.

Actually, in recent days, I have tested the pattern layer bug with the 3 last versions of the Nvidia drivers. The crashes happened with all 3 versions. The July version of the driver was a fresh install.

Unfortunately, also the last update (August) was of no avail.

It would be really interesting to know whether your system crashes with this file as well.

9f8b58c7-34d2-4f33-bdcd-31a74fc8cb72.dmp attachment_Log.txt Test pattern layer.afphoto