Affinity Photo Windows Customer Beta - 1.10.2.1178

[Mark Ingram]

Click here to download the latest beta

Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: 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.

• Fixed Toggling 'Quick Mask' not updating until you toggle the mask off and on again
• Fixed 'Overlay Paint' and 'Overlay Erase' tools in Develop Persona not painting with correct spacing
• Fixed document with 'Save History' failing to save after promoting a Group to a Layer
• Fixed vector import potentially importing with the wrong document size
• Fixed 16-bit 'Saturation blend mode' displaying white pixels
• Fixed crash painting on empty pattern layer
• Fixed 'Levels' > 'Output black and white' using the same values when changing channels
• Fixed files losing quality after a merge or export
• Fixed potential crash opening an EXR document
• Fixed crash opening multiple FITS files at once
• Fixed DNG files not being displayed in Develop Persona with Hardware Acceleration enabled
• Fixed Astrophotography to cope with unicode file paths
• Fixed PSD import of Linear Burn blend mode being imported as Multiply
• Fixed some occassionally fonts failing to be recognised at startup
• Fixed Borderless printing having a border
• Improved 'Uninstall Pack' flow to auto-select the pack
• Fixed 'Preset Manager' > 'Shape Presets' being unable to click
• Fixed hang on My Account page 
• Fixed 'Defringe' > 'Also remove complementary colour'
• Fixed crash when closing the application
• Fixed potential crash on launch when a sync'd asset references an unavailable font
• Fixed document pixel resolution being stored in the wrong format within XMP metadata (breaks later parsing of the same data; hides the values from the metadata panel's 'Detail' view) 
• Increased maximum defringe radius
• Fixed 'Convert to Curves' crash with underlined text, emoji etc. 
• Fixed Astrophotography Stack failing on some DNG's with no warning
• Improved Astrophotography 'Make Align Layers By Stars' to work for layers in transformed groups 

Previous release notes

[NotMyFault]

Good to see the defringe improvements. Sad it is still crashing with negative radius.

[aji]

afp-3919

Brush errors hope to be repaired as soon as possible, thank you

[Max N]

Nice update. I would also like to see the brush mix in the list of fixes. The version is replaced by the version, and the problems go unnoticed by the developers. The mix brush does not draw a straight line when holding down the shift key. The mix brush resets the empty fill when changing the layer. I'd like to see such basic functions working correctly.

[TEcHNOpls]

There is no notice in older beta about this one.

[nezumi]

I am bit saddened not to see any work being done on acceleration (or are not mentioned?). Photo is rock solid for me with acceleration turned off but if I turn it on inevitably it will hang... Not checking this beta because nothing about acceleration related crashes is mentioned...

[PeteMacca]

5 hours ago, nezumi said:

I am bit saddened not to see any work being done on acceleration (or are not mentioned?). Photo is rock solid for me with acceleration turned off but if I turn it on inevitably it will hang... Not checking this beta because nothing about acceleration related crashes is mentioned...

I checked it out. It still fails with hardware acceleration on my Intel UHD 620 GPU, just like it did with previous versions. So I keep it off, and it works just fine.

[phoenixart]

Not sure if the sudden crashes here and here are still being looked into, but just to confirm: I tested this latest beta, unfortunately the issue persists.

I still hope the devs will be able to figure this out at some point. For the time being, I stick to 1.9.2.1035 version, which is the latest release that works fine with the hardware acceleration on.

[DigitalVisuals]

I working with the Beta on a windows 11 setting on 75hz with 32 GB ram and a Nvidia GPU.  Where the 1.10.1 has several problems, the beta is working how it should.

[Abelnt]

tested on windows 11.   All seems woks nice, but the look is not nice, seems a old wi10app. all my windows -apps white and rounded and affinity black and square . . . .   

[Chris B]

Thanks for confirming Abelnt, I do not like the look of Windows 11 either. I had almost instant regret after updating 😬

[bobkn]

I have just begun experimenting with Affinity.

GPU acceleration is unavailable under Windows 11. (I have an AMD 6900XT GPU.)

Does the beta support that?

[PeteMacca]

Hey @bobkn

You might be experiencing a problem with AMD...

 

[nezumi]

If you are CG artist there are two things to keep in mind. And I am not joking or trolling. Research heavily before purchasing AMD GPU because sadlu it is riddled with problems or unsupported entirely outside of gaming. And never - NEVER - give up into FOMO and start installing new system right away. Its never a good thing to be early adopter. Give it time so they fix bugs, patch it out... Why you are jumping on win11 already? You need that rounded corners that much? Chill out for now, stay on win10 until they sort out all the problems.

[bobkn]

10 hours ago, PeteMacca said:

Hey @bobkn

You might be experiencing a problem with AMD...

 

Thanks.

I had the false impression that Affinity wasn't permitting my AMD GPU from being used because Affinity wasn't identifying the OS. It is probably because recent AMD CPUs are locked out due to driver issues.

I'm disappointed that the issue has not been resolved after 8 months. GPU acceleration can be very significant.

Edited October 16, 2021 by bobkn
typo

[bobkn]

3 hours ago, nezumi said:

If you are CG artist there are two things to keep in mind. And I am not joking or trolling. Research heavily before purchasing AMD GPU because sadlu it is riddled with problems or unsupported entirely outside of gaming. And never - NEVER - give up into FOMO and start installing new system right away. Its never a good thing to be early adopter. Give it time so they fix bugs, patch it out... Why you are jumping on win11 already? You need that rounded corners that much? Chill out for now, stay on win10 until they sort out all the problems.

I'm not a CG artist. I'm more of a PC enthusiast.

I've preferred nVidia GPUs in the past, mainly because of their drivers. Some applications  (like Canon's Digital Photo Professional) are coded to only use CUDA for GPU acceleration, which means no AMD. Other software supports both makers. I can't address the claim that AMD GPUs are "riddled with problems".

I'm not jumping on Windows 4 "already". I've actually been using it since its first release in June. For the most part, it isn't a new OS. It could have been promoted as Windows 10 with some interface changes. The only incompatibilities I've encountered are some drivers (not graphics drivers) that are incompatible with the core isolation security setting. Core isolation was also present in 10, but not enabled by default. Windows 11 seems to be primarily two things: a marketing ploy, and a means to enforce enabling the hardware security features that have been present in Windows PCs for a while.

I'd thank you for your opinions, but I prefer to be sincere.

[nezumi]

@bobknAbsolutely. By all means - you do you. I am speaking from the point of view of somebody who is making a living on PC and cant afford "ow look, it doesn't work.. Well, lets hope they fix it soon". Because meanwhile I would have no income
Sadly Win11 is a mess for now and a big no-no for anybody with Ryzen AMD cpu. Unless wants to "enjoy" up to 15% slow down.
As for AMD GPUs - I would be glad to buy one for many reasons but software I use either would have problems or it is not working AT ALL on it. Substance Painter is notably slower and people were reporting some bugs and in Maya it doesn't support Arnold renderer at all. Shame because I think they have some really cool hardware - being Ryzen user myself.
As for GPU acceleration in Affinity - I have NVidia card and cant use it either It crashes almost instantly, maybe after a minute of use. I have no clue how hard it is to make it work, but I am trying to be understanding here - Photo for me works perfect and is quite fast without acceleration so I can wait. I remember when Designer was crashing constantly and randomly when using pen tool. They have fixed it after long battle and its perfect now. So as disappointed as I might be that I dont see any fixes for acceleration in this beta I am giving them benefit of a doubt. This team showed more then once that is capable of great things and is indeed listening to users. Latest example of that would be for me how they dealt with changing brush size with stylus. From unusable weirdness they changed it to one of my suggestions (not taking credit, but hey - I suggested it and it works like this now - call it coincidence if you want) and it is pleasure to work with now. Lets hope GPU acceleration situation will have a happy end. I would imagine its a complex matter. So, fingers crossed for the team.

[bobkn]

The AMD CPU slowdown in Windows 11 appears to be a bit overstated. (Clickbait, to a degree.) I have no benchmarks to show how significant it is outside of some games. I haven't seen any indication that it causes program failures, so I'm not highly concerned. Whether the patches expected from Microsoft and AMD in the week of 18 October fix things, we'll see.

I'm a very amateurish hobbyist, and I don't depend on my camera or PC for income. (Outlay, yes.) As an enthusiast, I do a lot of things that would make no sense for a pro. That includes reluctance to get an Adobe subscription, even though its pricing is reasonable.

Whether Affinity Photo's lack of support for AMD GPUs is significant, I don't know. The limited amount of testing I have done with it has been fairly quick. Maybe my Ryzen 9 5950X CPU (16 cores/ 32 threads) is up to the task.

Edited October 16, 2021 by bobkn

[nezumi]

Ow slowdown is very real. I mean there were official statements, multiple benchmarks widely available, ALL tech related channels talking about it... It is what it is. I agree that I havent heard about any program failures caused by win11 but I wouldn't rule out such possibility. I certainly think patches will sort it out - if not now, bit later. I mean they cant just leave it like it is.
I switched to Photo from two decades of Photoshop not because of money - I simply like Photo way more. You have quite a cpu there, my friend Very cool! I have merely Ryzen 7 with 8/16 cores and Photo is absolute pleasure to work with. Smooth as butter. Thats why I dont mind waiting for acceleration being fixed It was a blast to have really big brush working extremely smooth with acceleration turned on. Looking forward to be able to enjoy it once more.
For what I have read AMD side has to react to that issues on their side but I know nothing about programming, so no way to verify how true it is.
AMD is weird - they have "professional" line of GPUs, yet they dont support extremely popular software and features in professional field. Instead they are writting their own renderer, getting involved in Blender... It cant replace professional needs. And I wish they would get involved way more in CG world, beyond just games because NVidia has monopoly in some fields and thats never a good thing. Now Intel is coming with its GPUs as well, so things may become more interesting.
In any case - good luck to you in all your endeavors

[bobkn]

I didn't mean to suggest that the performance loss with Ryzen CPUs under Win 11 isn't real.

I'm just not sure how significant it is for most applications. The 15% number is reportedly at the extreme limit, and the loss is less for most programs. I hope that the issue is fixed before a meaningful set of benchmarks is collected.

I know little about what path AMD is taking in GPU computing. I'm unfamiliar with Blender, but if it's open source, good for AMD. (If it doesn't work out, it will have no direct effect on me.)

[Mark Ingram]

New version available.