Big issue: A bug destroys my layers regularly

[Marina P.]

Dear Affinity Support Team,

unfortunately I have to describe a bug to you that appeared the first time already around a year ago and went worse. I'm using an iPad Pro (2. Generation) which is currently running on Version 15.1, and have Affinity Designer installed with Version 1.10.19.

I'm afraid that I cannot show you exact videos about what is happening so I try to describe it. Mostly the bug appears when I use the "back"-function. There comes a certain point during the workflow - earlier or later - when I want to go backwards with the left arrow (because the gesture is also only working accidentally) - and then the pixel layer I'm drawing in gets destoyed. It looks as if big rectangles of "nothing"/transparency are erasing the layer, in some cases there is only one little "box" of the layer left. Sometimes I can rescue it with going forward again, but mostly the damage is irreversible, even if I go forwards or backwards in the clock-protocol.
Sometimes I suppose that the bug awakes after doing some changes of pixel brushes, but the problem is so unpredictable that I can't say it for sure. My documents consist in most cases of a few groups with several layers, today there were 4 groups and 10 layers, 1500 x 1500 pixels.
I use some imported Pixel Brushes from Daub, Frankentoon, The Rusty Nib and some more. I'm not sure but I think the problems began with importing the new brushes. However, before that I had already a problem that in some cases a standard brush suddenly became extremely pixelated and drew like "stairs" after enlarging pixel-selections. I don't know if this effect is bonded with the even more severe bug of now.
I must say that this issue is so destructive it brought me near to the point of losing any motivation für working with this app, which makes me sad because it meant very much to me. (And there are some more issues, too, but this would probably be too much for one bug-report.)

Whereas I never recorded the problem, at least I took a fast photo of what has happened today and attached it. There was a short "performance problem" with the brush and not even a second later a transparent rectangle destroyed the drawing. Before that even another issue occured: Two layers suddenly united undemanded. It also happens that groups become layers, or that layers vanish ... I don't have a clue if all these phenomens are connected. 

Kind regards and thanks!
 

[Callum]

Hi Marina P,

Welcome to the forums

This looks like a redraw issue but its hard to say for sure, does zooming in or out change how the layer looks once you have performed an Undo action? Do you have a large number of projects open on the Affinity homescreen?

Thanks
C

[Marina P.]

Hi Callum, thank you very much for your quick reply! 

Mostly I have only one to two projects open on the homescreen. But I do suppose that the problem gets more likely the more layers are opened, especially when there are masks involved. (However, in one case the issue started right after the very first drawn lines (or rather after going "back"). 

When I zoom in and out, the "damage" follows with every change/movement as if it was drawn like this. Unfortunately, zooming is also a problem. Normally it doesn't work, I have to wait about 10 to 20 seconds until it works. 

What I ask myself often is if there is a bug inside the app, or if it is a RAM-issue? But I'm using the iPad mainly for Affinity and have no other Apps which could "steal" so much RAM, so it would be strange if Affinity needed more than 8 GB of RAM. But I'm a "laywoman" on those themes ... 

Thanks back! (But without back-arrow ...  
Marina

[Marina P.]

(Oh, sorry, my iPad has got 4GB RAM.)

[NotMyFault]

As a long-tome iPad user  (had 5 generations since first) i would recommend to make a full backup (ideally via iTunes to a Mac or PC), then reset the iPad and restore from backup.

The iPadOS 15.x caused lots of performance  issues lately, only came back to normal with latest 15.3.

Save all your Affinity files to a dedicate folder (not the default Affinity Designer !), and make a backup to iClod or another storage media.

Please note that some older apps may not get re-installed, and you need to re-login to many Apps.

A fresh install and restore about once a year helps to clean-up some nasty issues.

Unfortunately it can take several hours until all apps are re-installed. 
 

i too have occasionally redraw issues (about once a week), normally closing the document, force quit Affinity apps, and rebooting iPad always solved the issue. 
 

If you do serious work, save often, do backups to external or cloud storage often, use snapshots, create multiple versions/copies of important files.

IPad with 4 GB Ram is normally fine for complex files.

 

 

[Marina P.]

Hello NotMyFault, 
thank you very much for your reply! Guess what, yesterday evening I let the iPad search for updates and I could do the Update to 15.3.1. I don't know why the iPad didn't announce any versions before it so that it remained on 15.1 for such a long time - 'cause the updates normally appear automatically. 

So my thought was to wait with the full reset which I'm a little bit afraid of, and to find out if the updated OS has got any influence on the performance of AD. 
I'll come right back here and share my experiences. 

And it's an important advice that the issue is rather not based on too little RAM. 

Nice greetings to Hamburg from the Black Forest
 

Edited February 11, 2022 by Marina P.

[Vosje]

Hi, I’m having the same issue… See my thread here: 

 

Just performed an update on my iPad (not a clean one), that didn’t help.

Lately I noticed that my layers get corrupted not only when I undo a change, bult also when I simply use a brush pen on them…

[Marina P.]

What you discribe is exactly the same to my issue. Also that using a pen can cause the damage has happened sometimes. And changing brushes seems also to be problematic in some cases. 

I'm "glad" to hear that this issue is a known bug so that I hope that it can be fixed in the near future. I didn't have the opportunity to work with AD after the Update to 15.3.1., but I don't really believe that the issue has vanished by that. 

[Marina P.]

Hello, some days ago startet a little drawing but after a few minutes the bug happened again. It got worse and worse so that I wasn't really able to work on it any more. 
I want to show you in four little clips how the issues looked like. 

There are some aspects of what could have been the cause for the sudden problem: 

1. Unfortunately, there is the annoying case that when I want to lay down my (left) hand on the display, it happens that in the first instance, one point of my little finger and one point of the hand are touching it at first: The App thinks it is zooming, and the layers flicker rapidly and often also I touch some other commands like masking out the functions ( I don't know the English terms) or I activate unintentionally the pipette. Yesterday it was the fast flickering and masking out, and shortly after that the problems began. 

2. It could have been the Frankentoon Neptune Brush ("Osaka"), having had a latent strange performance so that I thought: "Oh dear this won't go well ..." 

3. Also the zooming was problematic, but I'm not sure if this was before or after the bug occured. 

4. As always the "undo"-function was the direct trigger. 

5. Yesterday I noticed that the adjustment-layer for changing colours doesn't work as flowingly as it did for a long time. While using the slider for going through the colours, there was not the clean surface but at first big rectangles in wrong colours to see. I know that this might not be fit to this case, but I wonder if there isn't a coherence? 

 

[Marina P.]

[Marina P.]

In the third clip you can see that the brush startet to erase pixels around itself. When I startet filming, it seemed to be normal again, but undoing led to full damage of the layer.

Strangely, today I wanted to trigger new "examples" in the same file with the same brush, but everything worked well. I don't understand this.