Affinity Photo crashes frequently on Windows 10

[Jaumenik]

Hi,

Recently, I am working more and more in the Affinity Photo and I have noticed that when using certain tools, the software freezes (goes down). I have no idea why (what kind of issue makes it happen). I created HDR image from 3 photographs (RAW format). I used the Develop Persona option to improve the quality of the raw image. That's ok. As the next step I run the Tone Mapping Persona. I used a few tools for editing photo and afterwards the Affinity Photo freezes when zooming in on the part of the image to check the result of the changes made. It happens very often and I have no idea what causes this problem. My all drivers are updated. In the windows graphic settings I changed AffinityPhoto to work with the Nvidia card (GTX 980).

Please let me know what can i do to avoid this problem in the future. It is so frustrating!

Thank you for any advice.

[Pšenda]

Try HW Acceleration off in Preferences. 

[Alan9940]

I had this same problem recently when working with assets (clouds) from a recently purchased collection. The solution for me was to uncheck OpenCL on the Performance tab in Preferences. Give this a try, if you have OpenCL enabled.

[Jaumenik]

Thank you so much. That's it. I assume the OpenCL is not stable and makes the issue with crashes the Affinity.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Jaumenik

[Pšenda]

56 minutes ago, Jaumenik said:

Thank you so much. That's it. I assume the OpenCL is not stable and makes the issue with crashes the Affinity.

You're welcome. Yes, HW Acceleration technology is very unstable, so turning it off is the cure for the vast majority of application malfunctions and crashes. Until now, I don't understand, and the ever-increasing number of unhappy users worrying about crashes and application malfunctions confirms to me, why they didn't leave this dubious and untuned technology turned off by default. Everyone could easily switch it on to the exam as needed (and especially their knowledge).

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Jaumenik said:

I assume the OpenCL is not stable and makes the issue with crashes the Affinity.

As I understand it, the main (but perhaps not the only?) problem with it is some combinations of hardware & graphics driver software do not properly or completely support everything it can use to accelerate tasks involving parallel processing. This can put the app in an unstable state & lead to a crash or other unexpected behavior.

In theory, it should be possible to set up exceptions in the Affinity code to avoid using anything not properly supported by that particular hardware/software combination but in reality there so many possible ones that it isn't practical.