Layer effect is gone after updating the source

[yaycreative]

Hi Affinity community,

In my publisher file, I have multiple placed items from a source Affinity Designer file. I use the layer effect to colour them white. After every time I update the source file (e.g. for adding a new icon), the layer effect is gone. That’s pretty annoying, as we’re talking about 50+ occurences in the file.

I tried to avoid the problem by grouping each icon in its own group (to apply the effect on the group), but that doesn’t work either, because of the group disappearing (probably another bug) the moment it is created. That has probably sth to do with the icon sitting in a box with applied restraints, but is most likely another topic in its own. 

Any help would be very much appreciated. 

[Callum]

Hi Yaycreative,

This seems to work fine for me when I try this here, please could you provide a screen recording demonstrating this issue?

Thanks
C

[yaycreative]

Sure. Just filmed it. The screen recording file got a bit big, so please see this dropbox link here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jnwwoj0yshd3umx/Layer Effect gone.mov?dl=0

It might be interesting to know that this occurs after re-opening the file. 

[yaycreative]

Any ideas? It’s quite a problem for me as I have to give out this as a template file to the client soon, and can’t find a solution. 😐

[thomaso]

18 hours ago, yaycreative said:

Any ideas?

I don't get the issue of a lost layer effect applied to a placed and modified .afdesign within APub when the .afdesign gets updated.

Your video shows some oddities, sure if they matter: In the Resource Manager …

• the missing .afdesign shows a quite different preview image than after updating.

• before updating it reports a size of 256 x 256 px. I assume the .afdesign contains quite a few icons and will have a larger size? The preview after update does not look squared but rather like a long portrait format.

• before updating its type is "Affinity" (no app mentioned !), after updating it says "Affinity Publisher". It should be in both cases "Affinity Designer".

• it's file path mentions a "YAYdrive", respectively a "dropbox" folder. Are you sure it is not linked from / never has been linked from an external drive?

Possibly it helps to replace (not just update) all instances of this .afdesign in your .afpub.
Also, sometimes resource issues can get solved by making them embedded and then linked again.

[yaycreative]

Thanks for your reply, @thomaso!

I’ll comment on that in detail: 

• The size of the icons’ artboards remains unchanged. The gp-icons-v3 gets updated quite a lot (also in the future), but that’s only for adding new icons or maybe changing some design features. Sizes are set and won’t be changed. I think it only looks that way because the preview image’s resolution before updating is so low that it looks like it has changed. But they really are all 256x256.
• Dunno why it doesn’t recognize the file type correctly. Never even opened the file in Publisher or Photo before. So it’s a „straight“ Designer file. 
• Yes, all our work is on a network volume (which syncs to dropbox, but that shouldn’t be relevant here). I hope Affinity can handle network volumes properly. Otherwise, we are in trouble.
• I just replaced the source (of all instances) with the same file, and still, the layer effects are gone afterwards.
• Guess I’ll have to work around that issue, as I gotta finish that file soon. I’ll just duplicate the black icons and color them white in the icons file. 

Again, thanks for your help! 

 

P.S.: Just tested with a duplicate of both files saved locally. Still, the icons get black after updating. 

Edited September 2, 2022 by yaycreative
Added a PS.