Missing all raster brushes in Photo and Designer v2

[stojames]

I am having a major issue in that all of my raster brushes in photo v2 and designer v2 have disappeared and no raster brushes show. Even in my account, the brushes I installed show I need to download and install even though I installed them yesterday. None of my manually installed like Frankentoon texture, pattern and nature brushes, no brushes at all appear and importing brushes again do not appear. Extremely frustrated. All my brushes still show up fine in my V1 apps. The vector brushes are all still appearing in the v2 apps, but no raster brushes. Shutting apps down, reimporting, shutting iPad down did not help at all. 

This problem is just on the iPad versions.

I have no way to do any pixel brush work in the v2 apps at this time! The one time I tried importing raster brushes, the photo v2 app crashed, otherwise just doesn’t seem to do anything and I get an empty brush list. 

I am on iPad Pro 12.9, iPadOS 16.1 and I have both v1 and v2 affinity apps. 

[stojames]

I tried deactivating the v2 apps, removing them from my iPad and then downloaded, installed and activated again. Still no raster brushes appear in the apps! I have no idea what else I can try to do. If I go to my account and download and install a brush pack, it appears to so it, but when I go into the app, open a file and go to brushes, no brushes appear in either photo 2 or designer 2. The vector brushes are fine in designer, but no raster brushes. When I go back to my account, the brush pack I downloaded and installed appears back to a cloud icon again!

I am at a loss. I will have to use the v1 apps to paint with raster brushes as I cannot get any to appear in the v2 apps. Well, I can use the raster brushes in v2 on my laptop, but I do a lot of painting and sketching on my iPad with the Apple Pencil. 
 

need some help here.

 

[Chris B]

Hey stojames,

I saw this once in the months and months of beta testing and we could not reproduce or work out what happened. However, it has just occured to me that this may be a fault with V1 and V2 sharing a common folder.

My advise would be to open V1, save everything manually from the Home screen to safe location and remove it and also V2 and try a fresh install of V2. Simply resetting V2 or removing it won't bring those brushes back.

[stojames]

Oh my. I have lots of brushes installed in the v1 apps. A pain to go back and unload everything and reinstall. I will give a try at some point. I have nothing else left to try, but I am frustrated and will give it a go in the next couple of days. Thanks.

[Chris B]

I appreciate the frustration. I'm sorry I don't have a simple answer. If you purchased the brushes through the store, they should easily install again through your account. Those that don't show, try this:

Open the app

Tap the app icon in the top left corner above Live Docs - this will display a dropdown. Tap Import Content... and it should find all the installable content on the iPad.

[stojames]

Thanks. Yes, I had gone through that too. I have lots of additional brush sets from Frankentoon, Retrosupply and many others besides what are in the store. Just funny that all the other assets, styles, symbols, vector brushes are all fine. Just the raster brushes are the problem. When I unload everything and reinstall the v2 apps, I will try only loading from the store to see if they show up and will only load an additional brush set if I need it for something at the time and see how it goes. 
 

[Amontillado]

What is the "import content" function in Publisher and Photo do? It brings up a file browser, but I can't find any valid files to choose.

I suspect this may be kind of a newbie question. I've gotten enormous good from Photo and Publisher, but I can tell I'm just nibbling at the edges so far.

[stojames]

3 hours ago, Chris B said:

Hey stojames,

I saw this once in the months and months of beta testing and we could not reproduce or work out what happened. However, it has just occured to me that this may be a fault with V1 and V2 sharing a common folder.

My advise would be to open V1, save everything manually from the Home screen to safe location and remove it and also V2 and try a fresh install of V2. Simply resetting V2 or removing it won't bring those brushes back.

Well, I bit the bullet and removed my v1 apps. This caused the v2 apps to redownload and reinstall the brushes again, but they still did not show up. So, I deactivated my license and removed the v2 apps again. I downloaded and installed just the v2 apps (not the v1 apps for now), I reinstalled some of the brush sets and they are now showing up and working. I then imported my Frankentoon brushes and they appeared okay now too. I imported then a couple of other brush sets I use and they also work fine right now. I am kind of concerned about reinstalling the v1 apps and causing a problem all over again. I will hold off and see if I can just use the new v2 versions.

Bottom line was removing the v1 apps and the v2 apps, then reinstall the v2 apps only and reinstall brushes. So far, okay. Raster brushes appearing and working in both Photo and Designer now.

 

 

[Chris B]

Thanks for the update. I'm really sorry you had to go through such a faff. I will do some investigating to see if we can reproduce this and prevent it happening. 

[MEB]

3 hours ago, Amontillado said:

What is the "import content" function in Publisher and Photo do? It brings up a file browser, but I can't find any valid files to choose.

I suspect this may be kind of a newbie question. I've gotten enormous good from Photo and Publisher, but I can tell I'm just nibbling at the edges so far.

Hi @Amontillado,
It lets you import several types of addons (brushes, assets etc) at once from a folder rather than import each type one by one from their respective panels.

[JPolk]

I’m experiencing the same thing with my layer/fx styles. I can’t delete my v1 versions because that’s the only way I’ve been able to get anything done. Any other advice on how to resolve without deleting the v1 apps?

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, JPolk said:

I’m experiencing the same thing with my layer/fx styles. I can’t delete my v1 versions because that’s the only way I’ve been able to get anything done. Any other advice on how to resolve without deleting the v1 apps?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "layer/fx styles". If you just mean Styles, and none of them are showing up, then you can try this:

1. Fully close the app.
2. Start the app, and when you get the Splash screen, do a one-finger double-tap on it. You should get a Clear User Data dialog.
3. In that dialog, disable everything that is currently enabled, and then enable Reset Object Styles.
4. Click Reset. This should reset the Styles to their factory-default state. You will need to re-add any that you've added manually.

[Lisapdx]

I was having the exact same problem — all of my pixel brushes disappeared in Designer v2, including the basic ones that come with the app.

The solution here worked for me — uninstall all v1 and v2 apps, then reinstall v2 apps, which will require reactivating. I hope there’s a better solution soon because I spent hours of time backing up hundreds of illustrations, and I wasn’t quite ready to start using v2 exclusively. I’m definitely going to do a better job of backing up as I go from now on, and closing designs I’ve completed.

If it helps, I think the issue started after I installed a bunch of True Grit Texture Supply Beat Tones brushes and some RetroSupply brushes to Designer 2.

 

 

 

[walt.farrell]

41 minutes ago, Lisapdx said:

The solution here worked for me — uninstall all v1 and v2 apps

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. 

Uninstalling V1 should not be relevant or required, as the two versions don't share any data. 

Simply starting one V2 app with the Ctrl key pressed, and choosing Reset Brushes, should be enough. (Ideally, of course, the problem shouldn't occur in the first place.)

[Lisapdx]

I did try resetting my brushes in Preferences but I didn’t try the double-tap on the splash screen (my issue is with the iPad app) to reset user defaults. I’ll try that if happens again. Thanks for posting that.