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Affinity Photo 2 crashes when linked document updated externally (solved-turn off hardware acceleration)


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I have repeated the following with both .jpg and .afphoto files. This describes my most recent attempt this morning using a .jpg file 

1.) Launch APhoto2 2.0.0
2.) Automatically update linked resources is checked in Preferences
3.) Create new document: 18x12, 300 dpi, Prefer Linked 
4.) Save as Collage-New.afphoto
5.) Drag and drop File1.jpg into document from Windows Explorer. It appears in Resource Manager as a linked resource as expected
6.) Resize and position the image
7.) Save collage. All is well so far.
8.) Edit the linked jpg with an external editor and save it
9.) Aphoto2 crashes and vanishes from screen and from Task Manager

Crash report attached.

Next bug report will describe behavior when Automatically update linked resources is unchecked. 

 

daebd48d-4db0-4dfe-a61e-ca5f0664cdd4.dmp

Edited by Granddaddy
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Affinity Photo 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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It is not happening to me with Photo 2 beta 1670, but I used a different workflow, that could be free of the bug (and yet help you to do your projects).

So, important points :

- Yes, I would save the Aphoto file first thing, before doing anything linked (as you did).

- Have you tried using "Place" command  in FILE menu,  instead of drag and dropping from Windows? But of course, first setting the below option of placed objects usage as LINKED, or Place won't work for what you want (as I think default is embedded). 

- For this procedure, it is needed to set the automatic update of linked stuff on, in preferences, or won't work (you did this well, too).

- I have tried with PNGs, but editing the png with Clip Studio, it works fine, no crashes, and it updates the file.

I yet need to test with JPGs, as well could be a format based error (ie, anything related to a particular compression type/library, who knows).

(Anyway, JPG is lossy format, only for final output, I'd rather edit in other format, but that's me)

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Ok, no...

There's something going on in your config. Not necesarilly to blame your system, as a bug can  happen with certain configuration and not with another.

But I just made now the test with a JPG, and it does let me do the entire thing well.

I even tried just wildly drag and dropping from a windows, folder, it always make it well, I just need to be aware that despite I did set placed files to prefer be linked, it goes back to "embedded", in the option of File Menu below the "Place" command. Maybe ti does respect the default if I set it at the time of creating the new file. Indeed, very surely yes...

Hmmm... I haven't tried this by doing  the document as "preferred linked", like you did. Maybe there's the bug?. Will try that now.

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Ok, neither happens. I start the document setting in the "new file" options "preferred as linked", it still does it well, no matter what I do.

Next thing I'd check can only be done by you : I would check if the jpg (ie, sometimes happens with files downloaded from internet by certain browsers) is protected against write, or the folder where it is placed, is protected against writing, or don't have the permissions, etc. This is not uncommon problem with a linked file workflow and its environment, specially through local network resources.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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I very strongly recommend not using JPGs for this workflow, though., Every single time you save the jpg, you add a quality loss, more compression artifacts, degrading more and more that image. IMO use PNGs, or if more advanced color is needed, like usage of color profiles and such, better use PSD or TIFF formats (probably better PSDs).

Specially for linked files JPGs or other lossy format is not a good idea, due to the constant saves.

It's just my two cents about it :)

JPG, if using a high quality export setting, is great for a one-only, very final save, to  upload to the web, mostly.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Thanks @SrPx for all your work on this. 

You asked:
- Have you tried using "Place" command  in FILE menu,  instead of drag and dropping from Windows? But of course, first setting the below option of placed objects usage as LINKED, or Place won't work for what you want (as I think default is embedded). 
I just tried Place instead of drag and drop. As soon as external file was edited and saved, Affinity Photo vanished. It did generate a crash report, which surprises me as it disappears instantly as soon as the external file is saved.

 

Affinity Photo 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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I should have guessed.

I turned off Hardware Acceleration and Affinity Photo 2 is successfully updating linked images in my collage without crashing. I'll work on it more tomorrow.

However, APhoto2 continues to rotate portrait external images by 90 degrees clockwise when I update the external image. It accepts portrait images without rotating them initially, it is only when they are updated externally that they get rotated in the collage.

Thanks again SrPx for you work on this. I was about to quit for the day when e-mail arrived from the forums alerting me to your posts. I got inspired to look at the problem further.

I guess I'm relieved that it is "only" hardware acceleration that is the problem. Disappointing, but it seems to be a common problem with all the Affinity apps. (My system is relatively new and all drivers are up-to-date so far as I can tell from Dell's utilities.) At least I can continue working without waiting for a fix from Serif.

And thanks for your recommendations concerning jpg compression. I do understand there is quality loss every time a jpg is saved. It's just that I have never noticed the deterioration so far, at least not for my purposes. Perhaps I should look more closely. 

You also raised questions about problems arising from jpg files obtained from the Internet. The jpg files I'm using are straight out of my Panasonic FZ1000 camera or older Canon and Minolta cameras I've owned since 2002. A few are images scanned several years ago from old family photo prints or from 35mm slides. They have not been processed by anyone but me. They are family photos ranging from some taken digitally in the past few months back to scanned images of photo prints taken 80 years ago. All files are on my desktop system's internal hard drive.

All the jpg files in the collage have been saved only once from .afphoto files. Any changes will be the result of tweaking the .afphoto files a bit more and overwriting the existing jpg with a new jpg. Then again, I don't know how images are stored in the .afphoto file. I guess I've assumed that would not be lossy when saved.

Thanks again for inspiring me tonight to keep working on this.

 

Affinity Photo 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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I am looking at your signature, and you have the same card than I do, and practically my same Windows. Your CPU is very good.  But mine is a generic PC (built by parts), while Dell surely has included special differences in hardware and software configuration. Super random, but do you have your Screen custom scaling (at windows settings/system/screen/custom scaling) at 110%? (I have a wild, crazy theory...).    I'm sure future updates of 2.x  will make it rather more stable also in less common scenarios, as you should be able to activate OpenCL in most systems. I am reading that those with AMD cards have worse experience ...I was expecting the opposite, as Open CL comes from AMD, kind of. But there are many factors here. Major global upgrades in every software I know (I believe it happened with the first release in Photo, if I remember correctly, but with many versions of Photoshop, etc) have a first stage, first moment, that is hard for early adopters, but for me, it is rewarding due to the massive improvements I am discovering in other matters.

The JPG rotation. It's a bit a short in the dark, but I have experienced some apps, some software include certain special tags in the file headers, like in JPEGs (where meta data and certain stuff is stored), related to flipping and rotation. In the past, old apps would do this from time to time, that would flip your image but would display fine in the app that generates this, while once read back by another app, that header tag (a text that is stored inside the file) would be interpreted differently, forcing the rotation or flip.

My suggestion is to do this same workflow with a different software as  the external application to modify the linked files. And if you don't mind, uploading here a jpg of a non private image (like a free  image of pixabay, unsplash or pexels, just modified (even with a brush stroke) in the external app you are using, and exported from there as JPG). So that I can open it here with tools that I have to check the file header of such JPG, see if it has some problematic tag, so that I can test it with or without the tag, and check how it displays in my Aphoto, if rotated or not. If so, then we know the culprit and how to avoid it, surely.  In that case, you could even end up using one of these free utilities to clean that header every time (surely can use in batch mode, or do a simple python script for it), if you have a strong need to use such external app, or instead, the easy solution: using a different one (ie, csp doesn't provoke that). For starters, using now a different one would determine immediately if this is what is happening there.

The jpg files saved externally, are losing quality due to compression every time you save them as jpg (png/tiff/psd are lossless) in any external application, or in actual Affinity, if you save the entire project as JPG instead of *.afphoto. So, if you modify the jpgs once embedded (ie, made them embedded, rasterized) in Photo, to my understanding, should not lose any quality as afphoto format is totally lossless, and the whole thing is being saved as such. If you keep them linked and only move (or even scale, flip or rotate) the linked object, to my understanding, it is not modifying the original pixels in the file; you are modifying like a reference, a connection point/box. As long as they are linked, only will lose quality if modified again in a external software, in the moment of re-saving  there as JPG. And will lose again if exporting the whole thing (the entire aphoto file) as a big JPG, for example. And yep, the loss is cumulative, incremental, with every jpg-save. It is quite less perceived with very high quality settings, but it is still happening, it is in its nature. It is more noticeable with some graphical features (text, etc) than others. But while the JPGs being linked, just for moving them  (or even scaling, etc, them), that's like a packet that you put there, that is referenced another file, so, in theory no quality is lost in the original JPG, is not being re-saved in any way. And if you embed or rasterize the linked files, it's all saved as an aphoto, no loss is added. Ehm, I should have explained that with fewer words and more clearly.

Glad that I inspired you to give it a second chance. Everything is a trade off... I prefer a bit of complexity if I get a better deal in the long run, very generally speaking.

 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Sorry, I had stuck in my head the "external application" thing, for some reason... it is just your camera, they come from there, these JPGs....

Well, still, could be a meta tag that the camera puts in the jpg files... or sth done by the importing app/driver of the photos in your windows... I don't know. We could check that file header. Or, if you prefer to look it up yourself (I don't mind, for me it's just 2 seconds for me to check one jpg header) , I can tell you the name of several utilities.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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 My all time favorite is Exiftool. But this is kind of more obscure, although the most powerful. Exif Pilot is surely much easier to learn and use the first evening, and very complete, too.  Respectively :  

https://exiftool.org  

https://www.colorpilot.com/exif.html  

If the issue is nothing related to that, anyway these two apps are wonderful for handling file headers (for metadata, etc). Affinity has also in itself great support for metadata.

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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Ouch... No, you actually said "8.) Edit the linked jpg with an external editor and save it", that's why it was stuck in my head. So, now I got the full thing in my thick skull (I read and write too fast...), yep, that external editor could be the culprit, even if the very original source is your camera. Or maybe it's a tag in the header that comes from the camera, who knows. If you have a non-private jpg that followed that workflow (external editor), and can upload, we could know more. But if not, I'm sure  you will found out the issue.  :)

At least the situation is better than at  the beginning.  :) 

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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I do have grayed out the "update" button in the Resource Manager, but I guess because for me open cl doesn't crash, and have it always to automatically update, so makes sense that the button is so, grayed out.

BUT...!

Then I have tested it deactivating the automatic update, and no, it does not rotate 90º degree clockwise, it operates as expected.

My conclusion: Is something embedded in the JPG header part of the file (internally, so) by a) Originally your camera, that includes that tag b) Your external app.

And because it happens just when hitting the update button and not before, and giving that that button works great for me, I am blaming that external editor. You can check with another external editor which saves JPG, or... study the JPG header, or upload sth saved with that editor as a JPG (whatever file, does not matter, only that I know what rotation should it have, for example, with some text, so that I know if it is 90 º rotated or not. I'd remove the tag from the header to check if it keeps doing it to me after importing to Aphoto).

AD, AP and APub. V1.10.6 and V2.4 Windows 10 and Windows 11. 
Ryzen 9 3900X, 32 GB RAM,  RTX 3060 12GB, Wacom Intuos XL, Wacom L. Eizo ColorEdge CS 2420 monitor. Windows 10 Pro.
(Laptop) HP Omen 16-b1010ns 12700H, 32GB DDR5, nVidia RTX 3060 6GB + Huion Kamvas 22 pen display, Windows 11 Pro.

 

 

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