Affinity Photo File damaged and will not open

[cutout3]

6 hours ago, Pšenda said:

As 'stokerg' suggests, "Save As" makes all the sense in the world. That's how I try to save all my Affin stuff. This way you can see right where it is going, rename it, etc. Do some people not use "Save As" and only use "Save"? So is that a part of the problem? When people always use "Save As" when saving their Affinity files, they could then make sure where the file is being saved to. In other words, make sure the file is being saved internally first. This could then avert potentially losing the file? Yes.

Does that make sense, or is that accurate? I can live with this, if that is a big part of the problem. But 'Im a 'small time player'. I'm sure it is not entirely the problem, as you guys are far more tech savy than myself, and have said so, many times, from the short time I've been listening. Is part of this also that many people at home or at work, cannot easily store their completed files internally? Is it easier for them, or many to quickly store files externally, in the cloud, or another hard drive somewhere, external to their users' computer?

So has Serif come out with an official statement about peoples' files getting lost, destroyed, yet? Especially after the launching of V2? I would think many were hoping this might get fixed on V2? Some seem to be having even more problems with V2. Is that true?

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, cutout3 said:

So has Serif come out with an official statement about peoples' files getting lost, destroyed, yet? Especially after the launching of V2? I would think many were hoping this might get fixed on V2? Some seem to be having even more problems with V2. Is that true?

What would an "official statement" contain that either explains or solves these issues? Serif is aware about the issues and the risk for users but is also aware that out of more than 2 million users, a minority are forum members, while only a minority of that minority report these problems. "Just" as an airplane is statistically safer than a car, accidents resulting in death from either are statistically a minor problem, although there is no doubt that each is the biggest problem for users who have experienced it … while a majority continues using both.

Accordingly, certain statements such as "redesigned", "all-new", "much more to the redesign than aesthetic", "painstakingly remodelled" are published "by design", leaving it to the "professional" user's imagination what they particularly refer to, what desired meaning is excluded and what known issues were decided "by design" to continue to exist, and regardless of resulting from a new beta or a previous retail version.

The V2 list of fixed bugs and issues is indeed impressive – while, naturally, a certain, individual user hardly can be sure they would not occur any more to them.

Although Serif offers with the forum a public platform for such discussions they appear to be limited to the features of the forum software. Your second question is therefore difficult to answer, especially since there seems to be a minimum number of characters in a keyword to get included in a search while the terms used in possibly related threads remain unclear and hard to filter with the search engine – either as phrase or with any of the keywords but not explicitly with all. (as an internet search doesn't do reliable)

[cutout3]

7 hours ago, thomaso said:

What would an "official statement" contain that either explains or solves these issues? Serif is aware about the issues and the risk for users but is also aware that out of more than 2 million users, a minority are forum members, while only a minority of that minority report these problems. "Just" as an airplane is statistically safer than a car, accidents resulting in death from either are statistically a minor problem, although there is no doubt that each is the biggest problem for users who have experienced it … while a majority continues using both.

Accordingly, certain statements such as "redesigned", "all-new", "much more to the redesign than aesthetic", "painstakingly remodelled" are published "by design", leaving it to the "professional" user's imagination what they particularly refer to, what desired meaning is excluded and what known issues were decided "by design" to continue to exist, and regardless of resulting from a new beta or a previous retail version.

The V2 list of fixed bugs and issues is indeed impressive – while, naturally, a certain, individual user hardly can be sure they would not occur any more to them.

Although Serif offers with the forum a public platform for such discussions they appear to be limited to the features of the forum software. Your second question is therefore difficult to answer, especially since there seems to be a minimum number of characters in a keyword to get included in a search while the terms used in possibly related threads remain unclear and hard to filter with the search engine – either as phrase or with any of the keywords but not explicitly with all. (as an internet search doesn't do reliable)

Well explained, thank you! I guess my next question would be: What is the overall satisfaction of using Affinity brand software for your image-editing needs, vs. with some other competitor (Adobe, other). The pros and cons would need to be weighed and compared.

Since we are specifically talking about lost data here, I wonder what percentage of overall user data gets lost with Affinity, vs. Adobe? That may be a question that can't be accurately answered, and would have to be filed in each user's pro/con list. If Affinity has a higher data loss liability in this area (not saying it does or doesn't, because I don't know), what keeps you guys with Affinity? What do you like about it? Can you keep the data loss potential risk to an absolute minimum?

[Old Bruce]

17 hours ago, cutout3 said:

I wonder what percentage of overall user data gets lost with Affinity, vs. Adobe?

Can't say as I don't have any Adobe products. My data loss with Affinity products is absurdly low.

Then we have people "losing data" because they do use Adobe products and those files are made in Adobe with propriety properties which don't translate to Affinity. 

17 hours ago, cutout3 said:

Can you keep the data loss potential risk to an absolute minimum?

Work with and Save to a local hard drive. Stay away from networked drives and all cloud services, use your OS to copy the files to and from them for backup. 

Keep your drivers for graphic cards, printers and mice/graphic tablets up to date. Easier said than done I bet.

[cutout3]

3 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

Can't say as I don't have any Adobe products. My data loss with Affinity products is absurdly low.

Then we have people "losing data" because they do use Adobe products and those files are made in Adobe with propriety properties which don't translate to Affinity. 

Work with and Save to a local hard drive. Stay away from networked drives and all cloud services, use your OS to copy the files to and from them for backup. 

Keep your drivers for graphic cards, printers and mice/graphic tablets up to date. Easier said than done I bet.

"Keep your drivers for graphic cards, printers and mice/graphic tablets up to date. Easier said than done I bet."

What is the best way to do this, again?

Thank you Bruce!

[cutout3]

3 hours ago, Red Sands said:

The problem with files breaking or Affinity losing access to them is entirely a bug in Affinity, Bruce. Don't mess things up here. The curse of the forum.

Keeping drivers updated and working on a Windows computer is a living hell and a plague that after many years drove me to Apple and M1 + M2, which turned out to be the wisest IT decision of my life. There is no simple answer to the Windows issues. And my updated AMD driver crashed all graphical software intermittently on Windows 11 anyway.

There are various commercial programs that can scan your computer for software and driver updates, but unless you're desperately looking for a fix for a current problem, there's rarely anything significant to be gained from updating other than the satisfaction of knowing that there should be fewer issues, perhaps better performance and possibly fewer security holes. Drivers should be kept up to date, however. 

But that's a different kind of crash. The files that break in Affinity are not related to drivers, and the two types of problems should NOT be confused here.

 

48 minutes ago, Red Sands said:

Sign up for the newsletter?? Report ANOTHER bug? Nah, shutting down the otherwise excellently specced Windows machine. Back to Mac.

After decades of pain I realized that there is no escape from this driver Hell. 

Are you saying, as it relates to Affinity software, that Macs are better, with their M1 or M2 processors, than PC's? Are you also saying that if you get and use a Mac (w/ an M1 or M2) that you will be lessening the Affinity potential data loss risk significantly? Can you further distinguish, between the use of Macs vs. PC's for lightweight hobbyists like me, compared to everyday, high volume business users?

I may be getting provocative here, but I'd like your honest opinion.

[Pšenda]

12 hours ago, cutout3 said:

What is the best way to do this, again?

Several cases were noted on the forum where simply updating the driver was not enough, but it was necessary to uninstall it and reinstall a new driver (this procedure is also recommended by Serif). Therefore, if you feel that the graphics card is not working correctly (the need to turn off HW Acceleration for a supported card type), then this procedure is recommended.

[Old Bruce]

13 hours ago, Red Sands said:

The problem with files "breaking"  ... it is related to file management and Affinity's internal handling of data...

An excellent post. I hope you don't mind me condensing it down.

I have some Affinity documents with linked files which take a long time to completely load. But I can work with a Publisher file, moving things around or changing fonts in Text Styles, while linked images are still loading. So the way the data is handled is fine for me. I just stay away away from the cloud and have no networked drives.