Affinity Photo 2 - "The Mother Ship"

[JRD_2]

During  a photoshoot / edit,  away from any WiFi, I discovered this gem

Why does the product need to check "home" to work?  

Even Adobe give 30 to 99 days before you have to check into the mothership.  
 

[walt.farrell]

12 hours ago, JRD_2 said:

Why does the product need to check "home" to work?  

It's not checking "home", or you'd get a different message. It should be, as it says, trying to communicate with your other installed Affinity applications. That requires access to the local (within your computer) network, which is apparently blocked. Or perhaps you have one of the (Edit) apps still running, but hung.

Edit: however, if you've configured it to reopen files that were open when you closed the app before, you may have one of them hung trying to access a network drive that's not there any more. In turn, that might prevent a second Affinity V2 app from starting if it can't communicate with that first app.

[stokerg]

Hi @JRD_2,

If you see the FAQ here this error is likely caused by your firewall blocking local network connections.  As @walt.farrellmentioned  

[JRD_2]

After some testing I came up with this:

Affinity V1 - doesn't care what you do.  no net, filtered traffic but V2 DOES care.  

The whole "Affinity can't communicate with 'other' apps is smoke and mirrors, especially when there is only one program loaded on the system.

The below spoiler is only one small capture two launches.  Which qualifies as the mothership  or ships (to me)

Spoiler

Affinity photo 2 - launch

- affinity.api.serifservices.com (US) 18.244.87.39:443 (server-18-244-87-39.sof50.r.cloudfront.net)
- go.seriflabs.com (US) 18.244.87.34:443 (server-18-244-87-34.sof50.r.cloudfront.net)
- serif-entities.api.serfservices.com (BG) 52.85.5.4:443 - Amazon-02
- s3.eu.west-1.amazonaws.com (IE) 52.218.61.155:443 - Amazon-02  (connected almost 2 full mins)

Affinity photo v1 - launch (but doesn't care if the connection is filtered or application is restricted to com to the outside world)

- (same set of addresses)
- crashs.seriflabs.com

@stokerg yes, it was (filtered) -  my laptop is always in a locked down state because it goes outside the flat. 

The bit about "as it says, trying to communicate with your other installed Affinity applications. " is false when you have only one application installed.
no need, no reason to "com" fail due to non-existent other applications installed.

(to me) this is a hybrid cloud based product.   (for now) the easy solve (for me) V1 on the laptop and V2 on the desktop

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, JRD_2 said:

The whole "Affinity can't communicate with 'other' apps is smoke and mirrors, especially when there is only one program loaded on the system.

By loaded, do you mean installed or running? That is an important distinction in V2 since in V2 various items can be linked among the installed apps so they share the same files to significantly reduce the amount of drive space needed for all of them.

[JRD_2]

On 9/16/2023 at 5:09 PM, R C-R said:

By loaded, do you mean installed or running? That is an important distinction in V2 since in V2 various items can be linked among the installed apps so they share the same files to significantly reduce the amount of drive space needed for all of them.

TLDR? (for the thread) im guessing yes

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, JRD_2 said:

TLDR? (for the thread) im guessing yes

I don't understand what you mean by "yes." Do you have only one of the Affinity apps installed on your system or more than one of them?

[JRD_2]

19 hours ago, R C-R said:

I don't understand what you mean by "yes." Do you have only one of the Affinity apps installed on your system or more than one of them?

i think you need to re-read the FULL thread, maybe more slowly?

[thomaso]

On 9/16/2023 at 7:14 PM, JRD_2 said:

Affinity V1 - doesn't care what you do.  no net, filtered traffic but V2 DOES care.
(…)
(to me) this is a hybrid cloud based product. 

Do you have the same settings for V1 and V2? – Both app versions have instances that use internet contact: The "Welcome" screen/window when launching the app (which appears like a tiny website), the app internal "Check for Updates" feature and the "My Account" option in the Toolbar when working. (Also the Stock panel does but I assume only if the user triggers a request)

You might 'deactivate' each of them while I don't know if a deactivated "My Account" option is fully identically with one that never got activated within the app and whether it may get used (= create an account + link to the Serif website / its store) regardless in what store you purchased the app, for instance for later purchase, download and (auto-)install of additional content (e.g. brushes, assets).

[R C-R]

@thomaso, just FYI there is no welcome screen in the V2 apps.

[thomaso]

35 minutes ago, R C-R said:

The error message shown in your first post tells you what the problem is.

... which also appears to confuse the OP and to have caused this thread. Although I have never experienced this or a similar message, it seems unclear regarding "communication with other Affinity apps" since, as the OP literally implies, no other Affinity apps appear to be installed on their computer.

From this perspective also Walt's further info about possibly auto-reopened documents doesn't explain the message but might rather trigger one of various known messages about missing or lost access to items other than to an Affinity app, … as it is also known to happen with corrupted temp or .autosave files, even with local-only files and drives.

But I wonder whether "other" may be related to one app that got opened twice, as it appears to be possible in Windows OS … and thus may cause confusion of common/shared temp folders or files?

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, thomaso said:

... which also appears to confuse the OP and to have caused this thread.

FWIW, I hid the post of mine you are quoting because on further thought it did not seem relevant to the discussion. But I now wonder if even if just one Affinity app is installed it still tries to check to see if any of the others also are installed because otherwise on startup it would not know if there is anything in the increasing number of items that can be synced or linked among the V2 apps that needs to be updated because one or more of those items might have been modified in one of the other apps.

In short, if due to some firewall setting it can't check to see if any of the others are installed, it shows that error message.

[thomaso]

20 minutes ago, R C-R said:

In short, if due to some firewall setting it can't check to see if any of the others are installed, it shows that error message.

This idea conflicts with the known reports about issues with APub's Personas: Instead of checking for other or newly installed apps when launching APub, APub appears to require special user interaction after app installation: To launch each app manually at least 1x to trigger them successfully as available APub Personas. AD and APh seem to tell APub that they exist – while APub does not seem to look for them.

If your idea would match then either APub would just "know" about installed apps … or might trigger such a message like"communication with other Affinity apps". Instead a message occurs that demands to install, even if the installation was done already.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, thomaso said:

AD and APh seem to tell APub that they exist – while APub does not seem to look for them.

I am not sure what you mean by that. It is APub that needs to check to see if AD or AP are installed (& that all are the same version) in order for StudioLink to work, not the other way around. Consequently, I would expect APub to throw the 'can't communicate' error if a firewall is preventing that app from checking to see if the others are installed & what versions they are.

So, since the OP says the error message is occurring on the launch of Affinity Photo I still think the error message is most likely caused by a firewall setting preventing Affinity Photo on launch from checking to see if either of the others are installed, which would be necessary for the V2 linkable features (Swatches palettes & Brush, Asset & Style categories) to work. Since V1 does not support linking those things (& thus requires more disk space for these per app items), AP V1 does not need to do this check.

IOW, it doesn't matter if only AP V2 is installed, on launch that app still needs to check to see if the others are to know if these four V2 link options are available.

EDIT: For completeness about linking, in V2 there is also a new General Preferences/Settings item "Link new content categories." So I assume if it is enabled then every time a new Brush, Asset, or Style category was added to any of the apps, it would access see if to the others were installed to automatically link them.

[JRD_2]

@stokerg you can close this topic

Thanks everyone

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure what you mean by that. It is APub that needs to check to see if AD or AP are installed (& that all are the same version) in order for StudioLink to work

All the apps need to make the check, as it also controls whether File > Edit In... is enabled. And the communication is also part of the data sharing between the apps, I think.

[thomaso]

8 minutes ago, JRD_2 said:

you can close this topic

Thanks everyone

Before closing a thread it appears useful that you let us know which info or detail did solve your issue and/or avoids the error message.

[R C-R]

7 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

All the apps need to make the check, as it also controls whether File > Edit In... is enabled.

Wouldn't that also apply to the V1 apps? 

[walt.farrell]

Just now, R C-R said:

Wouldn't that also apply to the V1 apps? 

If the check is made the same way in V1, yes. But I have no idea if it is. 

But if it applies to Publisher because of StudioLink as you mentioned, then it applies to the other apps, too 

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

If the check is made the same way in V1, yes. But I have no idea if it is. 

Not sure what point you are trying to make. Either the 'edit in' items are greyed out because the others are not installed, or they are available because they are installed. So any time that menu is accessed, one way or another in both V1 & V2 the check needs to be made.

So if that check is blocked I think the only thing that would happen in either version is those items would always be greyed out & no error message would be shown.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Not sure what point you are trying to make.

My initial comment was a response/rebuttal to your statement that "It is APub that needs to check to see if AD or AP are installed (& that all are the same version) in order for StudioLink to work". All 3 apps need the information about what other apps are installed, not just Publisher.  And all 3 need to communicate (in V2) to share data.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

All 3 apps need the information about what other apps are installed, not just Publisher. 

Sure, but my point was that the 'edit in' options V1 also need access to see if the other apps are available, but I do not think they need to do that in either V1 or V2 on launch, just whenever that menu is accessed.

 Of course I could be wrong about that.