Pierre Igot Posted September 23, 2023 Share Posted September 23, 2023 I have a very serious problem on my Mac with picture files since I have been forced to upgrade to macOS Ventura (13.5.2 right now). Things work fine for a while, and then after a few days (cannot be more specific yet), image functionality starts acting up in various apps, including Affinity Photo 2. All of a sudden, Affinity Photo 2 appears to be unable to display PNG and JPG pictures at all. All I get is an invisible layer with the check pattern: The same picture still appears to display properly in macOS Preview, although occasionally if I try to make any color adjustments there, the picture turns white and all is lost. When it occurs, the problem doesn't just affect Affinity Photo 2. I have the same problem in Pixelmator Pro. And if I try to view the same image in a separate user environment I just use for testing purposes, it appears to be even worse, with even Preview itself being unable to display the image: At this point, I have no choice but to reboot my Mac. But then I live in constant dread of the problem recurring, which it does eventually, forcing me to reboot again… and again… and again… All this points to a bug in Ventura itself, but I cannot find ANYTHING online in Apple Discussions or elsewhere, so I am turning to this community of fellow users in case someone else has encountered the same problem in Ventura and found a solution. Any help would be appreciated! macOS 13.5.2 Pixelmator Pro 3.4.1 Affinity Photo 2 v2.2.0 Pierre Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Igot Posted September 23, 2023 Author Share Posted September 23, 2023 Adding to the weirdness: right now, I am still experiencing the problem in Affinity Photo 2, but Pixelmator Pro appears to have righted itself somehow and is displaying the image correctly again! I have NOT rebooted or done anything other than quit and relaunched both apps. What on earth could be going on? All my JPG and PNG pictures are opening fine again in Pixelmator Pro. None of them are working in Affinity Photo 2, where I still get the check pattern. And Preview still won't display the picture in the separate user environment either. This is crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeTO Posted September 23, 2023 Share Posted September 23, 2023 I have no idea of what this problem is, but just to rule out hardware settings in Affinity, go to Affinity Photo 2 > Settings and click Performance. If it's not already set this way, turn off hardware acceleration and change Display to OpenGL. Good luck Quote Download a free PDF manual for Affinity Publisher 2.5 Download a quick reference chart for Affinity's Special Characters Affinity 2.5 for macOS Sequoia 15.1, MacBook Pro 14" (M4 Pro) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Igot Posted September 23, 2023 Author Share Posted September 23, 2023 Thanks. Ended up calling Apple while the problem was happening and after seeing it in action (with me filming my screens with my iPhone and them share-screening my iPhone, because apparently three displays in extended desktop mode is too much for their screen sharing infrastructure to handle) they got me to reboot in Safe Mode, which of course got rid of the problem. (A simple reboot does too.) Now I am supposed to wait until it happens again and call them again to “escalate” the issue to a “senior advisor”. When it happens again (and it will), I will check out the hardware acceleration thing. It could very well be a software/hardware issue involving processes that use the video cards. I suspect it will take a lot of effort to pin it down, and most of the effort will have to come from me and not from Apple. Grrr :-(. Good thing I don't edit pictures for a living! MikeTO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Igot Posted October 1, 2023 Author Share Posted October 1, 2023 UPDATE: Problem happened again. Got to talk to a senior advisor. Turns out disabling hardware acceleration in Affinity Photo 2 DOES temporarily fix the problem… until it's re-enabled. Also discovered that quitting all running apps fixes the problem, without requiring a reboot or even a logout. So… some kind of weird app conflict? To be continued. MikeTO 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Igot Posted October 30, 2023 Author Share Posted October 30, 2023 Adding to my own update with more information. After a few days of uptime, this starts happening in Affinity Photo 2 and the only way to alleviate it is to turn off hardware acceleration (thank God for that option!). But it also happens in all kinds of other apps where there is no way to turn off hardware acceleration: Preview, Pixelmator Pro, etc. IN ADDITION, I get other symptoms. FaceTime no longer works (the other person doesn't see or hear me). Buttons in dialog boxes in various macOS apps become invisible when the dialog box is in the foreground. Preview is no longer able to resize pictures reliably, or even display them. The image2icns utility is unable to display pics. There are numerous signs that something is seriously wrong. Once this starts happening, there are things I can do to try and alleviate the problem. For example, if I quit Safari, which uses a lot of memory and renders a lot of graphics, all of a sudden Preview and image2icns work properly again. If I then relaunch Safari, which reopens all my browser windows, things continue to work for a while, and then they go bad again. And it's on and off like that, until I actually reboot the Mac or quit all apps and start all over again. It's driving me nuts. This keeps happening every few days. I recently upgraded to Sonoma (14.1) to see if it would help. It hasn't. The problem happened again less than 24 hours after I did the upgrade. (I hope it's not going to be even more frequent in Sonoma!) AppleCare has been unhelpful so far. I have found a responsive senior advisor who's following the case, but he keeps asking me to do things that the engineers ask him to ask me to do that clearly have NOTHING to do with the problem (disable old extensions for things that I don't even use anymore, etc.). Nothing that they have asked me to try has made ANY difference. The latest request coming from the engineers is that I try to reproduce the problem WITHOUT using ANY third-party software. How on earth am I supposed to be able to do that? I cannot do any work without using third-party software. This is ridiculous and I am at my wit's end. I cannot quite believe that I am the only one experiencing this problem. Surely there are other M2 Ultra Mac Pro users out there who are encountering the same problem. But I cannot find them. Are there any forums that anyone could recommend where I might find follow Mac Pro users who might have more insights/tips? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeTO Posted October 30, 2023 Share Posted October 30, 2023 I've had hardware acceleration in Affinity turned off for the past couple of years. The extra speed isn't worth turning it on. But although I advise you to keep it off, it sounds like your issues are not with Affinity but with macOS or your hardware. I suggest asking for help in Apple's support forums: https://discussions.apple.com/welcome Good luck Quote Download a free PDF manual for Affinity Publisher 2.5 Download a quick reference chart for Affinity's Special Characters Affinity 2.5 for macOS Sequoia 15.1, MacBook Pro 14" (M4 Pro) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Igot Posted October 30, 2023 Author Share Posted October 30, 2023 Thanks. I've just started a thread on the Mac Pro forum there: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255241383?login=true&page=1 So far, no help, except that I did run Hardware Diagnostics just in case. “No issues found.” Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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