Macros are crashing Affinity Photo 2.2 100% of the time.

[Scott W.]

Attached are my custom macros that I use for editing. Originally made using 2.1, I even re-exported them using 2.2.

Using any one of them will crash Affinity, so it has made the program unusable. Help! 
 

Edit: This crashes on both MacOS Sonoma and Windows 11 after testing. 

Filmic Effects.afmacros

Edited October 5, 2023 by Scott W.

[Komatös]

I see the crash too. It is due to the Convert colors command that plunges Affinity Photo into nirvana.

[Scott W.]

2 minutes ago, Komatös said:

I see the crash too. It is due to the Convert colors command that plunges Affinity Photo into nirvana.

Ah! You're onto something. The last two actually seem to work fine, the 6000K white point (simple color multiply only) and the Flatten command.

Weeeeird.

[Komatös]

I had run the Convert to 16bit macro and then saw that the Convert colors was also included in the other macros. So I simply deselected the command in the macro Monochrome HSL Conversion and executed the macro. And it works w/o a crash.

Unfortunately, the problem with the macro editor is that commands cannot be moved. Because Convert colors works if you insert it again in a macro in V2.2.

[R C-R]

Even though this is in V2 Bugs found on Windows, I can confirm that the same crashes occur on my Mac.

One additional oddity for me is when I deleted the Filmic Effects.afmacros from the AP V2 Library panel, it asked me if I wanted to delete it from just that app or all apps.

Anybody know what that's all about?

[v_kyr]

27 minutes ago, R C-R said:

One additional oddity for me is when I deleted the Filmic Effects.afmacros from the AP V2 Library panel, it asked me if I wanted to delete it from just that app or all apps.

Anybody know what that's all about?

Probably due to that, even for macros ...

Quote

Affinity Photo, Designer & Publisher V2 apps now use a shared location for your saved resources, including;

Object Styles, Text Styles, Fills, Brushes, Tool Presets, Grid Presets, Assets & Document Presets.
...

 

[R C-R]

I know about that shared location; however, since macros are only supported in AP I did not expect the macros.propcol file to be there since there is no way to share macros with the other 2 apps.

[walt.farrell]

10 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I know about that shared location; however, since macros are only supported in AP I did not expect the macros.propcol file to be there since there is no way to share macros with the other 2 apps.

You can use macros in the Photo Persona of Publisher, can't you?

[v_kyr]

13 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I know about that shared location; however, since macros are only supported in AP I did not expect the macros.propcol file to be there since there is no way to share macros with the other 2 apps.

You can look where the file concrete resides (I don't have v2 apps installed, thus I just guessed). Sharing not directly with ADe & APub, but possibly other APh v2.x versions.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

You can use macros in the Photo Persona of Publisher, can't you?

Yes I can. I had forgotten about that since I have never enabled the Library or Macro panel in APub.

That explains it. Thanks!

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

You can look where the file concrete resides (I don't have v2 apps installed, thus I just guessed). Sharing not directly with ADe & APub, but possibly other APh v2.x versions.

The location for Macs is ~/Library/Group Containers/6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs/v2/user/, just like the (since removed from your post?) Where are the Affinity V2 apps resources and preference files located? FAQ link says. The FAQ just fails to mention macros are also stored there (as an macros.propcol file). There are separate 6LVTQB9699com.com.seriflabs/ folders for the V2 & V2 beta versions, & another for the V1 AP extensions for the Mac Photos app if AP V1 is installed.

Stored there are several 'shared' *.propcol files that I think actually aren't & probably can't be shared like the preflight_presets.propcol & a few others, but that's not important here.

[v_kyr]

39 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Stored there are several 'shared' *.propcol files that I think actually aren't & probably can't be shared ...

You would have to inspect if certain folders or files inside are linked here, in order to find out if some of those things are shared or not. Other than that it might be like Walt said, that macros are maybe only shared with APub then. - However, somebody from the Affinity team should be able to tell for sure here, so no further guessing is needed.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, v_kyr said:

You would have to inspect if certain folders or files inside are linked here, in order to find out if some of those things are shared or not.

I'm not sure what you mean about inspecting to see if they are linked. Certain of the *.propcol files like the table_formats.propcol or the preflight_presets.propcol one I mentioned earlier seem only relevant to APub so AFAIK they can't be linked to the other 2 Affinity apps, while others like for brush or swatch palette categories can optionally be linked from within the V2 apps. OTOH, the macros.propcol file apparently is automatically shared by AP V2 & APub V2 (via its Photo persona like Walt mentioned) but there is no explicit link option for that in either app -- it just happens.

There is more about this kind of linking in the https://affinity.help/designer2/en-US.lproj/pages/Addons/linkingContent.html help topic

[v_kyr]

6 hours ago, R C-R said:

I'm not sure what you mean about inspecting to see if they are linked.

[R C-R]

@v_kyr, if you are referring to Symbolic links then no, all the files in ~/Library/Group Containers/6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs/v2/user/ are regular files, as shown below with the owner name field obscured for privacy reasons.

The help topic I linked to above explains how this works in V2, but it should be fairly obvious from the file names that some of these *.propcol files are unlikely to be used by all 3 apps.

[v_kyr]

7 minutes ago, R C-R said:

if you are referring to Symbolic links

Yes that was what I initially meant, in order to see if they are maybe shared via symlinks. - Other than that, the two apps here (APh + APub's-APh persona) do maybe make probably use of one and the same macros.propcol file then, if what you said is shown by the Library panel on a macro delete (as you told above) is really meant that way.

But instead of our speculating here, somebody from Serif can tell you for sure more concrete.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Other than that, the two apps here (APh + APub's-APh persona) do maybe make probably use of one and the same macros.propcol file then, if what you said is shown by the Library panel on a macro delete (as you told above) is really meant that way.

Empirically, they do appear to use the same macros.propcol file because if for instance I delete a macro from the Library in one, it is immediately deleted in the other's Library ... but there are some oddities like that in the Photo Persona of APub V2 I sometimes don't see all the Library categories or the macros in them until I force an update by choosing to delete a category, which instead of deleting it forces all the categories & their macros to appear.

Doing that updates the macros.propcol file's modification date, so it seems apart from that oddity that whatever is done to edit, add, or delete a Library macro category or a macro in it is indeed automatically applied the the Library panel of the other.

But like I mentioned, some of the other *.propcol files in  ~/Library/Group Containers/6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs/v2/user/ do not actually appear to be shared among all of the V2 apps because only 1 or 2 of the apps supports what they reference. Examples include table formats, tone maps, develop, live masks, & so on.

[v_kyr]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

... but there are some oddities like that in the Photo Persona of APub V2 I sometimes don't see all the Library categories or the macros in them until I force an update by choosing to delete a category, which instead of deleting it forces all the categories & their macros to appear.

Sounds like some change & update (refresh) problem in APub for the library panel then.

13 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Doing that updates the macros.propcol file's modification date, so it seems apart from that oddity that whatever is done to edit, add, or delete a Library macro category or a macro in it is indeed automatically applied the the Library panel of the other.

An edit/add/delete affects the library panels associated data structure and so the associated „macros.propcol“ file contents, which in turn when changed should also trigger the library panel to redraw (refresh & update).

[R C-R]

52 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Sounds like some change & update (refresh) problem in APub for the library panel then.

Yes, that is exactly what I think it is, but the only way I found to force a refresh was by choosing to delete a category that appears to be empty. That causes the supposedly deleted category & all the others to appear correctly & show all their macros.

55 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

An edit/add/delete affects the library panels associated data structure and so the associated „macros.propcol“ file contents, which in turn when changed should also trigger the library panel to redraw (refresh & update).

As above, that is precisely what happens when I chose to delete an apparently empty category. Obviously, when the category appears to be empty there is no way to edit any macro in it. I did not try adding a macro to a supposedly empty category & now that all the categories are properly populated for now I am going to leave well enough alone.

[v_kyr]

8 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Yes, that is exactly what I think it is

Maybe you should post and mention this in the V2 MacOS bugs section, as this here is the Win section where things may overall behave differently.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

Maybe you should post and mention this in the V2 MacOS bugs section, as this here is the Win section where things may overall behave differently.

I am going to wait & see if the redraw issue occurs again. If so, I will post there.