Affinity Photo 2 unable to open any image (windows on ARM)

[Pi0cket]

I have just started a trial of the affinity suite and thought I would play with some photo editing

Every photo i try to load into Affinity Photo 2 just comes up as a checkerboard

the same image loads into Affinity designer 2 fine

I have attached the image for testing, it is a 1 bit bitmap image

System is a Lenovo Flex 5g, with a Snapdragon 8cx Processor and 8gig of ram
Running Windows 11 Developer Preview build 2657.ge_prerelease.240719-1747
Affinity Photo 2  v2.5.3

Pete

CL32-logo.bmp

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums @Pi0cket

The file seems to open without issue in Photo 2.5.3 on Windows 10 (Intel) – see attached image.

Have you checked to see if your Performance options in Settings are the same in Designer and Photo?

Note: If you are running a developer preview build of Windows then that could cause issues if Serif haven’t got round to checking compatibility with that version yet. For stable use of any software I would recommend using the ‘normal’ version of the OS rather than ‘bleeding edge’ versions which could introduce all manner of weird incompatibilities.

[walt.farrell]

The image also opens correctly in the ARM-64 version of Photo 2 running in ARM-64 Windows 11 Pro in Parallels on my M2 Mac.

I don't have a "real" ARM-64 Windows system to try it on.

[Pi0cket]

@GarryP I have checked the performance settings, they are both identical. I also tried it in Publisher 2, and it also opens fine just like Designer 2 does

Developer preview does add an extra layer of complication for sure, but i assumed that if one program worked fine, the others would too

@walt.farrell thanks for checking

[GarryP]

10 hours ago, Pi0cket said:

Developer preview does add an extra layer of complication for sure, but i assumed that if one program worked fine, the others would too

If one application does something even slightly differently to another application then one might work and the other might not.

Developer preview builds of operating systems are (mainly) there for developers to check to see if their software will still run on the next proposed version of the OS, and aren’t generally supposed to be used by ‘normal’ users; they’re called “developer previews” for a reason.

If you are installing a developer build of the OS but aren’t using it to test software compatibility then you’re probably using it for the wrong reason and should expect to have weird issues from time to time.

If you encounter a problem using software while you have a developer build of the OS installed then the my advice would be to install the latest non-developer build and try again because software is very rarely officially supported on OS builds that aren’t supposed to be installed by ‘normal’ users.

The problem you are having might, or might not, have anything to do with you using the developer preview version of the OS but unless you are using an officially supported (non-developer preview) version of the OS you are less likely to get the support you need.

[NathanC]

Welcome to the forums @Pi0cket,

Try disabling Hardware Acceleration in Photo 2 under Edit -> Settings -> Performance. Once this has been unchecked close the interface and restart the app for this to take effect and then try opening another image again, you should now hopefully find it opens as expected.

This is a ARM64 Photo 2 specific issue that has come up before in thread below, I had raised this internally but unfortunately it has not been re-producible yet. If you could also provide a copy of your dxdiag.txt that would be great.

Saving dxdiag: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/open-and-run-dxdiag-exe-dad7792c-2ad5-f6cd-5a37-bf92228dfd85

Thanks!

[Pi0cket]

Hey @NathanC thanks for your message, i can confirm that disabling the hardware acceleration lets me open files in photo 2 fine i tried a few without issue

 

Attached is my dxdiag.txt. if there is anything else i can do to help debugging im happy to help

DxDiag.txt