.afphoto not correctly closed

[barninga]

In my regular workflow, I use to open a .tiff file from a folder, edit it as needed, save it to .afphoto to a different folder and then close it. Then I open another .tiff and so on, potentially 70-80 .tiff files, without ever closing Affinity Photo. When I complete the editing process, I select "New batch job" from the file menu, add all of the afphoto files I just created to export them to jpeg (only jpeg save selected, 90% quality, in the same folder that holds the .tiff files; no macros, no resizing) and launch the batch job.

After the recent update to 2.5.5, it happens that during the batch processing some afphoto files (usually one or two) get a red cross in the file processing list, instead of the green checkmark, and are not exported to jpeg. Then, if I try to open them to export them manually, an error window informs me that they are already open in another application.

If I then close Affinity Photo and then restart it, and try to open those files, they are loaded regularly and I can export them to jpeg.

If I close Affinity Photo at the end of my editing loop, restart it and then run the batch process, I get no errors.

It looks like Affinity Photo fails to correctly close some .afphoto files when I save and close them, so it cannot reopen them when running the batch job. Closing Affinity Photo releases them completely, so they can be regularly opened after Affinity Photo is restarted.

Affinity Photo 2.5.5 from Apple App Store

2021 M1 MacBook Pro, RAM 16GB, 13" display

Mac OS Sonoma 14.7

Hardware Acceleration ON

By the way, due to this problem I realized that the box where the batch processed file list flows is small and does not allow to easily read the name of the files that get an error. In addition, it is automatically cleaned as soon as the processing comes to end. Why not to open a floating resizable dialog window, with its own red/yellow/green buttons?

Thank You

Stefano

[carl123]

13 minutes ago, barninga said:

In my regular workflow, I use to open a .tiff file from a folder, edit it as needed, save it to .afphoto to a different folder and then close it

 

14 minutes ago, barninga said:

It looks like Affinity Photo fails to correctly close some .afphoto files when I save and close them, so it cannot reopen them when running the batch job.

Just prior to running the batch job, check the above folder for any (hidden) files with a afphoto~lock~ extension. If you see some and these are the ones that the batch file fails on, it will confirm that this is the source of the problem.

But make sure you run the batch job before 5 minutes have elapsed as the afphoto~lock~ files "time out" in 5 minutes

Additionally, as an independent test, try turning parallel processing off in the batch job screen as this can also cause issues like these

[barninga]

hello @carl123

thank you for your reply.

I am quite sure that a five minute lock cannot be the problem, since between the editing of the first afphoto files and the last ones there's usually a gap of a few hours, and I never had the problem on the last bunch of afphoto files I saved. Anyway I have a set of images ready to be processed and I'll make sure to look for lock files in the afphoto files folder as soon I end editing the last one and before I run the batch process, leaving Affinity Photo open. If there aren't any, as I suspect, I'll turn parallel processing off (even if a parallel processing issue should produce its effects even after closing and reopening Affinity Photo, but it never happened so far).

I'll be back with some news asap.

stefano

[barninga]

update:

as suggested, I checked for lock files in the afphoto files folder, just after closing the last afphoto file (result of editing a source tiff file). I found none.

So I run the batch job (export to jpeg) after unchecking the parallel processing option. No errors.

I repeated with parallel processing on: no errors again, but I can't say if this test is significant.

No parallel processing is not an option, since it's way longer (my mac has 4 cores, so it takes approximately four times the time needed with parallel processing on).

I'll update this thread with the results of my next operations.

[barninga]

update 2:

I had problems with the finder: external disks not released due to open files, where the application(s) using them had been closed; last file in a folder not displayed in column mode, and more funny things like these.

I terminated the finder and after restarting it I had no more problems with Affinity Photo's batch job. So I suspect that the Finder was involved.

I'll post more updates if I find more info.

Thank you for your support.

[barninga]

I have to come back to this topic.

After editing several photo groups of 60-70 images each, I've come to conclusion that Affinity Photo randomly happens to keep files open at filesystem level after closing them through the File menu. This seems to happen more frequently if several images are kept open in Affinity Photo during the editing activity.

For example:

- I have a bunch of, say, 70 photographs to edit

- I open enad edit the first one, and keep it open after loading the second, and so on, until I have, say, six or seven images opened in Affinity Photo at the same time

- While opening new images, I close the first ones, so I keep working with the last images opened at the same time

- After editing the last image, I select File->Close All

- I create a new batch job to create jpegs from the afphoto files

During the batch job, it can happen that one ore more photographs cannot be opened and get a red X instead of the green checkmark. If I try to manually open those images, I get an error meaning that they are already open in another application (which only can be Affinity Photo itself).

If I close Affinity Photo and relaunch it and repeat the batch job, all the images are handled regularly and get non red X.

It looks like that, under certain conditions, Affinity Photo does not release the system resources taken by an open image; they are released only when Affinity Photo is closed and relaunched. For some reason, this seems to happen when keeping open several images at a time.