Affinity Photo: "The file appears to be corrupted."

[jeppe]

1. What Application are you using?
   Affinity Photo 2
    
2. Are you using the latest release version?
   2.5.6
    
3. Can you reproduce it?
   Yes, just open the file.
    
4. Does it happen for a new document?
   What do you mean, 'new'? The document I was working on, was created yesterday. I worked on it for several hours.
    
5. If you cannot provide a sample document then please give an accurate description of the problem for example it should include most of the following:

•    What is your operating system and version (Windows 11, OSX Ventura, iOS 16 etc)?
  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, build 22631.4317, Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22700.1041.0
   
•    Is hardware acceleration (in Preferences > Performance) ON or OFF ? (and have you tried the other setting?)
  "Enable OpenCL compute acceleration" is ON. I have not touched the settings since installation.
   
•    What happened for you (and what you expected to happen)
  I worked on a file for several hours yesterday. I saved the file. Closed Affinity Photo and shut down my computer. This morning when I opened the file, I received this error message in Affinity Photo: "The file appears to be corrupted."
   
•    Provide a recipe for creating the problem (step-by-step what you did).
  As mentioned, I opened the file I had been working on yesterday, and I received the error message. I tried both opening the file from Explorer and from the File > "Open..." menu option in Affinity. The file is stored on a local disk.
   
•    Screenshots (very handy) or a screen capture/video.
  I attached a screen dump.
   
•    Any unusual hardware (like tablets or external monitors or drives that may affect things) or relevant other applications like font managers or display managers.
  I's say my setup is pretty "standard". Desktop computer with SSDs and one monitor. I only use Affinity for very light work.
   
•    Did this same thing used to work and if so have you changed anything recently?
  I have not used Affinity Photo very much, but this is the first time I am seeing this error. Needless to say, this is probably the most critical issue a user can encounter when working with an application. Getting your work destroyed and losing many hours of work is obviously quite devastating in so many ways.

plantegning.afphoto

[Alfred]

On 12/1/2024 at 8:11 AM, jeppe said:

• Can you reproduce it?
  Yes, just open the file.
   
• Does it happen for a new document?
  What do you mean, 'new'?

Create a new file (e.g. via the ‘New…’ command on the File menu). Save the file, close it and (try to) reopen it. Does it appear to be corrupted, or does it open OK?

If it opens, quit the app and relaunch it, and then try again. If the document still opens, then the answer to the question

On 12/1/2024 at 8:11 AM, jeppe said:

Can you reproduce it?

is ‘No’ and the problem is peculiar to the file ‘plantegning.afphoto’.

[jeppe]

Quote

Create a new file (e.g. via the ‘New…’ command on the File menu). Save the file, close it and (try to) reopen it. Does it appear to be corrupted, or does it open OK?

It opens OK.

Quote

is ‘No’ and the problem is peculiar to the file ‘plantegning.afphoto’.

Yes, my file is corrupted, but Affinity Photo is the causing this situation. I can also see that I am certainly not the only person who has experienced that *.afphoto files are corrupted. And I'd love for this to be looked at and fixed. Software that destroys your work is of course totally unusable, and I am certainly not a happy camper having paid for something that is unreliable and wastes my time.

Maybe Serif/Affinity would care to comment if they are going to investigate this bug?

[PaulEC]

On 12/8/2024 at 9:24 PM, jeppe said:

I am certainly not the only person who has experienced that *.afphoto files are corrupted.

One of the main reasons that Affinity files become corrupted is if they are saved to, or opened from, an external drive, rather than the local drive. Does this apply to your file?

[jeppe]

On 12/8/2024 at 11:09 PM, PaulEC said:

One of the main reasons that Affinity files become corrupted is if they are saved to, or opened from, an external drive, rather than the local drive. Does this apply to your file?

No, my file is on a local drive.

So, if I understand you correctly there's a general issue with Affinity software that causes files to become corrupted if they are located on an external drive? That sounds horrifying to be honest. It's quite surprising if this is indeed the case. I mean, working with files located on e.g. USB, network, cloud etc. I would expect is an expectation from most users in 2025. I wish I knew about this limitation before shelling out the money for this software.

Any chance that this severe limitation gets fixed?

Also, anyone from Serif reading this (not sure if you are employed by Serif, Paul?) any chance you can fix my file?

[PaulEC]

2 hours ago, jeppe said:

not sure if you are employed by Serif,

No, just a user, like most people here. You can tell if someone is from Serif, their posts will be marked "Staff".

Apparently they are working on solving the problems with using external storage (it is now better than it was!)

[jeppe]

1 hour ago, PaulEC said:

No, just a user, like most people here. You can tell if someone is from Serif, their posts will be marked "Staff".

Apparently they are working on solving the problems with using external storage (it is now better than it was!)

OK, thank you, Paul, much appreciated!

[NathanC]

Hi @jeppe,

We generally recommend saving to local storage over external locations and then copying files over to external locations afterwards. Saving to external locations isn't guaranteed to result in a corrupt file, but saving locally often significantly reduces the chances of encountering corruption and also ensures a local backup copy of the file is available. The app's file handling is something that continues to be worked on by the team internally. I'll be logging your file with the developers for further investigation into what's caused this corruption using the information provided, but please note that we can't guarantee your file will be recovered or provide a timeframe.

[jeppe]

5 hours ago, NathanC said:

Hi @jeppe,

We generally recommend saving to local storage over external locations and then copying files over to external locations afterwards. Saving to external locations isn't guaranteed to result in a corrupt file, but saving locally often significantly reduces the chances of encountering corruption and also ensures a local backup copy of the file is available. The app's file handling is something that continues to be worked on by the team internally. I'll be logging your file with the developers for further investigation into what's caused this corruption using the information provided, but please note that we can't guarantee your file will be recovered or provide a timeframe.

Thanks for the response, Nathan, much appreciated.

I am saving my files locally, but it comes as a surprise that we need need to even consider file location in this day and age. It's clear that you cannot rely 100 % on Affinity Photo to handle files correctly, which - by my standards - are fundamental to any application. So, unfortunately I have to stop using the software since I do not want to take the chance that more work is destroyed and my time spent on it is wasted. I'm guessing there's no way to get my money back, and my only option is to await a fix.

I do hope that you will be able to fix the issue, so we can have an actual alternative to Photoshop. Also it's much appreciated if you're able to recover my file.

[AlainP]

This "File appears corrupted" problem has caused me so much problems in the last weeks. It happens even on files saved locally. I wasted so much time on this that I went back to my old Photoshop until this has been fixed for good. And then I will have many Photoshop files that will not be 100% compatible with Affinity. Will I come back to it.... don't know yet. Too bad because I like Affinity apps more than Adobe counterpart.

[helpneeded]

Same problem here. Spent hours working on two files, one of them 86 pages, and now my files are corrupt. I'm still using Version 1, but I find this too unreliable. I like the software, but it needs to be able to be reliably saved and reopened for edits without corrupting the files.

[jeppe]

I see there is an updated version:

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/whats-new/

I do not see any mention of the file corruption problem being fixed. Maybe I missed it, but otherwise I assume it's either too big of a challenge to find a fix or it is not a priority. In that case I'm not sure what is the worse of the two, and it is quite a disappointment.