Affinity Photo 2.6 completely freezes my PC.

[Raymundo OP]

Hello, I need your help.

Photo is completely freezing my PC to the point where I can't move anything—mouse or keyboard—absolutely nothing. The screen freezes. When the issue starts, after a few minutes of using the program, I can barely see how the mouse movement slows down, starts flickering, and becomes increasingly sluggish until it stops moving entirely. The Reset button doesn't respond, so I have to turn off the computer and restart it.

This has actually been happening since version 2.4, where Photo causes a serious crash on my system. No error message appears, and it doesn't seem to be triggered by a specific action. However, in most cases, it happens when I try to place an image on a canvas or select a tool like a brush, eraser, or any other. I've also noticed that it can occur when interacting with different program menus.

Because of this, I also have a license for Photo 1. I installed it, and the same issue happened after working for a few hours.

I ran a RAM test, and no errors were found.

Can you help me? I don't know what's happening.

 

My PC:

Intel Core i3 8100 3.6Ghz, 240mm liquid cooling

16GB RAM DDR4 3200Mhz

Storage 512GB M.2 Gen 3x4

Nvidia GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6

Windows 11 Pro

[Timo Konttinen]

Same here:

version 2.6 sucks big time!

1. if I open several Nikon D850 .nef pictures (about 55 mb each) in Affinity photo, my computer freezes, and only way to proceed, is to reboot the computer using power button.
2. when I have selected resize-tool and try to straighten the picture and zoom the file using ctrl plus mouse wheel, total freezing and power button reboot
3. after almost an hour editing a single picture my computer froze completely when I tried to export the photo. Really frustrating, because the ”recovery-file” shows only the original picture, not the edited version!!!

None of those issues appeared in previous versions…

My computer:

• win11 home 64 bit with latest updates
• Intel i7 9700 K
• 48 Gt RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

 

[Komatös]

@Raymundo OP @Timo Konttinen Hello and welcome to the forums.

I would recommend that you deactivate hardware acceleration under Edit -> Settings -> Performance.

[Skipa]

I also want to mention that the same thing is happening to me on the following specifications, I was working on a single image with a size of 1MB, no other applications open aside from Discord and I was not in a call or watching a stream:

AMD 9800X3D, MSI Gaming Trio 4090, (2 x 32GB) 64GB 6400mhz RAM, and a 4TB SN850X M.2 Drive

This happened multiple times, not even a one-off, I thought my computer crashed. This only happens when I move a selection area on a layer, I don't otherwise have this issue happen.

Is this truly only solved by deactivating hardware acceleration, with 24GB of VRAM available?

 

[Raymundo OP]

Thanks, I think it works!!
😀

[Skipa]

I want to follow up with a solution that I did not otherwise find on this forum. I resolved the "freezing" problem by enabling Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in System -> Display -> Graphics -> Advanced graphics settings -> Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, then I restarted my PC:

Now I do not have any issues with the application freezing up the PC and I did not have to disable hardware acceleration in Affinity Photo.

[stringy]

On 3/5/2025 at 11:50 PM, Skipa said:

I want to follow up with a solution that I did not otherwise find on this forum. I resolved the "freezing" problem by enabling Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in System -> Display -> Graphics -> Advanced graphics settings -> Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, then I restarted my PC:

Now I do not have any issues with the application freezing up the PC and I did not have to disable hardware acceleration in Affinity Photo.

Hi

I looked into this and my setting is already enabled and I have the freezing issue, glad yours is sorted though 🙂

[Komatös]

7 minutes ago, stringy said:

It just seems like we have to post a thread on the forum and assume somebody at serif is investigating?

 

If one of the Affinity programs crashes, there may be a crash report. 

 

 

[stringy]

43 minutes ago, Komatös said:

If one of the Affinity programs crashes, there may be a crash report. 

 

 

Thank you I checked but there were no recent crash reports stored

[Komatös]

2 hours ago, stringy said:

I checked but there were no recent crash reports stored

Are the drivers for the GPU up to date? Is Windows up to date? Are there any programs (from the graphics card manufacturer) running in the background that (could) affect the GPU settings?

[stringy]

Hi

Yes both are up to date.How would I check for programs running in the background?

[mopperle]

39 minutes ago, stringy said:

Hi

Yes both are up to date.How would I check for programs running in the background?

Open the Windows Taskmager and check for any process with nvidia in its name.

[stringy]

Yes there are NVidia processes running, see file.

 

[stringy]

I have just updated to the latest beta 2.6.2.3213

I have tried it with acceleration ticked and unticked in the performance setting and it still freezes when exporting

[stokerg]

On 3/5/2025 at 11:50 PM, Skipa said:

I want to follow up with a solution that I did not otherwise find on this forum. I resolved the "freezing" problem by enabling Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling in System -> Display -> Graphics -> Advanced graphics settings -> Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling, then I restarted my PC:

 

Hi Skippa,

Thanks for posting this fix!  I've created an FAQ for it here.

Can you attach your log.txt file?  Depending which installer you used it will either be in:
%appdata%\affinity\photo\2.0

Or the MSIX installer:
%userprofile%\.affinity\photo\2.0

You can get to that location by calling up the Windows Run box by holding down the Widows key and tapping the letter R and pasting the above path into the run box.

This way can see which graphics cards and drivers are affect by the issue.

@stringy, sounds like you having a different issue.  I'll split your post into it's own thread   

 

[stringy]

Thank you

I am not getting anywhere on this, I even had to use “paint” instead of affinity the other day just to add txt to a photo and save as a jpg!

Any suggestions on how to get serif to look at an issue would be appreciated.

 

[stokerg]

Hi @stringy,

4 minutes ago, stringy said:

Any suggestions on how to get serif to look at an issue would be appreciated.

 

Yup we already are, i'm in the Technical Support team with Serif.  See the Staff tag under my profile picture  

Can you attach you log.txt and also a screenshot of Edit>Settings>Performance

[mopperle]

@stokerg

The solution suggested by @skipa, does also not work for me.

What I did:
- open Photo, loaded a RAW file
- developed it
- exported it as png, worked OK
- opened the Export dialog again, System crashed
 

Attached logfile.

Log.txt

[stokerg]

@mopperle,

Can you also post a screenshot of Edit>Settings>Performance 

Can you also post a screenshot of WinVer, which shows the full version of Windows you are using.  Call up the Windows run box by holding down the Windows key and tapper the letter R and in the run box enter:
WinVer

Then click okay and take a screenshot of that window.

 

[mopperle]

[stokerg]

Thanks @mopperle,

Can you replicate the issue if you disable Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of the Performance window in Settings?

When you untick Hardware Acceleration and close Settings, you'll be prompted to restart and once restarted, then try replicating the issue  

[mopperle]

To add:

GPU utilization goes rarely above 50% while developing/exporting (see screenshot)

What is interesting: after a successful export as png, I restarted Photo again, loaded the same raw file and got an apphang and the file was not displayed. Photo could be killed via Taskmanager, so no system freeze.

[mopperle]

9 minutes ago, stokerg said:

Thanks @mopperle,

Can you replicate the issue if you disable Hardware Acceleration at the bottom of the Performance window in Settings?

When you untick Hardware Acceleration and close Settings, you'll be prompted to restart and once restarted, then try replicating the issue  

Disabling hardware acceleration solves the problem. In Windows graphic settings hardware accelerated GPU scheduling is still active.

[stokerg]

7 minutes ago, mopperle said:

Disabling hardware acceleration solves the problem. In Windows graphic settings hardware accelerated GPU scheduling is still active.

Thanks, thats most helpful.

We are currently looking into this and common theme between cases so we can get this logged with the Developers.

[mopperle]

Are those issue happening only with Nvidia GPUs or also with Radeon GPUs?