Affinity not loading fonts after new 1.7.0 update

[Annfinity]

Hello, 

 

I updated AP this morning to 7.1 and I'm having issues that are affecting my work. It is not loading all of my fonts. I am running late with a delivery for a client because it's refusing the load the fonts that I've used in the designs just yesterday. I don't know what to do. I have closed and reopened, restarted, reinstalled my fonts, but it's only loading a fraction of my fonts. How can get help with this?

[HVDB Photography]

Do you have any idea how many fonts are installed on your system?
In the past there were performance problems with huge amounts of fonts loading during startup.

[Annfinity]

Yes, around 3000. I never had any performance problems before the update--except that the software would take a long time to start up. Usually, if it didn't load some fonts, I would just close the software, reinstall all my fonts, then launch the software again and all would be well. That is not working with this update. It only loads a fraction of my fonts. I am a cover designer, fonts are very important for me. Should I just revert back to the old version? 

[Mark Ingram]

Hi @Annfinity, can you try renaming the %APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0 folder to something else, and seeing if that allows you to start?

If you create several threads with the same issue in it, it is harder for us to help you, because our responses can be spread out over several threads :-).

[Annfinity]

@Mark Ingram Thank you! I did and then did another computer reboot and now it's opened! A little laggy than before but at least it's open. Thanks again!

[Annfinity]

Hi @Mark Ingram. Do you have any suggestions for the fonts issue? Affinity still isn't loading all of my fonts. 

[MmmMaarten]

32 minutes ago, Annfinity said:

Hi @Mark Ingram. Do you have any suggestions for the fonts issue? Affinity still isn't loading all of my fonts. 

3000 fonts installed permantly is a little much. There's no need to install 3000 fonts. It's slowing all kinds of things down, like you experienced while loading Affinity. You could better use software that is able to switch fonts on and off and use those fonts, without having to install them in Windows. Font managers like MainType or some free software that is able to do this.

These types of font-software allows you to use fonts on Windows (also in Affinity) without having to install them. They just let you switch on a font which makes it instantly available in Affinity software to use (you even see a popup in Affinity showing there's a new font!). After using you just switch the font off again.

 

[Annfinity]

@wigglepixel I had no problems with my fonts in the previous versions. It ran perfectly fine. 

[MmmMaarten]

8 minutes ago, Annfinity said:

@wigglepixel I had no problems with my fonts in the previous versions. It ran perfectly fine. 

Could be. But also older versions were affected by the amount of fonts installd. And still it's not the best thing to install 3000 fonts. It's taking memory and it's slowing startup of software using the fonts down. Why would you need them all to be present all time? My guess would be you only need those fonts during designing, so just turn them on when you need them would not only optimize your system, but also the load-times of software using fonts.

There's more on the forum about it, like here:

 

[Annfinity]

@wigglepixel I just checked out Main Type and it's a little pricey. Not really looking to spend that much just to manage fonts. I have over 15000 fonts, I only have 3000 installed. Is there a free or cheaper software that has the "turn on" feature that you would recommend? 

[MmmMaarten]

11 minutes ago, Annfinity said:

@wigglepixel I just checked out Main Type and it's a little pricey. Not really looking to spend that much just to manage fonts. I have over 15000 fonts, I only have 3000 installed. Is there a free or cheaper software that has the "turn on" feature that you would recommend? 

Yes there are some free font managers, like Nexusfont. But I find Nexusfont to be quite slow when you have a lot of fonts like you do. Can't look in your wallet, but 50 euros is not that much for this software that really speeds up your workflow a lot. Real value if you have these amounts of fonts. It's pretty great software and you can organise your fonts on all kinds of categories to find all your fonts back in no time. For example you can create all kinds of tags, like 'Christmas fonts', 'Digital displays', 'Handwritings', 'Drum'n'bass style' or whatever. One click on the label you created and you have all fonts you added to that label. And just click on the font you want to use in your design and load it on the fly, without installing. And Affinity immediately recognises it so you can start using it directly without having to restart Affinity.

That software is really fast, while Nexusfont needs to load the contents of a folder each time you click on the folder. So the more fonts you have in a folder, the longer it takes to load the contents and previews of the fonts in Nexusfont software. But maybe there are better free alternatives out there as well. Or you don't mind waiting a little longer, than just tryout Nexusfont. The software looks great and is easy to use. And so it's free. Be aware though, it's not being maintained anymore. Which shouldn't really be a problem, but just so you know.

 

[Annfinity]

Thank you, @wigglepixel. This is very helpful. I will look into  - and test out - all of the free options first to decide if forking out a hundred bucks for Main Type is worth it. I'll probably avoid NexusFont if it's slow because that would kill productivity. Thanks again!

[MmmMaarten]

8 hours ago, Annfinity said:

Thank you, @wigglepixel. This is very helpful. I will look into  - and test out - all of the free options first to decide if forking out a hundred bucks for Main Type is worth it. I'll probably avoid NexusFont if it's slow because that would kill productivity. Thanks again!

You're welcome. fyi according to their website MainType 8 Standard Edition is not a hundred bucks, but 49 euros. Maybe you could download a free trial first, just to see if you like it or not. Good luck!

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, wigglepixel said:

fyi according to their website MainType 8 Standard Edition is not a hundred bucks, but 49 euros.

The Standard Edition allows a maximum of 10000 fonts in the font library. Since the OP has over 15000 fonts, it would be necessary to decide which third of the collection should be excluded from the database.

The unlimited Professional Edition of MainType 8 is on sale for US$79 (instead of US$99) until a week from today.

[MmmMaarten]

8 hours ago, Alfred said:

The Standard Edition allows a maximum of 10000 fonts in the font library. Since the OP has over 15000 fonts, it would be necessary to decide which third of the collection should be excluded from the database.

You're right. Didn't know about and look for this limitation. That's a pitty, but still the professional edition stills is only 80 euros dollars one time. For people using this for a profession the time this speeds up your workflow pays the software back in less than a day. Also if you really have over 10.000 legally paid fonts (ahum), 80 euros is just a fly in the universe...  But I know...

I wonder what Main Type does in about a week though. Is this just to make buyers decide quickly or will there be a version 9 maybe? The software is great, but some modern dark and flat styling on the interface would be nice!

[edit] Funny, I see just now the 'classic' theme of the software is more modern looking than the vista-looking 'modern' theme...

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, wigglepixel said:

I wonder what Main Type does in about a week though. Is this just to make buyers decide quickly or will there be a version 9 maybe?

I think it’s just that the latest version of FontCreator was released recently, so the launch offer for that product is accompanied by discounts on the other ones.

[MmmMaarten]

BTW Also keep in mind that for Illustrator or Photoshop or CC 'we' used to pay hundreds/thousands of euros to get a version in the past... and when running CC with the subscription model later you payed 60 euros a month even and the software was only for rent and never got yours. If you stopped paying you could never open a single file of your own creations anymore, which was a huge risk and costs even more money to convert or rebuild.

So let's say we now have a stack in which we use Designer, Photo, Publisher and Maintype together... that's 50 * 3 + 80 = 230 euros, which is less than 4 months of Adobes Creative Cloud subscription for 4 pieces of great software that work together nicely and you can use for a long time without having to pay for a license or losing the right to open your own files. I like the world better now! And we now can decide which update for these programs we pay for and which we let pass. 

[Annfinity]

@wigglepixel @Alfred FontBase is the winner for me. It's free, unlimited and super easy to use, not to mention lightning fast. There's a paid upgrade for $3 per month, but all that upgrade adds is the ability to view glyphs. However, Creativefabrica.com has a free fontcloud in beta that offers the glyph feature for free, so I'm using it along with FontBase. I've uninstalled all my fonts and only activate specific fonts via Fontbase when designing. You were right @wigglepixel, without all those fonts installed, Affinity is super fast now. Where I used to have to wait up to ten minutes sometimes for it to load, now it loads in under a minute. 

Another issue has also been fixed - though I am not sure if this is from the update or the removal of fonts - when exporting a pdf, I used to have to wait up to 15 minutes for the export to complete. That's no longer the case. Now I can work a lot faster. 

 

Thanks again for all your help!

[MmmMaarten]

Great you found software that fits you @Annfinity. Nice and clean interface. It might help others here too looking for a free and easy to use font manager.

[John McDowell]

I’m having the same issue of them not loading, but am using Affinity on an iPad Pro, and have only about 250-300 fonts.  

[John McDowell]

Following others’ suggestions on this thread, I looked for an iPad app to do the same. Fontcase worked like a charm!