Unexpected Brush Format

[markbowen]

Hi there,

Have the update of 1.7.2 but now I can't load any brush set at all into it.

I had accidentally deleted a brush group from Affinity so went to load the file again and now it comes up with this message every single time.

I have also tried downloading about 20 other different brush sets (all .abr files which normally work) and not one single one of them will load in.

I also tried first loading the set into Photoshop and exporting them from there and trying again but nothing will get them into Affinity no matter what I do!

Please let me know where I'm going wrong as I really need my brush sets back, can't work without them!

Just to re-inforce that this has only started since the upgrade to 1.7.2. Prior to that all brush sets were loading fine.

Many thanks,

Mark

 

[Lee D]

A change to .ABR brush import has been made in 1.7.2, it should skip any corrupt brushes. However I've just tested a few .ABR files and none imported as the "Unexpected Brush Format" message appeared. Once back in the office I'll do some more testing and confirm the changes made.

[markbowen]

Hi Lee,

Many thanks for looking into this for me.

Everything was working fine before 1.7.2 and I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't accidentally deleted a brush group! Always the way isn't it?!!

The brushes load fine into Photoshop and I tried to load them in there and export them back out but still the same message.

Unzipping the original file that I have of the brushes and trying to import those into AP also has the same problem unfortunately :-(

Any help you can give on this one would therefore be greatly appreciated.

Best wishes,

Mark

 

[markbowen]

Hi Lee,

Have attached a sample file of the sort of thing I'm trying to import to AP if that helps at all?

Many thanks,

Mark

 

Water Set 2.abr

water_splash_brushes_ps_set_2_by_frostbo_d4l8p6k.zip

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, Lee D said:

A change to .ABR brush import has been made in 1.7.2, it should skip any corrupt brushes. However I've just tested a few .ABR files and none imported as the "Unexpected Brush Format" message appeared. Once back in the office I'll do some more testing and confirm the changes made.

FWIW, I tested with several .abr files I saved after banishing Photoshop Elements from my Mac, & several others I downloaded from various websites. Some import into Affinity Photo fine; others generate the 'unexpected format' error. I have no idea why this is.

All of them (eventually) show a preview image in the Mac Finder > Get Info window that looks like a sample of (some of?) the included brush patterns, & they also import into Pixelmator Pro without error, which suggests the files are not corrupt/unreadable.

In older versions of Affinity, some .abr files also generated an 'unexpected' error, & for them this 'Get Info' preview always included something in addition to brush patterns, typically what seemed to be text comments or the like, but there is no indication that is what is causing the Affinity error.

[markbowen]

Hi R C-R,

Glad it's not just me then :-)

Always wonder if I've done something absolutely stupid but know that this time I haven't.

Hopefully there will be a fix for this really soon as I've just had to literally go into Photoshop and paint out around 100 brushes and export as PNGs and then import into AP to get on with my work. Definitely don't want to be doing that every time. I still have many hundreds that need to go in so hoping for a fix really quickly. Also if I ever download any new ones then it would be a real hassle to have to do this each time.

 

[v_kyr]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

...for them this 'Get Info' preview always included something in addition to brush patterns, typically what seemed to be text comments or the like

That's usually a normal part of the ABR format file structure as there can be several text portions ...

PS brush files do starts with a header: 2-byte big-endian integer for the version, followed by 2-byte big-endian integer for brush count. The header lies a sequence of sections organized by key: 'samp', 'patt' and 'desc'.

All of those follows the same structure:

•  a Photoshop resource signature ('8BIM')
• a 4-character key ('samp' or 'patt' or 'desc')
• the length of data (a 4-byte big-endian integer)
• data (of variable size)

1. The 'samp' section data (if not empty) represents a series of sampled brushes with unique identifiers (UUID) referenced in the descriptor.
2. The 'patt' section data (if not empty) represents a series of patterns (used for textures) with unique identifiers (UUID) referenced in the descriptor.
3. The 'desc' section data is a flatten descriptor which can be decoded using the PS script stream methods.

There are tools which can extract the brush images or convert the brush format etc.

[markbowen]

Hi v_kyr,

Thank you for the exceptionally thorough explanation.

Really hoping that Serif can fix this though as they were all working fine before and I would have thought that if I were to create a new brush or set in Photoshop and then export them and open them in Affinity Photo that they should work as they would then 100% definitely be the correct format.

Not really sure why anything needed to be changed but hopefully this can be fixed soon as I have loads of brushes that I'm not going to be able to use easily otherwise. Converting them all would be a complete pain.

I did come across a viewer .JAR file today for OSX that I was able to extract the images from but then I had to go through the tedious job of creating all the brushes again within AP which I really don't want to have to do again.

I haven't come across any tool that can convert the brush format though. I'm on Mac so that might be why though.

Mark

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

That's usually a normal part of the ABR format file structure as there can be several text portions ...

Thanks for the info, but that isn't what I meant. The "Get Info" Preview pane usually shows only what looks like a sample sheet of the brush pattern thumbnails in a grid layout, & no text. For some of the .abr files that would not import into earlier versions of Affinity Photo, at some of the grid positions, instead of a brush thumbnail a block of text would show, the same size as a brush thumbnail. The text looked like something one might find added to a conventional sample sheet as rasterized text, like as part of a logo or instructions for use.

I have noticed something else about the .abr files that will not import into Affinity Photo 1.7.2. They will import into Pixelmator Pro, but they all show up in that app with odd default brush names like "$$$/Presets/Brushes/NaturalBrushes2_abr/ChalkDark=Chalk - Dark." That isn't definitive because some of the ones that will import into both apps also show in Pixelmator Pro with similar names, but it does suggest there is something weird about how some .abr files are formatted that isn't properly parsed in more than just AP.

EDIT: I just realized that the brushes that will import into Pixelmator Pro but not into Affinity Photo don't work correctly in Pixelmator Pro, nor are their thumbnails in that app correct!

[macfaninsf]

Having the same issue. PLEASE FIX! Too often upgrades are one step forward, two steps back.

[markbowen]

On 8/17/2019 at 12:01 PM, Lee D said:

A change to .ABR brush import has been made in 1.7.2, it should skip any corrupt brushes. However I've just tested a few .ABR files and none imported as the "Unexpected Brush Format" message appeared. Once back in the office I'll do some more testing and confirm the changes made.

Hi Lee,

Was just wondering if you've been back to the office yet? Wondering what the official word on this is? Seems a few people are having the same problem so was wondering if we'll possibly be getting a fix at all?

Really don't want to have to use ABRView.jar to get all the PNGs out of all my brush sets to re-create them again as that will take ages. Also can't get AP 1.7.2 to work with ANY PS brush sets anyway even totally brand new ones.

Thanks for any information you can put our way on this one.

Best wishes,

Mark

 

[Alfred]

32 minutes ago, markbowen said:

Was just wondering if you've been back to the office yet?

Patience, patience! You created this thread only yesterday (Saturday morning in the UK) and it’s now Sunday afternoon here.

[markbowen]

3 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Patience, patience! You created this thread only yesterday (Saturday morning in the UK) and it’s now Sunday afternoon here.

Lol sorry! :-) UK here too. Was a little hasty I guess but have work to do and can't (not easily anyway).

I'll definitely be more patient now though.

Best wishes,

Mark

 

[v_kyr]

Did some tests and none of the PS brushes (aka .abr files) imports anymore in the latest 1.7.2 versions. I think due to code changes they made, they wrecked their previously working PS brush import functions in some way, so these seem to be buggy or over picky now.

[R C-R]

22 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Did some tests and none of the PS brushes (aka .abr files) imports anymore in the latest 1.7.2 versions.

That surprises me a bit because I can still import any of the .abr files that I previously imported in earlier Affinity versions -- I get an identical set with a " 2" suffix added to the category name. This includes all the circa 2011 .abr files I saved when I deleted PSE (I think version 9) that came with that app, & some newer ones I downloaded from various web sources (but unfortunately I don't remember what those sources were or the original names of the files).

So for me, it amounts to some import without issues & others throw the 'unexpected format' error.

As for what changed, my guess is the addition of support for multiple 'sub-brushes' probably has something to do with it.

[markbowen]

For me it's literally no brushes / brush sets at all. Don't know why it's different for some though.

These are brushes that I've had for ages and they all work within Photoshop just fine. I've even exported them from Photoshop to ensure they're coming out in what I would then believe to be the correct format and nothing works. All of them load into all other Apps though.

[v_kyr]

I did a try with some already before archived PS brushed and some new PS brushset downloads, of which none could be imported now.

[angier]

Last week I spent some time organizing about a third of my brushes and exporting them as affinity brush sets. Taking on the task of organizing my PSD brushes stalled and crashed my Af. Photo program several times. Sometimes I used the windows task manager to shut down Af. Photo. Every time I used the task manager to shut down the program the brush sets I created were deleted. The only brushes that were available to me were the ones that came with the program. So I learned to export any changes I made to my personal brush sets several times so I could reinstall them if I needed to.  I really hope Af. can come up with a better way to organize brushes.

[dmmmd]

Watching this thread closely. I as well can no longer import PS brushes into AF 1.7.2 Mac version. 

[Harleyman]

The folks at Affinity are brilliant and I sincerely believe they're working on this, but it's September 20th and I still can't import brushes.  Using AP version 1.7.2.471 on a Desktop PC running Windows 10.  Did I miss a patch?

Edited September 21, 2019 by Harleyman
added computer type and OS

[firstdefence]

The 1.7.3.476 beta version appears to have the abr issue sorted but only a Windows version has been released at the moment.

 

[Pariah73]

yay! add me to the party!

Same error in Photo, Pixel Persona in Designer and Publisher Photo Studio Link. I was hoping one of them but alas, nay.

[R C-R]

12 minutes ago, Pariah73 said:

Same error in Photo, Pixel Persona in Designer and Publisher Photo Studio Link. I was hoping one of them but alas, nay.

Since you seem to be a Windows user, I think you could use this workaround to import your .abr files into Affinity.

[Wosven]

The last updates of AD and AP on Windows are able to import ABR brushes. You'll have to import them in one of those apps, and export them to AFBRUSHES if you want to import them in APub, or wait the new APub update.

[Harleyman]

I just downloaded and installed the latest Beta 1.7.3.476 Affinity Photo and brushes import beautifully now.  I haven't tried any brush imports into my current versions of Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher.  In the meantime, I have a question.  I've never installed a Beta version of software before.  Should I eliminate my original non-beta version or wait until the final version of 1.7.3.476 is released?  Thank you.