Launching Affinity Photo from PhotoLab 7

DxO PhotoLab
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I had Affinity Photo 2 installed as an MSIX app on Windows 11. MSIX is an app format which, apparently, has certain advantages in terms of security and updating performance. But - when I located the exe path (an alias I think) in the WindowsApps folder and tried to use launch Affinity from PhotoLab as an external application using that I got an ‘Access denied’ message.

Over on the Affinity forums there are long threads about this. It is apparently a known problem. Serif provides a workaround launcher program. But I preferred just to remove the MSIX app and install a standard MSI/EXE file - which works fine.

There are some claims that DXO could make this work if they wanted to - i.e. it is possible for developers to code their app (PhotoLab in this case) to launch external MSIX apps. Though - most people just seem to accept that it isn’t possible and use one of the two solutions above.

Does anyone know, e.g. from DXO, if they plan to support launching external MSIX apps? (Assuming the information that it is possible is correct).

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Only DxO can answer your question and they won’t do that on this user forum. You will have to submit it to them via this page:
https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Meanwhile, given that AFP2 has been out since Nov 2022 it’s reasonable assumption that DxO are unlikely to provide support for MSIX app execution aliases any time soon.

1 Like
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@stuck

Yes. It seems, based on this that they know about the issue and do not intend to support MSIX directly. They propose various work arounds. (I went for the reinstall AFP2 as a normal MSI/EXE program option).

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Initially, I used the workaround, but when Affinity offered the standard MSI/EXE installation, I decided to go with it – no problem so far.

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When I saw the confusion the MSIX installer was causing I held back and waited for the MSI/EXE version before I upgraded to AFP2.