jos

I use Apple Photos as a DAM. So it's my startpoint. Go from there to Affinity and back. Back in Photos I sometimes do some little changes, so all in all I'm happy with the combination Apple Photos and Affinity. For me, but I like to keep everything simple, it's fine.

Works nice, so a big thank you to you!

Vielen Dank!!!!

Hey folks!
 
I've created a little collection of some flower brushes for AP and AD (Pixel Persona). Hope you like it.
 

 
You can download the brushes here: FLOWER-POWER-by-MENSCH-MESCH.afbrushes.zip [12.3 MB]
 
Installation:
Unzip the downloaded zip-file. Install the FLOWER-POWER-by-MENSCH-MESCH.afbrushes file in your brush panel.  

 
Keep on drawin'
 
Norbert

Use this link instead to go to the authors webpage, there use then the blue "Download" rectangle button!
 

Ref: Luis Melendez - Affinity Photo stock brushes
 
 
 

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash
This is a duplicate post of a thread that is now locked and moved to the questions forum

I'm an absolute beginner when it comes to Designer and Publisher. Testing and discovering it now. You might call it playing and I think it's working fine. Doing of course a lot of unnecessary and stupid things, being surprised about the " results" but so far on my yellow iMac with 16gb no problems.  Just my experience so I was surprised to read your reaction. 
So the good will get better  . . . 
 

I use Apple Photos as a DAM. So it's my startpoint. Go from there to Affinity and back. Back in Photos I sometimes do some little changes, so all in all I'm happy with the combination Apple Photos and Affinity. For me, but I like to keep everything simple, it's fine.

Solly and Print Monkey, thanks for your kind answers. I like Affinity Photo very much so I will definitely buy that from the Affinity Store. And although I am not completely sure if buying all three is the best choice for me, for the price they offer it now, why not. Maybe I buy an iPad in the future, that makes the complete bundel very tempting.
BTW Solly,
what does JFSJ  and N3MKH mean?
Jos
 

So it will be the Affinity store, seems the best choice. Now I only need to decide if it is the complete bundel or just Affinity Photo. I've never used the other two, but there is some curiosity and I might like to use these programs. No professional use, just for fun. 

I used to use LR, but like many others I gave up on Adobe products after they went subscription after having spent thousands over the years on every version of Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Pagemaker etc. I would buy the suite version.

I did though, on the whole, like LR for cataloging files and processing RAW.

I feel like I’ve tried every alternative and always end up just using Apple Photos. It’s free and gets failry regular updates.

I keep all my images in folders on an external SSD which is backed up to other SSD’s daily. The images are all referenced into Photos, but not physically moved to the Photos library. You can do that and have the library (of referenced files) on an external disk.

Like many Apple apps it has powers that are not always explained up front. One feature that I just discovered was in using the search function. I can’t remember why I was looking for “beer” but I typed that in and a bunch of photographs were found. All of them, except one, had either glasses of beer or beer bottles. There was one foto that had neither in them. I enlarged the image and there, on a piece of paper was the tiny word “beer”. And it was on a creased part of the paper shot at an angle. I guess this is a benefit of Apple’s newish technology that can find, and copy, words in images.

Count me impressed.

I also use the edit feature, but don’t use the Photos edit engine per se. I select an image and press enter which opens Photos Edit and from there, in the three dots in a circle icon, I select the RAW processor of my choice. I typically use RAWPower, which is a $30 (I think) app written by one of the lead engineers on Apple Aperture - a much beloved DAM and RAW processor sadly missed by the cognnoscenti. You can also pick Affinity Photo or whatever other foto editing app appears in the pop-up menu.

I used to think an Affinity DAM would be cool. I would like to give those guys my money, but I no longer feel that is necessary. Although I would still buy it if they did release such a beast.

Cast aside any opinions you might have about Apple Photos and give it a try.

I've seen so many complains about the downloading and buying from the MAC store that I've chosen for the Affinity store.

Hello ~ For anyone who is interested I have managed to create an "Add Border Macro" that seems to work fine. You can create multiple border Macros (Various border widths) First go to Studio view and check the Macro option. The Macro panel appears.
Add new macro and Record the following actions.
1. Select ~ Select All  (Ctrl A in windows)
2. Then ~ Select > Outline
3. A Box will appear and now select from the options "Inside"
4. In the PIXELS box add what width you want the border to be eg 10px
5. Click Apply
6. Now .. Edit > Fill with Primary colour (Which makes the border White) (Secondary Colour is Black)
7. Now press the ESC key (In windows) not sure for a Mac
8. Now ~ STOP recording and Name the Macro as ~ Border 10px
Job done ~ Items in bold are on the Menu Bar.
You can create multiple variations of this eg 10px border 20px border etc. Maybe 20px Border RED or Blue etc.
Works fine for me.
 

 

Hello, I'm a photography and editing enthusiast. I've been learning this craft for a while and I'm a firm believer in sharing information so others can learn, and adapt it to their own needs. Many of the techniques I used to create these brushes and macros were not pioneered by myself, but I did create the brushes and macros contained within here myself.
 
Installation
Brushes
Enable the Brushes studio panel if it is not already, click View > Studio > Brushes.
Click on the Brushes studio panel, then click the Waffle icon. Click Import Brushes, and find the downloaded brush file on your system.
A new brush category called "Retouching" will appear in the Brushes studio panel.
Macros
Enable the Library studio panel if it is not already, click View > Studio > Library.
Click the Library studio panel then click the Waffle icon. Click Import Macros, and find the downloaded brush file on your system.
A new macro category called "Retouching" will appear in the Library studio panel.
Modifying
Brushes
Right click a brush and click Edit
Macros
Enable the Macro studio panel if it is not already, click View > Studio > Macro. Right click one of the macros and choose Edit Macro. Some steps allow you to click a gear and alter values. If you need to modify more in depth, unfortunately you will need to re-record the entire macro. I highly recommend opening a text editing program, and writing down each step in a macro before beginning to re-record. When done, you will need to click the button to Add to Library, or Export as an individual macro.
 

What's Included
Brushes
Markup Pencil Brush
Useful for making "notes" to yourself. 3x High Flow Brushes
Hard, Satin, and Soft brushes. 3x Medium Flow Brushes
Hard, Satin, and Soft brushes. 3x Low Flow Brushes
Hard, Satin, and Soft brushes. This brush collection is sorted into each flow group by brush size (64, 32, 16) for easy identification when choosing a new brush. Choose a brush and resize it to the size that you need. Each brush has Pressure dynamics enabled for use with Art Tablets so that they offer a higher flow with more pen pressure, although they can also be used by mouse users.
 
Macros
Any Macro appearing with a *** warning text will run slowly and be very intense on your computer's system resources. I highly recommend letting these macros run, and just waiting for them to complete without attempting to do more work, or alt-tabbing to other programs.

Luminosity Masks ***
This macro manipulates channels to generate MASK LAYERS (not pixel layers), and deletes all created spare channels afterwards to avoid bloated files. To use one of the mask layers, drag the mask out of the folder and over another layer's picture icon so that it creates a vertical blue bar. Alternatively, drag the mask layer so that it appears normally in the layer stack (as if it were not clipped), right click the mask, then click Mask to Below. If you need more than one copy of a particular mask, right click the mask and click Duplicate. If you are interested in modifying the macro, I highly recommend watching Robin Whalley's video which is where I learned how to do this process within Affinity Photo. Black & White
Generates a Black & White adjustment layer which is extremely close to an alternative B&W conversion method using a 50% grey layer set to Color. Shoutout to Ezra & Ally who teach the technique here this merely automates the process they taught. Solarize
Generates a curve meant to be used to check color consistency across gradients, as well as useful for finding tricky dust spots / blemishes. This is not meant to be a creative effect, only useful for editing purposes. Dodge & Burn
Generates curve layers with masks for dodging and burning. Use a white brush on the mask to reveal the effect. I've tweaked the blend ranges so that each effect rolls off, i.e. dodge will not effect the bright tones as much as it does the dark tones, burn will not effect the dark tones as much as it does the bright tones. Color Correction
Generates a curve in both RGB and CMYK color space for basic color correction. Open the curve layer, use the picker tool inside the adjustment properties and click on the area of the image you wish to correct. Some knowledge of color theory is useful here. Contrast
Simple curve layer with an S-Curve to boost image contrast. Local Contrast & Sharpening ***
Do you enjoy the Clarity filter, but hate how little control it gives you? Give your image some punch while being able to dial in the amount of local contrast boost and sharpening independantly. For more effect, feel free to duplicate either layer. Use a mask on an individual effect, or the whole group. Frequency Separation - Bilateral ***
Some editing workflows prefer using a different blur to the gaussian method of the built-in filter. Because of limitations of how Macros work, the blur will not generate an actual preview. If you need to preview what you are doing, please create a merged visible layer (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E), then run the Bilateral Blur filter. Record the values you find to be useful, then delete the merged layer and run the macro.  
FAQ
Reserved for future questions that may come up Retouching Dynamic.afbrushes Retouching.afmacros

Thanks a lot!!!