Murfee

Hi, it is due to colour decontamination of the pixels, James explains it in this post.

Hi @feste, the only way at the moment is by using paragraph numbering, it’s not fully automatic but once set up it will only need a bit of manual work to update, this post might help. It will be really easy when data merging & linking is added, I am looking forward to this, I have a spreadsheet that I use that only needs a change in one cell to fully update the year including special dates.

It was 😀

That is normal with cropping, you are reducing the dimensions of the file and that is reducing the amount of pixels so you end up with a smaller file size. Your original raw file will be safe, Affinity Photo does not save changes directly to the raw. It will save it as an Affinity format, this will increase the file size due to the way the software works, or you export the file to jpg etc. It was mentioning adjustments that confused me, I thought you meant adjustment layers 😀

Hi don1950, to save as a jpg you need to export it, go to file>export and choose jpg from the options. I am not sure what you mean by the nef file decreasing, can you explain a bit more what exactly you are doing for this to happen.

You can drag it but that can sometimes be a bit fiddly to get it where you want. Try view>studio>reset studio. It moved when you dragged it out and probably closed when you closed the app

Hi @don1950, go to View in the top menu bar, then click Studio, now tick Basic.

We are getting the divide blend mode in 1.9, is there any chance we will be getting the layer fill mode to complement the special 8 blend modes...hope so 😀

Hi Carl, they certainly can, there is a bit of an issue with this method though ... on my machine all adjustment layers added to Assets display as a red square, this is a bit of a pain when you need to visualise something such as a particular gradient map you want, with the presets in the adjustment panel that you have saved you do get a visualisation of the effect you need. We still need the ability to save presets from adjustment layers. The ability to export these presets is the main problem with the adjustment panel.

It is a tricky one, for some reason you need to click on the canvas then drag to outside.

Yes it is, hopefully it is just an oversight and they will add the ability soon. Particularly as there is no straight forward way to export presets from Photo.

If you go to the new pixel layer alpha channel and right click, now choose fill, you can now isolate each channel and paint freely.

Hi @eyeEmotion, This video by James Ritson may help with your texture maps. https://player.vimeo.com/video/205028961/ it is a legacy tutorial that MEB hosts. There is no direct way to alter levels on a single channel that I am aware of, there is a roundabout long winded way though. Duplicate your completed texture map layer (I tend to keep the original layer and turn visibility off), add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer and make it a child layer, duplicate the layer with it's child twice. On the top layer's child channel mixer, isolate the red by turning off the green & blue channel info, do the same for the second layer but isolate the green, repeat for the third layer but isolate the blue. Change the blend mode of the top 2 to add, this now displays the 3 layers the same as the original. You can now add a levels or any other adjustment as a child to the isolated channel. When you are happy you can merge these 3 layers back together and you should have the result you need. Yes I know its long winded and not ideal but until we get better channel editing it might help. Edit : There is also a quicker way by adding a levels adjustment to the original layer and changing from Master to R,G or B, this can be merged. (I forgot about this one 😀) I suppose it depends on how accurate you need to be and what your desired result is, I use channels a lot but not always in the same way.

I agree that TOC formatting is not as user friendly in 1.8.3. @GarryP, I struggled with this during the Mac Betas, this is a thread that I was struggling with, I needed to keep the TOC numbering exactly the same as the main text headings...long story but it was for a very special and emotional project. My case was just matching the colour and style of the numbering, I needed to change the formatting of TOC List Number, I based this on my number stye from the main text styles and it worked. The frustration came from trying to find a style in the TOC that was using numbers...there were none, the TOC was automatically pulling them through. I think that if they maintain this then at least the TOC should also pull through the formatting. Users should also be able to decide if they want to use bullets or numbers in a TOC. Sometimes this is needed in the main document but can lead to a cluttered TOC.

I don't know if this will help anybody but I do a huge amount of masking using various methods depending on the result I am looking for. I can easily combine many gradients in a single mask by nesting rectangles or any shape with a gradient applied, these gradients are fully editable and do not remove info from the original mask. You can also change the blend mode of each shape depending on your needs. To add the various gradient shapes they need to be dragged to the right of the Mask layer's thumbnail. You can also save gradients in the swatches panel, create a category then when you have a gradient that you want to keep click the add current fill to palette button, if you want to make it easier to identify your gradient rename it to something meaningful, then when you hover over the swatch the name shows, this can be really helpful if you have swatches that look similar. I am not saying that there isn't room for improvement with the gradient tool but there are ways to achieve what you are looking for, just that they may be different to what you are used to or expect. I have attached a very simple screenshot with a pink layer to highlight the different gradients in a single mask.You can also see the various saved gradients in the swatches panel. (dog image from Unsplash )

Hi Mark, I am running Sierra and this is working fine for me in 1.8.3, I did notice that it was a bit reluctant to restore when I first updated, a few more clicks and it worked fine and has done since then. The create new document from snapshot is also working well.

Hi @im140.6, after you have made your selection and placed your dog on a new layer, go back to the background layer and using something like the inpainting tool, remove the dog. Now apply the blur to the background. The halo is a result of the blur using pixels from the dog and spilling into the background. Lovely dog by the way 😀

I am just glad it worked for you, I came across this issue a while ago and tried different methods until I tried the custom colour option.

Hi, have you tried using the Edit>Fill, when the panel comes up select custom colour...this works for me on a Mac. It doesn't work if I try picking a colour from the Colour Panel or selecting Primary or Secondary colours in the Fill panel

That is because they are vector items, if you need to swap between stroke & fill the Keyboard Shortcut Shift X works for me on my Mac

Also it will need to be a pixel selection and the paint bucket tool selected. If it is a shape then the fill colours are for Fill or Stroke, not primary & secondary

I am sure that these improvements will come in time, considering the software is still in it's early years they are doing a very good job. There are lots of feature requests and improvements to be implemented so a little patience from users helps, I know it is difficult waiting for your particular feature or improvement 😀 Edit: We have received small improvements along the way regarding the refine panel, it is a lot better now than it used to be 😀

The refinement process should in theory, My experiences with it have been very positive. My workflow is very simple when cutting areas of an image, I select what I need from a higher resolution image with the selection brush, then I refine this selection...it sometimes needs a bit of further work with the foreground & background areas if the colours & tones are very similar between them, I use a very small brush for this sometimes only 3 or 4 pixels. I then export this as a mask. Further refinements are then done if needed...often they are not. One tip with the refinement panel, if the initial selection is good you might be better taking the tick out of the Matte Edges box, this will vary depending on the image. I often find that leaving it active will fade the edges a bit too much for a very small area, resulting in bleed. If I need to extract a very small item with no real fine detail such as the image you provided I use the Pen Tool, I go around the edges and then switch to the node tool for tweaking the curves. I then fill the curve and use it as a mask. The good thing about this is you can use the node tool again to further refine your edges.

Lol...more caffeine needed again, I was referring to the shortcuts to swap between them

They are under the miscellaneous section, this is at the bottom of the list