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LongtimePhotoshopUser

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Everything posted by LongtimePhotoshopUser

  1. Precisely, TomM1. The reason why all of my current plugins -- Eye Candy 7, Xenofex 2, Filter Forge, more than a dozen Flaming Pear plugins, Topaz Labs Glow plugin, and SuperPNG -- work with Adobe Photoshop CS6, is because their developers did the hard work, and figured out how to make them work with Photoshop. They put in the hours. Perhaps I am wrong, but the impression I am getting on this forum is that perhaps Serif may not have that same level of motivation when it comes to making Affinity Photo compatible with Adobe-style plugins. If that is the case, then as I have said before, they are going to lose a huge number of potential Affinity Photo users who depend heavily on Adobe-compatible plugins to do their daily graphic work. Personally, over the years, I have spent thousands of dollars on Photoshop and Photoshop-compatible plugins. I am not going to sacrifice all of that time and money, and all of the plugins I enjoy working with, for a product -- no matter how shiny it may look -- where none of my plugins fully work, if at all. That just doesn't make sense, in my view. Adobe has years of experience in the graphics market. Their products are rock solid, and they work. So I think that R C-R's comments are a bit blown out of proportion. Photoshop is not the old buggy that he seems to think. Thousands -- if not millions -- of happy Photoshop users are testament to that.
  2. Well, I'd say that we have pretty much driven this issue into the ground. The problems with Filter Forge, Eye Candy 7, and all of the other Photoshop-compatible plugins that I use, is clearly related to a partial implementation of the Adobe plugin SDK in Affinity Photo. Only Serif can do something about it, if they want to. I've already made my position clear. No complete Adobe plugin compatibility, no Affinity Photo purchase on my end.
  3. I assume you mean something like the following. If this is indeed what you are saying -- I am not really sure -- Filter Forge is still not giving the desired results, even when I do this: 1. Create a new Affinity Photo document. 2. Choose "Elliptical Marquee Tool". 3. Go to "Colour" pane and choose a color. 4. Use "Flood Fill Tool" to make the circle from step 2 blue. 5. Choose Select > Selection from Layer". 6. Choose Select > Refine Edges > Output > Selection > New layer with mask. 7. Choose Filter > Plugins > Filter Forge > Filter Forge. 8. Upon doing this, FF fills the entire layer, just like before , and not just the circle in the layer. In fact, when I do all of the above, right before I select the FF plugin, the circle is not even selected in the layer if I do step 6. And, as I have already made clear, if I do step 5 and skip step 6, then FF won't even launch. I even tried reversing the selection so that it includes the whole layer, but not the circle in it. Again, FF refuses to launch. So, clearly, the issue is with selections, as we have amply discussed before.
  4. Thank you, but they have already been informed, and in fact have already responded as well. Please read further back in this thread where I quote their responses to me. Thanks!
  5. That is indeed the bottom line. There is only so much that the FF team can do to make Filter Forge compatible with Affinity Photo. Not to drag the horse through the mud, but in this case, I am convinced that the onus is really on Serif at this point. They are the ones who appear to be dragging their feet about this. If what I've been told is correct -- that is, that they are developing their own plugin system -- if it does not include full Adobe SDK compatibility, then they've lost me as a potential customer. I am not about to learn a whole new plugin system, or go out and try to find plugins that do the same thing as my Adobe plugins, when I am already very comfortable with Photoshop and my Photoshop plugins. I would rather just bite the bullet and pay Adobe $20/month, and thus avoid that hassle altogether.
  6. Yes, I can certainly confirm what you are saying. I've been a solid Mac user since 1990, so I am fully aware of how with many Windows developers, building apps for the Macintosh is just an afterthought, and a way to increase their revenue stream. I have come across so many apps over the years where there has not been a Mac-compatible version; and often, even when there is, it is seriously lacking, compared to the Windows version of the same product. As I said, they want to milk Mac customers, but without really putting their heart into development, either because they are just being lazy and selfish, or because they lack the skill to really make a great Mac-oriented product. And, yes, when it comes to commercial apps, there is definitely dishonesty on both sides of the fence. Some unscrupulous developers will say anything -- even if it is a partial truth -- in order to snag a few more users in their net. So, in this case, yes, I would have to agree that both Serif and Filter Forge are not being completely above board regarding this issue.
  7. Ashf, that is not very reassuring. It is their product, but if it turns out that they are not going to fully support Adobe-compatible plugins, then I think they are shooting themselves in the foot. I don't need to tell you that many thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people use Adobe products and Adobe-compatible plugins every single day. In my view, to not include full Adobe plugin SDK support in Affinity Photo is to ignore a huge potential market. And that starts with me. As a longtime Photoshop user who has a very established Photoshop workflow, switching to Affinity Photo is hard enough. As I've already said, not being able to use any of my Adobe-compatible plugins is just putting the nail in the coffin.
  8. Well, as far as I can tell, there is not much that Alien Skin can do about it as long as Affinity Photo does not fully adhere to Adobe's plugin SDK standard. The bottom line for me at least, is that I cannot seriously consider switching to Affinity Photo until the Affinity Photo development team seriously addresses this issue. I use Eye Candy 7, Xenofex 2, Filter Forge, more than a dozen Flaming Pear plugins, Topaz Labs Glow plugin, and SuperPNG on a regular basis in Adobe Photoshop. None of them work fully or completely in Affinity Photo, if at all. So, while I could save $200/year by switching to Affinity Photo, at this point, switching would seriously cripple my daily graphic work. As I said, it is a very nice program, but in my view, it is just too early for the Affinity Photo development team to be making the claim -- as they do -- that Affinity Photo is Photoshop plugins compatible, when it is clearly not. In fact, I would dare say that it is a dishonest selling point to even make such a claim.
  9. For those of you who are interested, I heard from Alien Skin again regarding their Eye Candy 7 plugin. Once again they confirmed what I already knew. That is, that the problem lies with the Affinity Photo app, and NOT with their plugin. They also confirmed that the above instructions are for a Windows machine, and NOT for a Macintosh user, such as Glicky and I. Here is what they had to say:
  10. Glicky, I communicated with their help desk yesterday and earlier today, and fully explained the problem to them. Their response was the following. I tried out their suggestion, but it does not work on my iMac. I told them what happened after I tried their suggested method, and am now waiting to hear from them again. Here is what they suggested:
  11. Glicky, before you get excited about trying to use Eye Candy 7 in Affinity Photo, please take note of what I said above. That is, that Eye Candy's window is all monochrome, so you can't even tell what you are doing. Yes, you can apply effects, but you will really be working in the dark. Here is a screen capture that I took. I hope it shows up here:
  12. Glicky, I don't know what platform you are on, but on my 27" 2017 5K iMac, after properly installing Eye Candy 7 in Affinity Photo's "Preferences" pane, you should see a new entry under Affinity Photo's Filters > Plugins menu which says Alien Skin > Eye Candy 7. Once you select Eye Candy 7 in the menu, it will bring up a separate window for Eye Candy, just as it does in Photoshop. Again, this is how it works on a Macintosh. I don't know about Windows machines. It may behave differently.
  13. John, I see that you are on a Windows machine. However, that is NOT true, at least not on a Mac running Affinity Photo. As I explained in the other thread, on the Mac, unless you specify a selection, in either Photoshop or Affinity Photo, Filter Forge will apply the effect to the entire layer. You HAVE to use the select tool if you only want Filter Forge to apply the effect to part of the layer. This applies to both rasterized text layers, as well as to layers containing images. To reiterate, Filter Forge applies its effects to the entire layer, unless you specify otherwise with the select tool. Look at the images that FirstDefence posted in the other thread. It is as clear as day.
  14. FirstDefense, thank you for providing the images so that John can see exactly what I am talking about. I see that you are also working on a Mac. I would expect Filter Forge to work the exact same way in Affinity Photo. But, as I have already explained, it most definitely does not. In fact, it won't even launch if you make a specific selection in a layer. It will only launch and work properly if you DON'T specify a selection, and let it add the effect to the entire layer, which, as you know, we don't always want to happen.
  15. I don't know what platform you are on, John -- I am on an iMac running Mojave -- but, yes, that is exactly what happens, and what needs to happen. I don't know how much experience you have with Filter Forge, but with the Mac version at least, if you invoke one of Filter Forge's filters, it applies the filter to the entire area of the layer. In other words, the chosen effect fills the entire area of the layer. That is, unless you specify a specific object/element in that layer. So, if I have a transparent layer with an image of a person in it, and I only want Filter Forge to apply an effect to the image of the person, and not fill the entire layer with the effect, then, yes, I need to select just the image of that person. Furthermore, if I want to apply the Filter Forge effect to just a part of the image of that person, then I need to select just that part of the image of the person before applying the effect. This is how Filter Forge works in Adobe Photoshop CS6 extended on my 2017 5K iMac. In the case of a text layer, I have to rasterize the text first, and then select the text, before applying the Filter Forge effect. Just as with the previous example, if I don't select the text first, then Filter Forge will apply the effect to the entire area of the layer. All of this makes perfect sense to me, because it allows me to apply an effect to just a certain part of a layer, whether it is an object or text; so I don't understand why you find it unreasonable. I would expect Filter Forge to work the exact same way in Affinity Photo, and it would seem that it tries to do that, except for the fact that if I select something in a layer, Filter Forge won't even launch/run, when I select it under Affinity Photo's "Filters" menu. As I already explained, if I don't specifically select anything in the layer in Affinity Photo, then Filter Forge does indeed launch, but it applies the effect to the entire layer, which is not what I want in every case. So, I have to agree with the Filter Forge team when they state that the reason that Filter Forge is not working properly in Affinity Photo on my iMac, is because the Affinity Photo team is not fully adhering to Adobe's SDK plugin standard. They can't say that Affinity Photo is compatible with Photoshop-style plugins, if they don't properly and fully implement Adobe's SDK in Affinity Photo. And that is the root of the problem, as far as I can tell.
  16. John, apparently Filter Forge works a little differently on a Windows machine than it does on my iMac. As I already said, if I select a particular element in a layer and then invoke FF, it won't even launch. So in my case, there is no error message whatsoever. Furthermore, we should not have to copy the selection to a new layer, even if it does work that way, at least on your Windows machine. This needs to be fixed. I cannot entertain the possibility of switching to Affinity Photo until my plugins are able to work with it. I have made over 4,000 images using these particular plugins in Photoshop, and I occasionally update them as well. So again, my plugins not working in Affinity Photo is a show stopper for me.
  17. Well, after posting the previous message, I posted the following message on the Filter Forge support forum: The Filter Forge developers just responded to me with the following: So based on what they said, the problem seems to be that Infinity Photo does not strictly adhere to Adobe's plugin SDK format. That is why some plugins -- such as Filter Forge -- will work in Adobe Photoshop, but not in Affinity Photo. So apparently, the problem needs to be fixed on the Affinity Photo side.
  18. Hello. Thank you for your response. Yes, I am aware of that setting and have already set it to "large" hours ago. However, I think you already surmised that that is not what I am talking about. I was referring to the "Artistic Text Tool" and the list of available fonts which is displayed when you use that tool. As you may know, in Photoshop, you can adjust the size of the display list quite large, so that you can see what the fonts will actually look like in a layer. In contrast, in Affinity Photo, there is no preference -- at least I couldn't find one -- to make the display list a larger point size. They are a rather small, fixed point size so that you really can't see the beauty of each font before using it. BTW, I am running the Affinity Photo trial on a 27" iMac running Mojave 10.14.6. Also, using a secondary font viewer defeats the purpose. The idea is to have everything right there in front of you, and not be distracted by having to open other apps. That is in fact one reason why I don't like certain PS plugins. That is, because they open a secondary modal window on your screen, which you have to switch to in order to implement some effect. Anyway, I would request then that the Affinity Photo developer seriously consider giving us the ability to adjust the point size in the font list. Thank you! UPDATE: Well how about that! I just discovered that if you use the "Artistic Text Tool" to create a new text layer, and then hover and scroll over the available fonts in the font list menu, the text in the text layer automatically changes to show you what it will look like as you scroll up or down the list. Even Adobe Photoshop CS6 doesn't do that. So I am impressed. I think I like Affinity Photo's font display method better than Photoshop's method, although they are both good.
  19. Hello, as a longtime Photoshop user, and one who is getting old, and who has poor vision, I enjoy the fact that I can enlarge the font display list to a larger size in Photoshop, so that I can see exactly what each font will look like before I actually use it. Sadly, it appears that with Affinity Photo, this is not so. The font list on the top left side of the window is way too tiny for my poor eyes, and I see nothing in the preferences which will allow me to change it. If there is a way to make the fonts in the list larger, and I am just missing it, please let me know. On the other hand, if there is currently no way to make the font list larger, I would hope that you will consider implementing this sometime in the near future. Thank you.
  20. Well, I re-installed Filter Forge in Affinity Photo on my 27" iMac, as per the above instructions, and I am still having problems. Here is what I did: 1. Open .psd document in Affinity Photo. 2. Use the "Flood Select Tool" on a layer, followed by the "Invert Pixel Selection" under the "Select" menu to select a specific element in the layer. 3. Select Plugins/Filter Forge/Filter Forge. 4. Filter Forge refuses to launch. In contrast, if I choose a layer, but don't select a specific element in that layer, Filter Forge will launch, and it will apply the effect. However, it applies the effect to the entire layer, and NOT just to the element in the layer. So the question is, why does Filter Forge refuse to launch when I select a specific element in the layer on which to apply a Filter Forge effect? Am I selecting an element the wrong way perhaps? Is there a better way to do it? This is my first day using Affinity Photo. UPDATE: Okay, I just tried to select an element in a layer a different way. Instead of using the "Flood Select Tool", I discovered that I can just use the "Selection From Layer" option under the "Select" menu. But I still get the same result. Filter Forge will not launch once an element is selected.
  21. I second that. I need Eye Candy 7, Filter Forge, Flaming Pear plugins and Topaz Glow plugin working properly in the Mac version of Affinity Photo before I can really seriously consider switching to Affinity Photo as my default image editor.
  22. That's a bummer. I just wrote to Alien Skin about Eye Candy 7 about an hour ago due to it not working properly in Affinity Photo. I imagine that they will give me the same answer that they gave you, TomM1. I use Eye Candy a lot too in the Mac version of Photoshop CS6 extended, so I hope that Affinity Photo compatibility is forthcoming.
  23. I just started trying out Affinity Photo this morning on my 27" iMac running Mojave 10.14.6, after having used Adobe Photoshop for many years. Eye Candy 7 is one of the plugins that I use in Photoshop. I can indeed confirm that Eye Candy 7 has some serious issues with Affinity Photo. While it will apply affects, in the actual Eye Candy editor window, everything is black, and there are other interface problems. As a result, because the element you are working on is black, and the effect you apply also shows up as black, you can't tell what it is going to look like until after you close the Eye Candy window. Furthermore, it applies the effects destructively on the same layer, unlike in Photoshop where a new separate layer is created. In short, if you don't like the effect, then you have to use the "undo plugin" option under Affinity Photo's "Edit" menu. I wrote to Alien Skin this morning to see if they plan on making Eye Candy 7 completely compatible with Affinity Photo. I hope so, because I use the plugin heavily. Filter Forge also has some issues with Affinity Photo. If I select an element in one of my layers, and then apply a Filter Forge effect, the effect is applied to the entire layer, and not just to the element I have selected with the "Flood Select" tool.
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