[How to Edit the Alpha Channel]

1 minute ago, DeepShader said:

I'm confused..

 

Yes, I understand your point, but two things:

 

1.) I think Affinity Photo is (sadly) interested in end-consumer only. Maybe a semi-professional market. I hoped Serif would use the chance to push Photoshop down, but it seems that this is not interesting for Serif (just have a look how much stuff is missing, if you would fully compare to Photoshop).

 

2.) You can easily create a transparent graphic in Affinity Photo. Or what do you specially mean?

 

 

Just to be clear: I wish I could replace Adobe products with the Affinity line up, but I can't, because of things like that and as I mention before, this is not the only missing feature for (full) professional work. But as I said.. that's not the main goal for Serif - I think.

yeah that's unfortunate, because in many many ways it thrashes photoshop and even recently I've noticed adobe has started copying many of its features, but the alpha channel functionality baffles me. In photoshop I can just paste straight into the alpha channel, I can even just paint into it - this makes sense. I don't get how you do this in Affinity, if you even can its super un-intuitive, like i say this seems like basic paint software functionally to me, I don't see how Serif thinks its not an issue.

I wish I could tell everyone I know to buy Affinity, but it's incredibly hard to do simple things, and then by the same token some of its features are light years ahead of adobe - its a totally bizzare piece of software. Maybe in a few years it may be super good, but it just holds me up at the minute

[Saving a file]

not what I'm seeing open a file export to TIFF tick save affinity layers. Add a layer then try to save

it won't save it as a TIFF

[Saving a file]

open a TIFF file, add a layer and hit ctrl S, it will prompt you to save an afphoto file

[How to Edit the Alpha Channel]

for example 

47 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

@efflam & @tazcebula

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

Agreed, but that has not been our target market so far, sorry. Better tools to edit the alpha channel directly will be needed before Affinity Photo would be more suitable for the parts of the games industry that reply on TGA-alpha for texture storage. I would not say it "makes no sense at all", it's just not right for your particular use.

for example what If I as an artist wanted to create a transparent graphic, do you understand how hard that currently is, try that in Photoshop and you'll immediately see the issue with Affinity

[How to Edit the Alpha Channel]

54 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

@efflam & @tazcebula

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

Agreed, but that has not been our target market so far, sorry. Better tools to edit the alpha channel directly will be needed before Affinity Photo would be more suitable for the parts of the games industry that reply on TGA-alpha for texture storage. I would not say it "makes no sense at all", it's just not right for your particular use.

You know I don't agree with that and I stick by what I said - it makes no sense at all, I was actually pointing out that it was a problem for game dev, but its a problem for anyone who wishes to use transparency, especially any kind of developer and currently the way it works in Affinity Photo is an absolute joke to be honest. I'm a developer and I'm surprised how badly it has been implemented especially considering how easy it would be to implement. At this stage I'm not sure what the point of the alpha channel is, and sorry if I come across as being harsh, but it is pretty useless currently and if there is some magical way of putting it to use, it is in dire need of UAT, alpha channels are an industry standard its got nothing to do with our particular use case at all.

[Saving a file]

Sorry if this has already been brought up.  When I open a file type eg TGA/TIFF if I then modify that file and hit Ctrl S to save it - affinity tries to save it as an afphoto file, it should surely save it as the original file type over the original file.

[How to Edit the Alpha Channel]

This is a massive issue, so much so that I'm going back to Photoshop - sorry I can't wait for you guys to sort it out, why on earth can you not edit alpha channels - it makes no sense at all.  This is a basic requirement for game dev.