A_B_C

Alfred, you're a lovely and kind man. Always helping others and commenting and contributing. Thanks a lot!

If anyone had asked me short time ago what would I go for if ditching Photoshop for digital painting, my normal answer would have been "Affinity Photo". But then one day I found myself painting in Designer's pixel persona and loving it too! I'm faster every time and understand a bit better the brushes, which for whatever the reason have always been a bit of a hard to handle and tame subject matter for me in Serif products.
I am currently researching on different species for better and more effective workflows when it comes to science communication and illustration. This is an attempt to improve painting fur... More to come!
Full project including time-lapse here: : https://www.behance.net/gallery/93107969/Scientif-illustration-Mammals

 
UPDATE ON RESEARCH>  
So, now I am trying to replicate this craziness with the so called vector brushes in the Designer persona. I reckon the guy on the left needs a comb! hahaaha!!
Anyways.. one step at a time, I'll get him one. The one on the right is for comparing both versions side by side.
Brushes galore!!
 
 

Just quickly: I couldn’t find an answer to this question by trying different forum searches. Is it possible to copy or move a page from one document to another? Along with all guides and stuff? How do you do that? 
Thank you,
Alex 

Yes, please! Let us export workspace settings. 😀
It is really frustrating when you have to reset your main toolbar after each update. There must be a way to overcome this through copying some part of the preferences, but I recently haven’t had the time to investgate into this matter. Any suggestions? 

Toolbar customization reverted to defaults after the update to 1.8 or 1.8.1(not sure when it occurred) Tools and panels looking good, nothing touched. We really need workspace settings to be able to export.

Just to add this. There is also a standard macOS ghostscript installer available, created by Richard Koch, University of Oregon:
https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/
For people who don’t like to go through the command line. 😀

Official Affinity Photo Desktop Tutorials
We've got a brand new set of tutorials that follow a more structured approach and are sorted into logical categories. You can access them by following this link:
https://affinity.serif.com/tutorials/photo/desktop
Please note that the previous thread is now considered legacy and has been unpinned. The videos linked in the thread are also considered legacy—they will remain accessible (albeit unlisted) but ultimately my goal is to produce suitable replacements over time using the new studio setup with live mixing and picture-in-picture. There's been a clear increase in quality of teaching and production values since Affinity Photo was first released back in 2015, and we hope to continue this moving forward.
The videos listed at the above link are hosted on Vimeo. Alternatively, please find a list below with YouTube links:
Basics
UI overview New document with templates Light UI Open and save Placing images Pixel vs Image layers Moving, scaling and rotating Layers Advanced layer options Selecting layers Mask layers Undo, redo and history Exporting Resizing & resampling Canvas resizing RAW development Tool cycling Studio presets Hardware acceleration External file linking and Resource Manager Advanced
Adding lens profiles Manual lens corrections Keyboard and Mouse Brush Modifier Colour management Compression efficiency Channels Channels: Selections HDR merging HDR ghosts removal HDR from one exposure Liquify Stacking: Object removal Stacking: Noise reduction Stacking: Exposure blending Focus merging Panoramas RAW advanced development HDR/EDR workflow Macros 360 live editing OpenColorIO setup Blend modes Blend ranges LAB Infer LUT Importing and creating LUTs Luminosity masks from layers Masking vs clipping layers Paste/move inside Isolating layers Layer Z order and hierarchical view Linked layers Corrective & Retouching
Cropping Straightening Images Inpainting Haze removal Dodge, burn and sponge brush tools Clone brush tool Sky replacement Chromatic aberration reduction and defringing Creative Tools
Colour picker tool Gradient tool Paint mixer brush Selection refinement Fill layers Pen tool Bitmap pattern fills Selecting sampled colours Selection Brush Tool Freehand Selection Tool: Freehand, Polygonal and Magnetic modes Pattern layers Text on a path Custom brushes from layer selections Divide blend mode Filters & Adjustments
Curves Levels Masking adjustment layers Filters Live filter layers Displace filter Shadows/highlights Gradient map Denoising/Noise reduction Radial blur Clarity Channel mixer White balance Black & white adjustment Zoom blur Selective colour Procedural Texture: Tone Mapping HDR to SDR Procedural Texture: Nonlinear Transform Correction Affine filter: seamless textures Frequency Separation: Gaussian, Bilateral and Median blur methods Export Persona
Exporting slices Workflows & Techniques
PSD write-back and PSB import PSD smart object import Editing infrared photography Relighting 3D renders Using Matte ID render passes for masking Lock children (Masking) Editing metadata Retouching scanned line drawings Applying Blender Filmic looks Compositing 3ds Max and V-Ray render passes Frequency Separation: Retouching lens flares with Median method Frequency Separation: Portraiture retouching Perspective compositing Astrophotography
Astrophotography stacking: SHO composition Astrophotography stacking: One shot colour workflow Astrophotography stacking: Monochrome colour mapping Astrophotography stacking: LRGB composition Astrophotography stacking: HaRGB composition Astrophotography stacking: Bi-colour composition Astrophotography: Removing background gradients Astrophotography: Equalising colours Astrophotography: Sigma Clipping Astrophotography: File Groups and Filters  
Hope you find them useful!
James

Hi Truth42,

1.8.1 is now available through the AppStore which fixes the Undo/Redo issues mentioned. Could you attach a sample file of the objects that cause a crash when you attempt to divide them please?

Incidentally, we made a DMG file that you can run and follow the instructions to automatically patch the app for you... https://affinity-beta.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/download/PresetsFix.dmg
It seems there was a 'hiccup' on our build server and it has destroyed one file on the Mac App Store build, so we're building and deploying as soon as Apple can pass it through their store. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience 
Thanks for your patience,
Matt

(...)

(...)
 

A font file with CFF (PostScript) outlines should be named with a .otf extension. A font file with TrueType outlines can have either a .otf or a .ttf extension: the choice depends purely on whether or not you need backward compatibility (e.g. on older systems, or with previous versions of the font).

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (File Specific TOC Crash - may be due to section name) of the program in the latest customer beta. If you would like to try these changes the beta software is available in the forum posts listed below.
The latest beta builds are downloadable from links at the top of each of these beta forum posts.
Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.556 for Windows Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.556 for Mac These betas install parallel, next to the release version (they do not overwrite your release) and so the fixes can be tried in the beta without affecting your normal workflow in the release version.
Once these programs have been through a full beta process the change will be released in a future free 1.8.0 update/patch to all customers.

Nice to see Ben’s dynamic shapes entering the world of the arts …  ;)

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download ZIP: Download
Auto-update: Available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the third beta of Affinity Photo 1.8 for macOS.
Photo 1.8 is a significant change to the currently shipping 1.7 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.8 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.8 - we will release more builds before 1.8 ships. Things will be broken in this build - please use it to explore the new features and not for real work.
If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.8. 
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks (as always),
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- PSD smart object improvements.
- RAW camera support improvements.
- Double click to edit embedded docs from layers panel.
- New samples
- CMYK TIFF import improvements.
- Help improvements.
- Localisation improvements.
- Numerous small fixes.
 
Changes Since 1.7
 
- PSD smart object import support (enable in preferences).
- Reference presets for the Pro Display XDR are now supported properly.
- Filter effects now support high intensity colours in 32bit mode.
- Embedded document fixes.
- New stock brushes (your custom brushes will not be lost).
- New document panel tweaks.
- Text field expression improvements.
- Improved RAW support (Serif Labs).
- Improved handling of RAW files when using batch processing.
- Improved channels panel behaviour when disabling alpha.
- Numerous other smaller fixes and improvements.
- Overhauled the “File -> New” dialog - user templates are now supported.
- Implemented unified toolbar for appropriately modern macOS versions.
- Updated PANTONE palettes to include new Solid and Bridge sets.
- Renamed EXIF panel to Metadata and added support for user-editable fields, including IPTC).
- Added ability to read metadata from an XMP sidecar file (enable in Preferences).
- Added native CR3 support to the SerifLabs RAW engine.
- Added a new lens profile selector to Develop.
- Reimplemented the HSL filter's HSV option.
- Improved quality & file size of results when exporting JPEG.
- Switching to a mask node will now automatically switch to the grey colour slider.
- Improved lens correction of RAW files coming from lenses with fixed focal length.
- Improved unsharp mask “threshold” slider.
- Improved selection refinement performance & quality.
- Improved the noise reduction filter result when applied to JPEGs.
- Improved precision of Gaussian algorithm (to reduce banding).
- Improved reporting of file load errors (could previously report file corruption incorrectly).
- Improved performance of operations with large selections.
- Improved memory use with alternate futures and when replacing image layers.
- Improvements to Photoshop plugin support, notably for DxO plugins (but also for many others).
- Fixed Styles to show styles that would normally be invisible.
- Fixed crash when loading some corrupt JPEGs (valid image data, but corrupt following data).
- Fixed deletion of brushes / styles / etc. not reducing disk usage correctly.
- Fixed PSD export of hidden layers.
- Fixed angle cursors when the view has been rotated.
- Fixed “Create Palette” from CMYK images resulting in RGB colours.
- Fixed Pixel Selection appears incorrectly when started near page edge.
- Fixed rasterising a fill layer goes wrong after changing document size.
- Fixed Marquee Selection not constraining to a square if you drag across the right diagonal.
- Fixed mis-identification of some Tamron lenses mounted to Canon bodies.
- Fixed failure to load some PSB files (and failing to report errors).
- Fixed missing EXIF data for CRWs.
- Fixed crash importing PSD files containing embedded colour profiles with unicode characters in their names.
- Assorted other small fixes and improvements.
- Localisation improvements.
To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this beta notification thread 
To be notified when this update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo customers, please follow this release notification thread

Status: Beta
Purpose: Stability and General Testing
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Publisher
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download: Download
Auto-update: Available
---
Hi,
We are pleased to announce that a new Customer Beta of Affinity Publisher (1.8.0.556) is now available as a download from the link above.
As this is a 'Stability and General Testing' beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity where you may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 
We hope you enjoy the beta, and as always, if you've got any problems installing or running up, please don't hesitate to post in this thread. 
Any problems actually using this version please make a new topic in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Please feel free to leave general suggestions and comments in the Discussion Forum. 
Many thanks for your continued feedback.
---
Known issues
We are aware that the text ruler cannot be 'turned off' in this build. This will be resolved in the next update.
---
Fixes and Updates
Misc
'New Document' dialog improvements
Move Keyboard Shortcut Preferences for Studio Panels from 'Misc' to 'View' menu
Fix for fitting in Picture Frames with additional non-picture content
Focal point logic now works for Select and Node tools
Unit entry expression parser improvements
Margins weren't scaled on document resize
Transform Panel now updates with document DPI change
(Mac) Fix for Layer Effects showing wrong blend mode
(Win) Changing Gamma UI preference could incorrectly cause Tools Toolbar to enable
Text
Further optimisations to improve speed of text entry in longer documents
Paragraph Decorations line style was not scaling with document correctly
Paragraph Decorations transparency pop-up had no gradient options
Spelling options pre-populated with the last result after "learn"
Find and Replace
Added RegEx option ‘Dot matches Paragraph Break’, off by default.
- This may affect the behaviour of existing RegEx if the option is left switched off
Added RegEx option ‘Single Line Mode’, off by default
TOC
Fix for the list number part of TOC entries that have numbered headings
Preflight
Missing fonts entry wasn't jumping to Font Manager
Import
Fixes for IDML lists import
Fixes for IDML import with tables overlapping
Fix for PDF import of 'Maestro' font (and similar)
Specific EPS file was crashing on open
Export
PDF / SVG Export Presets reorganised
'Downsample Above' option was not sticking
Updated Help and Translations
---
To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this notification thread 
To be notified when this Publisher update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Publisher customers, please follow this thread

We have made fixes/improvements to this area (IDML Shift+Tab not imported correctly) of the program in the latest customer beta. If you would like to try these changes the beta software is available in the forum posts listed below.
The latest beta builds are downloadable from links at the top of each of these beta forum posts.
Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.556 for Windows Affinity Publisher 1.8.0.556 for Mac These betas install parallel, next to the release version (they do not overwrite your release) and so the fixes can be tried in the beta without affecting your normal workflow in the release version.
Once these programs have been through a full beta process the change will be released in a future free 1.8.0 update/patch to all customers.
Comment from the Developer
 

Hi all,
I logged this issue with our developers. 

Thank you, I thought there was a good Mac installer around, but didn’t remember where. As a known name in the TeX community I’m sure we can trust Richard Koch. (I still prefer the command line way, since I use a lot of “ports” anyway and can update all of them automatically.)

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download ZIP: Download
Auto-update: Available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the second beta of Affinity Photo 1.8 for macOS.
Photo 1.8 is a significant change to the currently shipping 1.7 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.8 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.8 - we will release more builds before 1.8 ships. Things will be broken in this build - please use it to explore the new features and not for real work.
If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.8. 
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks (as always),
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- PSD smart object import support (enable in preferences).
- Reference presets for the Pro Display XDR are now supported properly.
- Filter effects now support high intensity colours in 32bit mode.
- Embedded document fixes.
- New stock brushes (your custom brushes will not be lost).
- New document panel tweaks.
- Text field expression improvements.
- Improved RAW support (Serif Labs).
- Improved handling of RAW files when using batch processing.
- Improved channels panel behaviour when disabling alpha.
- Numerous other smaller fixes and improvements.
 
Changes Since 1.7
- Overhauled the “File -> New” dialog - user templates are now supported.
- Implemented unified toolbar for appropriately modern macOS versions.
- Updated PANTONE palettes to include new Solid and Bridge sets.
- Renamed EXIF panel to Metadata and added support for user-editable fields, including IPTC).
- Added ability to read metadata from an XMP sidecar file (enable in Preferences).
- Added native CR3 support to the SerifLabs RAW engine.
- Added a new lens profile selector to Develop.
- Reimplemented the HSL filter's HSV option.
- Improved quality & file size of results when exporting JPEG.
- Switching to a mask node will now automatically switch to the grey colour slider.
- Improved lens correction of RAW files coming from lenses with fixed focal length.
- Improved unsharp mask “threshold” slider.
- Improved selection refinement performance & quality.
- Improved the noise reduction filter result when applied to JPEGs.
- Improved precision of Gaussian algorithm (to reduce banding).
- Improved reporting of file load errors (could previously report file corruption incorrectly).
- Improved performance of operations with large selections.
- Improved memory use with alternate futures and when replacing image layers.
- Improvements to Photoshop plugin support, notably for DxO plugins (but also for many others).
- Fixed Styles to show styles that would normally be invisible.
- Fixed crash when loading some corrupt JPEGs (valid image data, but corrupt following data).
- Fixed deletion of brushes / styles / etc. not reducing disk usage correctly.
- Fixed PSD export of hidden layers.
- Fixed angle cursors when the view has been rotated.
- Fixed “Create Palette” from CMYK images resulting in RGB colours.
- Fixed Pixel Selection appears incorrectly when started near page edge.
- Fixed rasterising a fill layer goes wrong after changing document size.
- Fixed Marquee Selection not constraining to a square if you drag across the right diagonal.
- Fixed mis-identification of some Tamron lenses mounted to Canon bodies.
- Fixed failure to load some PSB files (and failing to report errors).
- Fixed missing EXIF data for CRWs.
- Fixed crash importing PSD files containing embedded colour profiles with unicode characters in their names.
- Assorted other small fixes and improvements.
- Localisation improvements.
To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this beta notification thread 
To be notified when this update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo customers, please follow this release notification thread

Anyway, sorry all for being away, I've been focusing so much in these last few months on self improvement, experimenting and all sorts of things. And my workflow has become very much an organic exchange between Designer and Photo. I've always wanted to explore how much Photo can be an alternative to Photoshop for digital painting (Designer kills Illustrator in my opinion), and the fact I can switch so easily between the two programs has urged me to find solutions for digital painting as well. 
It is getting there, there are a few things that should be addressed, but I'd say that one can do about 90% of things that one can do on Photoshop, but with the bonus of this Designer-Photo synergy, without considering costs etc. I hopefully will expand more on this later, but I'll start with the "end" - as it is a style I've been trying out lately. 
Here we have a balance of say, 7% Photo and 25% Designer. More soon, as this forum means a lot as I know that people know what I'm talking about in terms of cross-software use, which means a lot to me!
 
 

Created these two last week as part of a current project I'm working on. It's done fully on Affinity Designer with a mixed workflow of vectors and bitmaps. 

Interesting concepts, thomaso! 😀
 

Interesting screenshot, it seems in Windows the default preset speed is different than in macOS, at least according to the position of the white line below. Nevertheless, you still have some blue reserve left; in case you want it pop up earlier just move it far to the left. In my trial then it pops up immediately.
I agree to the recognition and reading speed of your pattern sample. But I doubt most users would like to be limited to single letters as master page names. So I think the approach to show the master names permanently at the page icons would demand much space for this texts. Therefore I would appreciate a colored page icon edge (stripe or square) as indicator at master and document pages.
As Wovsen mentioned, it appears more useful to make master pages relating to each other than applying many masters to document pages. However, color code might even handle this, e.g. ...:

This kind also could be used for section marking, either with specific colors only or shape or position.