cgidesign

Preferences - dithering I knew. But not the export trick. Thanks!

That explains it 👍

@NathanC I just now saw your reply. I already made a new bug report for V2.

APh V2 trial on Window 10. Nividia GPU is set to 10 bit per channel output. Monitor supports 10 bit per channel. Issue: Images on the display shows banding in smooth gradients. This somtimes is inevitable in 8bit documents but should not be an issue with 16 bit and 32 bit documents. Assumption: Affinity does not support 10 per channel output to the display. I consider this being a bug not a feature request, because working with CG and VFX elements (e.g. 32 bit displacement maps for 3d rendering) requires to be see if such a texture has banding issues or not. As Affinity Photo is mentioned to suport 32 bit editing, the limitation to 8 bit output makes it impossible to know, if the banding is in the image data or just a result of the limited output to the display. Gray_16bit_V2.afphoto

Sorry, wrong file name while testing all variants in V1 and V2. Gray_16bit_V2.afphoto

Interesting to read about the Mac world. I think this summerizes my usage of the controller quite well 🙂

And it seems to be related to the zoom level? At around 25% zoom there is severe banding visible. At 100% it is better. In my opinion 10bit display output is another one of those basic things which professional graphics software should do correctly these days (when were 10/12bit monitors introduced to the marked - 10 years, 15 years ago?). [EDIT]: It is also borked with 32 bit documents. Gray_16bit_V2.afphoto

Can you post the document for cross checking? I am using APh for 32 bit compositing. So far it works with Open CL. But before I buy the update I like to check if there are situations where Open CL is still broken like in V1. So, I would be happy to test your file on my system.

+1

@loukash thanks for trying to help. I use the hardness drag already as a workaround. But I need to move my pen instead of letting the wheel on the controller do the adjustment (the controller can not replicate a mouse or pen move). So the painting process gets interrupted. Difficult to explain - but with the controller all adjusments are done by my left hand, painting strokes are all with the right hand. For me it is a very fluent process. With the workaround I need to mix the left hand and right hand for an adjustment. It is better than using the top bar but still an interruption. Flow is not available - which is a pity because I change that (and size) most often Opacity is not available - not so relevant for me as I don't change that often Nevertheless, if I would not have found the workaround already your input would have helped me.

Have you considered to make a new feature request in the Feedback Version 2 area of the forum? Maybe it helps, maybe not.

Thanks for having a keyboard shortcut system within you applications. To enhance its functionality I request to add keyboard shortcuts for Opacity, Flow and Hardness brush settings. Reason: Working with shortcuts is faster and more fluid than moving the mouse or pen to the UI tool bars. As Opacity, Flow and Hardness are frequently used settings while painting, the missing keyboard shortcuts are disturbing the workflow. Furthermore: In my case I switched from keyboard use to a remote controller. This allows me to map the shortcuts from Affinity to physical nobs and wheels on the controller. This makes working in the Applications more comfortable for me. Unfortunately I can't add the mentioned brush settings, which causes the controller workflow to be disturbed like the keyboard workflow.

For me mimicing the handling of a physical paper and pen with keyboard shortcuts in digital painting was something I never felt comfortable with (in any software). In the end I bought a remote controller device with physical nobs and rotating wheels. Now that I got used to it and the muscle memory catched up, I like painting a mask a lot more than before. I only wish (and of course wrote feature requests long ago) Flow, Opacity and Hardness would get keyboard shortcuts. If I had to decide between "configurable degree value for canvas rotation" and "Flow, Opacity, Hardness" I would choose the latter ones. Maybe it is time to write the feature request again - this time for version 2 😉

APh Version 2 Trial on Windows 10. The implementation of OCIO is so unfinished / wrong that it is not usable like it should be. Example of a correct OCIO implementation: Input ColorSpace: The color space the 32 exr render passes, video frames etc. are created by the render software or video editor etc. Display Device: The device category the content should be shown on. There can be multiple categories in a config. View: The color space the content should be shown as. Look: A dropdown to select a LUT to achive a desired artistic look Channels: selfexplainatory Exposure: selfexplainatory Gamma: selfexplainatory In Affinity Photo it looks like this: This UI does not allow to use OCIO in the way it was meant to be.

Thanks for the reply.

Welcome.

Yes.

I am not sure, but reading the online help, it seems you need to have either .RGB or .RGBA at the end of the Layers' name. From the help: "When exporting to OpenEXR format, converts layers with affixes—e.g. .RGB or .RGBA after the layer's name—back to multi channel data." In that case APhoto is creating one multi channel exr file with the respective layers included. That fits your example. Diffuse and Specular had RGB at the end. Those two are included in your exported exr. I think this is generally new in Version 2. If I remember it correctly, Version 1 was not able to export multi channel exr's. The user had to export each layer individually. Good that you posted this question, I would have missed this welcome change in V2. [EDIT]: I am wrong regarding Version 1. Multichannel is possible there as well. (Oh dear, I missed that totally - would have saved me some time in the past)

Chris a kind request: Please consider to browse through the forum again or make a special thread asking users to post speed issues with details. I follow the forum since V2 got released and even posted a few solution suggestions. I am sure there have been several threads where the uses wrote details about what is slow. I remember "switching from from layer to another", "just opening a dialogue box" and so on. This mentioning of "slow" etc. is really all over the place in the forum and often the users write that Open CL on / off does not make a difference. I think this "Affinity V2 is a slow and sluggish software" feeling that grows in the forum does not serve you well. For me V2 is faster than V1 and Open CL works (only one total app stall so far). So it seems the software in general can be fast, but to many user write V2 is slow while V1 on the same PC / MAC is not. There seems to be an issue beside the RAW load times.

APh V2 Trial on Windows 10. I have two images open in APh. I resized the floating windows to get them side by side manually. 1. Request: Make a feature to arrange floating windows automatically (side by side or on top of each other. -------------- I brought the right image to full size: 2. Request: Let me bring a docked full size window on top of a floating window. -------------- I made the right image a floating windows again but it forgot its former size and postion. 3. Request: Let me double click on the docked full size window (or add the common windows controls to their respective top bar when it is docked) and let it "jump" back to its previous size and position. 4. Or find an alternative solution that helps me not to do this endless, time consuming, workflow killing, frustration generating, postion and resize work over and over and over. Sorry, did 10 hours texturing work today where I needed at least two images and it felt like Affinity Photo had an evil fun fighting against me with its floating windows.

APh V2 Trial on Windows 10. I have two images open in APh. I resized the floating windows to get them side by side. 1. Question: Is there a feature to get a side by side view automatically? I am asking because this dragging and resizing is time consuming. -------------- I brought the right image to full size: 2. Question: Is there a way to bring the fullsize image into foreground without the need to minimize the floating window? -------------- I made the right image a floating windows again but it forgot its former size and postion. 3. Question: Is there a way to let the image remember its size and position? 4. Question: Am I missing features in APh to do this type of window arrangement in a better way than the one I showed?

Any news on this? At least something like "yes, there is something wrong, we will optimize it". Not sure to buy V2 if there is a now a similar issue in V2 like the never fixed GPU acceleration issue in V1.

Irony mode on. That's such a bad timing 🙂 Now people are coming here to have a look into the forum and find all those version 2 complaints.

Sorry, I don't have a rule of thumbs value for hardness and flow but your arm case might benefit from using the mask / selection refine feature of Affinity Photo. It is a bit complicated to understand first but once understood it is one of the really good features. This answer is just in case you have not yet discovered that refine exists. Maybe check this video:

One more hint. In your initial screenshot I see that your CPU is running at a very low frequency. This is oftern the case with notebooks on battery instead of being connected to wall power. Maybe you can speed up your CPU by editing the Windows power plan. See this thread where I wrote about it some time ago.