GFS

😊 Amazing that there's anything really. The last vs was produced in '97. There are so many things which it did so well and that are still unmatched today. Example: Imagine taking a 300megapixel 16-bit tiff, then, using a brush of 500megapixel size, distort your image in a single smooth, gentle brush-stroke... and ... the distortion is applied as you paint/brush in real-time. The instant you lift your brush, it's done. Even if you take your brush and do a frantic squiggle back and forth, it's done instantly. Not even a seconds pause. Instant.

Live Picture, by Live Picture (a bunch of recently graduated students). It was essentially a compositing software, which was conceived to be able to do on a Mac, what was until then, done in *extremely* expensive retouching houses, as they moved away from manual retouching (transparencies, scalpels, bleach and tiny-brush+ink). These large installations were pixel-pushers with the actual computers themselves in separate rooms due to their size and required air-conditioning. Typically 2x ~2metre cube sized units, on the floor. Cost ~£2million late80s + 1 year operator training. Cost to client ~£500 per hour. Obviously their use was almost 100% advertising. It was pretty crazy, i.e. loony.. to think it could be done on a Mac back then, but 2 years mathematical thinking, followed by 2 years programming and there it was. No other app has ever come close to what it could do, even though the patents have been over for a while. Happy to expand if anyone is interested.

Well, sort of. But as you can see, it paints like a pixel brush and not a vector brush. However, if you want to use your painting as a vector 'shape' with handles, then it makes a vector shape, with points/handles, from the paint. You can choose how exact you want the shape... how many pixels per point. However, it leaves the brushed paint untouched, with its normal stencil/mask. Basically ... think of every variation and it does it. Did I mention it's also unbelievably fast? 😊

As I pointed out ... it's a very old app. Back in those days, the UI wasn't as sophisticated as now, but yes you could manipulate your vector mask in the same way as today. Actually ... it is in fact a vector as you paint. Not in the sense you are used to, but it is a vectorial description and the only pixels involved are produced in order to draw it on the screen, as a UI description of the vectors.

Indeed I am. As I mentioned... it is all vectors except for screen-draw. The clip doesn't show working from a selection, but it's exactly the same. I could just make a selection and it would automatically be: mask / stencil / vectorial. Can AFP make paint into a vectorial mask/stencil, by dragging the mask icon?

Seems Windows 10 has issues with mp4. ( https://videoconvert.minitool.com/video-converter/windows-10-cant-play-mp4.html ) I've uploaded a .mov vs, which is 10x larger... but maybe it'll work. Mask-Stencil-mov Otherwise maybe you could try a different browser.

That's pretty weird.. What OS are you on? For me it just goes on loop in the forum software. (Quite annoying actually). Try this: Mask-Stencil

Actually ... it is entirely vector based. There are absolutely no pixels involved apart from screen-drawing/representation.

I'm showing what I could do in an app, almost 30 years ago. Yes, as you can see, paint already has a mask, made as you paint, which can instantly be toggled between a stencil and a mask and also drag-copied to any other layer, as a stencil and a mask. It's instant. It's easy. It's automatic. It's a good method. The point of this thread, is that this cannot be done in AF apps.

Almost 30 years ago... My demo's a little confusing, because I'm trying to show how versatile this is. (I made it a long time ago) Anyway ... you get the point. This is making a mask from a brush stroke, and/or a drag-shape, then toggling it between Stencil/Mask and copying from one layer to another. Basically it can do everything we could want, very easily. Almost 30 years ago...

I started working with selections automatically as vectors/masks/stencils in 1995. Just sayin'.

Ahhh... stumped. Thanks for the info Walt. FWIW... Time Machine has saved the day once again, in the short term. 1.10.1 works fine.

I have a retail purchase. I bought it on the Mac App Store. I've run the betas frequently in the past. Particularly in the early days. The question is... how do I get Affinity Photo to recognise that my purchase is installed ... and even running??? Yes, I downloaded 1.9.3 from Serif website and ran it as a Trial. Yes.

I bought Affinity Photo in 2015 from the Mac App Store. (I have the email receipt) I can't remember when, but quite some time ago it stopped being recognised by Affinity Photo's account process, which appears during update. I'm not interested in the extras, so I just carried on regardless. Unfortunately!!! I now find with the update to 1.10.3 that AFP has a major problem and is crashing constantly. Simply opening the Export As... dialog, crashes the app. So... I downloaded the current beta, to see if it would work. It is asking me for an Account ID and a Product key. I'm guessing that I've never had a product key, since I purchased through the Mac App Store. So I'm stuck in a vicious circle. It doesn't recognise the Mac App Store vs as being installed even though I have it open/running!!! Could someone please tell me how I can get AFP (and perhaps AFD which I also have) to recognise the Mac App Store purchases? My client would be very grateful if I could send him his images today! (Okay... I got around the exporting by downloading 1.9.3... but still).

As I noted, you can alter metadata in a RAW file, which theoretically may be a problem, however, you cannot edit/alter the image itself.

You never alter a RAW. You can't. I think it may be a common misconception, where people make copies so as to leave the original 'untouched', but in fact, the original is always untouched. RAW editors are always using 'sidecar' files, it's just that you don't see them. The argument for sidecar to be kept alongside a RAW, is that metadata could, in theory, corrupt a file. However, if you are using a DAM like Aperture, or Apple Photos, then all of those bits and pieces are indeed kept separately... but out of sight. So for example, in Photos, you can make duplicates of your RAW, to have different looks, but secretly there is still only 1 RAW which just sits there, unaltered. You'd notice that they have the same name. Aperture was more professional with its UI and made Versions instead of Duplicates... as many as you wanted. But there was still only 1 RAW.

About 90% of my work in the last 10 years, involves focus stacking. I used Helicon for years. It's a good app, but AFP is superior for focus stacking. With Helicon, I always had to spend time 'cleaning up' the stack manually. This is sometimes very hard to get right with Helicon and you are sometimes working with using 2 or 3 stacks made with different settings, in order to use the best bits of each. The bug described by John Rostron in this thread re: AFP focus stacking (Focus Merge) is is an annoying waste of time and is representative of other areas of AFP, where bugs just linger on... My only criticism of AFP Focus Merge (aside from this bug) is the way it handles specular highlights, which it leaves as a kind of 'glowing blur'. Sort of as if there's a soft focus filter applied to the highlights. Ironically, this can actually be really nice in some cases ... although I would guess it was not intended behaviour, but I would very much like to have the choice of having *sharp* specular highlights when I want them. I waste a lot of time with AFP focus merge, cleaning up these blurred highlights, by manually brushing in the same actual area used by the automated merge, but even with this extra wasted time, it is still faster and better in the end, than Helicon. As is often the case, I expect the problem may lie with the fact that the people making software, don't actually use it, so they're unaware of these, slightly 'off the beaten track' bugs.

Thank you anon2! Perfect. Very useful to know about Winding/Alternate and I'd tried a lot of things, but not the Reverse button. Sigh... v_Kyr.. thanks for the pointers. Yes Filemaker is a little fussy about SVG, but it's getting there. The crucial part on Export from AFD, is to uncheck 'Set viewBox' in the 'More' settings, otherwise dimensions are set as percentages and Filemaker doesn't read those. You also have to add some fill attributes after export, in a text editor otherwise the SVG icon doesn't show in the icon selection dialog.

I don't use AFD much, being more an AFP user, but I'm trying to adapt some SVG icons that were made for Filemaker Pro and I can't work out how they were done. What I'm producing in AFD works, but not in Filemaker (which doesn't support all SVG styles). Below is a grab of a simple icon in AFD. The 3 transparent rectangle/areas on the right (green circle) were already part of the icon, but the one on the left (red) I added myself. It seems okay, but once imported into Filemaker, the red circled area on the left, that I made in AFD, is no longer transparent. I can see in AFD that they behave differently when using Add/Subtract, so clearly they are different ... I just don't understand how they are different and therefore, how I can replicate the green circled area on the right. Can anyone enlighten me? I enclose the very simple AFD file, which will be easier to understand (except for me) and also the original SVG that I'm trying to adapt/change. Any help, much appreciated. 😊 FM-icons.AFDesign.zip To_Do_Bar.svg

Thanks for the reply v_Kyr. I've solved my problems and now I can solve yours too. 🙂 The percentage width/height tags are replaced by points, if you deselect the 'Set viewBox' option in the Export dialog's 'More' settings. You can Save your settings via the Manage Presets button in the Export dialog's 'More' settings There was a further hiccup with AFD and Filemaker, in that importing an SVG into its 'button icons dialog' worked, but wasn't showing an icon in the Buttons dialog itself (where you choose the icon you want to use). So very hard to work with the AFD exported icons. This I discovered was due to using a Shape in AFD, instead of Nodes. Nodes give an SVG with Paths, which works perfectly. Shapes give you different SVG code.

I'm lost with code, but would like to know if I can configure AFD's export SVG settings (More) so that my exported SVGs match the settings in this example file? (FWIW, this example works perfectly with Filemaker). Here's the code (opening the SVG in a text editor) and I attach the sample file as well. Does anyone know if/how an SVG can be output from AFD to match these settings? <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <svg version="1.2" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" x="0px" y="0px" width="50px" height="50px" viewBox="0 0 52.33 52.33"> <path d="M19.833,0L32.5,0 32.5,19.833999 52.334,19.833999 52.334,32.500999 32.5,32.500999 32.5,52.333 19.833,52.333 19.833,32.500999 0,32.500999 0,19.833999 19.833,19.833999z"/> </svg> SVG.zip

I've just had this problem. FWIW, in the Export Dialog, going to 'More' and choosing to convert typefaces to Curves, solves the problem.

Thank you Chris.

Is there any way with the new Metadata panel, to remove the Creator Tool tag? I've tried editing the XMP and importing it, but the Creator Tool isn't replaced. Also wondering if Metadata can be applied via Batch Job?

You might want to dig deeper into the Finder. It is a very powerful database and gives you most of the tools that you are after. For file management organisation: I barely use Folders, because they are totally opposite to what computers do so well. I use Smart Folders (searches), Tags and Comments (keywords). With these three things you have an extremely powerful organisational/management tool. For example ... all of my RAW files just get dumped into Root folders. No traditional Folder organisation whatsoever. Of course, I never ever look at the files this way, because in practical terms, although my files are in a single place, they are equally in multiple places simultaneously... as many as I want in fact, thanks to Smart Folders. Tags: You can make as many Tags as you want and you can give the standard ones keystrokes too so these can be used for rapid rating etc. (You can also rename them). They're also available in all standard Mac dialogs (Serif... who knows why... don't use standard Mac windows, so you can't add Tags via the filename in any Affinity window). Comments: You can batch manage Comments, which perform in exactly the same way as keywords in photo apps, except with the advantage that they do it throughout the entire system instead of just your app. Smart Folders: These are REALLY powerful. They have built-in boolean functions (and/or) and can be used to dig down into some incredibly detailed criteria. They can be visible in every Finder window, or you can put them where you want anywhere on your system. If you combine these 3 things with: Gallery view: which gives you thumbnail/large view and essential EXIF, Rotate and Markup etc. You can zoom into any image preview, even beyond 100%, with 2-finger spread. QuickLook: (Spacebar) which can zoom in and out of images with + - keys. Will scroll PDFs as a single page... just like a webpage and which gives you direct access to Markup, Rotate and video Trim etc. will play and Trim video files, without having to open any app. SlideShow: Access via QuickLook or Contextual Menu (using Option-Key). Full-screen images on dark background... single and multiple. Navigate via keys. Ideal for quick presentations. (QuickLook/SlideShow.. cannot Tag/Comment individually via keyboard... it's applied to all because they are all 'selected') Automator: which is the 'glue' for rapid automation, e.g. batch keywording via Comments, keyboard-command Tagging, Image conversion, Colour-space conversion, Resizing, Sharing, uploading etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. You can add all off these things to the Services menu (2-finger-tap on file/folder/anything) and even give them their own keyboard commands. What you can do with Automator is pretty much limitless, as it can include AppleScript, Terminal commands and SQL, but there is quite a learning curve when you go beyond the basics, although there is a very active online community too. As an example, I have an Automator Service, which will take a folder of images, resize them, convert to sRGB, remove accented characters from their names (I'm in France) and zip them *as individual files* which I can then upload to my ftp server. You can of course, do all of the above in full-screen ... even Dark Mode now, which is better for images and the Finder gives you a wide range of Sort options + the Arrange menu. I've really only touched on the aspects that the majority of users are probably not very familiar with, but there is obviously a lot more to commend this approach, not least the fact that if you are in the Mac environment, then ALL of this stuff is retained across Macs and via iCloud too. It would require a changed mindset for most users, but in my experience, it takes about a month, maybe two, to get used to new ways of working, e.g. using certain Trackpad gestures instead of old habits, or ... I'm currently having another go at Spaces in Catalina, which I haven't tried for a long time ... and I have to say... they're not too bad. (FWIW... I use all the gestures! ). A dedicated DAM like Aperture, will obviously be slicker, but conversely cannot handle any and every file type. I should add that if you move files onto Windows disks, they will loose their Comments (keywords) as the Windows file format doesn't support them.