smadell
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Posts posted by smadell
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XnViewMP has gotten a lot of good press on this forum. My understanding of it (and I am not a user, so this is limited) is that XnViewMP is an image browser, not an asset manager (DAM). If you are looking for a full-fledged DAM that can display Affinity Photo files (or at least the embedded previews) take a look at Photo Supreme. It is not free (as is XnViewMP) but it is a true DAM, with keywording, geotagging, portfolios, versioning, and so forth and so on. It is available for Mac and for Windows. If you add the affinity extension into the Preferences (see below) you can catalogue your Affinity Photo files and see their previews. It is a powerful tool.
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Already there...
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a simple fix is always a good one!
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Hi, pedrors...
On macOS, printing profiles are in 1 of 2 places. They are in:
1) <SystemDisk>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/
2) <SystemDisk>/Users/<User Name>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/
Note - <SystemDisk> is the name of the hard drive that serves as your Startup drive. <User Name> is the name of your User. The icc profiles in your Main library are accessible to all users. The profiles in the User Library are only accessible to that user. If you put your printer profiles in there, they should be accessible from the Printer dialog. After choosing Print... from the File menu, choose your printer at the top of the dialog box, as usual. In the middle of the dialog box, from the drop-down menu, choose "Color Matching." Make sure that the radio button for "ColorSync" is chosen. You can find your printer profiles in the menu underneath that choice.
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This seemed like it "should" be possible, so I tried. Here is a solution. It's a 2-step process for each paragraph that contains an "out-dented" Drop Cap.
First, select the first word in the paragraph. Enable Drop Caps in the Paragraph panel, and set other parameters as you might like.
Second, with that word selected, go to Optical Alignment in the Characters Panel. Select "Manual" as the method for optical alignment, and make sure that the first letter of the word (the dropped cap) has an optical alignment of 100% on the Left margin. You might have to click the "Add" button if your drop cap character isn't listed. This will place the entire letter outside the left margin.
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Hi, Miguel
Thanks for following up. Sorry for the delay in responding - it's a time zone thing. Here are my Mac's specs:
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I read a previous post about having Metal Compute ON causing the Photo Persona histograms to lag extensively. I decided to test this by turning Metal OFF. I can confirm that my histograms update way faster with Metal off.
Also noticed another issue, which has bugged me for a while. Option-clicking a layer (to view it in "isolation") has been fraught with problems, sometimes not working at all. And, when it does work, clicking on a different layer to leave "isolation mode" almost never works.
However, turning Metal Compute OFF has solved that problem. Metal seems like a great idea in theory, but a real bugger in practice. Thought I should report this.
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Hey, Bri-Toon...
I don’t know much of anything about Designer, but PLEASE spell “crowd” without the ‘e’!
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So glad they’re helping you, Vlad and Dr J.
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How are you applying the Gaussian blur - from the Filters menu or as a Live Filter Layer? How are you inverting the mask on the Gaussian Blur? If you are using the Filters menu blur, this is destructive and will blur the entire Low Freq layer. A subsequent Mask layer, inverted, will hide the entire layer. This is how it’s supposed to work. The only reasonable way to do what you’re after is with a Live Filter layer applied as a child layer to the Low Frequency layer. Apply the blur as a live filter, then Invert the blur layer (which is just another way of saying invert the mask on the blur layer). You can then paint on the Gaussian Blur live filter layer with white, and this will reveal the blur.
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Marco...
You CAN paint in your mask, exactly as you'd seem to like. There are a couple of caveats, though (and I assume this is the case on the desktop version as well, and may also be the case within Photoshop (but I don't really know much about PS)).
When you have a luminosity selection active, the pixels are selected in varying degrees. Therefore, the paint brush will act as if it's got varying degrees of opacity attached. When you paint on your mask with the luminosity selection active:
1) You should set the Opacity of the Brush to 100%. Choosing anything less will diminish the intensity of your mask, and will give you the wrong result.
2) You should set the Flow of the Brush to 100%. This is mega-important. Anything less than 100% will cause the overlapping parts of your brush strokes to "build up" and give you bad results.
3) Increase the size of your brush - this is for convenience's sake. Also, I would use a hardness of 100%, but this too is for convenience.
4) Paint your mask in ONE PASS. If you make a brush stroke, lift, and make another, you will create a built-up effect where the mask is "magnified." Again, not what you want.
Here's a video of the process. (When I created the luminosity mask, I used a "Darks 1" luminosity selection with a macro.)
EDIT:
I realized after posting that I screwed this up a little bit. It's all correct, with one major flaw. When you do this, create an "empty mask layer" (i.e., one that is filled with black) and when you paint your brush should paint with white. Oops...
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In most cases, luminosity selections don't limit the pixels that are selected. All of the pixels in a layer are selected. However, pixels vary in the amount they are selected. So, in a "Lights 1" luminosity selection, the very white pixels are fully selected (100% or thereabouts) while the very dark pixels are selected only minimally. The "marching ants" you are seeing in your luminosity selection is really only the margin of where pixels are 50% selected or more. And, since all of the pixels are selected to one degree or another, you can paint on all of them.
However, the answer to your problem is really much simpler than that. Once your luminosity selection is made, open the "Layers" panel and click the " + " sign at the top. From the drop-down menu, indicate that you want to add a Mask layer. The mask you add will inherit the luminosity selection perfectly. No painting needed.
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I have four separate feature requests that I'd like to submit. I have created a separate post for each of them, and they are all posted here within the "Feature Requests & Feedback" section. I have included proposed Studio-type panels (or modifications of existing panels) in each of the posts.
4) A Workspace Manager
I've actually suggested this before, but I think it's a good enough idea that I'll raise it again. Just as we have Managers for Guides, Snapping, Grid and Axis, and the Assistant, I'd like to see a Workspace Manager. This centralized manager-type panel would allow the Studio panels to be toggled on and off, as well as shown, hidden, and reset. Options to show/hide the toolbar, tools, and context toolbar can be offered. Also, some workspace-related options can be included, such as the dark or light UI, UI font size, and grey levels for the background, artboard, and UI gamma.
Most importantly, an existing workspace can be saved (as a preset of sorts) and can then be recalled from a Presets list within the Manager panel.
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I have four separate feature requests that I'd like to submit. I have created a separate post for each of them, and they are all posted here within the "Feature Requests & Feedback" section. I have included proposed Studio-type panels (or modifications of existing panels) in each of the posts.
3) Select Color Range using HSL-like Definition
I love that the HSL Adjustment panel now allows customized hue ranges. It's a really powerful addition. I would really like to see this sort of color range choice for some variant of the Select Color Range… menu choice. In addition to Select Reds, Select Greens, and Select Blues, I would love to be able to choose Select Custom… and be presented with the same color range chooser used in the HSL panel. The output of such a Select Custom… choice should be tailored in a similar fashion to the Refine Selection dialog; that is, allow the output to be a Selection, a Mask, a Layer, or a Layer with a Mask.
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I have four separate feature requests that I'd like to submit. I have created a separate post for each of them, and they are all posted here within the "Feature Requests & Feedback" section. I have included proposed Studio-type panels (or modifications of existing panels) in each of the posts.
2) A New Filter - Add Grain
A suggestion for an additional Filter. While the Add Noise… choice is nice, it tends to give a small and very uniform form of noise. This might be great for dealing with certain situations, but it's not a good substitute for adding Grain to a picture (to give a photo an old-time type of look). I suggest a separate Filter that deals with Adding Grain, providing sliders such as (i) Grain per pixel; and (ii) Soft vs Hard. This reasonably simple set of choices is present in the Nik Silver Efex plug-in, and gives me all the choices I think I might want.
- TehObLiVioUs and Fixx
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I have four separate feature requests that I'd like to submit. I have created a separate post for each of them, and they are all posted here within the "Feature Requests & Feedback" section. I have included proposed Studio-type panels (or modifications of existing panels) in each of the posts.
1) Presets should be available from their respective panels
Affinity Photo already has the ability to store presets for Adjustments. In the Adjustments panel, these presets are segregated by adjustment; that is, only the presets for Curves are shown under the Curves Adjustment choice, and so forth. But, for some curious reason, these presets cannot be accessed from the adjustment panel itself.
Personally, I don't like adding adjustment and live filter layers from the menus or from the Adjustment panel - I add them from the icons at the bottom of the Layers panel. As such, I never get to see the Presets that seem to reside only there.
I would love to see Affinity Photo give me access to presets from the corresponding adjustment panels. When I open the Curves adjustment panel, I can create a new preset - I should be able to access the Curves preset I created yesterday!
Here is a mockup of a suggested change in the panels. Yes, it's the Curves adjustment, but this sort of addition seems like it could apply to all of the panels. The only difference would be the existing height of the panel window, but shrinking or adding to the height of the presets list could adapt itself to the size of the overall panel.
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This one's for Dave Straker...
I am using a Mac, and I know you're on Windows, so that may explain the difference. Nevertheless, checking the "Reveal" box within the Crop tool's context toolbar does indeed reveal the canvas of a previously cropped photo. (Also, I assume that "Rasterize and Trim" has not been previously used.) This is what I get when I check, or un-check, that box on a photo that I had previously cropped:
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Hey, James...
Just to nitpick... The link to the video titled "Inpainting" says "Pinpointing" instead!
- Patrick Connor and stevewade
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Hey, John and R C-R...
First of all, the link to that series of posts is: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/76900-saturation-masks-a-simple-method/
Second, Apply Image really only needs a single image (in fact, a single layer) since there is a button near the top of the dialog box that says "Use Current Layer as Source." Clicking that lets you apply the layer to itself. Here is a screen shot where I swapped the Red and Green channels in a photo (original on the left, swapped channels on the right).
The more important point might be that your last question is easier to answer than Dave Straker's math makes it out to be. I have posted a series of macros which will (i) create Saturation masks and Vibrance masks (inverted Saturation masks); (ii) create greyscale visualization layers for those masks; and (iii) allow you to apply the masks to a layer stack. You can access those macros here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/87004-macro-updates-for-v17/
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So here's what I want to do, and I haven't figured out how yet. I edit a monthly newsletter, and have to deal with articles that start on one page and continue on another. I set up text boxes on the beginning page and the ending page, and flow the text from one to the other. So far, no problem. I place an "anchor" into the text frame itself (NOT embedded within the text) on both pages. This does not seem to be possible in Affinity Publisher yet. I also put additional text frames at the bottom of each portion of the text, with the phrase "Continued on page x" and "Continued from page y" respectively. I then create hyperlinks on the "continued on/from..." text linking to the anchors in the next or previous text frame. In this way, I can jump from the beginning to the end of an article easily.
The graphic I'm attaching is the setup I now use within QuarkXPress. It works perfectly for me. Putting the "continued on..." text in a separate frame allows me to edit the article and not worry about having the hyperlink flow onto another page. Putting the anchor on the frame, itself, rather than embedding it into the text allows me to keep the hyperlinks attached to the next frame and previous frame - again, this keeps me from worrying about text flow if I eliminate or add words at any point in the article. This arrangement also lets me insert or delete pages, or even move one or the other of the pages to different spots in the newsletter without worrying about hyperlinks pointing to the wrong place.
How can I accomplish this in Affinity Publisher? I want so much to love this program. I use Affinity Photo all the time, and wouldn't leave it for the world. But, so far, I am stymied as to how to accomplish what is for me a most basic task in Publisher. ANY help would be appreciated.
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Because of changes in the way some Adjustment Layers are coded, I have posted updated versions of this macro category (and of one other). While the existing macros, downloaded from this page, still work, the updated macros are a little bit cleaner and do not display the "nag screen" about updating a legacy adjustment.
Download the updated version here:
Luminosity Masks: how to transition from Capture One
in Pre-V2 Archive of Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
Posted
There is no reason why. you cannot create a luminosity range using Blend Options, and also use a layer mask to narrow down the areas to which this luma range is applied. Also, remember that adjustment layers and live filter layers already have a built-in mask, and attaching a seperate mask layer, while possible, is not necessary.