aitte

I just checked, and *everything* under the Filters menu has those super useful, blue "No Comparison / Split Comparison / Side By Side Comparison" buttons in the bottom left of the filter panel. But *none* of the Layer menu's Adjustment Layers or Live Filters have that feature, so it's hard to compare the results of the adjustment. There is probably a technical reason for the lack of those buttons when dealing with non-destructive live-layers. But in that case, can't you add a "Compare" button to the left of the "Merge" button in the top toolbar of those effect windows? That would be a "momentary switch", meaning, the user clicks it, and as long as they *hold down* the mouse button it shows the original image (disables the effect), and when they let go again, it re-enables the effect. That way the user can't accidentally toggle the effect permanently off, since it's just a momentary switch. And it would be good for quick comparisons. Better yet, perhaps the blue switches can be added to live layers too? I loathe having to go all the way to the layers panel to disable/re-enable the effect when I want to compare the results of live filters/adjustment layers, and then all the way back to the effect panel to keep adjusting things. That slow mouse-travel time for comparisons seems like the least slick area of Affinity Photo/Designer. :D Please save me...

Thanks for this report! It proves even further that my proposed solution is a good one! You see, this problem doesn't just affect cropped content. The Affinity products haven't got the calculations correct for cropped content, for layer fx either, etc. And instead of wasting a lot of time implementing slice-calculation that is intricately aware of how to calculate the slice area for each of those things, it can be solved *all* in one go, *and* adding a super useful "Threshold" function, if it's done in this way: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/12074-automatic-slice-calculations-misinterpret-layer-fx/ (see post #3 for a proposed solution, which would solve layer fx, cropping and all other potential slice calculation issues in 1 second, and would add a useful "threshold" feature). ;)

I was using the ability to create non-destructive boolean curves. To do so, you must add the "Operations" panel to the main toolbar. Then, you option-click the button in the toolbar to do a non-destructive boolean (a regular click would be a destructive boolean). If you go into the menubar instead, under Layer - Geometry - Subtract (for instance), it does a destructive boolean. I've tried holding option, command, shift, etc while clicking the application menu item. But unfortunately the only way to get non-destructive booleans to work is to have the Operations toolbar visible instead, and to option click those buttons. So my questions & suggestions are: 1. Are any other functions in Affinity option-clickable, or is it just the boolean operations that have a special meaning? 2. Some Mac applications show different menu items when Option is held down. You could do the same thing in Affinity's menu. If I hover over the Layer - Geometry menu, it would show the regular "Add", "Subtract" etc. But if I hold down Option, it would instead switch to menu items saying "Compound Add", "Compound Subtract", etc. I'm pretty sure it's doable.

@marsofearth: It's a bit confusing that you're now acting as if you never suggested a total merge into 1 single application. In your first post, and all posts after that, you said: "Why not simply merge Designer and Photo. Or perhaps have Designer having Photo integrated while Photo is stand-alone." Now in your latest post you say: "I never said Serif should merge the applications. I am saying why not make the apps able to send data quickly between each other with a simple button press". Merging? Never going to happen until every user is willing to pay $100 for a 2-in-1 app. And that will never happen. Casual users will just pick up the cheaper (and poorer) Pixelmator if Affinity merges the apps and is forced to raise their price. But even better integration via "send current layer to Designer/Photo for modifying" and "return the modifications to the other app" buttons? Yep, it's on their feature roadmap. ;) PS: Some of you mentioned what you'd be willing to pay. I'd happily pay up to $1,000 for each individual Affinity app. As a musician using only legal software, I am used to prices in that range (almost all music plugins are something like $200-800 each). I'm sure Affinity wishes every customer thought like this, hehe.

It makes zero business sense to merge them. Buying both Designer and Photo is still a lot cheaper than buying ONE of Photoshop or Illustrator. But to make matters worse: * If they merge Designer and Photo then they will have to raise the price from $49 to something like $79, but that means a *lot* less of the casual users buy it. And it's still less than they would have made from 2 separate sales. So less income means they may have to fire employees and cripple product development. * If the products merge, the GUIs become more cluttered and confusing. * If the products merge, they will have to delete one of them from the app store, and only half of their users would get the merged upgrade - the ones from the deleted product would have to re-purchase the other one. The app store does not support license migration. * If they had released the product "merged from day one", then they would have given a free "Photo" upgrade to every Designer user and would not have received any reward for their 5 years of hard work creating Affinity Photo. Alternatively, they could have made it a paid "Designer 2.0" update and piss off all the designer users who have been promised that their purchase includes free updates for 1-2 years to come. * An alternative solution would have been to sell Designer and then have a $49 in-app purchases to unlock Photo, but that makes no sense either. People who only want pixel work would have to buy Designer which they don't even want. And Designers may feel cheated paying $49 for extended pixel editing power. So that option would just piss off both userbases. * A merge would constrain all features and keyboard shortcuts in a way that makes sense for both vectors and pixels, instead of allowing each app to develop its own workflows. It's horrible for business in 100% of the areas that matter. And it's not even an issue; people have happily worked with Adobe's separate software suite for decades. A merge will not happen until *all* users are willing to pay $100, and to buy the software in the exact same sales volume as today. The lack of a merge is not Affinity's fault. It's your fault. It's my fault. It's all of the users who would not pay a fair price if they're merged. So let's never talk about this again, and let's instead celebrate that we're getting awesome Adobe-killing software at $49 each for *perpetual* licenses and none of Adobe's monthly subscription fee bullshit. We're already getting a mindblowing deal, and we're used to working with individually specialized apps. Everything is perfect.

You know what I find funny? A 185MB .dmg becomes a 640MB application. That's some damn magical compression. I noticed that the Contents/Frameworks folder is responsible for over 400MB of Affinity Photo's size, and that liblibpersona is the main offender (308MB). Makes me wonder: Would it be possible for you to turn this into a 185MB application by compressing the installation and making it decompress itself on-load? That would speed up load-times significantly on mechanical (non-SSD) hard drives, which usually have a read speed of ~80MB/second (so reading 640MB=8 seconds). You could cut several seconds of load time if it loaded compressed data from disk, did a rapid decompression in memory and sailed on happily ever after from there. Having to only load 185MB=2.3 seconds. May not be possible to compress dylibs though...

@JasperD: Answered in AP thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/11658-affinity-photo-customer-beta-13126820/&p=50028

@JasperD: Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo are different GUIs on top of the same rendering/fx/import/export core (that's a very clever thing and ensures both apps grow together and can interoperate with each others file formats). As you will see, both the Designer and Photo betas are now at v1.3.1.26820. The beta version number has nothing to do with the version it will be released as. And if you've ever worked with Git you know that version numbers don't matter. You merge all changes from one branch (beta) to the other (stable) when it's ready for release, and Git grabs all differences between the two branches. Nothing will regress or be accidentally left behind.

PS: When I drop the image onto the app icon (which is the current workaround), I see that Safari (or Affinity Photo?) creates a file under ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems. When I close the image in Affinity Photo, the temporary file remains. Not sure that's correct handling either. Shouldn't you delete the temporary file if the user closes it?

This is something I used to do a lot on Photoshop (which I've now deleted, thanks to Affinity Photo! ;)). 1. Browse the web and find some image. 2. Click and drag the image on the webpage onto Affinity Photo's main window. 3. Expected result: The image is opened as a new document, that's how Photoshop handles it. But what Affinity Photo does: It creates a new Text layer in the current document and puts the web URL of the image in it (lol). It *is* possible to open images if I instead drop the web image onto the Affinity Photo *icon* in the dock. But that's annoying when you've got an auto-hiding dock (like I do) and it just seems *weird* to have it create a text-layer when you drop an image onto the main window. I guess the reason it creates a text-layer is that the application takes dropped *text* and creates a text layer, or dropped *image files* and loads the image, but lacks specialized "dropped image URL" detection and reverts to the text-handling.

Ohhh so line-height is called Leading. I never knew, since the corresponding Photoshop setting only has an icon (no name), so I just assumed this name: http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_dim_line-height.asp. Thanks for that! The setting is found under the Paragraph button: Leading. That's one thing to check off the wishlist. And italics can be faked with Character button: Shear, with perfect results. The faux-bold workaround is incredible too! The text toolbar has a Stroke option. Set the "Join" option to the totally sharp corners (last option) and the result becomes crisp and better than photoshop, since it gives total control over the stroke width (boldness). And if your characters start intersecting with each other, just open the Character button and increase the Tracking (space between letters). The only problem I discovered with the "stroke" feature is that it doesn't look good together with fake-italics ("shear"); it almost looks like a 3d dropshadow instead, but luckily I almost never need to use faux italics and faux bold together. Excellent information. Funny how we both give each other tips for working with this new app, that the other had missed. Now I can finally rely on its text tool without feeling limited. Turns out all I am truly missing is the text arcs (and curving text along a path), but I don't use those very often, and I read that the devs want to add it someday. Affinity Photo continues to impress! Let's hope the devs will read this thread and consider adding Calculations and the ability to do adjustment layers (like levels) on masks someday as well. ;-)

Yep, there are some things that Affinity Photo lacks right now. The greatest weakness I've found so far is the Text Tool, which is very basic. It can't adjust the space between lines (many fonts have too tall line-heights which causes a lot of whitespace), it can't do fake-bold/italics (for fonts that don't support it), can't do curved/arced text effects, etc. But I think I heard they're going to improve font effects. For most things, Affinity Photo has everything Photoshop did or even better. In some areas, it's a bit weaker but it'll improve with time. :lol:

That's still doable like this: Select the green channel, load to selection. Make a new layer, fill with white and call it "green alpha". Select the blue channel, load to selection. Make a new layer, fill with white and call it "blue alpha". Invert the "blue alpha" layer, set its blend mode to overlay and set it to 50%. It's a few more steps than "Calculations" in photoshop, though... But maybe we have more control in the end? Since you can use individual effects on the two separate layers, and then "Merge" those two layers into a single one. I agree though, it would be nice if there was a "calculations" command built in. It saves a lot of clicking. PS: Are you aware that you can right click on a mask and choose "Edit Mask" to get a black and white view of the alpha, with full ability to make selections, apply gaussian blurs, perspective, etc? Of course there's no levels or curves, since those only exist as adjustment layers... but all destructive effects work.

That's a very good use of individual channel access. There is no "Combine Channels" action in Affinity Photo because it doesn't need it. You can do it by combining individual channel selections instead. Try this: 1. Load the photo of the elephants, you used this one: http://www.howitworksdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/tanzania_elephants3.jpg 2. Look in the "Channels" panel, and click the various red/green/blue channels to find the ones with the best contrast. I think you decided on red and green in the video. 3. Right click the "Composite Red" layer and choose "Load to Pixel Selection". 4. Right click the "Composite Green" layer and choose "Add to Pixel Selection". This adds the intensity-values of the green channel to the intensity of the previously selected red channel. 5. Click the "Return/back" arrow in the top right of the Channels layer to return to viewing all colors. 6. From this step onwards, there may be better ways to do this than what I am about to suggest... I haven't delved that deeply into Affinity Photos' channels and masks yet, and it seems it has the ability to "create spare channel" if you right click, and even toggle quick mask (if you look at the "Pixel Selection" in the channels list), etc, so there's probably a more advanced way than what I am about to suggest next... 7. Create a new pixel layer. 8. Go to Edit > Fill and fill the selection with white. 9. Deselect the current selection. 10. Create another layer below your new one, and fill it *completely* with black. This is just to provide contrast so that you can see your selection/alpha work... 11. Now edit the white layer; do your levels, threshold, dodge, etc there. I suggest making a selection around the little elephant, then inverting the selection and hitting delete to get rid of the pixel data for all other elephants. Then refine the little elephant until its outline is just pure white (just like in your video). 12. When you are done making a white mask for just the tiny elephant, go to Select > Selection From Layer and you're now ready to save that final selection as a mask. If there's an even better way to do this in Affinity Photo then I'd love to know it. And of course, they're planning to improve editing (maybe even using adjustment layers) on masks too, so this will get even easier later.

It's true that the 8-bit alpha layer uses less bits per pixel than the 24-bit ( 8 each for R, G, B ) raster layer. But using masks like this sounds like micro-optimization, and it assumes that the image editor applies compression to the "R:0, G:0, B:0" black pixels of your pixel layer. Are you seriously constructing entire documents out of flat pixel rectangles with masks on them? That sounds like a nightmare to maintain. Have you really seen sluggish performance if you just used raster layers instead like everyone else? I frequently made Photoshop designs out of hundreds of individual (mostly non-masked) layers for each component of the website design, and never felt limited by the RAM or CPU usage. By the way, I suggest trying to work entirely with raster/pixel layers in Affinity Photo, and seeing if the performance is good enough, before you carry over this ancient "use masks instead of pixels to save a few kilobytes of memory per layer" Photoshop workaround. This is a brand new program, so let's not assume it has the same internal limitations or memory structure as Photoshop. :-) If any Serif/Affinity developers are reading, I'd appreciate their input on this quirky Photoshop technique.

@rui_mac: Alright, so a Gaussian Blur live-filter won't work the same way (since you're right in that it blends between blurred and non-blurred areas in an unnatural way). That was just a shortcut I suggested, for even greater non-destructive efficiency, but clearly it doesn't work with all effects. The fact that the "bonus shortcut idea" won't work still doesn't change this part of my post: "Stop filling your layers with a solid color. Get rid of the mask completely and make all shape adjustments on a pixel layer instead. Because all you've achieved in the video was to move the pixel-work (of creating and blurring shapes) into a useless mask layer, for no gain whatsoever. If you did that so that you could easily recolor the shadow later, then that is pointless too, since you can simply apply a hue/saturation filter instead." So, all you need to do is this: 1. Make a selection from the original text layer. 2. Create a new layer and fill the selection with black. Now do all your destructive gaussian blur, etc, on the pixel layer. The core point was still this: You're filling the whole canvas with black, then creating a pixel-based mask, and doing your work on the mask, and then complaining you can't blur the mask etc. That's insane. Just work in the pixel-portion of the layer. Literally everything you showed in that video with masks can be done as pixel layers. All you did was move the pixel-based work of blurring etc over to the mask instead of the layer. And yes they'll finally implement the ability to do effects on layers someday. But your video was not a demo of how that would be useful. Also remember this: If you really have a need to do all the pixel-based work in the mask instead of the pixel layer (for example if you want to mask a complex image to create a "shadow" based on a cutout from a flat image layer), then you could actually create a layer, do all the work as pixels (blurring, moving, etc), then "select layer contents" and create a mask from that selection. You'd achieve the same final mask result as in your video. And if you ever need to edit that mask again later, you could select the mask, fill the selection as a pixel layer, do edits, and then create a mask from it again.

"should be in affinity photo or any true photo editor" "unfortunately reached the limits of affinity photo" "this feature is indispensable for professional image editing" "make masks powerful and easy to deal with" - (as if they weren't already, with features like the super powerful refine tool, and the way you can easily edit, move and toggle masks!) Etc... It amuses me the passive-aggressive tone of people wanting Affinity to "hurry up" with their pet feature requests. It is like that in almost every feature request thread, and quotes similar to the above are seen everywhere on this forum. Usually in some obscure little thread, with only an irate original author doing most of the bumping and posting. Massive props to the moderators for reading through these walls of text. Serif works on features in order of global priority, and will get to everything important first and deal with nice extras when time allows. That's basic business management. If the ability to use levels/curves on masks was as "essential" as the passive-aggressive posts here imply, it would already have been implemented. The same goes for all other feature requests that use passive-aggressive threat language. Relax. They've just released 1.0 and it will keep growing over time. By the way, I have used photoshop for pixel based website designs for 15 years with loads of masking work in every project and never needed to use levels or curves on masks. I could see that it has a very minor value for very specific workflows but not much else. Besides, they've confirmed that mask editing will be improved later. What more do you want from them? These are real people you are talking to and they're working extremely hard in the wake of the launch to get truly *important* things fixed, like newly discovered crash-bugs and the like. If you are so in love with minor features that photoshop has had time to develop in its nearly 30 years of development then stay with creative cloud, it seems you're happier that way. Personally, I ditched a 15 year relationship with Adobe, cleaned their crud out of my computer, and couldn't be happier! Affinity Photo is fast and slick and buttery smooth and does almost everything that Photoshop does, and it's going to keep evolving over the years, just like Affinity Designer has done. I for one know I made the right choice. Affinity kicks ass. And what other company is as interactive with their customers? PS: In the YouTube video posted above, the author is creating a single-colored floodfilled layer of black or orange, and then using a mask to turn the fully filled layer into only a visible shadow outline, and then blurring that mask. Everything in that video was silly and overcomplicated. I'll just point out the obvious: Stop filling your layers with a solid color. Get rid of the mask completely and make all shape adjustments on a pixel layer with attached non-destructive adjustment layers like levels, curves and gaussian blur (use a live filter and you can paint the filter's own individual mask to gradually fade the blur). Because all you've achieved in the video was to move the pixel-work (of creating and blurring shapes) into a useless mask layer, for no gain whatsoever. If you did that so that you could easily recolor the shadow later, then that is pointless too, since you can simply apply a hue/saturation filter instead.

@FpTargeT: Search for MacAffinity on Vimeo.com to see loads of videos, to see the app in action. Affinity Photo is way, way better than Photoshop and I suggest buying it now. If you like Photoshop I guarantee you will love Affinity. i've used Photoshop for 15 years and this is the first true killer. Bought it on launch day. It's that good!

I care about this too, but I haven't been hit by it yet since I've always added at least 1 layer and thus saved as .afphoto. This app is full of pro features so I'd appreciate if it didn't make assumptions about what format to save as. I think the app should pop up a dialog box with buttons when Save is invoked: "You have made changes to this JPG file. What do you want to save as? JPG (overwrite original), JPG, PNG, AFPHOTO" - something like that...

Apple Photos happily imports RAW files and sorts them by shooting time and location (if GPS available). You can further group photos into albums/smart albums. It also allows you to hit "Edit in Affinity Photo." So since Macs already have a free DAM, the market for a dedicated DAM is small... Dev resources are better spent on Designer/Photo/Publisher.

@Andy: Excellent!

@Broicher, @Achim63: Go into System Preferences, Keyboard and add the US English preset. Enable the language switcher menu while you're there. Now you can set Affinity Photo to US English and when you press the keys in those [] locations it will act as if you pressed [] instead of your local keys. That means all keys will work. If you need to write local characters in Affinity's text tool you simply change language using the OS X menu bar temporarily, write your text and then change back to US English.

Could I please have this image in high quality and without the computer behind it? https://cdn.affinity.serif.com/img/photo/gallery/shortcuts@2x-060720151007--desk.jpg It looks awesome and I'd like to have that as a reference until I memorize them all. The "Help > Keyboard Shortcuts" is just a boring text list. This graphical representation is much better. :)

Finally! Bought and 5-star'd in the Swedish App Store!

Makes sense that you wanted to clear out "beta" bugs, but where's my "Live Filters need to go beyond bounding box of groups" page? Did you get it? I made the post today and it's gone. It details, with screenshots, an error with the "live filter" when applied to layer groups; it clips the effect at the bounding box... so I hope you see that bug report. :-)