andrewjones

Thank you Dan C It's what I suspected. I'll go read the specs for a Windows install then. Andrew

Hi v_kyr Thanks again for your reply. You have hit the nail. Yes, I already have AF 1 on this machine and would very much like to try out AF 2. No, there is no other need for a system upgrade, unless you include Steam. All I would need to do is either erase a spare drive or buy a new one for a MacOS clean install, so minimal cost. I don't want to install over an existing OS drive. Part of the reason is that I also use legacy software that will not run on 10.15 at all Opencore is what I'm looking at to make the install, but AF is currently the only reason to go down this route on the MacOS. Plan B is to install Affinity 2 on a Windows machine. In which case no issue arises. Thanks for bouncing it back - it makes it easier to decide when you have another person's opinion sometimes. Andrew

Thanks for your replies and yes, I have read the Affinity requirements specs. The point of the question (sorry, didn't explain this) is that the Mac Pro 5,1 is not supposed to be able to run 10.15 and upwards according to Apple. And it won't. But plenty of people have done a Hackintosh on it well beyond 11.x. So my question wasn't about the OS so much, as whether a modded Mac Pro would run AF, or whether it would be a non-starter because of the modded system. I can't test install AF 2 on a modded system until I have actually modded the system, so what I was after was an opinion on whether it sounded feasible or not. Otherwise, there's no point in modding the system, as everything else I use still runs happily on 10.14. Andrew

Can anyone with technical knowledge out there let me know (or give an opinion) if AF 2 could run on my machine, before I get myself into a knot? Mac Pro 5,1 2012 Intel Xeon Quad 3.2GHz, Radeon RX 580 8Gb Currently running MacOS 10.14 (which won't install or run AF 2). But I could do a forced system upgrade to, say, 10.15 or 11.x specifically to run AF 2. I'm not about to buy a newer machine, because this one is working perfectly. No reason to retire it yet. What do you think? Andrew

Well yes, I agree with all that. An image created in pure black and white - scraperboard, for example, probably needs to be scanned at 2400 dpi at least, on a scanner in bitmap mode, so no greys are picked up at all. It can be converted back to greyscale if necessary, but it isn't really necessary if the publishing software can use the image correctly. It needs photo software to scan and retouch and publishing software to publish it. I do this a lot. I don't want greys when I scan an ink drawing. I want edges to be as fine and clean as possible, so a high resolution is required. I have to use photoshop, because PS can handle bitmaps and dpi in excess of 400. It was a bit of a shock when I discovered that Affinity pretty much decided that 1 bit and anything above 400dpi was not in their world view. I didn't think to consider that it wouldn't be. I'm not sure where the idea that 1 bit belongs in an illustration program comes from. But if the software can handle 1 bit and edit it, great. I don't care about the semantics. Just give me the tools. I also use duotones and tritones a lot, either with true greyscales or with bitmaps, or a combination of the two. Sure you can make a sort of simulation in RGB, but it doesn't really do the job creatively, visually or mechanically. It's a little difficult to export to a couple of spot colour screens out of an RGB file. Or even greyscale separated plates. It would be lovely if Affinity dropped the idea that there is no need to work above 400 dpi and that greyscale manipulation is old hat, but I'm not holding my breath. Just sayin'

Thank you. That's a very useful and informative comment.

Personally the only reason I can think of is that Serif just don't see 1-bit as part of their current vision of the future of print, because, perhaps, they don't come from a print background. Unfortunately, print ain't dead yet, so ignoring a set of widely used print and manipulation techniques can only be costing them sales. Oh well. Thanks Jens and MikeW. I'll take your recommendation!

I hear what you say, but really I'm not interested in which part of Affinity the function should appear in, just so long as it appears somewhere. That would make me happy, as it is something I assumed would be in there when I purchased the software. Working in mono is a very useful tool and one I would have thought would be useful to photo people as well. I'm not savvy enough to know if a simulation would be good enough to do the job. Arguing about whether "Photo" is restricted to photo work is not really important - after all, if my memory serves me correctly, early advertising aimed Photo at digital painting as well. Because I'm old school I tend to regard the photo end as being anything that deals with pixels, but if it were to end up in Designer, that wouldn't phase me at all. Let me know when it arrives. Comments aren't aimed at starting some kind of discussion about which slot the function fits into, but are aimed at trying to persuade the devs that it is an important function used by all sorts of creatives and designers, and that if they were to implement it, I am absolutely convinced their software would have a far wider appeal. Particularly to those like me who are stuck with PS at the moment - because it's hard to find any alternative. I read that Photoline supports bitmaps on layers. I can't imagine why, but I need to get it to find out. That's all!

I would also like to add my name to the petition for bitmap and duotone capability. I can't see any reason not to have it and the sheer volume of print that uses both, makes Affinity effectively unusable in many situations in the print world. Adding the capability would open Affinity up for a huge number of designers and illustrators who currently have little other option than to carry on with PS. Including me.

Totally agree with this comment by nik78. Bitmaps are incredibly useful in illustration techniques - and used by illustrators and designers all over the world if you recognise what you're looking at. My personal method to make textures to build into illustrations is to find a useful lump of image texture - say a contrasty bit of rock or wood. Convert to greyscale. Convert to bitmap with threshold adjusted as necessary. Assign colour to bitmap. Dump back into master rgb illustration and carry on. Colour not quite working? Go back to bitmap and adjust colour. Didn't get the bitmap resolution right? Go back to greyscale and adjust from there. The same with duotones. Make a greyscale image. Go to duotone mode. Assign colours. Convert file back to rgb and dump back in the master rgb illustration. Totally controllable. In Photoshop this is very fast and simple to do. You can also dump the bitmaps into Illustrator as flat areas and assign colours on the fly. I have to say that I was really surprised when I bought the Affinity suite to find that none of this is built in. Vector trace is really no use for this technique at all.