rui_mac

This was asked before.
I include a screen capture of all the options available in the Find & Replace and Select dialog from FreeHand.
It was great to have something like this :-)

Tracing would be just great. Really, really great.

I still remember that I could search, for example, for line widths between 1pt and 5pt and in the replace field, type *3
So, if it found any line width between 1pt and 5pt, it would change the width to the triple of the width it had.
Very powerful indeed.

This was asked before.
I include a screen capture of all the options available in the Find & Replace and Select dialog from FreeHand.
It was great to have something like this :-)

Is there any way to change an item that is a Master Page item, into an editable item, from within a page that has a Master Page applied?
For example, I create a Master Page item that is a centered framed text box that is formatted but has no text or just a placeholder text. In InDesign, if I recall correctly, I could Command+click (or Command+double click) and the element that was part of the Master Page would become a regular page item, ready for editing.
Is this possible?

Tracing would be just great. Really, really great.

Tracing would be just great. Really, really great.

This was asked before.
I include a screen capture of all the options available in the Find & Replace and Select dialog from FreeHand.
It was great to have something like this :-)

We can argue if grey is a colour... but anyway there is no valid reason why alphas could not be adjusted like any greyscale image. Even if a channel is just ones and zeroes it can be manipulated.

Alpha channels are simply greyscale images.
Even if they are not stored inside as such, they do show as such.
So, people assume that whatever can be done with greyscale images, can be done with alpha channels. Any paint or editing operations, or filters or adjustments.
I was going to say the EVEN PROFESSIONALS expect that, but in really, PROFESSIONALS IN PARTICULAR expect that.
So, any professional bitmap editing application should treat alpha channels as greyscale images and allow the user to do with alpha channels whatever it does with a simple greyscale image, the same way it does with a simple grayscale image.
And I think Affinity Photo is a professional bitmap editing application.
So, it should behave as one, when dealing with alpha channels.

Alpha channels are simply greyscale images.
Even if they are not stored inside as such, they do show as such.
So, people assume that whatever can be done with greyscale images, can be done with alpha channels. Any paint or editing operations, or filters or adjustments.
I was going to say the EVEN PROFESSIONALS expect that, but in really, PROFESSIONALS IN PARTICULAR expect that.
So, any professional bitmap editing application should treat alpha channels as greyscale images and allow the user to do with alpha channels whatever it does with a simple greyscale image, the same way it does with a simple grayscale image.
And I think Affinity Photo is a professional bitmap editing application.
So, it should behave as one, when dealing with alpha channels.

When you are dodging/burning you are just adding more contrast to the textures that are already present in the image, since they are derived from the color channels.
So, imagine a wool sweater. It has a distinct edge, that results from the coarse wool. It even has a kind of... lets call it "organic feathered edge". So, painting would create a harder edge. Simply dodging and burning would create a nice mask with the "organic feathered edge" in a very controlled manner. I could even decide to increase the density of some parts of the edge and keep it softer in other places.
The same with hairs. Sometimes I just want to keep the thicker hairs and ditch the thinner ones. By dodging and burning on a channel that was derived from a color channel, I can create a very perfect hair mask, that is completely controlled by me, not a result of automatic processes. Oh, I can use automatic processes. But dodging and burning will allow me to edit the result of the automatic process in a very controllable way. Painting hairs is not efficient, specially when they are already there, in the mask, just requiring some brightness/contrast adjustments.

I already did.
I have been asking for more control over alpha channels ever since Affinity Photo was released.
Between 50% to 80% of a professional photo retoucher/calibrator has to do with alpha channels.
If editing alpha channels doesn't get more flexible and powerful, lots of things that are simple in Photoshop will be a pain (or almost impossible) in Affinity Photo.
And, believe me, I really want to use Affinity Photo for everything :)

Have you seen my video?
R C-R, I'm a image processing professional for more than 20 years. And I can assure you that dodging and burning a mask is A MUST for all professionals.
Don't think of a mask as simply a transparency. A mask can be used as a selection. I use masks/additional channels very, very often, because I need to create very precise selection for compositing or for color calibration.
So, I often start with a copy of a color channel or a combination of channels. Then, I have to edit that new, additional alpha channel.
To do so, I need to use ALL the arsenal of tools, adjustments, filters, etc, that I have available for a simple grayscale image. Because alpha channels/masks are just that: grayscale images.
If I can't edit an alpha channel/mask with all the tools, adjustments or filters, that will diminish the methods and techniques used by professionals.

I know that.
But it is just like a greyscale image, because the transparency mask is a set of values that goes from 0 to 255.
We should be able to use ALL paint/edit tools on a mask, just like we can, in Photoshop.

I know this method, Crabtrem.
I don't mean dodging and burning on an image.
I mean, on a mask.
For example, when I have a mask that I derived from a color channel, sometimes I need to darken or lighten some areas of the mask. And I mean, is a very specific way, not globally.
Check out this example I created sometime ago:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6H_8gjX-eI

My mask creation workflow (in Photoshop) requires that I use most paint/edit tools on a mask. After all, a mask is just a greyscale image.
So, why is it that the Dodge and Burn tools (two of the tools that I use more often when creating masks) don't work with masks?

Have you seen my video?
R C-R, I'm a image processing professional for more than 20 years. And I can assure you that dodging and burning a mask is A MUST for all professionals.
Don't think of a mask as simply a transparency. A mask can be used as a selection. I use masks/additional channels very, very often, because I need to create very precise selection for compositing or for color calibration.
So, I often start with a copy of a color channel or a combination of channels. Then, I have to edit that new, additional alpha channel.
To do so, I need to use ALL the arsenal of tools, adjustments, filters, etc, that I have available for a simple grayscale image. Because alpha channels/masks are just that: grayscale images.
If I can't edit an alpha channel/mask with all the tools, adjustments or filters, that will diminish the methods and techniques used by professionals.

I know this method, Crabtrem.
I don't mean dodging and burning on an image.
I mean, on a mask.
For example, when I have a mask that I derived from a color channel, sometimes I need to darken or lighten some areas of the mask. And I mean, is a very specific way, not globally.
Check out this example I created sometime ago:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6H_8gjX-eI

The native format is very structured, I know. And that means that is very compact when saved and also when in memory.
But, and this is a big but, if it is possible to paint or blur the alpha data, then it is possible to Dodge and Burn also.
If the alpha was stored in such a way that it was not possible to darken or lighten the values (in fact, dodging and burning are simply the increasing or decreasing of the values), then it would not be possible to paint on alpha too.

CMYK images are a set of four greyscale channels, each one defining the amount of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black ink.
Internally, there is no difference in the way they are stored.
So, a greyscale image is a list of values.
An RGB image is a set of three list of values.
A CMYK image is a set of four lists of values.
And an alpha is a list of values, just like a greyscale image. Exactly the same. Stored in the same way.
The way you interpret or use that set of values may be different, but they are all the same type of data, internally.
So, we should be able to use all tools in the same way in all of them.

Hi Elvys,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Yes, we are listening and aware this is something that must be reviewed/fixed as soon as possible. Now that v1.7 of Photo and Designer are out as well as Publisher we should get back to regular updates/fixes soon. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this is causing you all. Thanks for your support/understanding.

This was asked before.
I include a screen capture of all the options available in the Find & Replace and Select dialog from FreeHand.
It was great to have something like this :-)

I arrived late to this thread but the subject of adding scripting abilities to the Affinity suite has started a long time ago.
I can't wait to be able to make my own scripts inside any of the Affinity apps.
And I think python is, definetelly, the best way to go.
Multiplatform, lots of libraries available, easy and fun to code, very efficient,etc.

Having coded in BASIC, assembler, C, C++, javascript and python, I think python is the best one for scripting.

I arrived late to this thread but the subject of adding scripting abilities to the Affinity suite has started a long time ago.
I can't wait to be able to make my own scripts inside any of the Affinity apps.
And I think python is, definetelly, the best way to go.
Multiplatform, lots of libraries available, easy and fun to code, very efficient,etc.

Having coded in BASIC, assembler, C, C++, javascript and python, I think python is the best one for scripting.