rui_mac

Thank you!!! That was it. Now it only reports spelling mistakes, because I had to include some english words in my Portuguese text 

So much could be done with such a tool.
And I know Serif would make something wonderful.
Much better that the blend tool of Illustrator.
Come on!!! It has been asked for since Designer was in beta 

Freehand had an amazing blending tool.
I even made a video showing it.
And I'm sure Serif would make it even better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Rh8OcI9zU

Freehand had an amazing blending tool.
I even made a video showing it.
And I'm sure Serif would make it even better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3Rh8OcI9zU

Custom constraining angles will be great :-)

Tracing would be just great. Really, really great.

The problem with that method is that it pastes over, not only the Effects but the style AND the effects.
So, if I only want to copy the effects, we should have a Copy/Paste Effects.
For example, if I have an object with a red fill and a 4 pt green line and I apply it a drop shadow effect, if I want to copy just the drop shadow to another object that has a gradient fill and no line, it is not possible right now.

This was requested and talked about before, but here goes again.
Spare Channels don't behave as simple additional alpha channels.
When I create a new Spare Channel, specially if it is created out of a color channel, I expect it to behave just like a color channel, except that it describes "luminosity" or "opacity/transparency" information.
But I assume I could still use all painting/editing tools on it. Stuff like brush, dodge, burn, smear, blur, etc. Also, Levels, Curves, Brightness/Contrast, or any filter.
In effect, a Spare Channel should be treated as an additional greyscale image, and I should be able to deal with it exactly like it was a simple greyscale image.
I could, after editing it (again, like a regular greyscale image), decide if I want to use the luminosity information as a mask or simply load it as a selection or whatever.
BUT, PLEASE, make spare channels work like regular greyscale images inside the document, and not like a "special transparency information type of thing".
Professional editors need to be able to create complex masks and we need to be able to use all the available tools to do so.

Honestly, I have been trying to give Affinity Photo a chance, dealing with channels and trying to do in Affinity Photo whatever I do in Photoshop, with the composite channels and with additional alpha channels.
And, either it is very cumbersome and not very intuitive, or I can’t do it at all.
This is really forcing me to avaluate the type of work I need to do, to decide if I should use Photoshop of Affinity Photo.
I really hope the way channels operate, and the amount of stuff we can do with them, improves in the future. Hopefully, in a nearby future.

However, it should me made into a "live" filter, so that we could tweak it, as needed.

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 :-)

Ok. I will create a new file where the error can be reproduced and create a new thread.

Besides doing image editing for video (where alphas are required), I also do lots of image editing for 3D texturing (where alphas are also required) and I also do photo retouching and calibration for printing where... guess what, ALPHAS ARE ALSO REQUIRED.
Dealing with alphas is a must for any professional that works with images, no matter what field it works on. Is it professional work? Ok, so, dealing with alphas is required.
And working with alphas should be as straightforwards as working with any greyscale image.
Whatever could be done with a greyscale image should be possible to do with alphas, and it should work exactly the same way.
Alphas ARE greyscale images!!! Alphas are just information about opacity.
So, why are alphas different in AP?
I have been asking this ever since the beta versions of Affinity Photo and, if I recall correctly, I was told that working with alphas would be addressed and that it would become easier.
It hasn't! It is still a nightmare.
Will it ever change? As it is now, I can't work with alphas in AP.

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 :-)

Honestly, I have been trying to give Affinity Photo a chance, dealing with channels and trying to do in Affinity Photo whatever I do in Photoshop, with the composite channels and with additional alpha channels.
And, either it is very cumbersome and not very intuitive, or I can’t do it at all.
This is really forcing me to avaluate the type of work I need to do, to decide if I should use Photoshop of Affinity Photo.
I really hope the way channels operate, and the amount of stuff we can do with them, improves in the future. Hopefully, in a nearby future.

The way Affinity Photo deals with alpha channels/masks is the only thing preventing me to ditch Photoshop 😞

One more great demo of the value of having a fill slider for color in addition to -- as opposed to just having -- the opacity slider.
 
 

So honestly, this is nice for but it really doesn't solve much. Let me put this example in here:
I want to create an alpha channel that will be used inside another application for something other than transparency (texturing of 3d objects). The alpha channel becomes something more like grayscale data and can be used for many different things.
The issues comes in when Affinity Photo applies it as transparency (aka the composite alpha). Ok no problem, make the composite alpha white and just add a spare channel problem solved...
...except that it isn't.
The spare channel doesn't get saved in PSD or TIFF and if you use the affinity layers other apps cannot read them. If you apply to a mask or composite alpha in order to keep it readable in the file, then the other apps read it as transparency rather than an alpha channel which completely wrecks everything.
It would be fairly simple to just include alpha channels in TIFF files the way everybody else does it, no need for proprietary affinity layers that nobody else can read. Please fix.

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 :-)

This was requested and talked about before, but here goes again.
Spare Channels don't behave as simple additional alpha channels.
When I create a new Spare Channel, specially if it is created out of a color channel, I expect it to behave just like a color channel, except that it describes "luminosity" or "opacity/transparency" information.
But I assume I could still use all painting/editing tools on it. Stuff like brush, dodge, burn, smear, blur, etc. Also, Levels, Curves, Brightness/Contrast, or any filter.
In effect, a Spare Channel should be treated as an additional greyscale image, and I should be able to deal with it exactly like it was a simple greyscale image.
I could, after editing it (again, like a regular greyscale image), decide if I want to use the luminosity information as a mask or simply load it as a selection or whatever.
BUT, PLEASE, make spare channels work like regular greyscale images inside the document, and not like a "special transparency information type of thing".
Professional editors need to be able to create complex masks and we need to be able to use all the available tools to do so.

Yea I said a while back that it doesn't matter what you call them, they're basically all the same and should be treated the same. The problem we all have is the difficulty editing alphas, masks and individual channels both in ease and consistency. R C-R seems to have a habit of going into threads about legitimate problems for users who want to help better the software and suggesting there is no reason to change the software. Last time I saw this was regarding targa editing where R C-R was the only solution is to use AP and some other software to convert file formats instead of... Improving AP by adding a widely used file format.

Anyway, there really is no reason not to improve this part of AP. There is no excuse or reason it 'needs' to stay the same and one of the devs did chime in to this discussion to say it's not high priority (though for us it is but I imagine the devs have data on what the vast majority of users want to see improved first). I myself have only few problems so far with AP and the devs are working hard at improving the software so for that I'm thankful and I appreciate it. We want to be able to use the affinity line of applications, we want it to be the best software.  Photoshop probably didn't have game development in mind either but they've since embraced it. I know it has 'photo' in the name but in the end, affinity photo is just an image manipulation software and it'll be used for photography, generally painting artwork, graphic design, game development and TV production. I don't know which of these categories have more users but honestly I'd embrace the many industries that can use the software.  

No need to fight against potential improvements. 

Do you know how the data structure is stored? Is it a list [witdth, height, 2] matrix or two [width, height] matrixes?
And, no matter how they are stored, they are two matrixes with the same structure, containing the same data type values.
So, once again, there is no excuse for not being able to perform the same operations on a "opacity map" matrix that can be performed on a "greyscale" matrix.

I'm a coder and I know what I'm talking about. One of the last plugins I coded as a 3D vertex painting set of tools. It deals with RGB and, optionally, with an opacity map. The same set of code that is used for each of the R, G and B channels (that are, fundamentally, three greyscale channels), is the one I also use for the opacity map.
I even coded Dodge, Burn and Blur tools and they work the same at the RGB level as they work at the opacity level.

I think we all agree on that channel editing needs to improve in Affinity. Just image you could select a b/w layer and then copy paste it into all channels! This thread non existing because it just works! No hate, no nitpicking! Just love and happy accidents in the alpha channel.... Have a nice weekend guys!

It doesn't matter really what you call them, masks and each R G B and A channels or whatever other channel should really be treated the same IMO and you could be able to edit them all on an individual basis with the regular tools in the application. Make selections, paint from black to white and anything in between, copy/paste etc. and the process of exporting should be maybe more open ended for the users to choose how things are exported. I understand each file format has very unique features though but editing the basic RGBA shouldn't be complicated, difficult or confusing.