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 :-)

The Find/Replace was one of Freehands hidden gems - great for handling colours.
 
Speaking of which the 'remove unused colours' was another life saver.
Helped clean up the palette and identify colours that somehow slipped through the net.

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.

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.

That's certainly a feature we're missing, needing to switch to PS or Gimp when needed where it's faster to be able to work 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.

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.

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.

Yes, I bought it directly from Serif.
It offered itself to update, when I started the old 1.7 version :-)

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 :-)

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.