Alej

A suggestion for anybody that finds this, as a work around, pop the "QuickFX" menu to the side, there are checkboxes there. It doesn't toggle them all on or off but for the most part it's only a couple of them active at any time in my experience Now, don't even bother playing with that "Fill Opacity" there at the top. It absolutely does nothing on my side since years of pointing it out EDIT: wait, the fill opacity does work! 🎉

All these quite years old requests (and quite the useful ones, as currently it's an insane amount of friction to work) have been archived under "Affinity Photo V1" tags. What should we do? should we open a new one on affinity photo v2 and re-link to this one?

Ah my bad, could be that it’s not clear because of how I start the sentence, maybe I should rephrase it as a shortcuts bug. Maybe should do it soon, the problem is with configuring shortcuts, provided that there no conflicts prompted by a warning sign: 1. setting alt + delete (or ctrl delete) as the shortcut, for example, will just delete the layer and not perform the fill (even if it doesn’t conflict with other shortcuts) 2. Setting it as alt enter (or an another one with enter) will not perform anything. Will capture a video to first double check that it is a bug (and tagged as so), and that it is affinity photo v2 (hence not feedback for v1). And no, I dislike photoshop and adobe ways in general, that’s why I’m moving away… but I can’t put familiar shortcuts to ease the move, it’s definitely a friction point at least? But these don’t have to be the default forced on everyone, I’ll give you that.

1. Affinity Photo comes with Fill with Primary/Secondary colors shortcuts empty (only Shift+F5 for a somewhat complete but convoluted for simple fills tool). For people jumping from certain other softwares is a bit of a pace killer. 2. The problem is made worse because familiar shortcuts don't work: option+delete or ctrl+delete or cmd+delete will just delete the layer selected. 3. alt+enter, ctrl+enter or command+enter might have either another shortcut already or if it doesn't it does nothing. Ended up settling for a temporary shortcut with option or control + backslash (alt+\), can get used to it but it maybe warrants a fix as it's a mayor friction point as soon as the program is just opened.

Self explanatory, follow up to Feedback topic that was made for V1 a long time ago. The pressure sensitivity with side car is just too harsh, I have to exert a huge amount of pressure to see the pressure move... sounds dangerous for both the iPad, the tip of the pencil and the pencil itself. I tried a pressure sensitivity like the following: However it has to be done PER BRUSH a global override (or multiplier?) for all would be probably appreciated, that way the original brushes curves can be left untouched. This bug is a followup to a discussion going here:

This is under "Affinity Photo V1 on Desktop" and it's definitely not true... it's very much needed on V2. The frustration is real... 99% of the things work, yet it's that 1% that breaks everything and need to go back to photoshop. Filling with Primary/Secondary colors shortcuts, clipping masks on groups, brush global pressure sensitivity. Wasn't there on V1 and "on the ALL NEW, ALL THE NEW FEATURES" V2 neither.

Regretting more and more having jumped to Affinity Photo 2 (the whole trio of apps). It's a great price for what it does but still alt+del or command+enter, etc when put as fill selection with primary or secondary colors STILL don't work for example. So, global pressure sensitive, the best I can come up with is with the brushes to adjust the curve they come with at the "more" section next to the 'force pressure' icon... PER BRUSH. Use this type of curve: Now, this definitely requires care from the development team, going to try to open a suggestion if I don't see any. That curve makes it considerably more useful fyi.

Yes exactly, have been navigating the internet powers that be to find such a simple operation to no avail... a lot of people say "did you even try it?", or "just do the dragging thing", but I don't think it is fully grasped as it's quite a very simple thing use-wise. Clipping mask on a group: on a group with a bunch of layers inside, use another layer to paint on top of it but using the rest of the group's content as its mask. It's really simple... Photoshop (as much as I hate it) does it by stacking things "on top" while groups are "grouped" inside it. Simple. Also, groups have a folder icon... also simple. Affinity photo groups, pixel layers, etc are all confusing. What makes a layer clip with another or be just inside a group is the icon of it (nothing or checkerboard icon), because else, they even indent the same.

I have found this to be a common trend… I use Affinity Photo very rarely at times (when everybody else on my team uses Photoshop) because it feels more native and snappier in performance. However, sometimes I spend too many minutes doing something that takes a fraction of the time with PS (which I dislike with a passion because of all the bloating that nobody ever asked for). Filling a layer/selection still feels like a heavy friction hassle, color picking with the magnifier glass is the slowest action ever (it lags, hiccups and chokes the moment it tries to appear… I had made a video of it, silence), and I seem to not grasp the shapes tool… sometimes they fill with the top right color chooser, sometimes it doesn’t (gotta press X to switch between fore/back colors… maybe only one of the two fills, not clear), etc. Layout work works amazingly well… but so many other things are unclear in general: masks, clipping mask, effects, live effects and their the two tiered nesting levels (under a layer and the-under-in-between-to-the-right something) of it all. Reorganizing them after the fact seems to be a hit or miss too. The export persona refused to move slices, I have no clue how to move slices after I made them last time I used them. They seem to select or create a new one on top… just not move. And the elephant in this room… filling, try putting command delete or alt delete shortcut and it will delete a layer instead, as if the delete key has priority no matter the key modifiers combination. I understand this comes as too negative, and that it’s probably a very small team, but years on end without a solution is also very harsh for clients that would love to see this thrive. It takes a lot of time to investigate, come up with what brushes seem to be doing what, what fails, document it, capture videos at times to then be met with silence. It’s been over a year without an update looks like? Here’s hoping for an incredible overhaul of bug fixes (not features, just bug fixes). Fingers crossed from a sporadic non heavy user of affinity photo.

Here's a video of how it works, I just do some brushes, not quite as snappy the first one but acceptable however hitting 'alt' and color picking is not workable at all. The lag should be very visible on the captured video. This is also a tiny document test to take doc size out of the equation, it was a 446 by 96 px small canvas, just one layer. Also, just alt clicking doesn't show the color picker, it has to be dragged for it to appear, the first appearance is actually the slowest of all (not quite visible on the video as it just appears after some frozen time). Any workarounds in the meantime would be greatly appreciated. VerySlowColorPicker.mp4

So, sadly it was about a condescending comment making fun of people, which I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. What an ignorant comment and person then, hope it's reported and banned. @Lupearn Some people, for example, would go and prepare command line based massive Substance Designer files that do a lot of stuff on folders regarding channel packing, optimizations, resizing, material generation based on alphas (or smoothness to roughness conversion depending on engine), etc times 2000. And sometimes a quick test without having to go through the whole complicated pipeline just yet as a quick test makes a lot sense... and there's no real need to convert, it can still be done on PS, a company has no problem paying $20 per seat for a PS license, this is more about principle and wanting to find a different venue. Your comment is so condescending, short sighted and narrow. Compare that to the civilized and insanely helpful member here @kirk23 who has shared macros, workarounds for the "zero alpha pre-multiplies the RGB channels, etc", thanks a lot for the efforts. I will continue to use Affinity Photo on my personal time and professional time as much as possible, the community is ultimately very helpful (beyond a few rotten apples) and the devs are making great strides overall

No need for a direct format conversion, affinity can load and export psd files directly. And the format’s features support are kept as up to date as possible in my experience.

Exactly, the whole issue here is, whether the AP way is superior, is that people REALLY want AP to be a replacement, to make it work, for that to happen it has to have as less friction as possible. We aren’t bashing Serif devs, we are incredibly happy that they are doing what they do with performance and keeping things in check, is just that it’s so darn close in some things but not quite that it’s frustrating. If I want to get rid of a certain other photo program I have to be able to do the same in a similar enough way, at least at the beginning, no macros, no splitting, no preview woes… I jumped into this question thread right away because I opened a TGA file that had an alpha channel, that I wanted to invert, paint some stuff on it, Levels on a selection mask, resave. A 2min turnaround max for a dirty test before deciding on larger scale production decisions which turned in hours and hours of head-scratching, reading forums, etc… what happened? I had to do it back on known grounds and it took me 1hr 2mins instead of just 2mins and felt beyond frustrating, but that’s how much I wanted it to work.

Received a PSD files, it happens to have box rectangles with uniform rounded corners, it might be related to that? Also gradient fills properties show up. Let me know if these are actually bugs I should be mentioning here? or is it to be expected for the time being while compatibility is being worked out? Latest AP, 1.10.14 RectangleBugs.psd

Alright, I think that it is a beginner's mistake regarding blending modes, I have confirmed in other softwares that the 'Fill' opacity seems to not do anything either regarding the global blending opacity of effects and also the color/patter/inner-outer-glows/etc are not affected by the layer's blending mode either. So the 'workaround' (group and apply blending mode to that) seems to be the right way. Sorry for that. Here's the video in case, 1.10.4 appeared today for me. AP_10_4_FillOpacity_BlendingModes_bugs-Low720p_MP4_nosound.mp4

Ok, doesn't appear just yet on the Mac App Store. Will give it a test drive afternoon to see. Also, my bad, this has been a pretty rush test as it isn't an important task but felt weird compared to how I do it elsewhere, the blending modes themselves for color overlay don't seem to work either. Workaround: had to put everything under a group and use the blending modes there instead, actually having the blending mode on a layer with it's Layer Effects doesn't do the blending with the final pixel value.

Hello! thanks for the quick followup. 1.10.35514 File attached. But starting to fear that I might be doing something non-clever. Updating to today's version.FillOpacityPotentialBug.afphoto

Posting a video, it is self explanatory, can't seem to find why the slider does nothing on any of the layers shown. That said, if I create a new Text layer for example, the opacity slider of that one will work. Not clear why this current example seems to do anything. (Blending mode do work but can't modulate it). EDIT: my bad, was selecting the 'brushes' opacity for the layer's opacity. However the fill's opacity doesn't seem to work. Screen Recording 2021-10-29 at 11.23.53 AM.mov

Hopefully this is not against forum rules but another known app (it starts with “Pixel” and something about “mator Pro”) has added quite the Siri Shortcuts support for Monterey. It works with a reduced subset because they have quite the one shot ML actions (remove background, separate subject from background, etc etc). Maybe something useful could be done too with Affinity apps, especially now that the desktop has support for Shortcuts now, but pretty sure there are more pressing matters.

Hello! I'm having the same issue, iMac 2020, 5700XT Big Sur. It isn't TERRIBLY slow but it shows a considerable hiccup/lag. Can make a video of it if it is still being investigated.

Woah, I especially like the scene objects highlighting (because I hadn’t seen it before like this). Pretty sure the Serif guys are working hard for this but without neglecting the potentially more important imminent few fixes and QoL tweaks. To be honest, I have used these similarly related AI things a total of zero times in other applications... so I wonder how useful it can really be (if others can chime in), however, the Depth Map and scene labeling though, that looks interesting.

That’s an interesting workaround thanks for the share. Just as a caveat for anybody doing confidencial or company contract work: besides the potential several GBs of data per conversion round trip there’s still the security/privacy issue. They mention they delete it after an hour of the conversion but still... might not be the service the problem but anybody outside or around it. I would not use it except for personal testing purposes and even then the PSD file sent can have a lot of personal information attached to it.

Thanks a lot for this, after several years I found your breakdown of which tools works without anti-alias and the overview quite informative. I have been checking and following the Affinity Suite of tools and I’m using it more and more. Some time ago I didn’t even understand what “Pixel Persona” meant, had only Affinity Photo at that time. Now that I have all of them (both Mac and iPad) it makes more and more sense. What do you thing about the existing isometric view capabilities? Maybe that could help? Also regarding sticking to pixel persona only, could it be useful to quickly sketch with the curve tools, rasterize and then pixelize or clean on top? In any case, cheers.

Solid take, in my experience the photoshop way is a work around to be honest for forcing .TGA files to have the alpha channel (since the exporting is treated completely different if it is .PNG or .TGA there). The main issue with this though is that sometimes, especially video games, control over the colors where the alpha is zero (or “fully” transparent) is required (premultiplied alpha blending workflows for example). At this point I think it’s better to use something else, .PNG and transparency of the layers (or globally making one like rasterizing to mask with a layer at the very top) works perfectly fine for UI-like assets. For intricate R-G-B-A handling I’m just using substance designer when possible in the end (which also has another set of constraints, like textures there are always power of 2, sometimes a positive, sometimes a drawback).

+1! Just bumped into the exact same thing. Onto finding how to auto arrange them in the meantime. Unity could maybe allow for .PSD support too.