Alej

I am very excited about everything AI   but yet  have  to see any AI based tool  that could be somewhat helpful when it comes to anything your actual job related.   For some fancy bunny ears in your photos it's super cool for sure.
   What's weird it's surprisingly few really helping things  AI could do so far .  I bought one more year of Photoshop subscribtion last year because of promised AI selecting and photo tagging.    Hardly used it at all.  It's just easier and quicker  to select by yourself  vs  correcting  that stupid  like rock AI .  Tagging  works for anything except what you really need it for.       Same  with sympligon AI lod creation. What a mess.  You end up re-making  by yourself except in some very  obvious  and simple cases.  
Same for AI depth from photo  in  Adobe Alchemist.   It's so-so  really.  Not even  close to real depth captured through photogrammetry.
 
The only good AI job I saw is Octane render de-noiser.    vs other denoisers in other renderers  which basically smear you rendered image into something   unusable and do it only for beauty pass  so also useless
I have mixed impression from AI so far .  A great excitement and expectations and  kind of disappointing reality

Could be good but it's not easy task.
Also Affinity still lacks basic features such as non-destructive(vector based) warping so they need to be implemented before A.I. thing...

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.

+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. 

Yes, very very fun and without headache 
 

Think Angelos is right, can’t recall seeing this before.

While I'm here, and mostly as I have read many times that "you can't use the tools in Affinity (said even so, in general )  for pixel art". Which I believe is a very wrong statement.It is not its main focus, that's outstandingly obvious, they aim pretty higher, but the capability is totally there ... I think there's enough tools, even if it'd be just fine using only the 1 pixel tool. So, imo, there are tools/things that can be recommended, besides starting the document at 72 dpi and setting from start (well, this wouldn't be particularly needed, but dpi is) the final pixels' size (ie 32x32 px), plus setting nearest neighbor, just in case. And working (I dunno if setting in Pixel View mode (that button up there at the top) benefits the task in some way...) all time in Pixel Persona (using Pixel Tool) of AD (this all below leaves Draw Persona and Export Persona totally out) and directly exported from there.(those only having the AD license. With AP, you probably get more "usable" tools.  ) 
I've done pixel art in many apps (specially PS), but haven't been particularly curious till today about how AD's Pixel Persona would perform for this. I find it interesting. As is a gift inside AD! . You can use all selections that have the antialias checkbox, so that you can disable them, and leave them disabled. So, you can use the following tools, in AD Pixel Persona (I guess many of these applies till certain extent to A. Photo, I have not the license   ) , (oh, and keys are in "Windows", u know the equivalent of ctrl in Mac... ) :
- Rectangle marquee selection (perfectly usable, set antialias off)
- Circular selection (idem)
- Row and column selection (idem)
- Lasso selection. (idem) (freehand, polygonal or magnetic) 
- You can fill them all with paint bucket ! (tested neither antialias is generated). You can use the selections to delete chunks as well, of any shape.
- besides, you can use the 'protect alpha' setting in the 1 px tool ("Pixel Tool") settings, at top bar when you are working with this special tool. So, pixels only lay over your character figure, once you have a full silhouette. I would normally not use this, but can come handy. Neither antialias issues detected.
- Pixel Tool is great, inheriting nice details from old shool pixel tools.  CTRL kept pressed is erase mode (as the regular eraser mode would be slower to trigger and DOES produce antialias!) . If you wish 'cause you are more of a background color person rather than using several transparent layers (more of my case) , again in the top bar of settings of the 1 px tool, you can set the option triggered to eraser, to trigger to paint with 'background' instead.
- As with any other Affinity software tool, with 1 pixel tool you alt LMB drag to trigger the canvas color selector (I keep believing a faster non amplifier mode that had no delay is a must for painting, pixel art or regular painting (but is not the only one to suffer from this: Seen it happening too in Krita....))  , which is very convenient for a fast workflow.
- Shift drag while painting to make horizontal lines and vertical lines. Workflow recommended : click, then, staying in same point, shift and then click-drag, then drop shift.
- Shift CLICK (not drag) to get random lines, continued or not, even full polygons. Now, for good pixel art you might want to prefer do manually lines of 2 px steps, etc.
- If you need that much alignment stuff, you could combine the use of selections, set some layers with flat color shapes and set on the "protect alpha" setting for 1 px tool. I don't think it's necessary, tho.
- ctrl click om the layer thumbnails , like in PS or AP, etc, works for selecting quickly all what is painted in the layer (alternative to protect alpha, but also, to do other different operations)
- In menu select, following operations do not produce either antialias, and can be very productive. Advice: in the dialog, type the number entry of px (ie, 1 px), instead of dragging the slider, then hit tab key to see a preview of the selection change, tho it does the marquee preview as in hi res, but once hit enter, it does not do any antialias operation  : grow/shrink (do NOT use feather). Smooth (as this does not seem to add any feather / antialias), useful for rounding stuff fast in a pixel art style. 
- obviously, ctrl +a , ctrl + d , ctrl + shift + i (invert selection) work perfect, no issues, no blur added.
- About alignment, if you make a layers based workflow, you can always align all layers to left, right, bottom.. and/or select several layers (any list of them, or random ctrl picked ones) at a time, and apply a transform to those (ie, flip horizontal, for a walk cycle) . None of this introduces anything dangerous for pixel art solid pixels and unaltered tones.
- As always and from Adobe standards, double click in hand tool zooms to fit desktop, double click in amplifier, sets 1:1 zoom. very useful for pixel art. But some ppl do not know this.
- Layer effects:  Dangerous zone. Maybe would only use color overlay at 100%, selecting "swatches" instead of color wheel, as where to pick the color from in the layer effect dialog, if I made my own custom colors added to swatches (useful for pixel art)., or, use the color picker included in layer effects of  that layer to pick anything on canvas. Most surely, would ctrl/shift click several layers, then would go to Effects tab, near layers tab, and there would do the Layer Effect with color overlay, to change all selected layers fast to one color tone. (of course, all shapes inside that layer would get this color). At any point, I would change any number of layers with this tone by just changing the Effect.
- I probably would not use the blending modes, not in the brush, neither in the layer.  
- handling the layers order, flipping layers, using snapshots, history, etc, that all can be useful.  As well as locking layers, hiding/showing, etc. In many game companies, the workflow is by pieces in the characters, to optimize memory, and combination freedom. Both in pixel art and high res 2D games. I hate it, but is a must in certain jobs and even in freelance projects. That said, there's a ton other projects and companies using full figure sprites. Is good to have the layers flexibility, for any case.
- Generating a New View and moving the windows so they are not tabs any more and resizing the windows, I'd have a mosaic windows organization of 2 vertical tiles, so I get to see one smaller in close to 1:1 or 2:1 (at zoomed out canvas size width) and the other at zoomed in level, where I paint. This way you can even check some animation by switching fast between layers, checking visually both in 1:1 or so, and zoomed in. (tho ideal is doing animation in a proper animation tool, to which you could export the characters from here)
Ok, I've seen some posts of people doing very strange things in AD (again, I'd go for this better in A. Photo) to get pixel art done. This is really very basic (so basic that I've been just checking now for first what stuff is possible apart from the Pixel Tool (as is all I'd need)!), sorry to the most of you, and most contributors to the thread. But I still remember one very strange user case and certain questions... Might be fine to have at least one post with very basic stuff.
EDIT:  Forgot to add some interesting workflows.... You might want to add "Color" window (probably detached to keep it nearer and at your fav location) as a main new color selector, and mostly, the same, probably near to that one, the swatches panel. Set the swatches panel to show in LARGE thumbnails (as typical pixel art only uses some very few colors, and this way is faster/more comfy to select) , also, once you have setup/decided the colors -a lot of people do this (in pixel art and in digital painting) directly painting the samples on canvas on some corner- , your 6 or 8 or whatever main colors (no judging here, a large color palette is nice, too, the heck with the purists, no need to keep 100% emulating for ever the old machines limited capabilities), you can manually add swatches to your swatches palette (hitting the grey painting palette icon there), one by one, or can easily add all your canvas colors (in samples from a corner or in an advanced drawing) with a button touch to the swatches as your main and only palette. You do this by, in this swatches dialog, top corner tiny menu thingy, select "Create palette from document", then "as document palette". If u add more later, u can always repeat this, takes 1 second.  Also cool: you can hit "create palette from image..." , so you would load other image's pixel art colors, useful if working in a game animation or any project globally restricted to a set of colors (you can build new palettes from those adding new colors, etc).
Also, added a screenshot about a setup that could be useful.
 

I made a test yesterday, as IMO, this stuff in theory should be more up to Photo, is totally raster related. The attempt of doing pixel art through vector tools, the reasons to go that route totally escapes my understanding. Unless is planned a very complex pipeline providing with exports from same assets to res.  independent (different mobile sizes/proportions), SVGs for mobile AND pixel art exported from same asset, that is, in raster as well, for mobiles apps and game engines that would use raster only, instead, as all of this happens in actual game developments companies. Some games would even use both as an optimization trick. If not the case, IMO is a bit crazy to do pixel art with vector tools. Maybe you can do so, but is the wrong approach, imo. Hmmm...not totally so. In several places where they produce large quantities of icons, I've seen workflows 100% fully vector based. BUT! because they ended up mastering a method to quickly produce a clean enough  pixel-art export (from the vectors) which they'd clean up a bit more after that by hand. The average artist wouldn't get that right easily, speaking at least from an stats pov. Not my cup of tea for making good pixel art, tho...
My lightning fast test of yesterday -as I had tested the 1 px tool quite well, long ago, in Photo win beta- was fully in PIXEL PERSONA of AD, with the pixel tool, and exporting to PNG.  Doing so with formats like JPG instead would be extremely wrong, as that adds compression artifacts all over the place. I don't use any export persona for this (neither for anything, I don't to multiple files exports or the like, I don't get real benefit from using those for my activity) Even if not evident in a fast glance you'd get varied color tones in the best scenario of a JPG or other lossy format, blurriness if left at the usual default compression. Of course, my PNG export was not using any export persona, but directly from there, like I would have made in Photo for this pixel tool. Zero problems. Export was 100% good. IMO the pixel persona in AD, using the 1 px tool, totally a good enough environment to produce whatever the pixel art needed, be it tiles, sprites, backgrounds, whatever. Is it the most specific tool for that ? Nooope, even Krita has wrap around mode for tiles, isometric guides, an entire animation mode with keyframes handling, onion skinning and all, and other stuff. But the thing is, it is also a huge advantage to have all the standard tools for any other project that you might need to start, other than pixel art (plus, I'd be able to use many Pixel persona tools for Pixel Art, even with workarounds. Like in PS, Gimp, etc.). I keep liking to discover that at least in what I'm typically required to do (freelancer stuff), Designer is such a royal work horse.... Also, as I've done pixel art of very advanced level with just MS Paint, there's indeed some that -wrongly- say that pixel art should be done solely with that software (For Mac people : an "accessories" tool included in every Windows, but an old version which kept offered as a download in many geeky sites. Today there's too many tools free and paid, usually low cost, so much better for the purpose) -a bit of a silly statement, tho- but is a work profile that has its main factor mostly in the artist SKILL, rather than in the software's features, IMO. Any specific tool like Cosmigo's, or even the free Gale is more dedicated to the task and better  for companies doing that 24/7 (like always, like happens with Spine in 2D anim hi res for games, is also as there are in-house pipelines for engines, so it is a must for them).
For freelancing, I prefer a work horse for virtually any other thing that eventually, as a bonus, allows me doing pretty well any pixel art project (among other things, as in volume, more freelancing in other fields, and with exceptions, typically better paid. Pixel art and  comics making are two areas in which their professionals, we do get usually way lower payment than deserved for expertise and skills. So, the "work horse" thing is more important to most freelancers...). For that, the pixel tool is such a gift. But I've been a for ever defender in PS of just using the "pencil" tool, as is non aliased. And using non aliasing marquees, that's all u needed. Super epic discussions about it, but funny fact: I've worked for certain huge company in games/apps making, and most of the guys typically defending that you can only do old school, and use certain niche-geekish type of tools to produce pixel art, those mostly had not even done well paid gigs, or gigs at all, let alone get a salary for doing that 24/7. Like in many things, there's ppl (NONE in this thread, btw) protecting their sort of niche to avoid intrusiveness (and others letting 'em do so due to the -lets use yet another time the so trendy term- impostor syndrome) and to feel kindda special, but behind that there's little to nothing. You can do all and everything with a 1px tool here or the pencil in PS. Oh, and a canvas, yes, you need to open a new document. But that's it. A coffee/cereals drink/vegetables juice/tea might be almost essential, more than any othe "feature"...
Anyway, I'd be curious to know about  the need of alignment to grid for pixel  art. Indeed, is very productive to have an isometric grid for isometric pixel art.
 

yep, use the pixel persona + pixel tool. Works pretty (and hello from another pixel artist)

One benefit i can see, is being able to work on your iPad without having to be connected to a Mac. 
 
It does have some keyboard shortcuts and they are the same as the Desktop version where possible.  You can also change the Shortcuts in Preferences for certain actions

For sure, it's always important to have completely separate alpha and colour. Now with this workflow I can have a layers group for the colour, and a layers group for the alpha. Then all that is required before export is to right click my 'alpha' layer group and Rasterise to Mask.

SOLUTION:
1) Paste as new layer, make it the top layer
2) Right click layer > Rasterize to Mask
File > Export
This is a different workflow to what I was used to in PS, but I think it's more flexible because you can optionally have a bunch of layers above or below the mask layer all with their own transparency that will contribute to the final exported alpha channel. ALSO you can have multiple mask layers that all contribute to the final alpha channel.

The features sets are very similar but the iPad does not yet have 100% of all desktop features. Affinity did a Live broadcast showing there latest versions and Publisher. They demonstrated the same  file on both iPad and a top line Mac with no noticeable difference in speed.
check it out here, well worth a look as Publisher is coming to iPad and includes Live studio. This allows opening a file in one app and having all the tools of the other apps (if installed) available at the touch of a button, all within the one app.
https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/live/
Works done on Mac and iPad is totally interchangeable. Simple answer is to buy both! 

Please add support to save/export PSB files.

How are you supposed to be able to save large projects and exchange them with Photoshop or other applications?
Affinity Photo does not support PSB
No BigTIFF
No layers with TIFF (I know, it's an Adobe thing)
No editable layers are preserved with PDF

Now what?

I had high hopes for Affinity and I am really liking a lot of things about it (image brush!), but if I cannot use it to edit large projects (30GB+ image files) and swap them back into Photoshop then Affinity Photo is close to being useless for me.

Please tell me there is either an option that I missed or that there is PSB support in the works! Thanks.

Hi Affinity team,
I'm game developer, use Unity game engine. 

Unity are introducing a 2D PSDImporter package that allows the layers in a .psb file to be automatically imported into a sprite upon import.  This doesn't appear to work with .psd file. 

So i wish .psb export support in Affinity Photo / Designer 
Big Thanks!

I need this too. For Designer as well as Photo.

I am a Unity developer. 

so i wish  .psb export support in Affinity Photo / Designer too

Hi there, Unity are introducing a 2D PSDImporter package that allows the layers in a .psb file to be automatically imported into a sprite upon import.  This doesn't appear to work with .psd file, as far as I can see (despite the name), so would it be possible to get .psb export support in Affinity Photo?
Many Thanks,
Andy Duplain

Hi
 
I have switched from Adobe to Affinity.
I am working with unity and for animation i can only import .PSB files. Is there any plans to be able to export  .PSB files from Affinity? 

I  asked if there was any plan to support exporting to .PSB file in the future. I know i am not able to export to .PSB now.

I work a lot with Unity and Affinity Designer.
Unity introduced a 2D PSDImporter package that allows layers in a .PSB file to be imported as seperate sprites automatically. Unfortunately regular PSD-Files are not supported.
It would be of great help to me, if Designer (and Photo) would support the export of .PSB-Files

... better (and in accordance with the rules of the forum) is to add your request/vote to an existing request, of which there are already many. For example:
etc.

Maybe like so?

Hi giakaama,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Nothing wrong with that (quite the contrary). I do hope there's improvements here in future versions. Affinity Photo is still relatively new. There's quite a few areas that must be looked into/improved/expanded.