coranda

The tools in AP are only grey when you haven't got an image loaded.  Nonetheless, professional graphics programmes need to have bland grey interfaces, it's best practice.  In fact, one of the criticisms I've read of AP is that it uses coloured icons in the toolbar.  Similarly, a professional graphics workstation needs to be in a bland environment and should never be placed in front of a coloured wall, in a brightly lit room or have bright light directly incident on the screen.
 
It's because human beings have very flexible colour perception.  Cameras need white balance adjustments because our eyes compensate for the ambient light in an environment.  A white object under tungsten light will actually be quite yellow but to our eyes it will look white.  Because we automatically alter our colour perception to suit the surrounding light it's very important to not distract ourselves with colour or bright light on the screen and walls of the room.  That would influence our perception of the colours in the image and that must be avoided.

Thanks, coranda, bang on.
Back in the day, when I first started on a Quadra 950 Mac, Photoshop only had 'separated mode'.
This meant that for all the colour balancing/correcting work I did, my desktop wallpaper was purposely a 'bland', flat grey.
In addition, there was no natural light or windows to the outside - the room's fluorescent lighting was 5000 degrees K, so that any hard copy that was being matched to was being viewed in the correct lighting conditions to comply with my calibrated monitor. :)

The tools in AP are only grey when you haven't got an image loaded.  Nonetheless, professional graphics programmes need to have bland grey interfaces, it's best practice.  In fact, one of the criticisms I've read of AP is that it uses coloured icons in the toolbar.  Similarly, a professional graphics workstation needs to be in a bland environment and should never be placed in front of a coloured wall, in a brightly lit room or have bright light directly incident on the screen.
 
It's because human beings have very flexible colour perception.  Cameras need white balance adjustments because our eyes compensate for the ambient light in an environment.  A white object under tungsten light will actually be quite yellow but to our eyes it will look white.  Because we automatically alter our colour perception to suit the surrounding light it's very important to not distract ourselves with colour or bright light on the screen and walls of the room.  That would influence our perception of the colours in the image and that must be avoided.

The tools in AP are only grey when you haven't got an image loaded.  Nonetheless, professional graphics programmes need to have bland grey interfaces, it's best practice.  In fact, one of the criticisms I've read of AP is that it uses coloured icons in the toolbar.  Similarly, a professional graphics workstation needs to be in a bland environment and should never be placed in front of a coloured wall, in a brightly lit room or have bright light directly incident on the screen.
 
It's because human beings have very flexible colour perception.  Cameras need white balance adjustments because our eyes compensate for the ambient light in an environment.  A white object under tungsten light will actually be quite yellow but to our eyes it will look white.  Because we automatically alter our colour perception to suit the surrounding light it's very important to not distract ourselves with colour or bright light on the screen and walls of the room.  That would influence our perception of the colours in the image and that must be avoided.

The tools in AP are only grey when you haven't got an image loaded.  Nonetheless, professional graphics programmes need to have bland grey interfaces, it's best practice.  In fact, one of the criticisms I've read of AP is that it uses coloured icons in the toolbar.  Similarly, a professional graphics workstation needs to be in a bland environment and should never be placed in front of a coloured wall, in a brightly lit room or have bright light directly incident on the screen.
 
It's because human beings have very flexible colour perception.  Cameras need white balance adjustments because our eyes compensate for the ambient light in an environment.  A white object under tungsten light will actually be quite yellow but to our eyes it will look white.  Because we automatically alter our colour perception to suit the surrounding light it's very important to not distract ourselves with colour or bright light on the screen and walls of the room.  That would influence our perception of the colours in the image and that must be avoided.

There have been a couple of threads recently relating to luminosity masks and the limited flexibility available in AP.  In one of those threads csp proposed blending options as a better way to do this which set me thinking about how that could work.  I have produced a quick, simple video that explains a way to generate a very flexible luminosity mask using blend options.  I hope some of you may find it useful.
 
Thanks to csp for the original idea.
 
 http://youtu.be/2NfimjzLdbA
 
 

Yes, I can get it to happen if you have the pixel layer selected but if you select the B&W adjustment layer before refining the edge then you get the red overlay.

I can see how to do this in the Develop persona but is there a way to view clipped regions in the Photo Persona of AP?

Coranda,
 
Success! Brilliant advice. I can now enter competitions starting in just over a month without using Photoshop.
Your instructions are now printed out and ready for use on my desk.
Thanks again,
 
Bail

I believe Serif are aware of this problem and are working on it.

Filter>Noise>Perlin Noise

This should be fixed in the next beta.

Type Shift -O and it will flip/rotate sequentially through all four positions.

I mean, for example, it criticises AP for not using white balance metadata.  That's not true.  All he's really saying is that the default process doesn't apply white balance but that's just a matter of turning it on or creating a preset with white balance on.  In my experience, counter to his assertion, a camera's auto white balance data is often questionable and I frequently end up making my own adjustments so, that's not a fair criticism.  When he turns white balance on it isn't identical to his preferred convertor so he unilaterally declares that AP must be wrong without feeling the need to provide any evidence to support that contention.  No photographs of colour or grey scale charts.  That's neither fair nor intelligent analysis.  He might be right in his conclusions but he hasn't provided any evidence to support his argument and so, from a rational empiricist perspective, his assertions alone contributes nothing to the debate.
 
He also compares a Photos default process, which uses noise reduction, with the AP process which does not.  How can that be a fair comparison?  You can turn noise reduction on in AP and get a much less noisy image than that article presents.  Whether or not it's equivalent or inferior is an open question but that's not something he bothers to explore.
 
He declares that AP, "somehow manages to create both chrome (sic) and tonal noise even for well-exposed images...".  What's the evidence for this?  Having looked at images in AP and prior to demosaicing I haven't seen anything to particularly support this, but then he doesn't seem to have done any experimental analysis at all.  Opening an image in one processor with noise reduction on by default and another where it is, by default, disabled is a meaningless comparison with regard to noise levels.  The reality, as far as I can tell, is that AP doesn't create noise it's just that, by default, it doesn't do anything to reduce it.  To be honest, his suggestion that it creates the noise just makes me question whether he really has any understanding of the raw conversion process.
 
Yes, as I've said, there are still real issues with AP's Develop persona that I'm sure could be isolated with genuine empirical analysis.  However, so much of the criticism in that article is very shallow and could be placated with a different AP default preset.  To be blunt, I think there are many valid grounds on which the Develop persona can be justifiably criticised but there is nothing in that article that makes me think this guy is even close to being competent to assess a raw convertor.

I'm looking into this currently. There seem to be three groups of problems. The first group is the ones fixed by the beta. The second is due to layers being unticked in Export persona Layers; this results in them not being output, even though the Export persona still draws them. Finally, there are some remaining bugs in our export code which I'll fix ASAP.

I haven't used the RAW convertor in AP much so I can't really comment on it's quality but there is something that you need to bear in mind when comparing it to other convertors.  There is no such thing as a correct default conversion as raw files need to be interpreted to some degree so they can be viewed.  Different convertors pre apply various adjustments by default.  Lightroom/ACR for example, and much to many people's annoyance, applies some degree of recovery to images.  The amount varies from image to image but it won't tell you how much or give you an easy way to remove it.
 
What might, or might not, be relevant in your case is that AP defaults to zero colour noise reduction but ACR starts out with 25% to reduce colour blotchiness in the shadows.  Have you tried adjusting that in AP or turning it down to 0 in ACR?

I mean, for example, it criticises AP for not using white balance metadata.  That's not true.  All he's really saying is that the default process doesn't apply white balance but that's just a matter of turning it on or creating a preset with white balance on.  In my experience, counter to his assertion, a camera's auto white balance data is often questionable and I frequently end up making my own adjustments so, that's not a fair criticism.  When he turns white balance on it isn't identical to his preferred convertor so he unilaterally declares that AP must be wrong without feeling the need to provide any evidence to support that contention.  No photographs of colour or grey scale charts.  That's neither fair nor intelligent analysis.  He might be right in his conclusions but he hasn't provided any evidence to support his argument and so, from a rational empiricist perspective, his assertions alone contributes nothing to the debate.
 
He also compares a Photos default process, which uses noise reduction, with the AP process which does not.  How can that be a fair comparison?  You can turn noise reduction on in AP and get a much less noisy image than that article presents.  Whether or not it's equivalent or inferior is an open question but that's not something he bothers to explore.
 
He declares that AP, "somehow manages to create both chrome (sic) and tonal noise even for well-exposed images...".  What's the evidence for this?  Having looked at images in AP and prior to demosaicing I haven't seen anything to particularly support this, but then he doesn't seem to have done any experimental analysis at all.  Opening an image in one processor with noise reduction on by default and another where it is, by default, disabled is a meaningless comparison with regard to noise levels.  The reality, as far as I can tell, is that AP doesn't create noise it's just that, by default, it doesn't do anything to reduce it.  To be honest, his suggestion that it creates the noise just makes me question whether he really has any understanding of the raw conversion process.
 
Yes, as I've said, there are still real issues with AP's Develop persona that I'm sure could be isolated with genuine empirical analysis.  However, so much of the criticism in that article is very shallow and could be placated with a different AP default preset.  To be blunt, I think there are many valid grounds on which the Develop persona can be justifiably criticised but there is nothing in that article that makes me think this guy is even close to being competent to assess a raw convertor.

...and you must option click somewhere on the layer but not on the visibility check box.

I'm super happy to have paid for it because of what it can do, but it does have lots of room for improvement. Hopefully this discussion about the RAW process will lead to that!

I haven't used the RAW convertor in AP much so I can't really comment on it's quality but there is something that you need to bear in mind when comparing it to other convertors.  There is no such thing as a correct default conversion as raw files need to be interpreted to some degree so they can be viewed.  Different convertors pre apply various adjustments by default.  Lightroom/ACR for example, and much to many people's annoyance, applies some degree of recovery to images.  The amount varies from image to image but it won't tell you how much or give you an easy way to remove it.
 
What might, or might not, be relevant in your case is that AP defaults to zero colour noise reduction but ACR starts out with 25% to reduce colour blotchiness in the shadows.  Have you tried adjusting that in AP or turning it down to 0 in ACR?

In the print dialogue, at the bottom, there should be a button that says "Show Details".  Click that.  There you will see a drop down list that probably has "Affinity Photo" selected.  Click on that list and choose "Colour Matching" and make sure that "ColorSync" is enabled.  You should then see a drop down list of available profiles.
 
Soft proofing is an adjustment layer in AP so select the top layer in your image, add a "Soft Proof" adjustment layer and you'll be prompted to choose the profile.

The document setup item is in AD but I don't think AP has it unfortunately.  It would be handy to switch from white paper to transparent in AP because it affects the channels panel.

No problem, I'm glad I could help.

Preview is written by Apple and they only have built in support for the formats they want. Perhaps one day Apple will feel that the Affinity format is widespread enough for them to support it.

csp,
 
Thanks for that tip.  I did a little experimenting and that lead me to a great, simple way to get very flexible luminosity masks.  If anyone's interested, I've put together a short video to demonstrate the technique.  It's here:
 
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/11178-creating-flexible-luminosity-masks-in-ap/