mbrakes

Hear, hear!

+1

Photoshop allows for opening raw files through Adobe Camera Raw as Smart Objects, and then you can re-open the Smart Objects in ACR whenever you want, to further adjust the RAW adjustments. This is invaluable for advanced exposure masking techniques for landscapes, interiors and architectural photography. This way you can stack several alternative exposures to create a photo encompassing an extremely high dynamic range and different light sources and white balances, and "paint in" alternative exposures, or use luminosty masking techniques. AFAIK there is no equivalent workflow available in Affinity Photo (yet), which unfortunately prevents me from making the switch from Adobe.

I´m very glad to see that version 1.9 of AP is out, and AP becoming a more and more polished product, but yet I am very disappointed to see that the Selection Brush tool hasn´t been improved - not only does it not remember the refine settings, but the settings dialogue box doesn´t remember its placement on the screen either. Imagine having to process 50-100 photos, and having to repeat the same settings and nudge the dialogue box every time. Photoshop wins easily, no contest, yet AP is soooo close...! It is really frustrating, and I hope this will be put at the top of the list now. I´ll offer a design improvement to one-up Photoshop in this area simultaneously: It would be great if Serif could introduce presets for the "refine" settings in the Selection Brush tool, like a drop-down menu for often-used user settings which we can give descriptive titles - this would seriously speed up my workflow, and give AP the upper hand vs. Photoshop. (to clarify - presets for the dialogue window with settings for feathering, smoothness, output to new layer with mask etc.) Its always been an enigma to me why so many people seem so obsessed about brush presets in Photoshop, settings that I personally never use, yet it doesn´t have presets for the Selection Brush - Refine tool - that I use ALL THE TIME... Go figure... Please, please, please fix this 🙂

+1 I need this too - when I'm working on a batch of photos, the photos are usually similar enough that the same refine tool settings will serve well as a starting point, with only minor tweaks, for each photo. I was just about to conclude that Affinity at long last can go into action as my main editing software, and finally getting rid of Photoshop CS6, but this curious omission is a dealbreaker when processing 50+ photos a day - it's just so much quicker when not having to go into each and every setting every time. In Photoshop I can batch process photos using actions containing refine settings - I don't see how that is possible in Affinity Photo if it can't remember the settings. Please push this at the top of the priority list - pretty please! 🙂

+1

I'm having the same issue, and would really like to see a fix, please.

I just can't see myself commiting to Affinity Photo without this feature, it just makes simple repeat tasks so much more cumbersome than they should be.

Thanks Dominik! That is super helpful, and actually sounds like a viable solution. "Assets" is new to me, but if it is possible to use this as a system-wide drawer where often-used assets are kept handy at all times then it sounds like it could be just the ticket. Will have to look that up and play around with it. That being said - I still don't get why guides as per default can't be stored and reused easily across several files over several projects without having to sort to workarounds. To me, the most obvious purpose of guides would be to keep things consistent over time, and to do that you really need to be able to store them and access them easily across documents and projects. And you also have to be able to set the guides as relative values; percentages of height or width or something of the sort, so proportions can be kept even though the pixel dimensions are different between photos - as they regularly are after photos have been cropped. I'll keep on flogging this horse until the horse either dies or Serif listens :-) I also tried to figure out how to us the colour sampling tool yesterday, and it seemed harder than necessary to just sample a colour from one file and then use that colour as the basis of a gradient background in another. The only way I managed to accomplish this was through first storing in "Swatches", and then accessing "Swatches" in the other document, something that necessitaded a lot of needless clicking around. In Photoshop this is relatively easy by comparison - the sampled colurs just arrives in bacground/foreground color and off you go. But I admit I've only had limited time to play around and there may be some genius way of doing this in Affinity that I just haven't found out yet...

Thanks Carl, that is very good news! :-)

I am also looking for a way to specify which parts of a colours range to tune - specifically the red in people's cheeks and the greenish yellow tinge that some unshaven males take on around their jaws especially under fluorescent lighting - I use this all the time in Photoshop to tweak these unflattering or sick-looking hues. None of the above really works as replacements for me.

I just began using Affinity Photo in earnest today, after being an early supporter that paid merely to support "the cause" (monopolies are always bad), but I am pleased to see that Affinity is now beginning to look like a real Photoshop replacement. But this oversight is major, I am in the same boat as Steve above - this is a showstopper as I'm having to repeat hundreds of times a day. There's a similar annoyance with the (surprisingly) good Selection brush tool (W) with its refine selection option, where I always opt for the option to output to new layer with mask, to allow for making subsequent alterations to the background and the mask - same story there - this tool doesn't remember the last used option either. It may seem like a small thing, but when producing large amounts of photos all the extra clicks adds up, and I find myself returning to Photoshop simply because it is faster for this reason. I have to admit though that the future looks bright if Serif can just iron out these really annoying small omissions, there's so much good stuff too :-)

Thanks carl - yes. That is more or less what I've been doing in the past. It's just that it is a pain compared to simply storing a few preset guides that could be kept handy just like brush presets. There's so many things that seems assbackwards with these image processing apps from my perspective as a photographer. I almost never ever use brush presets, although that is included by default, but what I REALLY could need - guides - is treated like a second citizen. It has never made any sense to me and still doesn't. your signature line made my day! :-D

Thanks Walt! I really appreciate your helpful response, but your suggestion is more cumbersome than I like, and I'll explain why: I shoot portraits tethered to my laptop using Capture One, and enter the names of the subjects straight into a naming template, so the names are becoming a part of the filenames. This is important for the filehandling further downstream from me. Having to copy the photos into a new file for the sake of guidelines will mess up my workflow completely, and will introduce so many new hoops to jump through. I just can't believe that nobody have thought of implementing reusable guidelines before. Major oversight. Probably just goes to show how few Photoshop users are actually photographers as opposed to graphic designers that tend to create uniqe designs? I've found this Photoshop plugin https://pixnub.com/portrait-crop-photoshop-plugin/ which seems like it does what I really need, except it only works with Photoshop CC, and is quite expensive. Probably a no-brainer for a high-volume headshot-business, but it is only a part of what I do, and I really try to resist Creative Cloud (which is why I'm here in the first place) I've looked into Graphic Converter which can also crop using a similar face detection batch feature ("Crop portrait"), but needs to be set up as a batch process, and as it isn't WYSIWYG, it is quite cumbersome to set up the first time, and similarly make adjustments based on changing portrait compositions etc. But for the lack of alternatives I will have to experiment with it further. My greatest issue with the GC route is the fact that any crops are "hard" crops, so will be impossible to make any small adjustments after the fact.

Anyone know if it possible to save guides and reuse them between documents? As for now, it seems to me like this isn't possible, although I'd really like to be proven wrong... For the life of me I can't understand why this isn't a standard feature in either Photoshop, Affinity or any other programs that I am aware of. I could really use it like; all the time. I had high hopes when I realised Affinity had a Guides manager, but it seems half-baked - for me it seems like a major oversight to not allow for these guides to be saved and reused later, and be able to easily transfer them between documents. So much promise, but unfortunately falling short when you have to recreate the guides for every document. Life's far too short. Just for a bit more background information about my usecase: It is ridiculously difficult to achieve consistency between headshots when cropping without having to jump through a lot of unnecessary hoops, having to resort to copying photos and layer them and set transparency to 50% and the like. If I could simply set up a guide template based on percentage and use that as a cropping guideline, that would make my life so much easier. Pretty please...! And, while at it, please also add relative cropping based on face recognition, that would REALLY make my life easier :-)

+1

Haven't you heard that the "Classic Cheesegrater" has since been replaced by the much superior and even more customizable "Hackintosh"? :D

Hi Ronny, you are obviously talking from the viewpoint of a graphic designer, not as a photographer/videographer that has to grapple with thousands of RAW files/terabytes of video on a daily basis. The iPad is pretty much dead in the water however much Apple adds a "Pro" to the name, simply because they have crippled it with regards to input/output options. There's simply no way to get the required data in and out fast enough through wifi or lightning connector, not to mention limited internal storage, to make it a usable tool for pro's like myself. Not to mention the fact that by opting for a separate OS there's simply no professional software available (yet, and I doubt any is about to surface that will be considered "pro" by professionals like myself anytime soon, Affinity's iPad app included). Microsoft's newest Surface offerings look real good in comparison to anything Apple's been able to come up with lately except for the fact that I'm so heavily invested in the Mac platform that the switch is going to really hurt me in terms of software licences should I decide to switch. But in hardcore video circles Apple is now pretty much extinct, and I fully understand why, as Apple have pretty much ignored that user base (which once upon a time was the most die-hard fanbase) after Tim Cook became CEO of Apple. I'm pretty sure a lot of stills photographers will follow suit very soon unless Apple shows renewed commitment to their professional user base by updating the Mac Pro, give the MacBook Pro line a real boost in performance etc.

I think tablets are a dead end and would apprexiate the Affinity team not wasting any more time on it. Touch interfaces have (for now) the wow-factor for the masses, but I think most real pro's eyes are just glazing over by now. I "get" that you are supposed to work with lo-res proxy files, but that inevitably leads to a lot of potential syncing issues and preview rendering time I'd rather not deal with (been there). Not to mention how a touch interface slows you down and inevitably leads to ergonomic nightmare when working long hours compared to touch-typing shortcuts on a keyboard, and using a Wacom pen in combination with a dedicated controller like the Countor ShuttlePro v2, that can be programmed with all the macros you need/want in the palm of your hand, with physical keys and wheels that you can feel with your fingers without having to look at them, without taking your eyes away from the screen (ok, someone will correct me here and tell me that you don't have to take your eyes away from the screen when the input device IS the screen, but that leads back to the ergonomical nightmare part again, when you have to wave your hands over a large surface all day your shoulders and neck will start to hurt after a while). As "cool" as the IPad Pro/Surface may seem, there's of course also issues related to colour management and calibration. I get it, real pro's are in the minority, the majority of paying customers are amateurs or semi-pro, but I get kind of sick every time I see "pro" features announced that have everything to do with coolness and wow-factor and very little to do with actual pro usage. Like Apple's MacBook Pro announcement days ago, where they showcased the MBP with two 5K dispalys and two RAIDs and promoting it as a pro workstation. I tried that once before, and the fans on my MBP died. I don't think their cooling technology have improved that much in the couple of years passed. Most seasoned pros rightfully stick to the tested and true KISS principle. Which means hard keys and dials and beefy desktop workstations and calibrated displays.

I would really welcome a competitor to Lightroom and Capture One. Capture One gets the file processing right, and I love how they have provided such finely controlled tools for skin color. But the user interface is terrible compared to Lightroom. And I really don't understand why they insist on forcing users into their sessions or catalogue workflow. I am not allowed to simply develop 2-3 photos from a folder by dragging and dropping onto C1, but have to import them into a session in C1, which is just plain silly. Lightroom on the other hand has a lovely GUI but up until v6 was unusably slow, and the RAW processing quality just can't compete with C1 (I hear the argument over and over that files can be made to look the same in lightroom - but not without a lot of effort, and still not quite as good in my opinion). Would love to see Serif get both the GUI and file quality right.

Same here. As stated above, I too have managed to I have entered the path to Imagenomic Portraiture into AFP prefs, and a greyed out menu item appears in the plugin menu, and as it is greyed out it won't do anything. Same here, Imagenomic Portraiture is a real timesaver for a lot of my portraiture work.