iconoclast

I don't doubt it. However, I personally didn't notice any bigger problems with v2 yet. Generally there are many things that changed since I work with computers, and I'm not really glad about all of these "progresses". But there may be good reasons for it. E.G. I invest much more time in maintenance (Updates) than I did in my early computer years. The problem with launching Affinity Photo from e.G. IrfanView for me already existed in v1. I don't think that it is an Affinity problem, It seems to be caused by the security management of Windows. As far as I see, I could launch Affinity from IrfanView in my Adiministration account. But that would make no sense, because, of course, I only use the Admin account for maintenance, not for working. From my point of view, many things in Windows have become more complicated and annoying during the last years. It may be because Cyber Crime is increasing permanently. By the way, I saw that you are still using AIMP. I did that too for many years and really liked it. But it is a russian app. So I decided to delete it for security reasons.

I'm still exploring too. I opened the Preferences in Photo, clicked on Photoshop Plugins and then on Open Standard Folder in the Explorer (or so - I'm using german language for my apps). So I found a direction where content folders of the apps are: C:\users\yourName\.affinity. Maybe this will somehow help you. But I'm not sure.

Don't know if it is of any importance, but I'm on Windows 10 too, and I don't have any problems creating fullsized shortcuts on the desktop, simply dragging them from the Start Menu to the Desktop. But I can't test this Rocket Dock thing, because I don't use it.

I'm not sure how it is with the v2, but I have the v1 of Photo and Publisher from the MS Store and the Check for Updates there is part of the MS-Store-App. I decided to purchase my v2 apps directly from Affinity Store, because I want to have Installers to have more control about the installation (no hidden installation). With my vs1 from the MS Store I also had some problems installing the G'MIC plugin in Photo. I'm not really a fan of the MS Store anyway.

But she is talking about .ai-files in her headline. Not sure if she made a mistake there.

To make it clear, this is not unusual behavior. Many apps do this (as far as I remember GIMP, Adobe Apps, Corel Apps, Magix Apps, even some Image Viewers like IrfanView). It is not that they change anything in the files, the files will only be associated with the Affinity Apps, to be preferably opened by them in the future. Even that the file icon changes is totally normal. You can easily change that in the Preferences of your Operating System (or the way Dan told you) and associate certain file types to the app you want them to be opened with usually.

Probably a problem with semitransparent pixels. But I'm not sure about it and why it should be a problem. Don't know if someone already had the idea, because I didn't read the whole thread, but you could also paint with the brush tool and any brush you want on a separate layer and apply the Blend Mode "Erase" (the last one in the menu) to it.

Don't know if it helps, but I remember vaguely that there was a bug some time ago, that resulted in a somehow similar behavior. It could be fixed with a simple workaround. You only needed to change one file somewhere in the installation. Unfortunately I can't remember it more closely, but maybe some of the other members does. There must be a Thread about it somewhere in the forums. As far as I remember it had to do with the registration of the apps.

Hi JCarls! Instead of clicking to empty space you could simply press the "V"-key to change to the Move Tool. Oh sorry, should have read the whole post. No, I'm afraid clicking to empty space wont do what you want.

Hi Robin! I had some crashes related to text functionality in Publisher during the last days too. It seems that there is a problem with the latest Windows Updates, as I read somewhere here on the forum. Think there will be bug fixes next time (at least I hope so). I'm not sure if our problems are really related to this, but for me it seems so.

Here is a comparison of the Studio Panels available in the apps. If that somehow helps.

I'm not an expert, but as the functions of the apps are very different to each other, I think also the Modules must somehow be different to each other. Fact is that the apps become slower if there are too many Assets in the Assets Panel, the same with too many Brushes, as I already said. However, as I said, there are other good reasons not to bundle the apps to one app. And I personally must confess, that I would not like that.

The Affinity Apps are not Open Source, so you can't see differentiated what is loading on startup. If you start e.G. GIMP, you can see how all the different modules and plugins, the app consists of, are getting loaded. And if you install a new plugin or even a new font, the first start will take a little longer, because the new plugin or font has to be registrated by the program. The more plugins you add, the longer even the future starts will take. Think its somehow similar with other apps.

But all the features of the three apps must be loaded like separate modules, as far as I know. They all must be loaded and must be kept in standby while you work on a document. Because of this, you also shouldn't have too many brushes, plugins and especially Assets in the panels, because they can slow down the apps.

I think, if all three apps would be bundled to one, it would take much longer to start the app, because it would have too load much more stuff on startup. Probably it would slow the app down too, because there is much more stuff loaded, that must be handled by the machine. Besides the app would of course be more expensive than one of the three apps alone. And people who don't need one of them or even only need one of them would have to pay the higher price for a lot of things they don't want and don't need. So I think there are good reasons and it is not only an economic decision of Serif.

Damn! Yes, you are right. But the shine is brighter than its source. That's why we didn't notice it, I think. It's always a problem to paint light, because it always has to be brighter than the surfaces and media that reflects it, to look realistic. So you have to respectively darken the surrounding environment if you can't lighten the light. This is even more difficult in analog painting, because the paper white is the limit there.

Santa is not standing behind the car, so he would not be enlightened by the red taillights. At least not frontal. Can't see the source of this light. Some sort of miracle of Christmas? 😄 But anyway, it really looks very good. Just a few things should be fixed, I think.

Ah okay, that works. I first tested it clicking on the Checkbox and that doesn't work, but it works clicking the Thumbnail by holding Alt. And all checkboxes keep being checked. Interesting!

As it seems, isolation mode only works on Mac. I'm on Windows.

If you hold the Shift-key and click on the Eye-symbol of one layer in GIMP, all other layers will become invisible. Maybe this would be a solution?

You mean like e.G. in Audacity, where you can optionally mute one soundtrack or make it the only audible one with just one click? That could be helpful in some cases, I think.

Hi Neros! Windows or Mac? What versions? Have you tried disabling Hardware Acceleration in the Preferences? I'm on Windows 10 and had some crashes of Publisher during the last week too. Yesterday GIMP crashed too. My suspect is a Windows Update, but I'm not sure.

As I found out, my hint doesn't work. Shame on me. But what about simply inserting a layer with only one white rectangle shape in layer size? In that case you would only need to make this layer visible/invisible.

I'm not sure at the moment, because my computer is off and I can't check it, but what happens if you doubleclick on the object in the document, you want to watch separately? I vaguely remember that it should be opened as a separate temporary view. But I'm not really sure. Maybe I confuse something.

Sorry, hatte zu tun. Also, ich habe das mal gerade nachgeprüft, und das geht auch direkt aus Affinity Photo, Designer un Publisher heraus. Du musst nur auf die Pipette im Farbe oder Farbfelder-Panel klicken, die linke Maustaste gedrückt halten und den Mauszeiger auf die Stelle auf dem Bildschirm ziehen, von wo Du Farbe aufnehmen willst. Dann die Maustatse loslassen und auf das runde Feld rechts neben dem Pipettensymbol klicken um die Farbe als Farbauswahl zu übernehmen. Danach kannst Du mit der Farbe per Farbeimer eine Auswahl füllen oder eine Form, indem Du diese zunächst anklickst um sie auszuwählen und dann auf das runde Feld mit der Farbe klickst. So sollte es gehen. So hatte es Joe_I ja auch schon beschrieben.