iconoclast

You mean Styles? You can export them from Designer and import them to Photo and Publisher. The same with Assets. Click on the burger menu on the top left of the Styles or Assets panel. There are the options for it.

As far as I know, it's a general problem with file types that have been developed by Adobe. As far as I remember for example Photoshop was able to create TIFF files with transparencies and layers already many years ago, while other apps couldn't. Also TIFF is a file format that was invented by Adobe. Quite similar the PDF format, which has still some different features in InDesign, if I'm on current state. The PSD (PhotoShop Document) was initially a kind of home brand format of Photoshop. Like nearly every software has its own file format to be able to save your unfinished work - in Affinity Photo it is *.afphoto, in GIMP it is *.xcf, in PhotoImpact it was *.ufo, as far as I remember... - in Photoshop it is the *.psd. Adobe is still the global market leader in image editing and graphics software, so the accessibility of their file types may be important even for them. But they are still in competition with other companies and may not be very motivated in supporting their competitors without payback.

OK, I don't really know that, but as far as I know unfortunately only very few developers of open source software owe a Mac, so the development of Mac-versions is often a little bit neglected. They are mainly focused on Linux and Windows, I think. That's one of the main reasons why I'm still on Windows. But however, Inkscape is a very nice piece of software, but not really a substitute for Designer for me, because there are some important things missing in it. For example, the color management doesn't support CMYK.

PSD (Photoshop Document) is a file format that was invented by Adobe, initially for their own products. Even it can be read by software from other developers today, there may still be copyrights on parts of the code that impede other software to write PSDs with all of its features. But I'm not sure about that.

You're verry welcome! One additional hint for more complex shapes. Some apps can autotrace images. That means that you can load pixel images in that apps and let the app vectorise them automatically. For example the free vector graphics software Inkscape can do this. I hope that Designer will also have this feature in the future. One disadvantage of this is that the nodes are spread quite randomly, so that it is often not easy to do corrections of the curves afterwards. But it is often helpfull anyway. Attention! If you want to download free software you should always do that from their official websites. In case of Inkscape it is inkscape.org. I say that because some criminals have occupied the top level domains of some softwares like f.e. audicity to spread malware. Normally you can find the original links to the official websites in the Wikipedia-articles about each software.

Hi Bowzer! "Create Outlines" ("Expand Stroke"), if this is what you mean, only works with pure vector curves ("Solid Brush") in DESIGNER. Your curves consist of pixels aligned to a vector curve, even they may be created by using a vector brush ("Textured Intensity Brush" in this case). Those unfortunately can't be converted to outlines. So you can only follow Lee's hint. But in that case you will get a pixel image, and loose some of the advantages of the vector graphic. Edit: But your circle shapes are not too complicated. I think it shouldn't be too difficult to vectorise that shapes with the pen tool. Then you will get outlines and will be able to subtract it from the cloud shape. Edit again: Or try this: Draw a circle shape over your circle shape. Click "Expand Stroke" (menu "Layers"). Give the outlines a thin stroke and set the Fill to transparent. Change to the Node Tool. Hold Shift and drag the nodes of the expanded shape to fit to your original. Shift will enable you to drag exactly horizontal or vertical. Use the result to subtract it from the cloud shape. Hope that helps!

As Walt said, you could use the Selection Brush (the one with the brush symbol and a circle). If you draw with it on an object it will be selected. For its sensitivity, play with the brush size. Bigger brushes are more tolerant for what they include into the selection. To use a Layer Mask, click on the Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel. You will get a Child Layer then, that represents the mask. This must be highlighted to work on the mask. The mask allows to make parts of a layer transparent by painting the parts that you want to have transparent with black color. But this parts will not be lost, not really erased. You can restore them by painting over this areas with white color. You can even do that without a selection, but selections help to make bigger areas transparent quicker, easier and cleaner. For that, select the object you want to release from the background (f.e. your plain), then create a mask and fill the selected background - on the mask! - with black color. If the result isn't really as clean as you want, you can refine it by painting pieces away or back whenever you want.

Yes, you are right, sorry! I had the selection brush in mind. There doesn't seem to be an opportunity to set a shortkey for adding, subtracting and overlapping selections, like in Photoshop or even GIMP. Only those small buttons in the context bar. Could be a case for the "Feature Requests and Suggestions".

Hi BrendaLi! You can customize the shortkeys in the Presets (Edit menu). But holding Alt should subtract from the selection. At least in my Photo app it does.

To release the plane from the background, I would use a mask, because it allows non-destructive erasing. Everything you erase - with a mask, you use the paintbrush with the foreground color black for it - can be restored by painting with the foreground color white. And you can switch between foreground and background color by pressing the "X" key. You can also fill a selection with black on the mask to make the selected area transparent. But it is important that the mask sublayer is highlighted when you want to paint on the mask to erase or restore. So have an eye on it.

OK, I did some research in the meantime. In fact, it doesn't seem to be the color profile or even the certain image. Must have to do with the adjustments somehow. I created a new LUT with the same adjustments from a Stock Photo and got the same problem. The same photo looked verry different with the LUT than with the adjustment layers (see the attached screenshots below). It looks like the Levels adjustment isn't cosidered in the LUT, because the result looks the same with the LUT as with deactivated Levels adjustment layer (second screenshot). Here are my adjustments to reproduce what I did: 1. First I created an adjustment layer for the Channel Mixer with the following adjustments: RGB, Red channel: 100, 15, 14, 0, 0 Green channel: 30, 98, -29, 0, -4 Blue channel: 10, 35, 50, 0, -8 Alpha: 0, 0, 0, 100, 0 2. Then I created the Levels adjustment layer with the following settings: RGB, Red: 4, 100, 1, 0, 100 Green: 2, 77, 1,189, 0, 100 Blue: 0, 70, 1,097, 0, 100 Alpha: 0, 100, 1, 0, 100 Master: 1, 97, 1, 0, 100 3. Then a HSL adjustment layer with: HSL, 0, 25, 0 4. Finally I created a Curves layer RGB, Master: X: 0,562; Y 0,44 I think, the certain values are not the important point. My impression is that it has to do with the Levels adjustment layer. Even because the Master adjustments was reset to default after I reloaded the image. Image with all adjustment layers on the left and with the LUT on the right: Image with deactivated Levels adjustment layer on the left and with LUT on the right.

Hi Dan, thanks for your reply! Your files work pretty fine, as far as I can see. Unfortunately my own ones don't. Couldn't even upload them to this forum. Don't know why. Server error, repeatedly. The LUT-Problem seems to be related to the certain images I tested. I tried a Stock Photo from Pexels, and it seemed to work as it should, as far as I could see. But two other photos - one that I made with my old camera and one from a local photo studio - create odd results. Especially the second one. My suspicion is that it has to do with the color profiles of the images. The second one has GIMP built-in sRGB. I suggest, I must have done some editing with GIMP on it in the past and was careless with the color management. The other one uses a sRGB from Hewlett Packard. Must be the original profile of my old camera. As I created a LUT from the second image after I converted its profile from GIMP's to another sRGB, it seemed to work. At least much better. Will test it out a little more tomorrow, before I give a final judgement. Thanks again so far!

Hi everyone! I'm not sure if it is the same issue as reported here. Yesterday I tried to create a LUT on my own for the first time and followed the instructions in this video-tutorial. Not really too complex, I think. But it didn't work correctly, as you can see on my screenshot below. The left image on that screenshot is the image I took the adjustments from for my LUT. You can see them in the layers panel (only Adjustment Layers, no Blend Modes, only one Adjustment Layer with reduced opacity). The right image is the same one as the left, the source image, but with the LUT instead of the other Adjustment Layers. Should look the same, right? But somehow it doesn't. Am I doing something wrong or is there still a bug in the LUTs function? I'm on Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.4.1198.

Why are you shouting soooo loud? We are neither blind than deaf. This will not help anything.

Hi EBT! If you want to have enduring access to the additional stuff from Affinity (Assets, Brushes, Fonts...), copy this config-file to the following path: C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\ or, if your apps are from the Microsoft Store: C:\Users\YourName\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0(Store)\ (for the other apps, replace "Photo" by "Publisher" or "Designer"). AppData is a hiiden folder, so if you haven't already done it, you need to make it visible in the Explorer. Click on "View" on the top of the Explorer and set a hook at something like "Hidden Elements" or so on the right side (don't know how it is called in english. Then the folder "AppData" should appear. If you start your apps after that, you should be able to sign in/register.

Great! That worked.The complete path is %AppData%\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0\ or %AppData%\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\1.0(Store)\ for the apps from the Microsoft Store. But after I placed the config files there it works now. Thanks a lot!!!

I haven't placed it anywhere, because I didn't know where it belongs. But if I copy it to "C:\Users\[USERNAME]", it has no effect (is this really the full path?). I can open the apps as admin - even without the config-file - but it's verry cumbersome to do this every time I start each app. This problem looks very strange to me, because it didn't happen before I reinstalled my OS and as far as I see, there hasn't been an update since that time. So I can't understand what might have happened in the meantime.

Hi Dan! Is this "afreg.cfg"-thing also for Windows? Doesn't seem so. I'm on Windows 10 with the 1.10.4.1198 versions of the Affinity-Apps. I still get the same "We're sorry!"-page as the thread opener if I start the apps the normal way and try to sign in. Edit: Not to forget, two of my apps are from the Microsoft Store, one (Designer) is from the Affinity Store. What about betas? Could this be a solution? Where can I get them?

Hi Walt, thanks for that tip, but unfortunally even that doesn't work. The Assets are only available if I start as admin. But I don't need to sign in to my account for that if I start the app the next times. However, thanks again! It was worth trying. I'm sure this issue will be solved soon. It was a little bit scary to me, because it happened just after I reinstalled my whole system. So I was afraid that something went wrong with that.

This is realy an annoying problem. I had to set up up my computer, and even I managed it to reinstall the Affinity apps and to sign in with admin-privileges to get and install my additional stuff, I now have to start the apps as addmin every time to be able to use the additional stuff. Otherwise f.e. the Assets panel of Photo is empty. Hope it will be fixed soon!

Hi Dave! I can't offer any link or a detailed workflow to solve this at the moment, but you should be able to create something like this with the Layer FX. I would use Designer for it, because it would create a graphic that would be scalable without a loss of quality. But it should also be possible with Photo. You should create the logo first, without any effect. Only the form with the text-logo and the graphic elements. Then I would group the whole stuff (select all layers by holding the Shift-key and click on each), convert everything into curves (rightclick on the object and click on "Convert to Curves"). Then I would fill the whole graphic (without the background) with a gradient that defines the lighting effect. After that, you should click on the "fx"-button at the bottom of the Layers panel. A panel appears in which you select "3D". Be aware of that you not only set the hook, but also select the entry, to get the adjustments of that function. Play with the adjustments to learn what they are doing. It's not sooo complicated. Select also the "Outer Shadow" in the "fx" panel. Make your adjustments. For the background you could use a simple linear, eliptical or radial gradient, possibly with some kind of texture that you applied to it with a layer mode (at the top of the Layers panel, as standard "Normal" is selected there. I think this should roughly be the way to create something like this. Please excuse my bad english. It is not my mothers tongue. Edit: For eliptical oriented text, create an elliptical form first. Then select the Artistic Text tool and click on its edge to place the cursor of the tool. After that you can write your text. And you can change the font etc. and move it with the cursor as long as it is editable text.

Thanx for the hint, Walt. That's cool! And sorry for my late response. I'm in trouble with my PC at the moment.

Hi Mignolyx! I can't test it at the moment, because my Desktop-PC broke down and must be repaired, but if this feature really doesn't work correctly, you should better report it to the G'MIC developers, I think. I already found a feature in G'MIC too, that didn't work as it should. But it is a marvelous plugin anyway. The 8bf-version of G'MIC is relative new. So there still may be some bugs in it. But before you report it, check the colour depth of the image you tried this feature on. As far as I know, G'MIC only works with maximum 16 Bits in Affinity Photo.

A family in the village I lived in until lately decorates it's whole garden and house front every year with bedsheet-ghosts, skeletons, gravestones, huge spider webs and other stuff like that. And they have a large canvas they are showing movies like "Nightmare before Christmas", Tim Burton's "Vincent", "Mad Monster Party" etc. during their Halloween-Party. All Neighbours are invited. Crazy funny people! According to the cat-splean of the Serif people (I'm a cat-maniac too): I would like to have a menu in the toolbar with all the cat shapes they ever offered in their apps in the past and maybe in the future. That would be a nice little gimmick, I think.

OK, I'm on Windows too. Think you'll be right. To be honest, I don't really remember how it was after I first installed it.