Tatom

You've heard, they put it on the invisible roadmap.... I'm sure in the next 20 years it will be implemented with many missing features and terrible UX.

It is not about PSD files.

it is called PS

First of all, thanks dor all of your exports. Unfortunately these solutions are not even close to my expectations from workflow side; Alpha is still visible or per channel view is colored and contains alfa info (or becomes transparent if I switch off alpha); I have to deal something else now, but I try you get back ASAP and make a video about PS and AS comparison; maybe that helps more. I even don't understand logic of the macro/procedural system in AF with 25+ years experience in working and helping developers in 3d field (it is like one of the Iray implementations I saw; I could work instantly with any node based shader editor system like Unity/Unreal/Cycles/Redshift, etc.; but Iray... I gave up understanding the logic inside - also it lacked up to date documentation). So thanks, I will be back.

How I replace the alpha with another?

'I'd also like to chime in on the fact that you do have macro's (as said earlier) in Photo. So if you aren't happy with the workflow of channel packing, why not make a macro that does it for you?' I'm not so deep in AF, but on channel-level operations it didn't allow me to record steps. Generally I very rarely use macros for anything (even in PS); I don't need them. When I do, I use 3rd party stuff for that. 'In regards to everything else that was previously discussed, I've also explained the available options you have for working with multiple channels in Photo (one of my previous posts in here). I'd highly recommend (as I said before) to continue tweaking your current workflow within Photo to best suit you, use the macro system and the available tools they have, as it really is far more superior than Photoshop.' Well, I will see. I still have no idea who could I get back the Affinity example you uploaded from a freshly imported TGA created by someone else. Also it seems that alpha appears on all channels in your example file, I have to guess out how to change that. I also want to check if I link (place without embedding) an image from Affinity Designer as a channel to your file as Roughness (Alpha), will this work or not. There is a lot to discover and I don't like it. After many years any app what changes proven UX methods and forces me to to the same differently is a big 'no go', if from UX aspect it has no reason to do it differently.

I have AO, Roughness, etc. input in greyscale typically, I just want to be able to tweak them quickly and paste them to a channel. I don't know what could go wrong with it in a visible way; but I appreciate if you could give me a hint how to adjust an RGBA TGA file Blue channel only with Brightness/Contrast as easily as in PS. Thx.

And yes, if PS is doing something well, than it must be cloned. Number one UX rule. BTW there are things in AF what are superior compared to PS (like cloning on multiple layers) or the terrible PNG saving speed in PS compared to Export speed in PS (affinity is fast), but what I see is that in almost everything they tried to clone PS (even with PhotoPlus) and failed with a worse solution.

More superior? In what? What is the typical workflow in texture packing? Most of the cases it is used for the very same material (AO/Roughness/Metalness and similars). What editing does it need? Typically nothing, just copy and paste, which is a joke in AF, far-far overcomplicated. Typical adjustment scenario: changing values of a channel manually (like adjusting roughness) if you don't want to edit it in the engine or replace a former channel with another (if you prefer manual packing for control). In PS you could have Layers to store the data (AS also), multiple alphas, too. At the end you just export the visible info. 'you can't hold multiple copies and then paste them individually in Photoshop' You could have multiple alpha channels. What is the sense of having multiple copies in your workflow? When it comes to export it is almost the same like working with Layers.... The 99% of work is a simple Copy/Paste or manual adjusting a single channel (like changing brightness of the Roughness channel - in AF it seems to be global, not a single channel operation). PS is far superior for that.

I meant the possibility of direct interaction with alpha channel (and all channels - including RGB separately) quickly and directly. And PS does a great job with that; you could copy and paste whatever you want to wherever you want into an RGBA image (per channel level). Everything is more complicated than that is a bad implementation of channel/alpha handling. In AP the implementation is a joke. That is why I use PS, waiting for a clever developer hired by Serif.

Used by 3D artists (or should be used). PS was a 2D application, but it handles alphas perfectly almost since it exists. So that is not an excuse for anything. If I had no expertise in a field, I would make a research or I would ask someone who has, not to make bad decisions. Technically it would be pretty easy to make it work with the current - terrible - alpha handling, just some creative mind needed.

Nothing complicated? It was clearly implemented by someone never spent a single minute in the 3D industry. If I as UX expert were hired to implement to worst and least efficient way of channel packing, I would clearly fail compared to the AF 'implementation'. It is a bad joke. But for Crimity: I made a FilterForge filter for texture packing; if you have FF you could download it and prosper. Still not PS (that is why I still have PS, it is faster), but helps you to solve this ridiculously unsolved problem. https://www.filterforge.com/filters/14794.html

They don't car about this since.... well, they never did. It was also a suggestion for their former product improvement (PhotoPlus).

Declaring a fact is not an offense. I used the "no offense" term to declare that it is not 'personal', it is not claiming to 'hurt' feelings. Facts are facts, even if someone dislikes them. Of course I know that in our brave new snowflake world everything could be an offense and everyone could be offended by things, that is why I carefully used 'no offense'. It is not personal. Just pointing on a problem in the process.

Well, we heard this earlier. It is a post from 2020, more than a year ago. Pretty long discussion without result, women carry and give birth to a baby in less time. 'Hope, hope, hope'. It is not a church, it is a product development roadmap request, what could be answered with yes or no. If the answer was no, then accept the criticism related to it. No offense, but this is simple ridiculous. I swear to God I'm trying not to be sarcastic as much I am and I know it is not your responsibility (and I don't want to put on you), but this is the typical example how not to make things/run a company related product development.

Here is the problem. 3rd question, Nth ask for public roadmap, no listening for the users/customers, still no joy.

Well, let me to explain a little bit my attitude toward the world and its 'products', as it is so not Affinity-specific, that I'm considering to release a blog/podcats how to mess things up through product development without the proper skillset to understand how thing should work well. Not perfectly, just 'well' enough to fulfill the expectations of a paying customer or someone who has some expectations for his/her money. In the last few years (decades?) I see a complete decrease in quality management in product development. Not just apps, also physical products are affected. It is independent from the price of the product, it is an overall issue. I got tired related to this. I got tired to find (almost impossible to find the responsible person) and illustrate a problem for a manufacturer what would cost 0,001% of the final price and would double the lifetime of something; I got tired the endless debates with FOSS developers without any production experience who all think they could make a better solution for a problem then industry-leader apps. One from thousands could implement a better one, the others miserably fail in many levels (midwits). So I don't except anyone to be the one from the thousands. That one will write history (as Unity did, as ACT3D did, as many-many startups did). I want the average guy who knows his profession; takes a pen, checks the knowledge of all the competitors, writes down the functions, features, checks their implementations, how that implementations fits to the inner logic of the usage of that specific application and how it could be compared to the strongest competitor's solution (because it is a basic rule for UX: don't mess with things people are used to use in a specific way if you are not a UX genius. If you are, you can. So no rocket-scientist needed here, just hard work before writing a single line of code. - Planning 'for the past' (including all known and useful features at the past from own and other products) - Planning 'for the present' (including all known - often experimental - features from this day) - Planning 'for the future' (to make a massive foundation to be able to add features easily with some educated guessing about upcoming future functions/features the customer needs) Serif is almost as old as Adobe; before Affinity product line it was almost unknown on the market, while Adobe became industry leader and defeated its 'enemies' on the market with ease (like Quark), etc. Think about this. During this timeline small - in some cases 1-man - developers became industry leaders in their area and big company-financed products failed miserably. Just being concrete with an example: Corona renderer started as a one-man development, but it's writer was so geniously smart that when I saw his pre-prealpha version like 10 or more years ago I said: this guy will make it. He did. During this time nVidia developed Iray and abandoned it, because they were not geniuses (not to mention dozens of other companies who failed with much more resources). So I understand the limitations of the resources, but the limitations should force the developers to build something to versatile (to modify/implement, etc.) and to make a function work as it should. In the most of the cases on the projects I see there is no resource-problem. There is a 'seeing-the-big-picture' problem and the lack of wish/knowledge-problem. Not in the case of daily work, in the case of planning state. A coder will code something by the wish of his boss.

And another thing: Scale with object affects all of the FX layers. There was no one in the team who thought that it would be great to have the selection which FX-elements should be scaled and which is not? Because - as an example - I want to keep the outline size or the shadow the same to match the overall design with its values, but I just want to make some design elements smaller? This is when I say that UX is critical, thinking forward is critical, etc. I think this is the 4th time I get the response you gave to me. Thanks for it, but to be honest, I don't trust in it at all (no offense). And what makes me upset, that you HAD and HAVE the chance to make a real competitor for Adobe (if it is a goal) or you have the chance to make everything incredibly competitive (not just in price). But - as I saw in the case of many-many products - there are companies who listen and there are companies where CTOs think they 'know better'. Well, most of the cases they don't. That is why Adobe rules the 2D illustration world, while almost nobody likes them. I would be able to make 'into to smallest details' UX how a tool should work to have a better product, even workaround for things are messed up from the beginning, but here is the thing: I did it many times and it is time-consuming and typically goes to a 'midwit' who has no idea about UX, because 'she/he knows things better'. While clearly does not, as the examples illustrate it.

''No numeric option for scaling' This is something we hope to add in the future. ' The whole concept of bitmap fill tool is flawed in many levels in Designer. Numeric option will be great, but it has nothing to do with that. ''no FX-layer bitmap fill' This is available via the Fill Tool.' I know. From UX aspect it is a typical mistake the way it works and the way it is implemented. 'Assuming you're referring to FX options, this can be found here -' And why it is there? How this panel in any way related to the bitmap fills in the current implementation? it is like keeping toilet paper roll in the garage instead of the bathroom near the toilet .

"The Affinity suite has been written from scratch for 3 platforms at once and are still in 'infancy' stages, when compared to the lifespan of the legacy 'Plus' range software, which was written for Windows only. Drawplus was in development for around 24-25 years total, perhaps slightly longer, and during that time many developers built upon the codebase and features. When Serif switched to the Affinity range, none of that coding could be used - as we wanted a new app that was cross platform with an 'open' filetype that could be opened in any of the apps. This means that we had to start again, and certain features that may have taken 10 years to add to drawplus haven't yet been implemented into Affinity Designer, as it simply hasn't been in development for that long." We all know this and this is not an excuse, sorry. Designer was released almost 6-7 years ago. If you have to rewrite everything from the start, you have the opportunity to fix the glitches and make better implementations than the old ones or the competition have. You clearly missed that point. Here is how as I (a UX/usability advisor) see this: today making any vector or bitmap editing tool does not require ANY innovation; just taking the best, most user-friendly approach on the market exists and use that method. No geniuses needed at all to make this, just hard work. If you want a cutting edge, market leader application, you listen to experts. Unity3D did it when they started; I asked for a feature, I made my points and they had it in the app in 3 weeks. Lumion3D did it: they made a completely different approach and made from Quest they step forward to Lumion, which leads the market of real-time 3D visualization since they entered to that market. I wrote mails, posts for Serif offering help. No results. - So you were able to release Affinity Photo without direct alpha access for texture packing (and yeah, I know your so-called 'solution' and that sucks completely with an extremely stupidly over-complicated workflow - mentioned by many everywhere). - You were able to release Designer with extremely terrible UX/UI (I will get back to that later). - You removed the roadmap (having 'pages' were promised for Designer when it came out first). I bought all of the Affinity products to support you, but still use all the former product line, because the current one after years is not there (to replace the old ones). I have 3 friends bought your products and they still don't use it for anything and who are still Adobe users. Because they had the hope, just lost it. You don't listen to your customers.

For brush I made in an earlier version it did not worked until I edited it in the new version. Also this option should be under the 'Strokes', not under the 'Node', as it should be applied to a rectangle, etc without converting to curve.

This is how it worked in Serif DrawPlus: