GZA

I want to start with how impressed I’m with Affinity Photo. This is probably the only software I happily paid for. I’m so tired of monthly subscriptions and the value in Affinity is huge. And honestly for me Affinity Photo is the only reason to use an iPad. So nice for small jobs and family stuff.
Saying that… there are functions missing that will keep me away from using it. At least for now.
As a “professional” photographer in the Fashion and Advertising business for 10 years now and a photoshop user since Photoshop CS2 there are functions that I think are really important and are missing in one form or another from Affinity. It’s not something that will make my work impossible but it’s definitely slowing me a lot and will make me stay away from this otherwise amazing software.


Layers

Layer Opacity & Layer Fill:
Layer fill gives a totally different way of using and blending layers.
There is already a topic on the subject so I’ll post it here. Plus having them both in a single layer gives you an option to combine them.

Example by @mso1977
Posted November 21, 2018
 
Layer mask 1:
Copy layer mask by drag & drop without using “Links menu” - honestly when you have to deliver images in short deadlines who have the time to brows around menus ?
Sometimes simple mask copy is all you need to quickly adjust something.

Example by @Jowday
Posted February 8, 2021
 
Layer mask 2:
Density and feather.
I know these features can be found but they are on separate windows/option menus. It’s so much faster to configure every mask related thing on the mask itself.


 

 
Right Click
Right click on every tool especially paint brush, healing brush and clone brush.
When retouching Is so much faster to change brush options without distracting yourself looking around.
Also I’m changing the angle of the brush a lot when retouching. So browsing the menus and panels is not ideal.


 
 

Macro
Macro 1:
More freedom when creating Macros. Grouping more than one layer and moving layers around is a must!

Macro 2: 
Colour tags in Macros.
I don't think that having colour tags is essential but will definitely help a lot when having multiple groups of macro actions.


 
 

Shortcuts
Shortcut for colour chooser “colour picker tool”. Looking around distracts and perception is lost.
It should pop-up in the middle of the screen with a quick keystroke.
This one might exist but I'm not finding it so if anyone know if it exist let me know.


 
 

Workspace

Export Workspace: There needs to be a way to save your workspace.
For the competition software I have Workspace, keyboard shortcuts, actions and other things that I carry on a thumb drive and I can quickly upload on different computer to do a job.
Useful if you do clean install of the OS frequently.

 
The not so important for me, but still important topics.
 
Filmstrip view:
FilmStrip in develop persona. Making changes on multiple files.
There is already a topic on the subject so I’ll post it here
 
User Interface:
The UI on the iPad version looks more sleek and professional than the desktop one.
This one is not a big deal, but I’ll really appreciate it if the design is as clean and monochromatic as the iPad version. Sliders look better, icons look better, menu panels are compact and clean…
Everything in the iPad UI is like a software from 2021.
The desktop version look and feel at least 15 Years old.


 
 

I know this is a completely different software and we cannot expect the same features as PS. And for new users it might not matter, but for people who used photoshop for 20 years is really difficult to switch
I’m sure there are tons of features missing and I’m sure you guys are working around to get them in for future updates, but as someone who work "professionally" these are really essential things in my opinion that can speed up everybody’s workflow.

Much appreciate it!

Affinity Photo on iPad is amazing. However I need a small feature that I could not find. And it is that when working with the Apple Pencil, I cannot see the shape of the brush when drawing or erasing, which complicates giving precise strokes.
I would like it to be more like working with a Wacom tablet.
Congratulations on your app. I love it!

I think if there was a poll taken on most desirable new feature, this request would be at the top.

I completely agree. Working at different zoom levels and on differently sized images, it's really hard to figure out how big my brush is going to be. This is particularly useful since I'm using Apple Pencil, and I can really clearly see the point I'm touching. 

I think is very important to see the brush, please make this fix, I like very much affinity photo for iPad , procreate have brush and see the model of the brush, sorry for my English I try my best

There definitely needs to be an option to show the brush cursor. Right now it's like a guessing game for doing detailed brush work, like masking fine areas with hair...etc. I guess I'll still be using PS CS6 for the majority of my work for now.  GREAT APP SO FAR!!!!

Yup, this is a major problem, we totally need an update where we can see a live view of the brush circle when brushing, inpainting and all of that. Honestly, I love that I can finally do proper retouching and editing on the go but the brush cursor not being visible during painting is the only issue I see so far. It's a bit frustrating not being able to properly see to control the boundaries that you want to paint, heal, dodge, burn etc within, if you know what I mean. Please, please fix this. Warm regards and thanks for a fantastic app!!

Okay, Thank you. I really hope it gets added. It's kinda hard to liquefy if you can't see the edge of the brush. :)

Hello Affinity Team,
 
Is there a way to preview the cursor/brush size while painting or brushing? I understand the iPad doesn't have hover support but at least while brushing, I hope to see the boundaries of the brush.
 
Thank you so much!

I don't know why they added the drag but the Status bar at the bottom of the window tells you how to invoke it when the Paint Brush Tool is active.

That proves if one doesn't ask they may never know even if everyone does ---- Thank you for the answer Walt. 
I'm off back to school to learn more about the whys and hows 
 

Hi,
Photo 1.9 is there and I'm still unable to save my workspace and to manage multiple workspaces. Or did I miss something ? Photo is the only application that I'm using.
 

I want to start with how impressed I’m with Affinity Photo. This is probably the only software I happily paid for. I’m so tired of monthly subscriptions and the value in Affinity is huge. And honestly for me Affinity Photo is the only reason to use an iPad. So nice for small jobs and family stuff.
Saying that… there are functions missing that will keep me away from using it. At least for now.
As a “professional” photographer in the Fashion and Advertising business for 10 years now and a photoshop user since Photoshop CS2 there are functions that I think are really important and are missing in one form or another from Affinity. It’s not something that will make my work impossible but it’s definitely slowing me a lot and will make me stay away from this otherwise amazing software.


Layers

Layer Opacity & Layer Fill:
Layer fill gives a totally different way of using and blending layers.
There is already a topic on the subject so I’ll post it here. Plus having them both in a single layer gives you an option to combine them.

Example by @mso1977
Posted November 21, 2018
 
Layer mask 1:
Copy layer mask by drag & drop without using “Links menu” - honestly when you have to deliver images in short deadlines who have the time to brows around menus ?
Sometimes simple mask copy is all you need to quickly adjust something.

Example by @Jowday
Posted February 8, 2021
 
Layer mask 2:
Density and feather.
I know these features can be found but they are on separate windows/option menus. It’s so much faster to configure every mask related thing on the mask itself.


 

 
Right Click
Right click on every tool especially paint brush, healing brush and clone brush.
When retouching Is so much faster to change brush options without distracting yourself looking around.
Also I’m changing the angle of the brush a lot when retouching. So browsing the menus and panels is not ideal.


 
 

Macro
Macro 1:
More freedom when creating Macros. Grouping more than one layer and moving layers around is a must!

Macro 2: 
Colour tags in Macros.
I don't think that having colour tags is essential but will definitely help a lot when having multiple groups of macro actions.


 
 

Shortcuts
Shortcut for colour chooser “colour picker tool”. Looking around distracts and perception is lost.
It should pop-up in the middle of the screen with a quick keystroke.
This one might exist but I'm not finding it so if anyone know if it exist let me know.


 
 

Workspace

Export Workspace: There needs to be a way to save your workspace.
For the competition software I have Workspace, keyboard shortcuts, actions and other things that I carry on a thumb drive and I can quickly upload on different computer to do a job.
Useful if you do clean install of the OS frequently.

 
The not so important for me, but still important topics.
 
Filmstrip view:
FilmStrip in develop persona. Making changes on multiple files.
There is already a topic on the subject so I’ll post it here
 
User Interface:
The UI on the iPad version looks more sleek and professional than the desktop one.
This one is not a big deal, but I’ll really appreciate it if the design is as clean and monochromatic as the iPad version. Sliders look better, icons look better, menu panels are compact and clean…
Everything in the iPad UI is like a software from 2021.
The desktop version look and feel at least 15 Years old.


 
 

I know this is a completely different software and we cannot expect the same features as PS. And for new users it might not matter, but for people who used photoshop for 20 years is really difficult to switch
I’m sure there are tons of features missing and I’m sure you guys are working around to get them in for future updates, but as someone who work "professionally" these are really essential things in my opinion that can speed up everybody’s workflow.

Much appreciate it!

Hello, Affinity Photo community. I moved from Photoshop to AP and enjoyed its new features, while struggling to either re-learn new muscle memory, it was just too hard. Here are the major reasons why I moved to another app (Acorn) as my main image manipulation app over AP:
Command clicking of objects does not select their layer (and, while held, activate the Move tool). This is a Photoshop action that I just couldn't un-learn.  Perhaps the biggest weirdness, the tool I select is for the current document is not "sticky." If I switch to another document, the tool is reset to the tool I was using when I had that document open. This is not standard activity on any Mac program I can think of.  One of the most Mac-like systems going back to 1984 is that you draw a square marquee box, then add to the selection by holding the shift key, or subtract from the selection if you draw more marquee boxes holding the option key. That...doesn't work in AP in a standard way at all.  Having Macros was a good idea, but they are strange and difficult to use. When I recorded a a macro to make a selection, copy the contents of that selection and paste (my goal is to bring the right half of a book that was scanned so both sides will be closer and I can hide the ugly book binding from my image)...the data that is pasted is always the original data from the file I created the macro with. In order words, the clipboard data is saved inside the macro and that data is always pasted into whatever other image I run my script in, not the new data from a new file I'm working with. The effect renders AP useless for automation of any kind.  There is no Applescript support. While I am an expert at using Keyboard Maestro to do UI scripting to accomplish the automation I need, most other users are not. One big reason I switched to Acorn is its robust Applescript support, meaning I can automate just about any process. Yes, I know we're living in an age where codebases are shared across Mac, Windows and iOS and that Applescript is a dinosaur as far as technologies go. But some kind of useful automation is important for a tool like this. Another major frustration was that the command F key (to repeat a filter I've just run) resets when I switch to a new file. If I'm doing a blur filter on ten files, I can't use command F to quickly repeat my blur on each file, but have to manually choose it.  The program doesn't support basic Mac behaviors like, being able to command+click the title of a document and see its folder location, or option+clicking close to close all windows.  "Paste inside" just does not work, and no amount of updates made it work. What I am trying to do is, paste a larger bitmap image into a selection and have it "paste into" as Photoshop does, pasting into a new layer but constrained inside that box. I use this a lot when making memes and important images for work and not having it was frustrating. The "workspaces" idea was nice, but it only moves my palettes into the pre-set position and doesn't affect the "bar of unforgivable visual complexity" (whatever it's called...the contextual floating bar in at the top that is so overloaded with data it makes my eyes bleed). So I always had the bar showing up over the images I was working with when going from laptop mode to docked mode.  I was not a fan of the "auto scroll" feature which caused my image to zoom endlessly when I tried to draw a box marquee from one side to another. As my cursor approached the edge of the image, everything starts scrolling quickly. What pasteboard in the world moves when you approach one edge? If there's a way to "lock" the pasteboard I couldn't find it.  Working with text was...unique. There is no requirement to "accept" text changes, and I was put off by this. How do you select tools using the keyboard if you've just typed some text but can never "commit" the text changes? You apparently grab your mouse. Speaking of text, if there was an easy to select text spacing (the spacing between text lines) it was needlessly complex. I guess what I was looking for was "space between same styles" in the Paragraph tab...though something this important should be in the Character tab instead, IMO, as it's basically as important as font, font type (bold, etc) and font size and should not be located in some other place. Also, the ability to highlight some text and grab the size selector to show the text live was good, and I could use up/down arrows to move up or down a point size...but I had to press enter after each arrow to see my text size accepted.  Since you can't do some things on the background layer, I often had to copy and paste it into a new layer...which got named Background, instead of something less confusing like Layer 1.  The biggest, biggest frustration was the "beeping" that happened when I selected a tool that was already selected (as if this were an "error" I needed to be warned about). Since my workflow requires that I type M if I want the marquee tool, T if I want the text tool, etc. I turned off all the "cycling" tool options so that there was only tool per keypress, so that I didn't have to look to make sure I had the right marquee selector chosen. But this gave me the error beep in my ears constantly during usage. When I made a bug report about it (below) I was politely told the programmers had turned down my request. I felt that I was violating the "Affinity Photo community culture" by pointing out what was frustrating to me, and this made me feel future bug reports would also be politely declined.  In case you think I've got nothing bad to say about AP, it was great overall, and Inpainting (Contextual fill) is the best I've ever seen. And command+drag to duplicate a layer and drag it was genius. There were just too many minor frustrations for me to keep using the program as my daily driver.
So thanks very much to the creators of Affinity Photo for an amazing tool. I will continue to use it, and hope I won't be viewed as a strange creature by the community (if I am) for thinking that some conventions are better off working the same way as all the other programs I use for 15+ hours a day. I'll keep updating and checking out new versions avidly!

We are pleased to announce an update for the MacOS release of Affinity Photo, version 1.9.1
The detailed changes in Affinity Photo for MacOS 1.9.1 over the release build Affinity Photo for macOS 1.9.0 are as follows:
Fixes & Improvements:
Updated lens data (see here). My Account & Registration system improvements and fixes. This feature is explained in more detail here Sync your Affinity Store resources with your Affinity 1.9 apps Fixed numerous brush management issues. Fixed toolbar height in separated mode. Fixed the inability to save some files originally opened as read only. Text in scaled text frame could increase in size when grouped. Fixed shadows & highlights rendering bug. Astrophotography bad pixel tool improvements. Added ability to load FITS files with .fts extensions. TIFF loading fixes. Further TGA fixes for large files. Assets improvements and fixes. Fixed crash exporting LUTs. Fixed some icons being very small. Fixed incorrect/missing cursor issues. Fixed crash loading large TGA files. Fixed bug when erasing from a panorama source mask. Fixed CR3 bugs. Fixed monochromatic iconography option not working. Fixed alignment issues with pixel tool. Fixed marquee selection issues on Apple Silicon devices. Fixed loading of 16bit LAB TIFF. Fixed assorted live filter issues. Fixed PDF passthrough failing to work on multi-page documents. Fixed live stack with live perspective issues when the source images have differing orientations. New samples. Various stability improvements and assorted other small fixes. Help and Localisation improvements. Changes and fixes in 1.9 made since 1.8 (including the new 1.9 features) are listed in some detail in this 1.9.0 Photo macOS update announcement 
The 1.9 new features are explained by our team in this video
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in application menu, Affinity Photo > About).
If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store— updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update, or in the application main menu there is an option Check for Updates. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Photo for macOS) can be downloaded from this link (that installer is NOT for Mac app store purchases and needs a product key).

It would be a must to be able to assing a keyboard shortcut to a macro, this avoids to open library (by means of Menu-View->Studio->Library ot a shortcut - I use  Alt-L) every time a use a frequently used macro 

I guess this is covered elsewhere.
I made a few photographs of several different objects with the same lightings / conditions. In order to save me some time I made a new preset for the panels in the Develop Persona. Second time opening a RAW from the series of photographs there begins the boring repetitive work. Although the new preset is selected in the pulldown of the Preset (from processing last image) nothing happens. So I have to re-select the preset.
Maybe the presets can be part of the Develop Assistant? Second you can not save a preset over an existing preset with the same name, third you can not edit a preset, but this is not a real problem I think.

Hi,
Two things which are from the photoshop days;
1. The ability to select a few layers and CTRL+E to merge those layers
2. The ability to right click a layer and have the option to create a selection of that layer.
These are two commands in PS which I used regularly and would help speed up the workflow dramatically.
Thanks, N

I agree, not a good welcome for a new user from Photoshop. 
My first operation with Affinity and immediately a disappointment.
I hope it is not everything so...

Photo is a usability disaster everywhere I look. It is crazy. Even rudimentary features are incredibly time-consuming and illogical to use.
Simply add an option like in Adobe Photoshop, so anyone knowing he/she actually wants to perform a destructive crop can do it on the spot:

Who would immediately think "I will need to rasterize my bitmap photo and trim it to get rid of the area I never wanted Photo to keep anyway" ?
Finally the same confused customer can get the option to resize to "200,3 pixels" ... "Que?"

I can't believe how much I've wasted trying to destructively crop 40 layers of images. 

I need to export cropped section as individual files.
And currently I am doing that via Export Persona > Slices

There is no way to Rasterize and Trim multiple layers
There is no way to destructively crop the image.
My only option is to individually Rasterize and Trim each (40+) layers.
Why? 

I mean I know I can't complain at the price bout the suite but just why?
Why do you make it so unintuitive and difficult to use?

Another way a layer fill mode would help . . . can't do it CORRECTLY with just opacity control.
 

Agree! Linking also slows me down a lot. Everything that needs a separate menu or a pop-up window is slowing workflow a lot

Ah, I made a few attempts. I am not sure how existing layers can be linked when no linked layers has been created yet. Why not a "Link layers" option if it is possible with drag and drop? Maybe I'll check out the tutorials out of lockdown boredom later.
I would much prefer something like this for just a quick and dirty copy-paste of a mask. I learned it simply by trying it years ago. It has to be that intuitive to work in a professional workflow - and for it to stick to memory. Linking has to mature a bit usability wise before it is ready for prime time.

Hello.
I've been using Photo for quite a while now on iPad and have just purchased the Mac version.
So far a great app, but there is one major (at least for me) feature missing – the fill slider for layers, like in Photoshop.
I use fill far more often than opacity in Photoshop, because the way blend modes and effects interact with the background better suits my editing style and requirements.
Here's an example of the different ways blending is handled when using fill vs. opacity:

 
I don't seem to be able to replicate that effect or behavior in Affinity Photo by any means.
Please implement this functionality in Photo for both Desktop and iPad.
Thank you!
Michael