David Edge

Excellent, thanks Gabe. That will keep me out of mischief for a bit!

Thanks Gabe That's certainly a pragmatic way of sorting this image. Is there a way of doing the making the colour of something converge, effectively I suppose brushing in the hue without affecting saturation or lightness? d.

I have a photo of two bands of ceramic tiles that are lit by mixed light so the colour shades from warm to cool across its width. I'd like to equalise the colour across the bands while preserving the texture and shading. I'm sure there's a terribly simple solution, but it's eluding me!

Drag and drop of characters from Apple Colour moji doesn't seem to work although I can see that there might be a problem with non-black fonts.

I haven't checked preferences for the simple reason it turns itself on and off seemingly at random. The trackpad works perfectly with all other applications all the time; it's just hit and miss with Affinity. So I think something inside Affinity is deciding whether it wants to cooperate with pinch/spread to zoom and canvas rotate.

Well you could have knocked me down with a feather! I had no idea anybody was still using mice. Yes, it's an A1339 Trackpad. It works brilliantly for zooming and canvas rotation. Until it doesn't.

It's a feature that usually works perfectly well in the Mac desktop apps; and then just stops working and you need to use Cmd+ and Cmd- which is a right PITA. I haven't worked out why it switches itself off.

Ah, well, we don't have Designer 1.6.1 for Mac yet. I'll give it a day or two and if it doesn't turn up for Mac file a bug. But then it's Photo I'm having the problem with

Thanks Chaps Well as files are always rendered before delivery I'll go for import as text; indeed that's what I have set. I think it may be a post-1.6 problem. I've edited another two and while it doesn't get itself into as much of a mess as before, in each case it loses the fill layer below the object on save and re-open. Perhaps one for the bugs forum?

V_kyr Well, that's how I always do it and normally it works - Edit With Affinity Photo creating a 16-bit PSD, add the layers and save. Then any further non-destructive adjustments in Capture One are applied to a flattened version of what's in the PSD, but if I then Open With Affinity Photo I have my layers back with the file open in Affinity and can edit again,and when I go back to Capture One the non-destructive edits will be applied over. But always the PSD contains layers that remain editable in Affinity. Now I could imagine that I had inadvertently flattened the PSD inside AP, but why does the file have a black background (ie edited) when viewed in and exported from Capture One; but is unedited in Affinity Photo? Alfred - thanks, good point - I do stick to photographic manipulations when exporting to PSD and do any text in Affinity Design. But a useful reminder

I have a file exported to PSD from Capture One. I edited it in Photo, cut out an object, put a black fill layer behind it and saved it. The preview of the file in Finder shows it correctly with a black background. If I export it from Capture One it renders correctly with a black background. However if I open the file again in Photo to change the fill layer to black all I have is the original pixel layer with its original messy background and a transparent layer inside it. It exports as it looks - messy background. So I have a PSD file that Affinity Photo has edited, but cannot read and that Capture One can read but not edit. Any ideas?

Thanks MEB; well two suggestions to add to the "things to get to grips with" list there. One final question then; it seems the best solution for me is to use the selector tool in Quick Mask mode and then refine with the paintbrush; is there an easy way to flip the paintbrush between black and white? Toltec: If an object has been shot on black velvet and has dark bits these may merge into the version shown on solid black and you can get away with some imprecision in masking. If a version is made from the same mask with a white background then these bits scream out and need re-edited. And vice versa if shot on white; a mask that works when there's a white background looks bad on black. I'm realising though that by cycling round the quick mask (show as white / overlap / black) I can preview these so can make a single cutout. So getting close

Thanks MEB - so there's no way of refining a mask with a red overlay while retaining control? No way of setting the sliders in 'refine mask' that will stop it trying to outsmart me? Or no way of releasing a mask perhaps and displaying it as an overlay? I admit it's partly my inexperience, but I can't be the first person ever to have wanted to mask a museum object in different ways for white background (records) and black background (publicity). d.

I think I'm still missing something here. I have a mask sitting nested into the image. This is because I'm producing one version of the object with a black fill and one with a white fill and the mask that works for one doesn't necessarily work for t'other so I need to edit it. However while I can edit the mask with a brush, I can't get any view of the mask other than hard black an white. In Overlay mode I could see what I was doing, now I can't.

The reference is to the tutorial video