DoctorChas

Here's my two ha'porth. Serif had developed a reputation for creating some terrific and comparatively low-cost workhorse programs for Windows, and made money along the way—no easy task in the constantly shifting world of software development and user desires. When I heard that they were developing Mac-only programs that appeared to target the core of Adobe's business stream, I was intrigued: this was a very bold move for a small software house. Although I had limited experience—or need—of using Illustrator, I nonetheless downloaded the public beta of Designer and played with it. I was deeply impressed with the attention to detail, and thus when the public beta of Photo was released I eagerly downloaded it. I've been into photography for over 50 years, and I immediately fell in love with Photo. I both admire and despise PS: PS does some exceptionally clever things but I find the interface clunky and unintuitive (YMMV). Photo, whilst the first version was obviously feature-incomplete, was clearly drawing a line in the sand. The more I played with the beta, the more I came back to the word "elegant". Adobe are a $47 billion company, and yet here is a tiny company based in Nottingham that has aimed an arrow straight at Adobe's jugular—truly a David and Goliath situation. And so, gentle reader, we come to the crux: whatever you might think of Apple, they have always been about exquisite attention to detail. Serif have made a bold business decision to deliver a suite of programs that plays to that mantra. The fact that they've been able to do so with a tiny fraction of the budget heavyweights like Adobe can muster—and with that same apparent philosophic attention to detail—is astonishing. So is a Windows version of the Affinity suite technically feasible? Judging by previous commentary, yes. Whether it is a sound business decision can only be determined by the good folks at Serif. It is perhaps ironic that were a Windows version to be developed, it would only come off the back off the work done on the Mac version. I would also argue that Windows users deserve the Affinity suite: I frankly care not about the platform you use, but I do like to see the best tools placed in the hands of as many users as possible. May I take this opportunity of wishing all the staff and developers at Serif, and everyone here on the forums, a most splendid New Year.

Aha! So it's not dissimilar to using a vector mask in Fireworks. I'm trying to recreate a workflow for a project I originally developed in Fireworks. Now I'm trying to translate the workflow to AP because a) AP is so much funkier and b) Fireworks gets incredibly unstable with very large images and I need to be able to work with larger images. Thanks for the help, safoster71 and MEB—time to experiment some more :D =:~)

Pretty much. I should have pointed out that I want to do this in Affinity Photo, though. =:~)

Folks I've got how to create a shape mask but I'm stuck on how get the edges to blend into objects underneath. Say, for example I'm using a circle to create the mask. How to I get the edge to gradually fade to transparent and how do I control the width of that edge? TIA =:~)

Good point. folks. =:~)

Apologies if anyone has mentioned this before (I could't see anything similar posted here when I searched) but I would love it if the straighten tool would auto crop after straightening. Aperture does this very nicely, although I do prefer Affinity Photo's method of just drawing a horizon line as it's actually quicker. Oh, and unicorns—there just aren't enough unicorns :D =:~)

There's an alternative and arguably better way of doing this: with the SD card inserted, launch Image Capture from the Applications folder (or just use Spotlight). Your device will appear in the column on the left. In the bottom left corner of the window is a small arrow icon in a box—if it's pointing up, click it to open the panel. You can now choose which application to open when the card is inserted, or you can choose No Application. This same trick works for any device: for example, if you wanted your iPhone to launch Aperture, attach the phone, launch Image Capture and set your launch option to taste. =:~)