jimh12345

Thanks Walt - I'd never used the Adjustments panel, had to find out what that was and how turn that on, now I see the presets. Thanks.

I add a Soft Proofing filter, choose the profile and rendering intent, click Add Profile and enter a name. I assume I just created a preset profile. Now - where is it? I've looked all around, and Googled, an I can't see how to use that preset on my next project.

It's an odd situation. AP is great software and I see it mentioned often - it's getting good buzz. It's just inconceivable to me that it wouldn't be getting active development and be moving ahead. But this missing "feature" - a core capability that everyone expects - has been ignored for years while other things that I'll never use have been added. Every time I use AP I miss being able to see masks, and it's frustrating. I really don't get it.

Yes that seems like just what I need, thanks.

Is there a way to persist the settings in the Print dialog? It's tedious to have to set things like "fit type" "color profile" and "rendering intent" every time I want to print. And if I forget one, I lose a print.

While I'm respectful of the awesome complexity of something like Affinity Photo, I will say that the problem the OP describes is one that I've encountered as well - and it's not confined to Affinity, it comes up in other big applications. I go to Help to find out how to do something - it describes how to use the So-And-So tool - but I'm unable to find that tool in the UI. Sometimes it's not even currently in the visible UI - for example, maybe it's not in a default toolbar. The Help doesn't tell you where it's hiding- and I think this is because in a big application you typically have way too many options for how toolbars are configured and what's in them...

I use Capture One, and their Export is truly a model of logic, simplicity and easily discoverable functionality. It does what photographers need and want, no more, no less.

It's excellent software, I'm really impressed, especially considering the price. It's made me forget all about Photoshop Elements. I actually don't have a lot of complaints, I'd have to say that Export is at the top of that list right now.

Seems like Serif originally aimed Affinity at designers, not photographers, but hey... it's called Affinity "Photo" so presumably they want us on board. And workflow is king. They've tried to up their raw processing game, but really, they're starting from far behind, and most of us already have that covered with other software. We need Affinity to do things that we can't do in something like Capture One. So my wish would be for them to go slow on raw processing and put more effort into supporting photographers' workflow - and Export would be a major target for that effort.

I'm just a photographer, not a designer, so Affinity Designer is vast overkill for me. But I'm using AP, the core functionality, very productively; it's great. The one thing that I don't like, as a photographer, is AP's Export function. It's too limiting; it doesn't save my settings, it just does one export at a time. Typically, I want to export 2 or 3 versions at different sizes and locations. I'm so tired of pounding in my dimensions, and hunting around with File Explorer, 2 or 3 times, on every export. It's sooo simple in Capture One, for example; create any number of export profiles that specify size, sharpening, destination etc., then when you export, just check the profiles you want used. Done. Yes, I know about Affinity's Export Persona. It's a rare piece of software that can make me cry, but I think tears were rolling as a gave up after an hour of floundering around in slices, layers, Batch Builder, Export Presets, and 100 other options I don't need. I don't even know what a "slice" is. This is just way, way too complicated for a photographer trying to get JPGs of a photo. I've posted on this before - but is there anything new in the pipeline? Some new way to do multiple jpg exports that doesn't lead down a rabbit hole of complexity?

Yes this drives me nuts too. Really, really wish they'd add this.

Aha - so there' a "Flood Selection" tool. That could be the answer.

Not getting this. Flood fill doesn't create a selection, and just replacing a solid blue sky with a different solid color isn't really "sky replacement". How do you get from flood fill, to a mask for the sky?

I'll check that out.

I'm not big on sky replacement - I think it's a vice. But in this case, I have a totally empty sky, and a totally synthetic image composition, so I'd like to try putting in a few clouds. And it seems like AP just has nothing in its tool box to facilitate sky replacement in complex situations. While I don't want AP to start adding bogus "AI" features, the difficulty of selecting a blue sky really surprises me. Surely, I'm missing something here.

v_kyr, I didn't realize "select by sampled color" had a tolerance slider that can be used to refine the selection. I tried this and at first, thought it would be enough on its own. I select a layer for one of the birds, "select by sampled color", adjust the tolerance and get a nice tight selection around the bird. But the selection doesn't work like it should. First off, I apparently can't Refine it. So I just hit Delete and at first it looks like the blue on that layer is gone, but I find it's not completely removed, as if all those "selected" pixels weren't really selected, or some sort of transparency is in effect. Attached screen capture shows what I'm left with after the Delete. This is useless. I tried using the Eraser to wipe out everything in the selection. And what I found out is that the dashed border showing the "selection" is really only approximate, because I lost some of the bird that way. Some pixels inside that border aren't really "selected" and some outside of the border are. So, I had to be careful with the Eraser. But even with the Eraser set at 100% I found that multiple passes were necessary to completely remove the pixels. IMHO "Select Sampled Color" is just a mess. AP needs a proper tool for selecting by color range.

Yes, tweaking the tolerance on flood fill is a good idea, I'll try it. Still wish there was a direct way to select by color range.

Here's an image I'm working on: a composite of several shots of a bird in flight. They've all been processed identically but of course as I followed the bird and took shots, the sky varied slightly. Each photo is on a separate layer. Now I need to get a uniform sky behind all the birds. Yes, I could outline each one with the Selection Brush tool, refine the selection and cut out the bird, but that could be tedious; feathers are tough. Obviously I'd like to select by a color range - get all those blues at once - but If I remember right, AP doesn't have an easy, direct way to do that. Does it? Or can anyone suggest another clever way to select all these similar blues and either delete those pixels, or force them to a common color?

I think the mesh tool will do what I want, although the need has passed - couldn't figure this out in time so a simpler image was used. My takeaway from this is a familiar one: get it right - the way you want- in the camera, instead of fiddling endlessly in post-processing.

It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough. I decided the difficulty came in because the Mesh tool is working on a bounding rectangle, and the 'handles' aren't in the best places. So I came up with a clever workaround. I isolated the chain on a layer, rotated it to be vertical, and cropped around it, assuming the Mesh tool would then work on a bounding rectangle closely matching the object. But the Mesh tool "remembers" the original orientation and persists in using it. I even tried saving the layer as a new file and reopening it - no luck. Useless, and IMHO weird, behavior - see attached image:

Attached is the thing I'm trying to 'curve'. It's a section of a beaded chain (for a jewelry ad). I've already cut it out from the background and isolated it on a layer. The Mesh Tool is a good suggestion, I didn't realize I could use that on the specific pixel region in a layer. And with it, I can 'sort of' get what I want: a smoothly curved chain. I say "sort of" because the Mesh tool is working on the entire rectangular region bounding the chain, and when I try to curve the chain it wants to distort the size and shape of the round beads, in non-linear ways. By fiddling with all the grab handles I can get "close" to a nice result. What I'd really like to be able to do is draw some sort of a line right down the middle of that chain, curve the line, and have all the pixel contents follow it. Hope that makes sense. The Mesh tool might be "good enough" for what I need to do. In the second image you can see that I'm close, after a lot of fiddling, but some of the beads are weird.

Ok, that's handy, I see how you used the rectangle/curve/selection route to create a curved selection and use it to delete pixels. But I want to curve the pixel layer (the monitor in your example), not delete pixels from it.

Thanks all, unfortunately these methods are beyond my expertise with AP and involve too many elements I know nothing about - like rectangle "shapes", "node tool", "selection from layer" etc. I'm just a photographer, not a designer, and would have to move quite a ways up the AP learning curve. I tried this method, but quickly encountered things I didn't understand. I can drag out a Rectangle, I see a Convert to Curves button on the toolbar.. then I find the Node tool and see that I can deform the Rectangle... but that only affects the rectangle itself, not my pixel layer... I don't get how they're supposed to be connected.... So I've put this aside for now.

Affinity Photo 2, 2.0.4, a pixel image (photo).

I want to select a region in an image (by just dragging a selection rectangle over it) and then "curve" that selected area. How can I "curve" a selection, without creating any other distortions?