jimh12345

IMHO the purpose is to make money for Microsoft. I'm pretty sure they get a cut on everything sold through their "App Store" so they'd like every Windows application to be purchased through that channel. To that end, they'll try to herd developers into switching to their new setup package, using some combination of carrots and sticks. They'll tell you it's about security, or convenience, or something else, but in reality there's probably no benefit to anyone but Microsoft.

I have to believe Serif will be able to put together a standard Windows installer as an option. There's just no benefit to users from this "app" business. In fact I agree with other posters who say that calling this big powerful software an "app" just cheapens its image. At this point I've had to turn off Windows Ransomware Protection to use V2, and I'm not at all happy about that.

It's already disabled; if it's turned on, I'm in Crash City, Arizona.

Yes, the first thing I noticed was that it takes a long time to open a raw file. That's going to be a problem at times.

Yes, V2 was initially crashing right and left until I realized hardware acceleration was back 'on'. I'd disabled it in V1. Really, I wish acceleration would work...

I don't have any plugins, but I did try the Haze Removal filter and was still able to go into Develop, see the values of previous raw adjustments, and change them. Seems I still had a 'raw' layer to work with.

After fiddling with this on a couple of Nikon NEFs, I can say that it works, and so far it seems like I can get a result just about as good as Capture One. It's a bit awkward, flipping back and forth between "personas", but not nearly as awkward as exporting from C1 and then realizing later I wanted more shadow recovery. I think Serif has done it.

I'd been using Windows' built-in Ransomware Protection - it denies write access to executables until you approve them. And V2 broke that, with this new installation scheme. I'm trying to figure out how to specify the path to the new executable, but if that path keeps changing, it will be a PITA. Looks like the developers were pulled in by the Microsoft siren song of "here's our new way to do things, you need to need on board", and as a former developer I know just how that works. I suggest going back to a standard application installation, if only because this is going to be an endless source of confusion and a drain on Serif's support people.

Ok I admit it - I hate videos, find them slow and tedious. But there's an explanation in Help/QuickStart Guide: the default is still 'destructive', you have to choose the new non-destructive workflow. "Any changes applied through the Persona are non-destructive and are loaded as a RAW layer if the Persona’s RAW Layer (Embedded) or RAW Layer (Linked) output option is selected on the context toolbar. Being non-destructive, you can get back to the Develop Persona by double-clicking on the RAW layer’s thumbnail." If this works well - for example, has good shadow/highlight recovery - it's going to be da bomb.

Can anyone tell me the purpose of all this obfuscation from Microsoft's point of view? Just making things difficult for users doesn't stop the malware guys from getting in.

I'll check that out, thanks.

I was excited to see that V2 has non-destructive raw editing. But when I tried it, nothing has changed - I still have to "commit" the raw edits, and after that they're baked in. If I go back to "develop" all the adjustments are set to zeros. What am I missing?

Wow this is confusing. After installing and using AP V2 for a while, I closed it, came back later and literally could not figure out how to start it, or where it was installed. Ran the installer again and clicked "launch", then used Task Manager to find the .exe and pin it to my task bar. Still don't know how to add it to the Start menu.

AP was crashing right and left until I disabled hardware acceleration.

Isn't a new release rumored to be coming soon?

BINGO

Yes, apparently those "Guides" aren't affected by View/Show Guides, and the settings for Column Guides are part of the project. A bit weird, as two more-or-less unrelated "Guides" are managed by the same dialog. Problem solved.

They're "Column Guides". See previous post. 2 kinds of "Guides" in "Guide Manager"?

View/Guides Manager/Column Guides. Maybe I followed the wrong "guide" 🙂 I wanted to divide the image in four sections, vertically, to get a horizontal center reference.

Good idea - here it is. I deleted everything but the background layer, made sure "Guides" was unchecked, saved, re-opened, and the guides were still there. I'm thinking this will turn out to be a case where AP just does things differently from other programs, and my assumptions for how "guides" should behave are wrong. guides.afphoto

While trying to debug a printing problem, I turned on Guides and set them up the way I needed. Now I can't get rid of them. View/Show Guides doesn't do anything. Neither does Guides Manager/Remove All Guides (although I can still change the properties of the guides). Restarted AP, they're still there, when I load the same project. The Guides seem to have become baked into the project.

Update - haven't crashed since turning off hardware acceleration. I have to say this, though: I think I've now had to turn off acceleration in every editing application I use. Yes, my driver is up to date. This whole 'acceleration' thing seems to have been a failure, due to video card makers never fixing all their bugs. They just keep pushing out new cards.

My first attempt to print with AP didn't go well. 'm trying to print a .PSD for a 5x7 folding card, on 7x10 paper. I'm experienced in printing this from PS Elements, and thought I had everything right in both AP "Print" dialog and print driver settings. The printer is set for borderless printing. But in AP, the image has thin borders added to top and bottom, and is displaced to one side by about half an inch. In the AP "Print" dialog, the preview is correct, it shows the image accurately placed on the 7x10 paper with no margins. But the actual print doesn't match the preview. That can't be right. I went to the AP "Help", searched "Print", and I get a description of a "Print" dialog that obviously isn't the one in the current AP, many options are different. What's up with that?

Saw that, don't think any of it applies, but it's on my list. First I want to see if turning off hardware acceleration stops all the crashes.

RichardMH, thanks for pointing me to that recovery file interval. I reduced it from 5 minutes to 1. I also turned off hardware acceleration. That's a bummer because, hey, we pay for these powerful graphics cards and then end up disabling them - but so far I've run about 15 minutes without a crash. MikeTO, I haven't done anything with fonts in AP so far.