jorsh

So much bikeshedding on this thread, BMP is the best or only or most convenient tool for some jobs and debating its relative merits won't nullify the actual users with real world problems on this thread. File formats don't rot, BMP's simplicity is a feature and makes it excellent for many use cases (including ease of implementation for the Affinity team). Would I find BMP optimal for saving an image? Yeah, definitely in some contexts, and it seems weird to have that dismissed by people who have no idea what other AP users' needs are. I could never imagine the equivalent arguments being made with a straight face if, say, a paid spreadsheet program couldn't export a CSV ("have you tried exporting as a PDF instead" or "this is obsolete and legacy, you should export with a newer format like <fancier binary format with better compression that doesn't solve the user's problem because, for instance, it can't be processed with a company's existing tools or won't work with a different third-party application it needs to work with>"). I will never understand peoples' willingness to jump on this thread just to tell people they don't want what they say they want. Things like "have you tried using another format" or "have you tried converting it after", of course users have explored alternatives before posting on the forum (and maybe making an account to do that, too). At least I did, and there's been plenty of people explaining that they know the alternatives, and they do actually need BMP for what they're doing, and that converting or using different software is just a pain, and then getting told they don't actually want BMP like they say they do. And there are other people jumping on the thread just to wonder out loud about why Serif has not implemented it yet. Someone mentioned testing and maintenance, as if this is a hard format to test or the code would need constant attention once written. I write computer software and this argument is just rationalization and mental gymnastics. If they have architected the software in such a way that either of those concerns is valid then they have done a poor job predicting how the software will need to change. That also has nothing to do with the fact that AP is not solving real users' problems in the real world, and those users are respectfully voicing interest in a BMP export for the future of the program on this thread. Why don't I go use another image editor? I like AP, I'm sold on it, I like its features and I want to use it for more things. That's been rough for me because I can't actually export in my target format right out of AP and my target format is stupid simple.

Hi there, Made a forum account specifically to add my name to the list of people wanting BMP export here. I fall into the software development/application packaging crowd I think. The lack of BMP export makes the process of iterating on multiple resources in my application take 4x or 5x as long and is very frustrating. Using a different format would require me to make my application larger and slower, so I'm between a rock and a hard place with regards to the time that Affinity Photo is wasting for me. I'm aware this could be automated, and I've been using other software to convert to BMP in place of AP. I hope I don't end up on the list of professional users in this thread being told they don't actually want what they say they want, which is BMP export. I'm aware of the details of the format, and aware of the alternatives. It's just a fact of life for me (and lots of people in this thread) that exporting directly to BMP is the simplest, most obvious, most intuitive workflow and I was baffled to find it unsupported in a professional product.