JaGold

Personally I don't view creative app usage as indoctrination. It's a tool to me, like a very good hammer. If I can do the job well with Affinity, if it serves my goals, then I use it. 
Theres been a lot of R&D and $$$ invested into Photoshop, and it's an excellent, industry-tested tool. I just don't like renting it. 

Personally I don't view creative app usage as indoctrination. It's a tool to me, like a very good hammer. If I can do the job well with Affinity, if it serves my goals, then I use it. 
Theres been a lot of R&D and $$$ invested into Photoshop, and it's an excellent, industry-tested tool. I just don't like renting it. 

Hi! One of my go to menu items in PS is "Delete Hidden Layers" accessed by right-clicking on the layers palette. This is a valuable feature that I'm kind of surprised still hasn't found it's way to Affinity products yet. 
If you could also add it to the "Layer" drop-down that would make sense too. 
 
Thanks!

I TOTALLY FEEL ya! Photoshop has been frictionless for a long time, and it's really difficult to use Affinity products and not keep running into these annoying unpolished bits, whether it's an unintuitive workflow issue, or some software glitch, like how I'm trying to figure out why painting on a mask layer using the "Color" tab frequently get's stuck on black-only (hence the reason I'm here, searching for a solution! ). 

I'm of the current mindset to be cautiously optimistic that they will get around to the polishing. During the v1 launch in 2015 I dove right in, and it was a barely-useable mess (Photo I mean, Designer I've been pretty happy with mostly) that I abandoned after I tried to actually use it in my design pipeline for client work. I'm seeing the same pattern play out again here with the v2 launch. They really do need to allocate some people resources and get senior-level Photoshop users to meticulously go through the workflow or real projects and find-and-fix all the issues, along with the use of the forum's help and the legacy problems we've all been pointing out for years. 
Since I've gotten off the PS train this winter, I'm definitely personally invested in seeing Affinity succeed, and willing to help.
 

Personally I don't view creative app usage as indoctrination. It's a tool to me, like a very good hammer. If I can do the job well with Affinity, if it serves my goals, then I use it. 
Theres been a lot of R&D and $$$ invested into Photoshop, and it's an excellent, industry-tested tool. I just don't like renting it. 

Looking at frustrations in this discussion…
I’d like to add one
Affinity came out,
they had a refreshing approach
that I wanted to support.
After a very frustrating year of beachballs and crashes
with Photo on a MbP, crash reports,
support always looking into it,
I really wanted to pull the plug.
Finally an update which resolved
and proved the issue.
Few reasons I didn’t quit
liked that they were fighting the big guys
too many afPhoto extensions
and no real affordable alternative.
So happy and supportive for what I have.
To be honest, why these memories came back with V2,
Launch 40 off…
and no differentiation for new and existing users.
It’s not the amount that does it
just a bit of acknowledgement for early adapters
will encourage support for Serifs V2 approach,
even beachballs now and then.
Now it’s more like I will stick to V1
which is ok for average use
and if something comes up in time
Affinity or not
I can always decide.
Serif cherish your users!
Don't forget
why many of us chose you. 

I'm not so sure I even want a clone of PhotoShop's workflow.

I TOTALLY FEEL ya! Photoshop has been frictionless for a long time, and it's really difficult to use Affinity products and not keep running into these annoying unpolished bits, whether it's an unintuitive workflow issue, or some software glitch, like how I'm trying to figure out why painting on a mask layer using the "Color" tab frequently get's stuck on black-only (hence the reason I'm here, searching for a solution! ). 

I'm of the current mindset to be cautiously optimistic that they will get around to the polishing. During the v1 launch in 2015 I dove right in, and it was a barely-useable mess (Photo I mean, Designer I've been pretty happy with mostly) that I abandoned after I tried to actually use it in my design pipeline for client work. I'm seeing the same pattern play out again here with the v2 launch. They really do need to allocate some people resources and get senior-level Photoshop users to meticulously go through the workflow or real projects and find-and-fix all the issues, along with the use of the forum's help and the legacy problems we've all been pointing out for years. 
Since I've gotten off the PS train this winter, I'm definitely personally invested in seeing Affinity succeed, and willing to help.
 

Web page layouts, print files, digital art files... I have PSB files up to about 5-6GB. 

Ya gotcha, I'm on an older Mac Intel, so it's a different experience for you. I opened a 300MB PSD in AP1 in under 10sec, and in AP2 it took 3min! There's something very wrong with the MacOS version.

Hey I just found the MACRO tab (and the LIBRARY tab where it saves them) I created a macro that solves this problem 100%... Well 95%... I mean it would be nicer to have a right-click option to Delete Hidden Layers, but I'm happy! (and kind of excited to see what else I can do with macros) 

Try pressing tab - it is a hide/show toolbars and panels toggle. 

It happens to the best of us @JaGold  

Oh LOL it worked! (why didn't I think of that??)
Thanks!

Interesting! I didn't notice that yet. 

Really neat trick. But I think this might be a bug. Seems to me to be utterly unintuitive.

Also note that even though nested objects inherit parent layer's color tags visually in the Layers panel, the actual tag is not being applied to them. I vaguely remember reporting it as a bug or "improvement request" last year or so.

Hey friends,
I did some more investigating with the masks (if you haven't noticed Im a noob with AF, but have PS chops)... and I think I actually screwed up here. When I press B for brush I think I was occasionally cycling between Paint Brush tool and the Color Replacement Brush Tool, and the latter does not work as expected (the tool on B&W kinda looks likes it's creating weird artifacts). My bad!
 

Ah interesting tips guys! 
The Layer > Show All is a great workaround. 
I like the idea of using color tags to sort layers too, although I see the limitations at scale when working with hundreds of layers that are nested. HOWEVER, if you merge your two methods together: you can find hundreds of hidden nested layers via the Layer > Show All, then while they are highlighted, tag them Grey, then hide them again (for later removal). This could work 🤔

I don't think so. By keeping them selected, you can hide them all again with just one click or command.

First make sure no Layer is selected in the Layers panel, then.... 
Layer > Show All
All hidden layers will be unhidden but they will all be selected so just hit the delete key/icon

You can add a specific color tag to each layer while you're disabling it. For example, usually I'm using the Gray tag for any "throwaway" layers.
In the end, just select "Select Same Tag Color" from the context menu and click the Remove Layer button.

Hi! One of my go to menu items in PS is "Delete Hidden Layers" accessed by right-clicking on the layers palette. This is a valuable feature that I'm kind of surprised still hasn't found it's way to Affinity products yet. 
If you could also add it to the "Layer" drop-down that would make sense too. 
 
Thanks!

Hi! One of my go to menu items in PS is "Delete Hidden Layers" accessed by right-clicking on the layers palette. This is a valuable feature that I'm kind of surprised still hasn't found it's way to Affinity products yet. 
If you could also add it to the "Layer" drop-down that would make sense too. 
 
Thanks!

Hi! One of my go to menu items in PS is "Delete Hidden Layers" accessed by right-clicking on the layers palette. This is a valuable feature that I'm kind of surprised still hasn't found it's way to Affinity products yet. 
If you could also add it to the "Layer" drop-down that would make sense too. 
 
Thanks!