[What ergonomic design principles call for minimal contrast and reduced readability in user interfaces?]

In this case, accessibility/usability seems a distinction without a difference. The word disability itself has its own various contextual meanings, but word definitions miss the point: V2 is less pleasant to view for reasons given above. It also uses some non-standard contrasting on buttons, as @Granddaddy detailed quite well elsewhere.

Computer science is a science, part of which being how people perceive user interfaces; there's actual empirical data supporting what makes good design. The whole purpose of GUI visual design is to quickly provide information to the most different types of brains, through the most different types of eyes, in the most intuitive and efficient way possible. It's not to look cool in a YouTube video.  And FFS, icons aren't decorations.

Hence, a well-designed GUI will take into account imperfect vision by definition.

[Coloring a black and white photo in Affinity Photo V2]

How I'd do it on Windows 10

1. Create a fill layer with the color you want. Layer-->New Fill Layer...
2. Mask that layer to the overall area you want colorize. Don't waste time being precise.
3. Set the fill layer's (NOT the mask layer) Blend Mode to Lighter Color.
4. Click the little gear icon next to Lighter Color to display the Blend Options panel. Adjust the Underlying Composition Ranges curve to your satisfaction.
5. Touch up your mask if needed, and you may need to do manual touch up as well.

 

I'd repeat this step for each basic color needed. For the bamboo, I used a green Fill Layer and set the blend mode to Linear Burn. Note how "sloppy" the mask is, and shape of the blend curve I used:

 

It's easy to experiment with Blend Modes, just hold your pointer over it and roll your mouse wheel. Once you create your mask, simply using a combination of Blend Modes and Blend Curves, you can quickly colorize files, and you'll be surprised how well it works on complex images. Be careful with skin tones!

Tip: Sometimes it pays to scale up (resample) the picture about 4x, colorize, then back down for export. This tends to hide many flaws from manual detail painting.

[Communication and Secrecy at Serif]

3 minutes ago, Granddaddy said:

I think my issues and those raised by captain_slocum are indicators of a more fundamental problem at Serif.

This problem is that Serif appears to have little understanding of their customers' needs. They seem not to have a clear idea of who uses their software, how it is used, what it is used for, and under what conditions it is used.

I have seen similar problems in much different situations during my working years when a company adopts a narrow, tool-focused approach rather than choosing a user-centered, strategic approach to software design and development. 

I am astounded that a company that has been in business so long could release with great fanfare a software suite that cannot even be installed by many of their existing customers. Compounding this error is that support staff were never informed that such problems could occur. They were not prepared in advance for dealing with the  deluge of complaints from customers who found it impossible to install the software. Thus we had days of unnecessary chaos and anger that never should have happened.

You literally posted this as I started writing this...

The issue for me isn't the lack of a roadmap, it's lack of direction or any apparent strategy. It's unclear who their target demo is. For example, when there were complaints regarding alpha channel editing for textures, the official response was something to the effect game/3d designers aren't our target at this time, meanwhile V2 has a new, non-destructive, filter for normals maps -- so who's that for and why? If they're going for these people, why not give them what they're clamoring for? It's not my specialty, but as I read it, fixing alpha channel editing would open Photo to an entirely new vista of users. The Normal Map filter seems like a boutique function by comparison.

Sure, there's the new RAW, but so far as I can see, there's no non-destructive auto curves, levels, WB, etc. Is there an indicator on a layer to show blend curves have been changed? Is there a proper relax (not reconstruct) method in Liquify? Why are we still stuck with that goofy Lanzcos Separable/Non-Separable as the best in resampling? Do they actually think photographers work by sitting in an image editor and selecting File->Open... For Every Single File they edit? Does every dead obvious, simple feature, require a formal request, screaming users, and years and years to even merit consideration? Is the program going to become increasingly relevant to me as a tool for grown-ups, or are they going to continually do wildly counterproductive stuff like "redesigning the UI"?  The only criteria I can find for whether a feature is added is how good it will look in a YouTube demo. Sadly, I'm not even joking.

I just don't get it, it's as if they're targeting some sort of committee-spawned homunculus "creative". Kept Hermetically Sealed. In a mayonnaise Jar. On Funk & Wagnalls' porch. Since 1989.

Further, responding isn't the same as communicating. With what V2 has and hasn't, it just makes the feedback forum look like an elaborate version of every other cynical "we care what you think" corporate suggestion box. 

Finally, as for the MSIX, there would have been lot less anger had the initial default response not been to blame their Paying Customers.

[UI suggestions from a newbie]

@loukash Just to clarify, XNViewMP is a relatively new program. It's much more flexible than the older XNView.

https://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/.

It's quite impressive, but somehow I always get the feeling I'm fighting the UI Configuration rather than refining it.

[UI suggestions from a newbie]

I'm was really surprised that the V2 top tool bar has zero additional customizability over V1. Everything you can do in the menu that's feasible to do in a button should have its own icon allowed up there. I do think how customizing the tools bar on the left is much more intuitive than than Photoshop, although weirdly, there's a lot things there called "tools" that are really filters.

1 hour ago, loukash said:

I'm totally stuck because I don't like its default interface, but there are so many options to customize that I don't even understand what they do! So after about two hours of "customizing" I got tired of VectorStyler and went back to do some actual design work in admittedly suboptimal but still workable Affinity…
But yes, I'd also like some options to be more customizable in Affinity. Probably not the same options as you, or you, or as the other guy lurking in this thread right now.
And that's the dilemma every developer and UI designer must cope with. 

This is the reason I stick to FastStone Image Viewer instead of XNViewMP. FastStone is hardly customizable at all, and yet somehow doesn't need to be, everything is very intuitive. XNViewMP has more configurabilty, yet I never can get it just right.

[What ergonomic design principles call for minimal contrast and reduced readability in user interfaces?]

It's like they were working on new features for a V1 update, but decided to make it V2 so they haphazardly changed a bunch of colors and slapped together a new icon set so they could say V2 has a "completely redesigned UI that will optimize your workflow" to help justify it being a full version upgrade.

Anyone remember when Visual Studio decided to make every letter in all the menus uppercase? That went over almost as well.

On 11/21/2022 at 12:20 AM, deeds said:

The bigger question:

 

was the new UI designed in the new versions of Affinity Suite during their beta phase?

 

Either way, the answer will be of great interest, me thunks. 

As if they did beta testing.🤣🤣🤣

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

16 hours ago, Chills said:

For those people in business where the rely on the software the upgrade price form V1 to V2 is less than trivial. It is lost inthe mist.   Even if they bought V1 last month.

Besides none of this software is life critical.

Products should work as advertised; evidently "we finally got it to run with no fatalities, let's sell it"  is an acceptable standard here.

[Has V2 fixed Affinity's biggest issues?]

V2 is just disheartening. It's like coming from the great, original Star Wars Theatrical, being sold tickets to Empire Strikes Back, and forced to watch A New Hope: Special Edition -- the vast bulk of features are a hodge-podge of stuff the maker wanted, neither understanding nor caring what the audience wanted -- while being 99% the original. Serif could also learn from the various Death Stars down through the ages, it doesn't matter how numerous or fancy the features, if it keeps blowing up.

It's not so much that V2 isn't an Adobe killer now, it's that at this rate, it's so amply clear that it will never even be a contender. There's just so much wasted potential and time, so much missed opportunity, I'll likely just go back to an old Photoshop when my V2 trial expires.

And don't get me started on those of us with the MSIX bug being forced to watch Star Wars: Holiday Special, Clockwork Orange style.

[Remove irregular moiré]

I posted my tips here:

 

[How to remove Moire?]

It's been a long while since I've done this, but I recall working in LAB color space (in Photoshop) and did whatever only on the lightness channel. Of course you need a color image, and you must remember to change back to your final colorspace before exporting.

Sometimes the camera manufacturer's own terrible software will have moire reduction that helps with a specific camera.

Topaz DeNoiseAI is a standalone/plugin than might work. You could try the trial.

 

[Performance: are CPUs of AMD slower compared to Intel in Affinity?]

@TheFlow

At least now you know the status of your OpenCL as Affinity sees it.

3DSMax taking 2-3 minutes to start is abnormal. Maybe check 3DSMax startup log? The name of the file is Max.log and it should be located somewhere like:

C:\Users\<yournamehere>\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\<version>\ENU\Network

I love the name, "Max.Log". It's like a Tom Cruise character...

Tom Cruise as Secret Agent Max Log

Fighting rain-forest drug cartels

in

Undercover Lumberjacking!

But seriously folks, logs aren't just for lumberjacks anymore. If 3DSMax is encountering the same issue as Affinity Paint, that may hold the key. You should resolve this, if possible, because it's likely the cause of other performance issues, even if they're not obvious. Plus it may help others, which is a non-trivial bonus.

Just generally, how do games load and perform, and do you think they're stable?

Although it won't affect your problem, you should kill Steam when not in use as it's constantly causing all kinds of mischief.

[Image on image following contour]

Something like this?

 

In Photo V2, I used Mesh Warp to wrap it, using the vertical lines of the pumpkin as guides, and just kinda eyeballing it. This was a quicky attempt, but you could "tuck" mesh point in the grooves, especially at the bottom. This would give it a more 3D effect.

Then I set the blend mode of the Flag layer to Linear Light. The little gear to the right of Linear Light brings up the blending curves panel, so you tweak it until you get the desired effect. Hard Light also produces a nice effect.

There's one issue in V1 and now V2 you must heed: The layer panel will give no indication the curve has been changed. If you have multiple layers and you forget you changed the blending curves on one, it'll drive you berserk trying to figure out why nothing's displaying correctly.. I've got bit by this in Photoshop, and it has an indicator, It just didn't register in my brain.

If this does show an indication and I missed it, I'm happy to be corrected. Otherwise, you should change the indicator color of the layer in the layer panel (which I didn't).

 

[Performance: are CPUs of AMD slower compared to Intel in Affinity?]

@TheFlow

OK, I have a simple potential solution.

In the directory where your "Photo.exe" for V2 resides, there's a program called cltest.exe. It's a little utility that Photo executes internally shortly after it loads "fonts..." It checks the status of the machine's OpenCL capabilities. If I double click it, a window pops open and vanishes before I can read the text.

If this file were to stall, it could cause your symptoms.

I make no claim of the safety of this, but if you double-click cltest.exe and there's a delay, that might be the culprit.

If you run it in CLI, it will display data relevant to your OpenCL configuration.

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

7 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

@ChopperNova

You know Serif staff are real people and that we're right here reading all this?

Perhaps you should be more concerned with your customers than your own individual personal feelings. You realize we are real people who pay Serif real money for a product, and have every right to demand that it be fit for purpose -- and in many cases it is completely unusable. Those users were initially told to suck it.

Customers who bought V1 immediate before V2 are still being told Sucks to be you, and your rationale for how you're doing upgrades is flatly insulting -- and I'll repeat, this doesn't apply to me. Remember, everyone wanting upgrade comp, (and some were unreasonable), are your paying customers. They didn't deserve to be shamed as deadbeats in the forum, and while I appreciate the acceptance of widespread opinion here, I think mods could have a set a better tone, had they wished.

I interrupted my photo schedule, excited with V2, but had install issues, and it all just spiraled down from there with: First it was Sucks to be you, then; we'll get around to it eventually, in the meantime, sucks to be you. If you burn through your trial before a proper install, sucks to be you, if you want to test MSI before you buy at the discount rate, sucks to be you. Any stand-up company would apologize profusely for this huge waste of time and money for their customers, and bend over backwards to try to keep them, if the gave a shit. All this seems this seems like a risky strategy from a company that relies heavily on word of mouth.

Nothing's intended personally, but Serif is being PAID to do a JOB -- produce software. If my Uber drives through my garage door, costing me time and money -- then starts with a song an dance about how this is so better, 'cuz I don't have to walk as far to my kitchen, then it's just too damn bad if he gets butthurt when he doesn't get five stars and a tip.

Some people actually rely on software, and when it's broken, it costs them real time, money and creative energy. Broken software has even been responsible for people losing jobs. Sucks to be them.

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

6 minutes ago, LondonSquirrel said:

Maybe the technical issues are not so simple. If Serif say that a problem is difficult (in plain terms, without any particular example in mind) I am inclined to believe them rather than somebody who is not privy to the information that Serif has.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but perhaps the single most pressing technical issue would be a slight at best if the software was developed correctly initially. Likewise, there's actually these cheap little boxes you plug in to the wall that can compare tens of thousands of digital receipts in real-time as they arrive in email -- they operate using a system of ones and zeros... And the whole concept of beta-testing seems foreign to them.

I'm not privy to insider information, but I do have insight when someone's blowing smoke.

[Cannot create new document, presets are missing]

Assuming Windows, did you install it as an MSIX, or did you use the "unzip" hack?

If it's the unzip hack, this should work, but no guarantees if it FUBARs anything. It will certainly overwrite your custom brushes, etc., in all the apps. If you've never done this type of stuff before, consider creating a restore point.

1. Close all Affinity apps.
2. Go to where you unzipped, and locate the folder "affinity-photo-2.0.0\App\Resources\Affinity%20Photo". (Yes, it actually has a %20 in it😖). It should be full of files like "assets.propcol", etc.
3. Locate folder "C:\Users\<usernamehere>\.affinity\Common\2.0\user" (note the dot in .affinity, and it may be hidden).
4. COPY the contents of folder from Step 2 into the folder from Step 3, overwriting existing files.

Next time you start a V2 app, default stuff should be there for all the apps, not just Photo.

NB: While this might work with an MSIX install, you should first try uninstalling/reinstalling.

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

2 hours ago, Bman70 said:

... I wasn't even looking at usernames just scanning over posts and surprised how many people were white-knighting

It's as if people have Software Stockholm Syndrome, and act like Serif is some kind of a make-a-wish charity for kittens, rather than a for-profit company.

I was a huge fan two weeks ago, but the way Serif has responded at every turn, the non-responsive-middle-management-prick-speak, the hype, their staggering incompetence with respect to simple technical issues, the very thin list of improvements in V2 (with execrable icons), and the endless excuse making makes me feel I got played.

They're way worse than Adobe at this size on all counts, and their only real talent seem to be in undeserved self-congratulation that would shame a rapper. I've lost complete respect for them as a company and as software designers. I will actively discourage people from using their products now.

[Performance: are CPUs of AMD slower compared to Intel in Affinity?]

 

4 hours ago, TheFlow said:

Actually no, I used this machine for about 4-5 years now, I'm just at my wit's end. The only conclusion I have is that there is some kind of hardware/software interference that does get in the way. I start AP or AD, doesn't matter and for a couple of seconds it all goes well - then - it hangs.

Here's a video, not directly from screen recorded so nothing additional interferes with AP2.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qg6g7wy1gncfoco/IMG_2799.MOV?dl=0

20 seconds of "not responding" seems super weird to me.

The only thing that comes to my mind I have not tried is changing my GPU drivers to Nvidias game ready drivers instead of studio drivers.
Hardware acceleration is OFF and working in the program feels a bit smoother compared to ON.

Also, a benchmark of my system. 1700X, 16GB 3000 Ram, GTX 1060 6GB.

Thanks for the video.

• You have some antimalware running, I'd kill ALL that stuff for testing. It could even be a malformed Windows Firewall rule, just remember to turn it back on, if you want.
• Photo uses scratch folders and keeps recovery files in them. There could be a corrupt recovery file, or permissions issue. Or simply low disk space -- just because raw space exists, doesn't mean the file system can deal with quickly.
• In your task manager, click on the box that says GPU and look at the graphs there. If your SHARED GPU MEMORY in use is more than 1GB, you might start encountering issues. I've noticed sometimes Photo V2 really swallows that just doing nothing.
• Have you tried redownloading/uninstalling/manual cleanup/reinstalling?

 

[Colours changing on exporting]

2 minutes ago, peterhammer said:

That's the default and it is the issue.  It makes no sense to just ignore the document colour space and assume it is the same as the working colour space.

I think RAW files ignore colour space as it is just the data from the sensor.  The software massages the raw data inot a colour space.

 

I don't see a Keep Color Space, just Convert. What am I missing?

 

Nikon cameras name RAW files shot in AdobeRGB as "_NKN1234.nef", whereas sRGB are saved as "NKN_1234.nef". The colorspace is noted in the RAW, as Photoshop and others will honor it, but I'm not entirely clear on the implications.

 

[Colours changing on exporting]

35 minutes ago, peterhammer said:

Thank rvst but the issue occurs before exporting the image.

I have found the issue.  In Preferences there is an option to keep the original colour space which by default is not checked - how crazy can you get!  Checking that and all works fine.  It appears that Photo 2 uses some undefined colour space if you don't check it.

I only see a box to convert colorspace, which is unchecked in mine, although I'm not certain that's the default.

I do know when loading a Nikon RAW file, if it will ignore whether it was shot with sRGB or AdobeRGB.

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

2 hours ago, Dan C said:

The following in Ash's post covers this:

 

Ash also commented on this here:

My post was referring to people who bought V1 shortly before V2, which I'd imagine is not tens of thousands of receipts. Software houses typically act of good faith in instances like this, but we got it, your customers aren't worth the effort.

It's not sufficient to simply not BE Adobe, et al. You also have to not BEHAVE like them. Like I said it's your giant finger, you can give it to anyone you want. The MSIX fisaco amply demonstrates where both your thumbs are.

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

5 minutes ago, Brian_J said:

But what you said was...

With all due respect, that not paraphrasing — it's incorrect information that you used to support the statement that Serif is "dishonest." Serif provided their reasoning for not going the route of identifying customers who purchased on platforms other than the Serif Store.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, and frankly, I don't like contributing to the back-and-forth between users in these forums. But I think it's important we get our facts straight so everyone has the ability to reach their own conclusions based on facts.

When I said "Saying it's impossible to correlate users with V1 purchases is dishonest." I wasn't referring to some literal, absolute, universal, fast-than-light, physical impossibility, nor was I quoting anyone. I was referring to multiple statements made in this forum, which generate the cumulative impression of impossibility. So I was summarizing/ characterizing/paraphrasing, and if taken in context with my previous paragraph, it should be clear I was referring to those who bought V1 very shortly before V2. These people are being positively vilified here, when they're simply loyal customers expecting Serif to act in good faith. But it's Serif's giant finger, they can give it to anyone they want. We already know where both their thumbs are.

And it's kind of pedantic to take issue with my use of impossible and paraphrasing, while ignoring the actual point I was making, but whateves.

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

2 minutes ago, Brian_J said:

There are differences between traditional manufacturing companies and software companies, but I think there are some basic models, constraints, economic considerations — whatever they may be called — that apply to pricing strategy in most consumer product industries. Setting a product's price intentionally high, then offering a discount, may be common for products sold in TV commercials and retail stores, but I don't think it would be an effective approach for a software company.

I haven't seen Serif claim it's impossible. This is what Ash, Serif Managing Director wrote in his post:

 

With software, you can't set the product's price intentionally high because there's no baseline, but obviously there's a vast number of considerations. Corel frequently offers sales on Painter, which retails for over $429. Now, for a limited time only, you can get it for $299, plus $200 in Free Stuff.

Serif could have slapped together 100 brushes and said, $500 in exclusive, all-new content!!! It's a farce.

When I said Serif claimed it was impossible, I was paraphrasing. But if they wanted to make it happen, they could -- doesn't Apple Store supply any sort of digital receipt? And It's funny how they're managing to slap together create a bundle of exclusive, all-new content, just for users going from V1 to V2, though.

But if you want to believe their marketing tripe, you're welcome too it.

[V2 Pricing for users V1]

People don't seem to realize that individual software pricing is fantasy money. There's no per-unit cost. Serif could literally price their products anywhere from free to $infinity, and then offer whatever "generous" discount they wanted. They could also offer free versions. A company that makes, say, powertools, can't do that.

I don't have any issue with their pricing policies, per se, and this doesn't apply to me, but selling V1 after stopping development with the implication that it will be "supported" is unethical. Taking feature requests and bug reports on software that's bitrotting in a file archive is playing the customer. They're selling you Pussy Galore and giving you a sack o' cats headin' for the river.

Saying it's impossible to correlate users with V1 purchases is dishonest. If they don't have access to that info, most consumers could produce a receipt just like modern commerce has worked forever. Serif just doesn't want to.

Frank Zappa was right, most people really don't know when they're being dumped on.

[Performance: are CPUs of AMD slower compared to Intel in Affinity?]

1 hour ago, debraspicher said:

5600X is a good processor. That is what we put in husband's machine.

I just upgraded from a 3600. I tried 3900X for the extra cores and to be plain,  I was unimpressed by the performance boost from the 3600 compared to what hub was getting on the 5600X. His machine just seemed so much snappier. I wasn't impressed enough for the cost, so I returned to get the 5800X which was cheaper and I apparently picked up good silicon so have a nice OC on top.

There is a significant boost in-between platforms. Probably less to do with rated speeds/etc, more to do with architectural changes and maybe that modern software takes more advantage of newer tech. It's one thing to look at a facts sheet, it's very different to experience this when testing with your own setup, applications, witnessing the changes. It's very easy to see what you are actually getting. Ex: Hub started with a 2600X before and he wasn't able to run full settings in things like Doom Eternal. He had a NVIDIA 3070 in his machine, so it wasn't that. He took the step upgrade to my 3600 initially, saw major improvement from that leap alone. He could run everything on full settings (sans raytracing obvs). Then to 5600X, it just seemed even more rock solid. Technology is amazing.

If you do decide later to go for updated GPU and have the entire system up to date, that will last you a good long time as well as your processor will not be a major hindrance to a newer card. Which was a factor for me to upgrade because as I see it, more and more applications are being GPU-driven (especially VRAM).

I agree about the GPU. They're increasingly doing more single-thread Heavy Lifting previously performed by CPUs, diminishing the relative importance of single-thread CPU performance. I went for the 8GB Radeon RX580 (a long time ago) over the similarly priced 4GB cards with sexier specs, because you can't upgrade the VRAM, figuring those 4GB cards will become obsolete quicker. When I was buying, video cards had become obscenely expensive, almost prohibitively so.

My Ryzen 1700X overclocks the frequency nicely, but it doesn't net any tangible benefits except for the electric company.