Wilfred Hildonen

Frankly, I can’t remember as I haven’t had much use for it. I think I can do all the steps, but there’s no optimising for web-function.

I was working on an illustration and the routine is more or less like this: I create a rough in a pixel layer and on top of that I create shapes in vector, which I set to Multiply, so the rough is visible and I group it. Then I paint on the vector shapes with raster brushes until I’m happy with the result. I’ve done this hundreds of times, but now, all of a sudden, the first and basic pixel layer just vanished. Poof! Completely gone! I check off the other layers, but the pixel layer is completely empty. I check the opacity and it’s as it should be. I check History and it’s like it never existed. I have undone lots of steps, but nope. It’s gone. Completely gone. Well, the layer is there, but it’s empty. Maybe I accidentally touched something I shouldn’t have, but how is this possible? The rest us there, but not the first pixel layer. I have a deadline so I need to do it all over again, but it sucks! I wish there is a simple explanation for this.

Sorry for responding late, but it got busy around here, but I finally found out how to add it to the library. I overlooked that icon - and now I see that @Alfredhad even showed it - and looked for some option in a menu or something. Well, it is there now, but I think this tells of not being a very intiuitive process. The fool proof or the idiot's test 😛 Thank you all!

But as it was explained to me in that post, I can’t import .afmacro-files, only .afmacros-files. And I don’t have that.

Thank you and besides that they are named *.afmacro, that means that one has to import the single file for each time I want to use it, so if I had a dozen images open which I want to use the same macro on, I need to import it a dozen times, is that so? It is not only unintuitive, it is stupid in my opinion. It renders the whole idea close to useless. I hope I have misunderstood something. And what are the *.afmacros-files, in plural?

Like Lou Reed sang: I guess I'm dumb, coz I ain't smart. I have tried to search for a simpistic explanation but didn't find any which made sense to me, so forgive me if this has been explained somewhere. I have made a simple macro which I need to run on at least two images which I have imported at the same time. I saved the recorded macro to the desktop as I didn't see any option to add it to the library when I used the Export-function. Now, when I want to use the macro, I need to import it for each of the images, which is a waste of time and ruins the idea of the macro in my opinion. Why can't it remain open as long as I have use for it? Or why can't there be a shortcut? Can I add a shortcut? How? Then I wanted to add it to the library by just importing it, but when I use that function, it doesn't recognise the .afmacro-file. It is inactive, greyed out. That doesn't make any sense to me. Not very intuitive. So, can anyone smarter than me explain what to do and how to do it? In layman terms? For dummies?

It didn't crash after I did that, but these are the results. Black and white 300dpi...

Oh yes, thank you, Jeeves. Much obliged That's why I hate automats and they respond in kind - because you cannot communicate with them. Although it is rather primitive, we are able to communicate with our computers and other computing devices, but yes, when I reincarnate, I expect to be able to have a reasonable conversation with my personal assistant:) Anyway, I have downloaded the free trial of Keyboard Maestro and it looks very promising. So far I have managed it to do what Automator could not. I think it will be well worth the 36 euro they want for it, so thanks again.

Well, as I added to my previous post, Automator didn't do much other than play a dirty trick on me: it refused to open Affinity Photo and opened up Designer instead. So we're definitely in the Stone Age still. If we had been where we should be, Siri should have been doing all of this for us; the tedious repetetive tasks, but 'she' doesn't do much, either. I think we needn't worry about Skynet taking over in the near future. But thanks for the tips on Keyboard Maestro. I am an illiterate when it comes to scripting and stuff.

Well, what do you know? Recording a macro wasn't of much help. When I scan in those two halves of the A3 document, I save them as "Uten navn" and "Uten navn2". The operations I recorded was to open up those two files and then resizing and resampling them and add them into an A3-sized document in Affinity Photo. That works well the first time. But then I scan in another drawing and replace the two files "Uten navn" and "Uten navn2". Then I run the macro - and what I see in the document is exactly the two files before they were replaced! Which means it is of no use at all. So, Affinity Photo works in mysterious ways when it opens up files. First it changes the resolution and the dimensions. Then it refuses to recognise replaced files, but keep on opening the previous files. How it does that, is beyond me. Re-creating them from its own memory? I can always just record the resizing and resampling which will save a little time, but how do I know that it won't do some other magic trick with the files? The developers should definitely have a look at this. Meanwhile, perhaps I should buy an A3-scanner... OK, so now I see: recording is limited. It doesn't record it when I open files. So, the only thing it records is what I do with already opened files. Which doesn't help as much as I had opened. Does the macOS still have Automator? I have to look into that then. It has but although I set it to open Affinity Photo it insists on opening Designer instead. I think we are still in the infancy of this technology. The stone age if you ask me. I give this shit up! Now I wanted to record the process after I have opened up the files in AP, but it stops recording after I have resized and resampled one of the two images! I want to have the entire process until I have placed the two halves into the A3 document in one macro, but no Sir! This is not very useful at all. It is the most frustrating experience I have had for a very long time.

Thank you @loukash and I added to the bug-thread - but none of you have touched upon the problem with Affinity Photo changing the resolution from 300 dpi to 72 dpi when opening up the scanned images. That also result in the physical dimensions of the images to be blown out of proportions. Isn’t that a bug, too?

Most definitely a bug. Trying to scan in 300 dpi black and white, using my Epson ET-2710 series combined scanner/printer, causes the entire program to crash.

That was of great help, because somehow I was under the impression that AP didn’t have the macro-recording future yet! I looked it up and it certainly has and using that I should be able to record every step until the adjustment of the two parts. That must be done manually, but as soon as it is done, I could create another for all the steps until the naming of the files. That way, it’ll save me lots of time! I guess I should report a bug regarding the crashing using the Aquire-option, trying to scan directly. But again, thanks!

@NotMyFault: I received a notification of another reply you posted, but I don’t see it here, but well, since it doesn’t work scanning directly into AP, I can’t follow my preferred workflow, but have to scan in using another application and in my case it’s Preview. Then, as I wrote, I open up the two scanned parts of the drawing in AP, but… And yes, I go to Document resize and that’s where I can see that they’ve been changed from 300 dpi to 72. This also means that the physical dimensions have been blown up, from A4 to more than a metre high, for instance. That is also why I need to resample them and I need to change the measurements from pixels to millimetres, so I can set the height to something which fits into A3, like 290 mm. it works that way and I can copy/paste the two halves into a new document which is a horizontal A3 with a resolution of 300 dpi. I set the upper layer’s Blend Mode to Difference, because then I can adjust the two halves so they fit exactly. Then I change the Blend Mode back to Normal, flatten the document and crop it and then I export it as a jpeg. It works, but it would have been so much easier if I could scan directly into the program - and at least if it didn’t transform the scanned halves from 300 dpi to 72 and thus, blowing up the proportions immensely. I hope I have managed to describe what I attempt to do precisely enough and what the problem is.

Thank you, but it works well with Preview on the Mac. The problem is that Affinity Photo transforms it from 300 dpi to 72 dpi when I open up the images. I guess it will do the same, also if I had used Epson Scan. There is also Image Capture on the Mac, but I have no problems scanning, althought it would have been more convenient if I could scan it directly into Affinity Photo. And if scanning crashes it in Windows, too, then it is most certainly a bug. By the way, I save them as JPEGs. I used to use TIFF earlier, but since the newspaper puts my drawings on the web, too, it is more convenient that way.