chrisell

Awesome - thank you for the explainer

Ok that's weird. The texture does have an alpha channel in photoshop - I've no idea where it's gone in AP2. Attached screenshot shows the texture in photoshop with the RGB and A channels. I opened it in AP2 and for sure it doesn't show an unassociated alpha. Being a little confused as to what that was, I deleted the hidden layers in the TIF texture and re-saved it and now it does show unassociated alpha when imported into AP2. I've attached the new file here too. So that leads to another question I guess - why is the behaviour different if there are hidden layers in the source texture? I've been evaluating AP2 as a potential photoshop replacement but there are some things that are 'awkward' for my workflow (and my team) - the alpha channels is one. The fact that you can't just CTRL-S to save the open document, but have to export to the file format each time - that's a weirdly steep hill to climb. I like how quick and clean everything is compared to Photoshop though - that's making a compelling argument to switch. But some of AP2's functionality choices are - well - "weird" I'd say. dignumber8.tif

Here's a nice small example. dignumber8.tif

Aha - That's a good tip - thanks ! TGA or PNG or even PSD would work for sure. Interested to hear the workaround.

Footnote: I fear from this 4-year-long, 12-page-long topic that AP2 just can't do alpha channels the way the game and simulation industry needs (and has been using for decades) --->

Complete newbie here, day 1 in Affinity Photo 2. Fell at the very first hurdle. My workflow is and always has been for TIF images (textures for 3D Models) to have 4 channels - R,B,G and Alpha. When I load one of these into AP2, I see a lot more channels than I'm expecting (composite R,G,B, background R,G,B, background alpha, pixel selection and "Unassociated alpha"). For the life of me I can't seem to get just four channels - R,G,B and A. The loaded file won't allow me to save back to a TIF - it's trying to force me to save it as an .afphoto file. I don't want the premultiplied alpha that you can get by loading the unassociated alpha to background alpha (and even then, I can't seem to save as a TIF - again it's forcing me to save as a .afphoto file). I need the alpha channel to stay as it is in the TIF file - a separate grayscale channel. I've spent a couple of hours trying to pick through the forums and online help and I can't seem get to the bottom of what I consider to be the most simple, basic thing - how do I open, edit and save a basic, four-channel TIF image? Attached are pics of what a typical texture looks like in Photoshop, and how it's coming out in AP2.