SGFX

Yeah working on large Sizes is not optimal and can also be very laggy. I havent paid much attention to affinity memory usage, but Photoshop also eats a ton of memory in that case.

Also what is going on with basic round brushes doing this horrible aliasing and whats happening here in general? My white is painting gray with a white line? Im using a basic round brush and white color, new file, no styles or anything I know of, default settings This looks dreadful, is this normal? Here is from photoshop, both zoomed in a bit Testing some more and this seems to be from "wet edges" being default enabled, which does very strange things with color, opacity and whatnot, not sure why this would be default on. Like why would I want my soft round brush to do this by default, so strange. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - The brush palette also takes like a second to swap categories, which is way too laggy. On a 13900K. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Also the brushes repeatedly don't react on being changed. I have to press the brush 2 times in a couple cases just now for it to react and switch. Mostly it seems to work, but sometimes it dosn't, not sure. Seems to be a bug. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pixel Sampling is of very low quality - Also the round brush has ugly sampling. This looks like nearest neighbor sampling with a box blur applied which is really not acceptable quality. Compare to the photoshop version: Or a 3D Model using 4x Multi Sampling AA All brushes are hurt by this minimum viable sampling implementation. This is like a 3D software not caring about correct rendering of polygons. I don't want to to flame here, but this is really not a good look towards anyone knowing his subject matter. This is the children hand-crank in the racing stall. The quality hierarchy for resampling goes something like this, (im also not a rendering expert but I know a little): 0. Nearest Neighbor (nothing) 1. Box Blur <- this is used for brushes 2. Bilinear 3. (Trilinear) 4. Gaussian 5. Bicubic 6. Lanczos 7. Bicubic + Lancszos 8. SSAA + Bicubic + Lancszos 9. Old Generation Neural Upscale + SSAA + Bicubic + Lancszos 10. New Generation AI Upscale + SSAA + Bicubic + Lancszos Its good enough for a quick prototype of a pixel editing application, but way too low quality level for a real production, and all brushes look really poor as a cause. However there seems to be better implementations in the software, inside the exporting features. (You can circumvent it by working in a very high resolution to perform a manual supersampling basically but thats just very questionable.) So overall especially everything around brushes is quite limited right now still.

What is also odd is that the color picker dosnt give you a previous that you color pick when holding alt with a brush This makes you wonder if something is happening or if the feature exists. Right click not changing brushes is also such a big deal.

The current is simply an oversight Its not how windows works Its not how photoshop works (while the other hotkeys of the same feature clearly try to mirror it) Its hiding the most important hotkey behind a double hotkey which is very hard to naturally find out, while the low importance one is on the best slot instead I was under impression Photo simply dosnt have the feature, I think its a pretty clear case of a mistake/oversight to be fixed

Then this should be switched around, shift + alt = constrain proportions (can't recall needing that in years but sure why not) Actually just tested and in photoshop shift + alt is also constrain proportions Switching these 2 around is odd, especially when one has 10x the usage of the other but is on the more obscure combination

I tested again also on a fourth PC and the duration until icons appear is the same

AI tools are not going anywhere and it's clearly a exponential boost in unending areas. Serif has to adapt to the changing of the goalpost or be left behind. (Well Actually they started from behind.) There is no question or doubt about it. Still basics gotta be first.

No, Actually The toolset is really the same here in that example Photoshop Photo The difference is: Photoshop: Shift = Add, Alt = Subtract Photo: Shift = Nothing, Alt = Subtract, Shift + Alt = Add This is simply an oversight. Shift doing nothing is misleading for no reason, and you wouldn't double hotkey something when the single hotkey is unused.

After more trial and error yesterday we also noticed that there are more ways to work with selections. I noticed that you can somehow move pixels which are selected, I just opened photo again and tried it again but I didn't manage to do it again right now. If I press V to move it just wont, it moves the entire layer for some reason Im trying to press all sorts of tools and buttons but I just can't figure it out how its supposed to work. The lack of copy paste abilitiy is also extremely limiting, however we figured out that you can add or subtract by holding more buttons together with alt. Edit: We got completely played by the "image" layer again. There must be a much better indicator about non editable images, this is very frustrating. If you clipboard something from photoshop it is editable right away. I can see the value in not doing that, but image layers are just way too stealthy. This is much clearer in photoshop

Hey, We have Nvidia cards, 3070, 3090 Intel CPU at work, AMD at home (5900x, 13900x)

Hey, I must say I do really like where the software is going and I think its pretty close to make the switch from photoshop but there are definitely some major pain points left. Huge improvement from A1 however. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. General Performance is not acceptable yet We tried recently making the switch from photoshop, Affinity 1 was very slow but 2 still has some big issues which lead to a lot of frustration When I copy a layer it takes a easily a second or longer for the layer to display its icon in the layer list as example on a basically empty file This is hugely disorienting since I don't know if my hotkeys work or If I did the right thing until a second after, which is very frustrating. Other things also seem to have small lags. We are on high end PCs with about the strongest single thread cpu you can buy and this is just an empty 2k image with 2 layers. I can't imagine how much worse this is going to get on a larger file. Ive had up to 3 sec waits for the image to show up. This is a big dealbreaker. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Painting workflows are very inefficient and slow compared to photoshop There are 2 big differences that make Photoshop much much faster to use right now for using the paint brush and painting. We are not painters but even for us this is a massive slowdown. 2A. Color Picker is somehow not hotkeyable. Using color picker within a fraction of a second to pick a color and being ready to paint is a action you do unending times. Having to scroll over to the side with your mouse to click on the color window is very slow and adds up massively even in just a single session. I was in disbelief at first that you cannot call up the color picker. You can see how I can quickly switch colors in a second in photoshop and keep painting in comparison. In Photo, I have to swipe all the way, double click the color swatch, and manually confirm to close the menu, then swipe all the way back. This is a software to change colors of pixels on a canvas. Not having a baseline set hotkey for changing colors is very odd. This should not be an optional hotkey but baseline hotkey. Same for photshop, I don't understand the world where "crop" is more important to be on "C" than literal Colors 2B. Brushes can't be changed on hotkey? I must be mistaking some hotkey but that is completely crazy to me. Right click does nothing and I am really supposed to: - Mouse all the way over to layer panel - Switch to Brushes tab - Select the Brush I need within the drop down menu - Switch Back the layer panel Lets say we make a custom layout where the brushes are closer, but still this is a low of mouse path. We are not painters but switching a brush with right click is infinitely more efficient than this right now. Any real painter who uses brushes all day must have a massive speed downgrade from photoshop. Both of these things comebined make a completely massive difference in speed compared to photoshop. Great: I want to praise here however the amazing brush library which I find is the best affinity feature. They are high quality and photoshop is completely embarrassing itself to not provide something even close to this. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Selections are very bad to work with I got extremely confused when trying to work with selections and had to give up on multiple attempts. 3.A Selections don't allow copy or cut and paste which is extremely inefficient. I don't even know how I am supposed to work with them. I just had to give up. I want to just crop a rectangular thing for this post and I literally can't figure it out. In photoshop I just select a rectangle, copy paste or cut paste to new layer, done. - Here I select a rectangle. Cut paste - Nothing. Copy paste to new layer - Nothing. - Ok lets try invert the selection to erase the other parts as a dirty workaround. Keep ing mind that the (up to 3 seconds delay, jesus) for showing my new layer icon in the layer stack make this a multitude more confusing as I don't know whats going on until the icon gives me confirmation. 3.B Also, Selections also do not support shift-adding multiple. I kept trying all hotkeys, and just couldn't figure it out. After a bit of searching I found that there is a button to add the selection. This works but is very inefficient compared to shift adding multiple. Edit: It seems you can switch the mode around, however having to click this every time is very tedious. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Layer Visibility 4.A Smart Objects are hard to identify and understand Ok I tried now another cropping of a simple icon. Wow this is all confusing and unneccessary. I try to now crop it with my new found knowledge of Ctrl + Shift + I Dosnt work. Trying it multiple times, dosn't work. I get very confused. Turns out a image is not a pixel layer and can't be affected by a selection. It seems like in photoshop, if you copy paste in anything from clipboard, it is pixel, but if you drag in, it is smart object. This here seems to be some sort of smart object? However in photoshop the icon is extremely visible to be a smart object with a big icon. Here it is very understated. This should be more noticeable to not be editable. Smart objects / "Images" should not have a pixelated background if they are not pixel layered. The pixel layers also have a very noisy layer icon, which undermine all other icons. Pixel layers are the "standard" and should be lower opacity. Non standard layer types should stand out compared to the pixel layer, right now it all blends together making it hard to read. 4B. Layer Visibility Toggle Please switch visibility icons on layers to the left like in photoshop if possible. This is important to click and are being clicked many many times. Having the icon be all the way on the right adds to around 25% more mouse movement relative to the screen, really messes with photoshop muscle memory, and seeing the layer type icons is far less important than the visibility. Here we have a "hide" hotkey but not a "toggle visibility" hotkey. 4C. The Layer icon is hard to see The new layer icon is hard to identity. It is very low contrast and dosn't have a "+" 4.D The layer renaming field is too big I constantly rename layers by mistake instead of clicking them. The selection area is just too large and requires too much precision to not click it by mistake. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Tool Confusion As new user, trying hotkeys for known tools is very unclear which tool you are having right now in your hand. Many tools have the same cursor icon as example. Suggestion: When selecting any tool, briefly pop up for 0.5s on the top or left on your canvas the name of the selected tool with the name as on the toolbar hover, quickly informing you what you actually pressed or have in hand, idealls with the icon shown. This would be a great usability improvement and help learn the tools. Or maybe it can be next to the cursor when switching tools. However right now its very confusing to what you actually are toggling through and you constantly need to glance to left and check what actually goes on. This is only marginally better on photoshop but a long standing issue there as well, however photoshop in general has better cursor icons. Affinity also dosn't show the current brush style well. 5.B Pressing "V" toggles back to previous tool This is super confusing. In photoshop if I press V I stay on dragging. Here I suddenly go back to paint bucket or whatever. This can be very disorienting. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. The alt+scroll rotation needs to be optional The alt + scroll rotation of the canvas dosn't seem to have any setting or bool somewhere and this really messes with muscle memory. We all constantly rotate and its very frustrating, all people in the team keep complaining about it. There should be navigation settings. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Layer Styles? Layer styles are invaluable in photoshop. Sure, doing some cheesy bevel and glows etc might be very year 2000 but that's not the point. The default examples also seem to imply this idea and seem to be neglected or deemed not important. This concept that layer styles are for cheesy word-art effects is completely misguided. Layer styles are extremely useful for tons of everyday things such as having a color overlay, or a simple glow, simple corrections. They are on double click in photoshop for a reason and widely used. It is a must to quickly be able to change the style of a layer, even if its just a color overlay or drop shadow --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusion: Overall the jump from 1 to 2 is very impressive and It's "almost there" but there are some very important fundamentals which still need to be sorted out. Also Serif will have to act on the new Era of AI, Photoshop content aware fill was already one of the best features but now AI inpainting will be a massive advantage if Serif is missing the AI train, these things are not going anywhere, but first the core needs to work well before luxury stuff should be worked on.