JPWatkins

OK I've done everything all over (again.)
Uninstalled with every conceivable uninstaller.
Emptied the trash.
Reinstalled, again (This is at least the third time I've done this.)
And guess what.
After I uninstalled, nothing worked (in both Aperture and AP)—the plugins were gone.
After I reinstalled (yes, from the newest free installer from Google) everything was in the same state as before uninstalling (for both Aperture [working] and AP [only Silver Efex sort of working,]) and including the 7 days left in the "free trial" and the "requires global support" status warning.
Only Silver Efex Pro 2 v 2.2.24.10 x64 works, and only for 7 more days.
I don't know what else to do.

Affinity Photo and Designer are no longer Beta software, and I love em a lot.
 
But I have to say a manual like thing is needed. Maybe just a statement of the model of interaction would be a good first step. Tutorials are good, but I've been using Designer and Photo for about a year now, as needed, and I cannot say I have internalized a "model of interaction" for them.
In order for this software to have been developed, the writers, by necessity, must have a shared idea of an exact model of interaction for the software.
Every time I need to use a mask, I have to try 10 or more things before I find the right way to do what I want.
Every time I want to adjust type I struggle a to find the control I want, or I find it and it has no effect (until I find another one that overrides it.)
WTF is a pixel layer and when and why might I need it.
Placed items do not seem to have a linking function. Is there a linking function and if not why place an item rather than just cut and paste? etc.
 
In short, it seems like the model of interaction is inconsistent or obscure. I'd love to be wrong on this. I'm sure part of my difficulty has to do with the complexity and flexibility of the software. Obviously Designer isn't just a vector program and Photo isn't just bitmap one. But I have experience with software like the the Adobe suite, Painter, various CAD and solid modeling packages etc. But many of these are easy to pick up because the model of interaction is either well explained, or very apparent (the others are hard to use.) The Affinity SW seems to largely follow the Illustrator / Photoshop model, but seems to regularly stray from it in unexpected ways. I'm sure there's a reason. Please share. :-)
 
*** Is there a resource somewhere that lays out a model of interaction that the creators of the software try to adhere to? That indicates major and/or philosophical differences between Photo and Designer and Affinity and Adobe's approaches? Something that would generally serve as a guide to approaching what should be done in what way and how? ***   Thanks.

I agree with JP, this is a real problem, & it has nothing to do with "modern applications."
 
I use a 27" non-retina iMac & I often have to squint to see certain UI elements, not just in Affinity but also in several other apps that use a "grey on grey" UI style & have tiny little icons for status indicators, tool palettes, & such.
 
What I find somewhat helpful is to enable the System Preferences > Accessibility > Display options to Differentiate without color, & particularly the Increase Contrast & Reduce Transparency ones. Somewhat ironically, enabling Increase Contrast causes the expand/collapse indicators in the Affinity Layers panel to go dark (a bug I reported long ago) but that isn't too big a problem.
 
What is a big problem in Affinity is the low contrast difference between a selected & unselected tool in the tools palette, & only turning up the UI Gamma to near maximum makes it reasonably obvious which one is selected. 

With some back and forth I finally got my Nik filters working. Some of them don't work however. The list of three Nik filters that do work are:
Analog Efex Pro 2
Color Efex Pro 4
Silver Efex Pro 2
For me the key thing was specifying "/" as the support folder. What issues are you having?
 
M

No special permissions need to be set. See MEB's page here for info about which NIK (& other) plugins work with Affinity Photo (which currently is only available for OS X so there is no separate Windows version to be confused about).
 
MEB's post here explains how to set AP's plugin preferences for use with the NIK collection -- but note that the Plug-in Search Folders path will vary depending on if you have Photoshop installed or not.
 
This YouTube video explains how to run the installer & set up the AP preferences. It is for a slightly older version of AP but the important parts are the same.
 
EDIT: More stuff I forgot to mention:
 
• The NIK plugins are destructive so it is a good idea to duplicate the layer before using one of them.
• If you are still having problems getting them to work after checking out all of the above, please tell us if you have any version of Photoshop installed & if so, which one -- this makes a big difference in the install & setup procedure.
• Depending on if you create an extra install location, you may have installed standalone versions of each of the plugins -- these are apps that can you can run like any other app (independently of Affinity Photo or any other graphics app). This can be very useful if you want to apply any of the NIK plugin effects that don't work in AP.

Hi JPWatkins,
This is the path you have to set in Affinity Photo Preferences, Photoshop plug-ins section, Plug-in Search folders: /Applications/Photoshop Plugins/Google (see screenshot below).
You also have to press the Authorise Global button in the Preferences dialog, then Authorise again in the dialog that will open next if you haven't done so.
Also make sure you have Allow Unknown plugins to be used checked, close the Preference window and restart Affinity Photo.
 

The NIK installer creates & installs a separate set of Aperture plug in files in addition to the Photoshop ones. These are in a different format from the Photoshop plugins because Aperture can't use Photoshop plugins. Aperture is the only app that can use those special versions -- neither Affinity nor Photoshop or any other app that supports Photoshop plugins can use them. From what I can tell, the NIK installer always instal them, whether or not Aperture is installed on the Mac.
 
The Photoshop plugins are different. The NIK installer looks for an installation of Photoshop, Adobe Bridge, etc. -- anything it knows can use the PS versions -- which does not include Affinity -- & automatically installs them in the appropriate locations for those apps. This is why (both) videos mention creating a new folder in the Applications folder prior to running the NIK installer if you do not have any of the known apps (like Photoshop) on your system & adding that folder to the install locations using the plus button shown in the videos.

JPWatkins,
Do you have downloaded and installed the latest version of the Nik Collection from this link on the top of the page (nikcollection-full-1.2.11.dmg)?
The Nik Collection plug-ins are now free. There's no trial versions anymore. Did you have installed a previous version of them before they were released as free plug-ins?
If so you may still have a few old config files left somewhere on your system. Please check this page on the Nik Collection Help site for instructions on how to remove them properly.

JPWatkins:
 
What is the creation date of your file named Silver Efex Pro 2.plugin, & of the one named Silver Efex Pro 2.app if you have that as well?
 
It should be March 25, 2016 for these & all the other NIK files. Also, on my system both of these items have a version number of "2.2.24" without the ".10 x64" suffix.
 
If in Get Info windows the creation date shown for any of these files is earlier than March 24 of this year (the date Google released the free version), or they show a version number with more than the three number groups like 2.2.24, then I think this means there is some vestige of an earlier version of some or all of the NIK plugins somewhere on your system.
 
I know you said that you may have installed an early version years ago, but at that time there was no NIK Collection, just the individual plugins. As mentioned in the bottom section of the NIK Collection Uninstalling Help page (same link that MEB mentioned above), to uninstall any of these earlier "uncollected" plugins, you must download from that page the individual installers for each of them & run them prior to running the NIK Collection installer. The current free NIK Collection installer will not remove any of these old versions.
 
I never installed any of the older plugins but just to see what would happen, I downloaded the Viveza ones from that page & ran them (there are three in the download, one each for Aperture, Lightroom, & Photoshop). That had no effect on the Viveza 2 files on my system, a pretty good indirect indication that the NIK Collection installer does not touch any of the older plugin files, either during the install or uninstall process.
 
If you have not already tried running these uninstallers, I suggest you (once again) run the NIK Collection installer app to uninstall the new versions & then download & run each of these. Only after doing that, try running the NIK Collection installer app to install the new free plugins. This is the only way I know to guarantee that there will be no interference from any of the older files that might trigger the "free trial" warning.
 
Also, earlier you asked which plugins I had working on my Mac. What works for me with AP version 1.4.2 is exactly the same as MEB described on his Affinity Photo: Plug-Ins Support page. (Be sure to click on each plugin listed on that page to see the details.) All of the stand alone application versions also work.

It might help if you would post a screen shot of your AP Preferences > Photoshop Plugins window. To do that, first open the preference to that item, press CMD+SHIFT+4, hover the pointer over the window, press the spacebar & then click. This will create the screen shot of that window.
 
To add it to a post, click the More Reply Options button at the bottom of the reply window, click the Choose File button, & choose the screen shot you just made. Then click the Attach This File button.
 
Also, can you confirm that the stand alone apps work OK, without showing any splash screens, trial version notices with demo buttons, or anything like that?
 
Is it still true that you have a Macintosh HD/Applications/Photoshop Plugins/Google/ folder, & in it are the plugins & config files? As MEB mentioned, does that folder appear in the preferences Photoshop plug-ins section, Plugin Search Folders list?

Hi JPWatkins,
Remove that line from the Plug-ins Support Folders section, then click Authorise Global and Authorise again from the dialog that will open. Close the Preferences dialog and restart Affinity Photo. Check if the plug-ins are working after that.
 
To see how your Preferences / Photoshop Plug-ins config should look like take a look a the screen capture i posted on post #14

Hi JPWatkins,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Photoshop plug-in support is still being worked on. Some plug-ins run perfectly fine, a few still have a few issues while others may refuse to launch or crash the app.
Regarding the Nik Collection Some of them are not working in Affinity Photo 1.4.2 (Mac App Store version). For more details please check this page (click on each plug-in's name for details). They may appear in the menu and run but then display an error message stating they cannot apply the filter's effect to a separate layer.
Version 1.5 Beta has improved compatibility a little. All of them run inside Affinity Photo 1.5 however a few still have a couple issues. I will add a a second list just for the 1.5 Beta soon with more details.
 
Affinity Photo 1.5 should be out by the end of September/early October.

Not sure why mac_heibu questions you on this, it's a real problem. Apple's has been distracted for several years from their efforts toward a resolution independent OS (but I don't think anyone else is there yet either.)
 
All you can do in the OS, once you have settled on a screen resolution, is make adjustments in
System Preferences> General,
and
Finder> View> Show view options
(I may have forgotten somewhere else, but these are the biggies. This is sufficient for smaller displays and up close work, but if you have a big display and sit further away from it you do a lot of squinting. You will also want to learn to zoom in and out quickly using keyboard and mouse shortcuts. This is enabled in System Preferences> Accessability> Zoom. I have no idea what the default settings are, but I check "use keyboard shortcuts to zoom" and "use scroll gesture with keyboard modifiers to zoom" using "command" as the modifier. This is just what I'm used to. It really all depends on taste and the type of pointing device (trackpad, mouse, Waccom, etc that you use. (BTW, I have to have the mouse setting "scroll direction natural" checked, which strangely is not apple's default, or I go completely insane!)
 
Most software (Affinity included) also has some options that are helpful. In Affinity Photo go to
Affinity Photo> Preferences> Interface
where you can make some interface size adjustments if you want.