barninga

@R C-R it's not a priority for me either. I did not trigger serius bugs in AP 1.7.0 yet. Apparently, they have solved a nasty bug with the clone tool that produced artifacts when the destination area overlapped the source area. Apparently, also a bug that caused upper pixel layers to be misplaced when there was a live perspective layer under them has been smashed down. the annoyance that causes macros not to always start when clicked in the library is still there, though. it's just an annoyance anyway. after updating, my upper toolbar was reset to default, and the studio too had some unwanted changes. nothing so seroius. it still lacks a haze removal live filter. I did not tried whether masks can be dodged and burned; the new HSL tool looks more prowerful.

yes that's true, thank you for pointing it out. but -if i don't fail- there's a difference between rotating the crop box and having crop ratios and their reciprocals in the ratios list: in 1.6.x, when you selected the reciprocal of the current ratio, the crop box was limited to the image boundaries, while in 1.7 it's not, and this means you have to resize it most of the times. having the reciprocal of any ratio just one click away is really useful, but I don't think this conflicts with the capability to add reciprocals to the list: both features together would enable users to go the way they find more suitable to their need.

thank you all for the clues mac os 10.12.6 AP 1.7 I load an image, select the crop tool, select "custom ratio", input a value for w&h ==> "create preset" in the hamburger menu is still grayed out apparently, a new ratio can be created only as absolute dimensions, which is not that useful

hello all, in AP 1.7 I can't find a way to add custom presets to the list. in 1.6 version one cold set a new ratio and then add it to the list, givin it a name. in 1.7 the "create preset" item in the drop-down menu of the list is always grayed and the preset manager tool only has a button for adding a category. what am i missing? thank you

@jkehoe, the #7 shows a way to mask/unmask an effect in order to apply it only to certain areas of the image. in AP, any effect layer is also a mask. if you select an effect layer and paint black on it, the effect disappears where you just painted. if you paint white over the black area, the effect reappears. the exercise instruct to add a hsl layer, then invert it. inverting an effect layer actually means inverting its mask. when you add an effect layer, its mask is white by default: this means the effect is applied to the whole image. if you invert it, its mask becomes black and the effect is not applied anymore. in the exercise, you set the paintbrush to white, and the paint over a specified areas after selecting the hsl layer. this way, you create a white "hole" in its mask, which the effect becomes visible again through.

a dedicated graduated nd filter would be an interesting plus, ihmo. easy to use, but limited to its scope. the ability to create graduated filters of any kind is obviously more powerful. however, the fact that a gradient affects a mask destructively (as far as i could understand by experimenting) and you need to use a vector shape as a clipping mask to apply a non destructive gradient sounds like a bug to me, or at least like a flaw in AP's mask implementation (it's not the only one; i'd add the inability to dodge and burn in masks).

i never used that program, so i cannot make comparisons. however i used other programs and at the beginning i found a bit hard to learn AP's logic. now i'm happy with it.

@Forssux, you can apply a gradient mask to adjustment layer: just use the gradient tool on the adjustment layer. afaik, this technique will blend the gradient into the mask permanently. if you'd like to have a non-destructive gradient, you can use a shape (usually a rectangle) as a vector mask: apply a gradient to the shape and set one of its endpoints' opacity to 0.

@Sima: yep, it's the same thing - even if in your test the artifacts look smoother. @v_kyr: yes, i mean that. so it looks like something goes wrong, maybe in the process of creating the new layer or just in the rendering step. i'll wait a little to see if someone from the AP crew reads these posts and gives us an explanation; if not, i'm going to repost this in the bugs section of the forums. thank you for your replies and your time.

hello all, and happy new year! please i need some explanation about refining selections to "new layer and mask". i did the following experiment on the attached image: 1) select the background of the image with the selection brush 2) invert pixel selection 3) refine selection (default values, except for a bigger brush) 4) select "new layer and mask" 5) apply i'm not interested in how the quality of the selection could be enhanced (i.e. applying some feather during the refine process): instead, i can't understand how the new layer (with mask) is generated. I would expect a copy of the original layer, with a mask that describes the selection. the mask appears how expected (by me at least), but the new pixel layer shows something weird (to me). in the attached image, if you hide everything except "layer - created by new layer and mask", strange artifacts are clearly visible. they disappear if the mask is activated again. if i make a copy of the original layer and apply a copy of the mask to it, the result is similar - but not identical: if you alternatively make visible the new layer or the background copy (with their masks), you can notice that something in the image subtly changes. if you make both the layer visible at the same time, the quality of the selection improves. it improves even more if you make a second copy of the background copy and mask. now, the improvement of quality does not surprise me so much: i guess it depends on the fact that the areas that are left erroneously slightly transparent by the mask get more opaque when displayed one above the other. but i really cannot understand why the new layer created by "refine selection" is not a copy of the original layer, and what the artifacts are. i'll be grateful of an explanation or any clue. thanks in advance stefano IMG_1904.afphoto

@RNKLN, thanks for sharing.

i cannot reproduce the behavior you described. be sure you select the layer -click on it in the layer stack- where you want to use any tool before you begin.

yes @R C-R you are right when referring to adjustment layers as we know them in AP (and in PS, and other photo retouching programs, i suppose). However, we could think about a special kind of adjustment layer, where the adjustment is not globally applied, but only locally, where painted by a healing tool, or some other kind of brush. A sort of mix between actual adjustment layers and regular pixel layers. it could implement several kinds of "relativeness" to the underlying layer - hue, luminosity, and so on. i don't know if it's possible from programming point of view, and how much it could be tricky.

@R C-R i think @N'Awlins Contrarian means something like this: when the healing tool is applied to copy the pixels from an area to another area on another layer, what should get stored with this second layer are not the actual pixels, but the difference in hue and lightness between the pixels that are copied and the pixels that they cover ("heal"). at least, i think.

great suggestion @Gnobelix! i missed the batch item in ap menus. thank you!