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Once again, thanks for the detailed information. Since I wrote my last comment, I've had a chance to use Affinity to process images on my new M1 computer more intensively than I had before. I'm in awe of how fast everything is working compared to my 2014 computer. Topaz Denoise renders my images in a few seconds instead of several minutes. 😃

Hi, Dan: Thanks for answering my question in such detail. Almost everything was at the settings you recommended. I did reduce the RAM limit to 16384 MB, but I don't understand exactly what effect reducing the RAM limit like this has on performance. I presume it would improve it? I'm also not sure where to set the Disk Usage Warning. I've left it at 32768 MB for now, but I have 2 TB on my computer. Would it improve performance to increase or decrease that number? What would you recommend? Thanks, Lydia

I just purchased a Mac Mini M1 computer. I'd like to know if I should change the Affinity Photo performance settings in the preferences, specifically the RAM usage limit and the disk usage warning. I think they're set to the defaults -- 56320 MB for the RAM usage and 32768 MB for the disk usage warning. My ancient 2014 Mini struggled to keep up with AP so I'm looking forward to a much faster performance on the M1 but I'm wondering if adjusting these settings would make a difference. Thanks for any advice.

Thanks for responding to my question. Now I can stop trying to achieve the impossible. 🙂

I've been making some changes to my tools panel using Customize Tools but I've run into a couple of issues. I haven't been able to do the following things and haven't been able to find anything in the help files or the forums that addresses them. 1) Can I create my own customized group of tools with a drop-down menu? It seems that only the supplied groups can be moved onto the Tools panel. 2) Can I add or remove a tool from the supplied groups of tools? There are some frequently-used individual tools inside the groups that I prefer having out on the panel by themselves. I know I can drag the single tool onto the panel but I can't find a way to remove that same tool from the group it's in. 3) can tools that are not already in a given group be moved into that group? 4) can tools be moved up and down within the group? Based on my research and experimentation so far, I'm guessing that the answer to all these questions is no -- but I'd like to know if I'm missed some magic trick.

Ron: Thanks so much for this response. This solved my problem. I wasn't even aware of that function within the Account setting in the app.

I've been trying to install the four sets of Paper Farms overlays in the asset panel on Affinity Photo 1.9.3. but I've only been able to load the fog overlays. I did this by clicking on a file called "environmental overlays.afassets" that's in a folder on my computer. This file does not load the other three sets of overlays (rain, rainbow, snow) and I can't find any other .afassets files on my computer. Did I somehow miss downloading other files that I need and, if so, how do I get them? I'm using MacOS 10.14.6 Thanks for any assistance.

I'm not sure what version of the Nik plugins I have (I did pay for them before they were released free) but I'm getting the "fonts updating" bug too. I don't want to pay for a new batch of plugins when they work fine in AF 1.6.7, so I'm going back there.

I found an easy workaround. I found the macro file (My Macros.afmacros) that I saved in the finder and double clicked it. It opened in Affinity 1.7 and the macro library was reinstated. The same works for my custom brushes. However, I'm reverting to 1.6.7 because of the problem with Nik plugins. The above technique also worked to reinstate the brushes and macros in 1.6.7.

Thanks for reminding of this. I actually have the Topaz suite of plug-ins but when I first got Affinty Photo, there was a problem getting AP to recognize them and I forgot about them. I just tried installing all the plug-ins and most of them work, including Simplify. These provide more than enough options for my needs. You just saved me a lot of time and expense. :-)

toltec: Thanks for the references. I should have specified I'm working on a Mac. It looks like DAP is Windows only. I'll check out the online options but I'm leaning more toward something I can use on my own computer.

I'm interested in finding out if there are any digital art plug-ins that work with Affinity Photo. I don't need anything too fancy but I'd be interested in plug-ins with filters that can create and customize a variety of "painterly" looks from photos. If there's nothing that will do this as a plug-in, I'd be interested in recommendations for stand-alone programs that could be applied after an image is processed in Affinity and exported to a TIFF or PNG file.

I’m using the new Affinity Photo 1.5.1 on Mac OSX. I’ve been having some issues with the new macro feature and would appreciate some feedback. I created a macro to resize images to a standard format that I use on my web site. These are the steps: 1) Select Resize Document (opt-cmd I) 2) DPI: 150 3) Resample: Lanczos 3 (separable) 4) Size: 800 px (horizontal) 5) reduce the resulting image to view it at 100% on the screen (select Z on the keyboard, then Opt-click to reduce the size to 100%) Based on the results, I think the macro is not recording step 3 and is instead using the default setting “Bilinear” to resample the image. This produces a resized image that is not as sharp as one created using the "Lanczos 3 separable" setting. In the Export Persona, I have a preset that specifies Lanczos 3 (separable) as the resample method but, despite this, the images that were resampled in the Photo Persona using the macro are not as sharp as those resampled manually using Lanczos 3 separable. In addition, I found it impossible to get the macro to record Step 5 at all. Does it not record some keyboard commands or mouse clicks? On a related point, why does the resize box in the Photo Persona always default to Bilinear? I almost always use Lanczos 3 (separable) so it's tedious having to change this every time. That's why I created a macro in the first place (which, in fact, doesn't appear to make this change.) Is there any way to set Lanczos 3 separable as my default or at least have AP remember the last setting used? If not, adding either or both features to AP would be a big help. And one more macro puzzle: I created a macro to sharpen the resized images before exporting them to be saved as JPGs. The macro is designed to present the settings for Radius and Factor so they can be adjusted. However, the default number for the Radius is often not the one I entered into the macro -- it changes depending on the size of the image. For example, if I resize the image to the 800 px width, I get 0.4 px for the sharpening radius (the default number I entered). If I resize the image to 600 px width, I get 0.3 px for the radius. If I resize the image to 2000 px width, I get 1 px for the radius. There’s clearly some link between the radius setting offered by the macro and the width of the image in pixels, but I’m not sure why it would do this if I’ve given it a particular default radius while creating the macro. Is this the way it's supposed to work? The Unsharp Mask Filter doesn't do this (radius always defaults to 0). Any help with these issues would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for this information. Now that the App Store version is out, I plan to download it so I'll do what you suggested to preserve V. 1.4. I have another question -- once I download V. 1.5 will it "take over" all the AP preferences in the user preferences folder? I'm thinking I should make copies of those too and separate them from the user preferences folder so I can restore my ability to use V1.4 as before.

I'm going to wait until V1.5 is in Apple's app store. When I download this new version, will it overwrite/update my current app store 1.4 version? I'd prefer to keep the earlier version operational until I'm sure the new version is working for me. I know the beta versions can co-exist with the app store versions, but can/do the official app store updates do this as well? If not, how can I preserve my ability to use the earlier version until I'm sure about the new one?

Okay, thanks. Very helpful.

Thanks for this information. I still have a lot to learn about this program. I also meant to ask about another comment Lee made; he mentioned "opening the app with the CTRL key held, then select Clear and the app will open." I presume this is kind of the nuclear option for correcting strange behaviour in the program. Am I correct that this would reset all my preferences to the "factory settings"? What about brushes I've saved -- would they be gone too?

Lee: Thank you so much -- that worked like a charm. This has caused me so much frustration over the last two days. I'm not sure how that box even got checked but I guess I must have done it without realizing it. I don't use this tool much except to create watermarks so I don't know much about snapping. I presume it has something to do with aligning text where you want it. As a matter of curiosity, how does the magenta outline help with that?

I'm having a problem with the artistic text tool. Whenever I type any text, the first letter has a thin magenta outline. I've attached an image to show what it looks like. The top line is what happens when I type in a word with grey text. The bottom line is what happens when I set "fill" to "none" -- all that's left is the magenta outline around the first letter. If I delete the first letter, the next one automatically acquires this outline. The outline disappears if I "rasterize" the text. If I undo the rasterization to convert the text back to the artistic text tool, the outline reappears on any and all letters I click on. This just started happening and I have no idea why. I've used the artistic text tool before without having this problem. As far as I know, I haven't changed any settings that would make this happen but perhaps I did something accidentally. I've tried everything I can think of to make it go away. I thought it might have something to do with the "stroke" setting, but the outline doesn't go away if I set stroke to "none." Can anyone tell me how to fix this? Thanks.

Callum: Thanks for this tip. It did the trick but I had to adapt it to solve my problem. I still had to resize the canvas to create an "outside" for the stroke to work on. And I had to do two duplicates to get the back-white-black double border. So it's slightly more complicated than doing it in PSE but it works. It would work even better if I could create an action to automate the process but I don't think AP has actions yet. The border this process created has rounded corners. I can live with this but is there any way to make them square corners?

The FX outline tool is very frustrating. Once I have an image prepared, I want to outline the image in a thin black outline, then have a bit of white border (about .2") and then have another thin black outline on the outer edges. I've been able to accomplish getting the outline around the image itself and creating a .2" white border but getting a second black outline around the border has defeated me. This was a very simple process in Photoshop Elements using the stroke command, but I can't replicate the process in Affinty. After creating the outline around the image, I've tried resizing the canvas to create the .2" white border. I've tried to flatten and lock this combo in the hope that Affinity will treat the image and the resized canvas as a single document and allow me to add another black outline to the outer edge but this never works. Affinty insists on treating them as two separate layers and keeps putting the second outline on top of the first one around the image, rather than around the resized canvas. Can anyone tell me how to do this? I've read other threads that suggest creating three separate layers with different colors, but it would be very tedious for me to do this with the number of images that require it. Surely there's a simpler solution. Why won't the FX outine tool work on the resized canvas? Why won't the flatten command create a single layer/document that would allow the FX outline tool to be used as it can be on the image itself? Any help would be very much appreciated.

Hi, MEB: Thanks for your feedback. I understand the Beta process but I stopped downloading the betas, in part because they don't preserve custom brushes etc. and in part because I found installing frequent betas distracting and cumbersome. I decided to just wait for the official updates in the App Store. The version I'm currently running is V 1.4.2, which I downloaded from the App Store before June 13. According to the information on my computer, it was "created" on June 2 but my recollection is that I've been running it longer than that. I've been waiting for the latest official release and was expecting something beyond V 1.4.2. I'd also be interested to know if development of the Mac app has been slowed down by the development of the Windows app. When I first got Affinity, there seemed to be quite a flurry of activity, addressing bugs, new fixes and wish lists. That seems to have slowed down appreciably.

I'm confused about what this latest version is. The original announcement in this thread is dated June 13 and says an AP 1.4.2 update is available in the App Store. However, the version of AP I'm running is 1.4.2 and I've have it installed since well before June 13. The App Store says my version is up to date. So what does this announcement refer to? Is this some further refinement of AP V 1.4.2? As far as I can tell, there's no new version 1.4.2 in the App Store at this time.

Is there any word on when the next update for Photo (Mac )will be released? I've been running into some issues that have forced me to go back to Photoshop Elements from time to time and I'd like to cut PS loose for good. Has the work on the Windows version stalled development of the Mac version?

Darren: As far as I can tell, there's no way to export and import presets from any version of the program. I have some presets in the Develop Persona under the Basic, Lens, and Details tabs that I use to tweak my RAW files. I also have presets in the Export Persona for saving PNG and JPG images in several formats that I use regularly. None of these panels have anything in the drop-down menus that would allow me to save, export or import presets. (The brushes, on the other hand, do have "export" and "import" options in the panel's drop-down menu.) When I asked this question on a different thread, another moderator, Leigh, made the following comment: "It's only possible to back up settings such as Styles, Brushes and Keyboard shortcuts at the moment. The ability to save preferences & workspace settings have been requested before and I'm sure it will be added in the future." This suggests that it currently is NOT possible to export or import presets. If it actually is possible, can you tell me how to do it?