h_d

Back to square one... I now have both an esc and a Cancel button in my Touch Bar. When editing a Panasonic .rw2 file in Develop Persona, pressing esc has no effect. Pressing Cancel dumps me into Photo Persona, removing any changes made during my Develop session, without any warning dialogs. The issue with clicking the close button in the document tab while editing in Develop Persona is still not fixed. Clicking the red button still closes the image without any warning.

The Touch Bar issue appears to. be fixed in 1.8.4.183. I now get the standard "Are you sure you want to cancel..." dialog when I click the Cancel button. Nice one, thanks! But the issue with clicking the x in the document tab, as mentioned by @Chris B, is not fixed. The image still closes without warning. Cheers, H

I would guess that XNViewMP is copying the data from the IPTC Caption-Abstract field to an equivalent XMP field, and that Affinity Photo is reading and displaying the XMP. According to the very poorly referenced Wikipedia article on IPTC/IIM: It would be interesting to run your updated file through ExifTool. (Digging the mask btw @R C-R. I can't find one to fit my face .)

I think I see @Tom Lachecki. Affinity Photo can't read Caption-Abstract, so it doesn't write it back to the document on save. From a user perspective that's pretty much the same as deleting it - the metadata is lost.

My point was that populating one of the Core IPTC fields in Affinity Photo actually deletes the Caption-Abstract field when the image is saved. This is observable when viewing the image data in MacOS Finder and in ExifTool, and doesn't seem to me to be a good thing.

With that image, I can see a lot more info in Affinity Photo if I choose the File tab in the Metadata panel:

Thanks @Tom Lachecki, that's interesting. In testing, I believe I've found that populating any of the IPTC Core fields in Affinity Photo (eg adding a Credit) has the effect of deleting pre-existing IPTC fields in the image. For example, the OP's uploaded image has "1954 Chevolet Power Blue White top, White leather, Powerglide" in the IPTC Caption Abstract field (readable with ExifTool). If I open the image in Affinity Photo and populate the IPTC Credit field, then save and close the image, the Caption Abstract field is no longer visible when the image is run through Exiftool, or (as "Description") in the MacOS Finder information panel: A few screenshots to illustrate. Before editing in Affinity Photo: (the "Description" information is also displayed as "Caption-Abstract" in ExifTool.) After populating the IPTC Credit field in Affinity Photo: Update the Finder Info panel: The 'Description' metadata is now missing from "More info", and the corresponding 'Caption-Abstract' tag is also missing when the file is run through ExifTool. The crucial metadata appears to have been deleted, although my newly created IPTC Credit field is visible in ExifTool. Not sure if I should file a bug? Cheers, H

The metadata that I believe you're hoping can be displayed in Affinity Photo (1954 Chevolet Power Blue White top, White leather, Powerglide) is stored in the image's IPTC Caption-Abstract field. (Probably because Google/Picasa thought that would be a good place for it.) This is referred to as "Description" by Windows Explorer (and MacOS Finder). But for whatever reason, Affinity Photo does not display this particular field, even in the IPTC section of the Metadata panel: It doesn't appear in the default "EXIF" section of the Metadata Panel along with Camera, Date Taken etc because it's not part of the image's EXIF metadata. And it has nothing to do with the fact that the original image is a .jpg. It can be displayed and edited in other applications: for example Photoshop (which if memory serves can display full IPTC caption information) and Photo Supreme: Unless and until Serif add full (rather than limited) IPTC metadata display to Affinity Photo, one possible workround would be to use a dedicated metadata editor to copy the metadata from the Caption-Abstract field to one of the IPTC fields that Photo does display (possibly Scenes?) The fastest and most powerful is the command-line metadata editor ExifTool (Windows and Mac). ExifTool has a very steep learning curve, but I think it would do the job. I'm going to give it a try with the image you uploaded. I may be some time...

Once you've set up your Curves adjustment for one picture, you can save the settings as a preset. And you can then record a Macro (View-Studio-Macro) using this preset on a single image, and run it as a Batch Job on multiple images. Post back if you need help setting these up. But... How are you going to decide which images to apply the adjustment to? I don't think there's any way Affinity Photo can automate that, so unless you can manually identify and isolate the images that you want to change, I can't see much hope of a complete solution.

Maybe related to this? (If so, it occurs when using separated mode, across all Affinity apps, and @MEB has posted in that thread that it's a known issue, along with a workaround.) Cheers, H

You can use the Resize Canvas command to give you a larger working area, and move your three layers around on that: (You may need to unlock the original "Background" layer in the Layers panel before you can move its content around on the canvas.) You can also temporarily hide and display layers by unchecking and checking the boxes in the Layers panel: Cheers, H

I get the -200 message if I try to upload images wider than about 1200px (eg full-width screenshots). I think it's the forum software. Resize the grab to about 1000px and try uploading again. The grey boxes will disappear eventually. And yes, press tab.

You don't say which Affinity application you're using - is it Publisher? If so, then one possibility is to display the Text Frame panel (View menu, Studio, Text Frame) and make sure that the stroke width is set to zero. By default mine was set to 0.2pt. This very fine line is barely visible when the path is selected as the blue path line obscures it, but is noticeable when the page is exported to pdf.

As @GarryP says, you can indeed set the Align pop-up (in the toolbar) to centre the selected object(s) on the page, and this setting 'sticks': But this requires multiple mouse clicks, and you can't assign a keyboard shortcut. The menu commands (Layer -> Alignment -> Align Middle and Layer -> Alignment -> Align Centre) automatically centre the selection on the spread, with no way I can see of changing this behaviour in Preferences. And if you assign keyboard shortcuts to these commands, they will likewise only centre the selection on the spread. Setting the toolbar pop-up to "Page" has no effect on the menu commands. Might be worth a feature request? Cheers, H

Did you check both Applications folders? There is one under your user account (Macintosh HD/Users/yourname/Applications/) and the main system-wide folder at Macintosh HD/Applications/. Normally applications are installed in the latter. Alternatively, can you use Spotlight to find it? ( @markw posted while I was typing this). Which "Affinity" did you buy? Publisher, Photo or Designer? And from where - the App Store or direct from the Affinity website? Cheers, H