MJSfoto1956

Today I had to do some work in Indesign, which made me think of Affinity. I'm still using CS5 because I'm not a fan of software subscriptions and my Adobe apps are still just kind of limping along on my Mac but I don't hold out much hope for them when I do upgrade to 10.12. Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer have allowed me to leave Photoshop and Illustrator so I'm really looking forward to the release of Affinity Publisher.

And, here is a video glimpse of some of the improvements coming to the Node tool.
 
NodeTool.mov
 

And, here a video showing the new rotate-on-plane feature of the Move tool.  A new shape is created into a grid, using the "Edit In Grid Plane" mode.  Then, with the mode on, any rotations maintain the grid plane perspective.
 
RotateOnPlane.mov
 

Also enormous file size, some kind problems according to video codecs and formats. Better way is linking to streaming media platform such as Youtube or Vimeo.

When did they say they were doing so?
You can ask nicely but not demand!

Actually, "Balance Ragged Lines" is not supposed to be used on body text. Balancing and hyphenation are taken care of by the paragraph composer – by default that's Adobe's excellent "Multi-Line Composer", which already takes the effect of hyphenation and composition decisions over the entire paragraph into account, not just the current line. So you don't need to activate any other options to get nice and balanced body text.
 
"Balance Ragged Lines" is intended to be used with small centered blocks of text like pull quotes, multi-line headlines and so on. For instance, you can apply it to your subhead paragraph style so that those two lines of text are always evenly divided between the two lines and you don't have to manually add forced returns for everything to look balanced.
 
If you apply "Balance Ragged Lines" to regular body text however, it will actually usually make the result significantly worse, and it is sure to drive anybody mad who has to do copy fitting with your body copy style.
 
If you look at your example, the only thing that has really improved on the right is that InDesign has balanced all lines so that the last line of the paragraph is filled completely, making tradeoffs in all other lines in order to meet that goal. Also keep in mind that placeholder copy won't always give you the best impression of these things since the hyphenation is not representative when using pseudo-latin.
 
EDIT: There is an article on InDesign Secrets that goes into detail.

Yes. I doubt Affinity Engineers (good as they are) will be able to match, much less surpass, DxO's engineers with regard to RAW processing (and vice versa). This is why I would like to see AP do a better job "integrating" with the top RAW processors out there.  YMMV
 
Michael

Perhaps I am spoiled. I've used every version of Photoshop up to CS6 since before v1.0 (I was a beta user back in 1989). And once Affinity Photo supports macros and batch processing I likely will stop using Photoshop altogether. Having used image editing programs for as long as I have it is clear to me that the engineers for AP and AD "get it". For most things I can just intuit where the feature I want is and sure enough it ends up easy to discover. Again, easy for me. Likely not easy for a beginner. So yes, documentation is needed. Yet the free videos supplied by Serif are a superb resource. As much as I have a ton of experience with image editing, I have watched every single Serif support video multiple times. Each time receiving a little bit more insight. So my take is that the more you invest the more you will be rewarded. The fact is, there is no "hurry" here -- if you can't produce quality images with Photoshop you won't be able to produce quality images in Affinity Photo -- and vice versa. I'm a big fan of rewarding those who stick their necks out. In this case, Serif has done just that and I feel they deserve the kudos due them.
 
YMMV
 
Michael

Perhaps I am spoiled. I've used every version of Photoshop up to CS6 since before v1.0 (I was a beta user back in 1989). And once Affinity Photo supports macros and batch processing I likely will stop using Photoshop altogether. Having used image editing programs for as long as I have it is clear to me that the engineers for AP and AD "get it". For most things I can just intuit where the feature I want is and sure enough it ends up easy to discover. Again, easy for me. Likely not easy for a beginner. So yes, documentation is needed. Yet the free videos supplied by Serif are a superb resource. As much as I have a ton of experience with image editing, I have watched every single Serif support video multiple times. Each time receiving a little bit more insight. So my take is that the more you invest the more you will be rewarded. The fact is, there is no "hurry" here -- if you can't produce quality images with Photoshop you won't be able to produce quality images in Affinity Photo -- and vice versa. I'm a big fan of rewarding those who stick their necks out. In this case, Serif has done just that and I feel they deserve the kudos due them.
 
YMMV
 
Michael

Is that specific to the Hawaiian version? :P
 
M

There is no need for those fiddly "luminosity masks" in AP because of the very precise luminosity range settings available using "blend if" dialog (not available in Photoshop). Note that every layer has this already built in. You just need to determine where in the luminosity scale you want the layer effect to blend and how much to "feather" the range. Note also that this is much better than luminosity masks because you can go back and tweak the curve at any moment.
 
This is not a "theory": the results produce exactly the same results as a traditional luminosity mask with much more flexibility.
 
Michael

Hi, Robotbenjy,
 
It seems there are quite a number of people who show up on the forum expecting the Affinity apps to be a replacement for other, more mature, and generally much more expensive software. And often they are disappointed. I think its more a matter of expectations being let down (I too have read the PS-killer stories) rather than the software being flawed. As MEB noted, the apps are quite young. Give them a few more years.

Hi Ben,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
I'm not sure we are marketing it as a Photoshop killer. I think that idea comes from the reviews on net, comments on social media etc. Affinity Photo and Designer are our own view/project on photo and illustration editors. We are not aiming to clone Photoshop nor Illustrator. We are also trying to keep our apps focused on specific/defined areas, so don't expect 3d or animation features in Photo for example. I don't think it's fair to expect them to replace or cover all Photoshop or Illustrator features at this point. Affinity is a new line of software  - in its first version -, created from scratch and developed by a small team. It can't offer the same functionality as other apps on the market and in development for more than two decades, so you may find a few features missing. We are however doing our best to close the gaps as fast as we can. Artistic filters, to pick an example you mentioned, will be added in a future version. For information on what's coming/planned for the next months (for the entire 1.x cycle) please check Affinity Photo's roadmap and Designer's roadmap.
 
We keep the applications separate because we want them focused on a single area. Users that are interested in photo-editing for example don't have to pay for illustration features they don't use. This doesn't mean we have sacrificed integration with the other apps of the suite. You can switch documents between the applications going to menu File ▸ Edit in Photo/Designer (depending on the app you are in) without the need to save the file. You can also edit/adjust features that were created on another app of the suite inside the program you are in without switching to the original application where they were created. For example Live filters added in Affinity Photo can also be edited/adjusted inside Designer without switching apps. You can also open files created in any of our apps in whatever app of the suite you want. All are able to open files from the other apps, as well as use files created on the Mac on the Windows versions and vice-versa. This allows us to keep an accessible price for each app, maximise their features/scope for each area (photo, illustration, and desktop publishing later) while still maintaining interoperability between all the apps of the suite in the platforms we support. 
 
Hope this helps to explain some of the points/questions you raised. If you have any questions or trouble achieving something just post on the forums. There's plenty of staff (including developers) and experienced users willing to help. Thanks for your support.

I've been using Photoshop since 1990. And during that time I too got used to "resizing" my images to match the desired output. However, I've since changed my ways with Affinity Photo -- I now only "resize" on export. Since Affinity doesn't lose resolution when resizing pixel layers, you can stack a bunch of images, each with different resolution density, scale them each as layers, and output them at the desired resolution without losing any fidelity. At first I was skeptical but after having just printed a solo show for a museum here in Massachusetts using this technique, I'm sold.
 
YMMV
 
Michael

Or possibly does not completely understand the complexities & limitations of comparing on screen & printed versions of a digital graphics document? In the second post, MX1 said, "I want to be able to look at the actual print size while I'm working on it to see what I'm going to get."
 
It would indeed be wonderful if it was simple & easy do that, but of course color space conversions, printing device & print driver differences, the document "actual size" setting, & so on must be considered; and even when everything is set up correctly, the best we can hope for is a good on screen approximation of the hard copy output.

Me too, I had an exhibition in November, I had stacked 12-28 image layers, 16-bit 6000X9000 px images plus grads & adjusts, AP file could be somewhere 16 GB range. Looked good onscreen and handled easily enough. I could not have done this in PS.
 
It is possible OP has some bug related to graphics acceleration?

I've been using Photoshop since 1990. And during that time I too got used to "resizing" my images to match the desired output. However, I've since changed my ways with Affinity Photo -- I now only "resize" on export. Since Affinity doesn't lose resolution when resizing pixel layers, you can stack a bunch of images, each with different resolution density, scale them each as layers, and output them at the desired resolution without losing any fidelity. At first I was skeptical but after having just printed a solo show for a museum here in Massachusetts using this technique, I'm sold.
 
YMMV
 
Michael

Here is a small .mov file ( I hope it uploads )  Showing the two brushes I use in corel painter.
 
First I just make strokes with the scratchboard tool.  Notice that when the stroke overlaps itself it goes much darker.  I do not need to release the mouse button (or in my case, lift the stylus to begin a new stroke) in order for the stroke to go darker until it reaches 100% opacity.  I like that as it allows me to sketch quicker.  The opacity is pressure sensitive also and size so I can get variations on stroke width, tapering.
 
Then I choose the Just Add Water brush  and go over the strokes.  This is also varied by pen pressure.
 
I would love to find something inside of Affinity that could replicate this effect.
 
thanks for any help with this.
Untitled Project.mov

Just playing around with AP. Shot with Pentax K-3ii + DA* 60-250mm, RAW processing in DxO Optics Pro. Pano composite in AP of two images, together with lots of layers. Also uses the "Revealing Sky Detail" technique.
 

Just playing around with AP. Shot with Pentax K-3ii + DA* 60-250mm, RAW processing in DxO Optics Pro. Pano composite in AP of two images, together with lots of layers. Also uses the "Revealing Sky Detail" technique.
 

Just playing around with AP. Shot with Pentax K-3ii + DA* 60-250mm, RAW processing in DxO Optics Pro. Pano composite in AP of two images, together with lots of layers. Also uses the "Revealing Sky Detail" technique.
 

Noticed that in the Macro Library pane/panel, if I close all the subs, when I restart the app they are all open again. 99% of the macros for styles, enhancements, etc. are seldom used. Really only want my own showing most of the time. The look of this pane/panel should stay sticky to however you last set it. 

back in the very early days of digital cameras, I printed a 2mp image to 40"x60" -- and it looked great. The reason it looked great was A.) the nature of subject matter lent itself to not requiring a lot of resolution and B.) the distance the image was to be viewed was ideal for the amount of data being printed.
 
Needless to say, your needs may vary.
 
Michael

A print resolution of 300 ppi is really only needed for the typical viewing distance of things like books and small posters. For a 3m display board, the viewing distance is likely to be much larger: 25 ppi would be OK for a viewing distance of 4m or more, and 150 ppi would allow the viewer to get as close as 60cm/2ft without being able to readily discern individual pixels. However, this does mean that the pixel dimensions of the photo would need to be increased by a factor of 6.

this is how I would do it (see attached).
 
I'm sure there are a 100 other ways too.
 
Michael
 
reflection01.MJS.afphoto