verysame

@ErikKeller I must have misunderstood your question, I thought you were asking if it is possible to increase the exposure in a non-32 bit image in order to get an HDR image. That said, watch out for the 32-bit screen redraw issue. You might get, depending on your workflow, some black splotches. A simple exposure adjustment should be fine though.

No, it can't. If the information isn't in there there's no way you can push it further.

Thank you, @firstdefence. I only wanted to add my experience as far as PC spec goes since from what I learned there's nothing that can be considered the ideal situation. It's surely due to several reasons, the relatively young age of the product, the resources, the budget, so hopefully like you said in the future it will get there. I hope the same will apply to some of the features I still miss as well as some of those that are there, but not 100% complete yet. Best, Andrew

You're welcome, hope it will be useful.

You win, I give up.

I don't see how testing a program on multiple machines/configuration and getting issues from all them and concluding that there's something wrong with the program makes the logic "deeply flawed". Speaking of flawed logic... Your assumption is a little "one-way" thing. You assume that there's something wrong with my configurations. Isn't possible instead that there's something wrong with Affinity and other users are happy because their use is different than mine? So, perhaps you should ask the same question to the devs, instead of assuming that the problem is on my side. It might be possible that there's something that needs to be fixed or improved. That's how software evolves. Do you want an example? Check the 32bit situation. How many times do you deal with that type of image? And that's for your "majority" of happy users. As for the 32-bit issue, for how long we thought it was a video card driver issue? Well, it is not. Devs eventually even acknowledged it, but it is still broken (because of priorities, lack of resources, you name it). So, I think it's now only logical to conclude that if something is not working not necessarily is on my side. Oh, and by the way, you can browse the forum too, you'll find out I'm not a highlander here...

When did I say every Window user? Can you quote me writing that, because if so, I was utterly wrong. You say this as if it was one system, whereas, if you read my posts, I said I tested it over almost two years on different configurations. As for browsing through the topics, even in this very thread, they quoted another issue titled "Affinity Photo is making my PC cry". Like I said, I'm not here to fix anything, Affinity is broken and it's been like this for me on different machines/configurations for almost two years now. I'm glad it works for other users, but it does not for me.

@It123 Here's something you might want to play with. Duplicate the original layer and rasterize it. Go to filter and choose Apply Image Click on "Use Current Layer" Click on Equations You need to play with the values here. AP uses equations, but I never went through the options, so on this round I did play with it. This is one of the setups: With this, you should have a good matte for the top part of your picture. Duplicate your original layer once again and try these settings for the bottom half: You will end up with these two layers: (Top Half) (Bottom Half) To clean the buildings visible through the antenna in the foreground simply use a brush in overlay mode. If you use white, you'll affect the bright values (mid-grey will get brighter than dark-grey, black will barely be affected). To bring back some of the black areas, use the same brush in overlay mode and use black for the color. I ended up with this in less than 2 min. Which, personally, considered the tricky task, is not bad at all for a 2 min. job. With some finessing, you can get a pretty decent matte. Hope that helps.

To put it simply, no, and here's why. The solution provided in that thread refers to the Vsync (there is a good explanation here ) and I hardly see how this can be related to the CPU. But even assuming it is related in some way, I honestly don't want to run the risk to mess up my system which I use for business, and where I have many other programs running and none of them with any issues whatsoever so far, only to tweak one program (which, personally, I'm not even happy with). It would really be a twisted logic to do so. Hope at some point they'll finally make things run smoother. It's been difficult to adjust to Affinity paradigms, it's been great to love it, it's been sad and frustrating abandoning it. It would definitely great to come back when (and if) things will run in a more flawless way.

Thanks, @haakoo See my reply to @firstdefence above.

I appreciate you're trying to help, @firstdefence, I'm sorry if my post it's been confusing but the thing is, I only reported my issue not because I hoped to find a solution, but just to let the OP know that the original question has no answer. I started using Affinity almost two years ago, I went from excitement to frustration to disappointment. I know from personal experience that there are no optimal hardware specs anyone can give other than a rather generic "get the best hardware you can", and it is frustrating because it's like walking in the dark. I tested Affinity on dual Xeon, Intel i7 at fast clock speed, three and four GeForce GPUs, now the Ryzen. It gets a little better, but nothing has proved to be significantly better. I wanted to add my contribution because I remember when time ago I (and other users on this forum) have asked for a long time whether Affinity products were optimized for GPUs or not. After lots of confusion and misunderstanding, finally, one of the dev shed some light and explained there isn't much benefit Affinity takes from GPUs. But that answer took a few months. I recently switched to the Ryzen Threadripper because I knew after asking on forums, that C4D and other software would benefit from it, and I can confirm that. If at least, there was something we could rely on, either GPU, Speed Clock or number of cores, that would be something, but to date, Affinity products are not optimized for anything in particular. Just my 2 c.

That would be really odd, to say the least: If we also consider the use of the GPU in Affinity is not relevant...

@AffinityJules If you click on the image you'll be able to download the hi-res version. @It123 One way to do this is to use Apply image, but you need to work on two parts of the images separately as the taller antenna has some bright values in it. I'll try to post something later on today, but my advice is to look at the Apply image method, it can be helpful in cases like this.

By the way, this is turning into another of those threads where there's plenty of back and forth between users with no clue of what's going on, and no devs show up to say anything as not even them can figure this out. So, going back to the original OP's question, there's no answer (as usual).

Well, you said it, it is that program that causes the issue.

@firstdefence Well, if the issue happens only when I open Affinity, there isn't much else to doubt about the reason of the problem. Really, the box runs just fine 100% of the time, with zero issue, nada. Everything is updated, BIOS, video card drivers. There's no need for me to check on that side, I'm 100% sure nothing is wrong with the PC. No CPU trashing due to MS antivirus, which by the way has never been an issue for me even in the previous machines (I was running AVIRA, but same story, no issue). It is, without any doubt, something that Affinity triggers.

Nope, the Box I'm using is already assembled at its best, it's a Dell and it's liquid cooling. Like I said, no issue with any of the other programs I'm using, except Affinity.

Faith19, thanks for posting this. I was going to ask a similar question. I recently switched to a fast machine, AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950x, 32GB, Samsung EVO 860, 2 GTX 1080ti (I know, I know, GPU doesn't matter, these are just the specs) and yet, I can tell you the speed is not significantly better than my old machine (specs in my signature). But what is really annoying is that as soon as I start working (no matter what file I'm working on, small or big), the fans start spinning like crazy, CPU's temperature reaches the peek. Honestly, I don't feel I want to use a program in these conditions. Despite PCs nowadays have really good airflow systems and they are built to support some degree of stress, I don't like the idea of keeping my PC at these levels of stress, and this happens only with Affinity products. I use the machine for heavy 3D renderings & After Effects compositing and it rarely gets that warm. To be honest, the only other software that put some stress on my box is Capture One, but at least is not consistent, it's more bearable.

That's surprising, Fixx. Can you expand on this with some real data/examples?

Wow, really? Now I see why sometimes on this forum there are pages of discussion for even the most basic things. What surprises me is not the answer that @Asser82 gave, for what I know he is not necessarily a developer, but the fact that @Mark Ingram agrees. Asser82, your assumption is wrong. "If something gets updated" is not, in this case, a stable release. What you refer to is the update your browser, in its official release, does automatically. If I, the user, decide to download and install a beta release, these are the options I get during the installation: It's totally normal for a user to have multiple betas installed in different locations. In fact, I can install multiple betas in separate folders. Also, as far as focusing on the real problems, that's an old mantra I've heard here so many times. It's actually the core of Affinity: let's add A, B, C, D then let's focus only on C & D because we don't have time nor resources to cover everything. Yeah, makes a lot of sense, especially when there are users who were lured by A and B! If they don't have the time to play with secondary features, why waste their time in the first place? Or why, to put it more simply, don't we call this for what it is? A mistake, which can happen to anyone. They customized the installer, they didn't expect a user reaction to it (they followed their idea of how this would work), and now here we are. Oh, before I forget, to answer your "you can't place it into a new folder", guess what? I went through the process of installing the new beta again, but first, I uninstalled the previous beta, which it is something I don't usually do (basically Affinity updates over the latest beta's path) and, to my surprise, my old beta's folder is now empty (Affinity Photo Customer Beta) and a new folder appeared (Photo Customer Beta). Yes, I left the default options the installer comes with untouched but gives you a glimpse of consistency. Quite a convoluted experience for something so basic.

Mark, I don't get it. The whole point is to get feedback from the users... or maybe not? You devs add something, users test it out, give their feedback, which in this case was how to improve it, and the response is "you can't change it". Then why add it in the first place? Moreover, under a beta section? (a place meant to test and discuss new features)

Agreed. I don't understand why adding something and then removing it after user's feedback in order to improve it. Anyway, installed, opened, tried a RAW file and closed right away after the temperature and the fan went crazy as usual. Nothing new to me here.

Like you said, Apple. Not an option on Windows.

Dave, I (and many others) could say the same in regards to your post: why Serif doesn't focus solely on AP and AD rather than adding another burden (Publisher) to the already precarious balance?

True, I'm personally used (actually, I was used) to the A shortcut as my stroke panel was always hidden, which meant two clicks for me anyway. But good that you pointed out, each user can have different habits.