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SrPx

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Everything posted by SrPx

  1. Well... I wasn't really asking anyone to try it.... ;). Definitely not among my wishes....
  2. Tiffs are very useful as are requested by a bunch of print companies as the format to use, also in contests, in the public admin, in many places. Also, as you tend to have that sweet tiff import option in almost every app out there. And despite its issues and huge limitations, for print, you can have a flattened version in CMYK or RGB, with your profile embedded, and at a certain resolution. Is not linked to a particular native file version of a specific CC or whatever the brand version. It compress well when you zip it (I tend to do this , dunno why), though. And yes, is very universal, I like that. Even most OSes have a system utility that can open them. To be fair to Affinity, my loved Clip Studio Paint (using it for now as my painting tool) can't either save tiffs with layers, it flattens all like with a PNG or TGA. Anyway, it seems now a bunch of applications save a basic, simplified layers, version of PSD, which opens perfect in any PS version. You can perfectly open and save PSDs in Gimp, Krita, CSP, and I have seen no changes introduced among the saved versions from and to these applications. Of course, possibly they don't support a ton of layer features from PS, still is nice that it can load very simplified layers (no layer effects, etc). In some occasions I had issues, and just had to tell a client to flatten the layer effects, and/or text layers. But once done that, no issues, at least the layers would get through. And yeah, in the old days you did not need a new pc with every creative suite version. By any stretch. Today... ouch. I'm reading more and more testimonies, specially with PS and AE. Some people doing certain (not over complex) projects, having needed to upgrade to 64 RAM, yes or yes.. .they're getting to be RAM hogs... They are great applications, the industry standard and very powerful, no doubt... but...hmmm...RAM price being quite crazy (not as much as video cards for the freaking bitcoin mining thing, but not a good moment to upgrade RAM!) lately, is not a good feeling to see that kind of huge memory needs (and video card) in any application... And at company level, is an issue, too... of course, the high end machines of the pros will have no issues... but what about when you need to work with same software in the marketing person's machine (or in the coder's PC, etc) ....I mean, it's reducing the number of machines where it can run, in the whole company. Not good. Just try CC 2018, you'll know what I mean... (and probably wont ever complain for Affinity's performance, then... )
  3. They actually make *very* good software. And for a ton of years. They indeed have demonstrated their new focus (Affinity) to less amateur users, being now the target both amateur users and professionals. Then think twice....I've seen that happening (as a completely professional user in several areas, having been both a freelancer and a professional with quite some high responsibilities as an employee) with free software even! And a bunch at quite a lower price than 50 bucks ! (wont mention a list of them to not do even more (than I often do) publicity of other brands..). Price is ONLY one part of the equation. Same way, I've seen total sinking boats being bloated apps with crazy UIs, and yet outrageously expensive. I mean, through decades of software's history. In my view, the focus is fully professional and the apps already are indeed , in many ways. Is very different to compare a young app and a very old, fixed and patched through decades suite, than considering it is a case of an amateurish group of apps, which, knowing A BUNCH of apps from other brands which indeed are that amateurish... I can tell you, is far from the case of Affinity. Is just a WIP, a work in progress at a younger stage than the arcane Adobe or Corel are, but imo, advancing way faster in strict comparison.
  4. Oh, you didn't, never would be able... That was sarcasm in my side.... Lol, what feelings ? (seems it is you who didn't catch the tone) Lol, who told you I am offended ? I wasn't, and I'm not. Also, you are not forced to read my posts. So, you basically are telling me not to post in "your thread" (which it is not, and even if it were, you are not who to say who can post and who can't), where you want everybody be on a single line of thought, which is complaining to the devs about not being there a tracing feature. Yes, it belongs to this topic to have an opposite opinion about the need of a tracing feature. You cannot tell anyone that they cannot post if they are not on your boat, sorry. Not in this thread, nor in any other. Do you really understand that thinking that the addition of this feature now, when even the developers have stated that are not willing to add it for now, is to "feel offended by your opinion" ? (Again, if you understood I took offense, it is you the one having problems with English language...) Wow. Again, you seem to pretend that the option of going for extra tools for the very arguable need of a feature deserves another thread, and that only the ones of one side (specifically, yours) have the rights to post here. My tone was not of someone offended, not by far.....I found it funny then, and I find it even funnier now....
  5. in the past spreading more info than needed brought 'em problems of big magnitude. If ppl would had complained less in the previous times, maybe.
  6. well, one step at a time...IMO is the moment of polishing AD and AP, and seems they are working in a very initial Apub, I understood the latter is more than anything a proof of concept, not a full product just yet. Keeping your expectations not so high might be healthy. In general I think the thing, globally, the suite, might mean a lot more than we are thinking now that it will... (if allowing pros to do even just a 80% of what they can do with Adobe)
  7. Well, seems I lost a long wall of text I had written. My bad, but best for everyone else . Summary would be that... Well, I have been able to do so (but I'll keep using Adobe, Autodesk products, and whatever they ask me to use, at companies. It's always comfortable to use the most powerful solutions. But as a pro freelancer, being my own software (that's not really possible anymore, with that brand, anyways).... nope...) . I have been able to do so with Krita and CSP (aka Manga Studio) for painting, Blender(specially since appearance of Cycles renderer, one can get very close or equal to VRAY renders! ) and Wings3d for all 3D, eventually Gimp. (using a combo of my two painters and gimp for a while, before -at home, only- was Gimp and older versions with magazine DVSs/CDs of great software (thanks Serif and all other brands for that ! )) Little CMS, Scribus for CMYK, etc. It i spossible when you choose your own gigs to take. Isn't that pro work? It is. you probably cannot take a gig that involves "fixing a complex PSD file with layer effects and complex text layers", but anyway, I find those gigs a bit boring, and would take 'em when no other thing available, but am a freelancer mostly for fun (for plain easy income/time ratio I'd be yet at some company....by far.) Yet tho, from time to time it is an issue, but I tend to get friendly with th eproject authors I work for, and is easy to ask 'em to flatten those effects, and me dig for a way to import the text layers. Things like tell them to export in PS compatibility mode, simplify certain effects of the layers (i can re-build with my own tools), export as tiff, etc. Anyway, illustration requires less of image editing, and these apps combo can solve a collection of situations. For deep, serious image editing, is way, way better IMO just use Affinity Photo (but my project native files are yet based in the other tools, so that'll have to wait a bit). A. Designer is a dream come true compared to what I had before for that at home... I'd add just that it depends. Some creatives, as you included there several profiles (I do graphic design and all sort of editing, is not just painting projects) can deal all with out that subscription, some, usually depending on a large client, big company with its workflows in place fully tied to the top dog... yeah, those can't even start thinking of leaving the subscription. And probably don't have a need, at all. I subscribe (no pun intended ) what said by someone above: Usually u can pay that, but at some point you need ALL your bucks for sth, I do help other ppl, so I don't accumulate too much money on the bank. A "surprise" like a car total repair, or a HUGE doctor's fee, your main PC breaks, or all together, and then, while u can pay all, -or not- last thing you need is yet another monthly bill. Even if is no issue to at some chosen time to pay all together the whole cost of a year subscription, but for a permanent, "owned" software license. I can see tho how a very large number of professionals will always depend on the Adobe subscription, but my point is the reason is due to the closed native formats. Feature-wise, I can't agree: I paint WAY better, faster, more comfortable, in a much more flexible way with clip paint studio than I ever did with PS. And it allows me to use it in any crappy machine, like this one, my parent's, sister ones, it runs everywhere, allowing in all these to load my typical 5k to 10k px (side) square canvas without brush lag, and allowing many layers. Same thing with AP and AD, it loads very light in these old machines . Soon buying a ryzen, but is super nice that I'll be able to run anything of my workflow in the old machine, too. IMO, it depends a lot on your type of clients and projects. At a company, heck, the boss pays for it, so, whatever...
  8. Prohibited ? Short answers? Wow, you set more rules than the forum admins (which, as you aren't, no one has to follow, btw).... (looks like -after your post- what would be only "allowed" posting "here" in this particular thread is that the devs shall have the exact roadmap that one wants wants, then?, and opinions can only go in that direction ? ) Yet so, the key is yep, to use other tools for that function. Like it or not. See? At least I went with one of your rules. It was short, now.
  9. Due to direct hardware access needs (tho Wine is improving a lot, lately) I have my doubts that all software would work at the required performance or even support certain uses. If anything, for these issues VMware seems to do better... I used it for long at my latest company.
  10. Have you configured well the mapping in the wacom panel settings ? (outside of Affinity applications. In Windows settings , what we used to call "control panel" , specifically the wacom icon.) The projection settings. I tend to use both "full screen" and "full tablet" marked / checked , but with keep screen proportion/ratio marked. Also, check that the setting (not sure on what model/version/old or new wacom tablet model do you have) in wacom panel is considering the device as pen, not as mouse. Sounds a bit random, but my own intuition (you seem to have issues accessing the menus, if I finally understood it well ) would make me check these things first...
  11. Fair enough (I'll really welcome any macros/batch development, too, but I am way more worried about the brush system (also because there are masses of angry ppl about it...IMO a bit too much as APhoto is not a painter), and polish some details in file exports, pdf, etc. Those are really really core to be considered pro tools, so it makes a lot of sense the priority there. ) If you get stuck with something with imagemagick or XnView, you could let us know here. I might know the solution/tip, (or not, if is sth I have not specifically dealt with).
  12. For a bunch of things one goes observing after certain quantity (tho not very long, am relatively new to Affinity forums, but old timer for Serif products usage) of time lurking around, I bet they have someone always (probably not the same person for all areas, cycling) taking a look of what's posted around here. Fully at 100% over every long wall of text (like the ones I overload the forum with), NOPE, as then when they'd develop, lol... I don't believe they have an army of people for just social media, as huge companies can afford, instead. I know deeply well the Actions + batch operations in Adobe PS. And how incredibly powerful it gets to be for a video editor and a game artist. But....While there are things very advanced that you can only do through internal Photoshop functions (in this case by triggering Actions, linked to the batch operation) there is also stuff that you cannot do with Photoshop and its batch actions, which instead you can very well do with specialized converters, specially ImageMagick and in some aspects, with irfan and xnview. About the Mac/Windows issue. Please -tho you probably got good note of that- realize that while Irfan is Windows-only, both Imagemagick and XnView count equally with Mac OS versions ! (even linux versions, too . And in the case of Imagemagick, even Android, iOS and other platforms (indeed, is often used as a server library to apply operations dynamically or statically over sever images)) . I mention this not just because they can take any task orientation (portrait, etc) related, and let you chose among different resampling functions (irfan can, too, and some say lanczos, present in Irfan, gives more quality than Photoshop's bicubic. I have not made a scientific test of that) . Probably XnView is more advanced than Irfan, yet being also very user friendly. But to be sincere, have not used XnView for many years (it already supported better transparency, PSDs, etc, than irfan. Maybe irfan loaded faster, less resources usage, etc, felt slightly more snappy to me back then) . Imagemagick is the harder to use for people not happy using a command line tool, but IMO, is by far the most powerful. I'll now will give you my full opinion about the whole matter, I mean, not just an advice in the meantime this feature gets improved or added . It matches what I have been saying - to people that cannot wait to a feature being added to any of the Affinity suite apps - about combining apps (I'm told often that I tend to say same things over time... My grandfather used to say that this is a characteristic of sincere people... ;D. Yet tho I change of opinion when arguments are solid.) and it is that probably the best solution is in the middle. If you get to be familiar with one of this apps (ie, you could install the ones having a mac version, XnView and Imagemagick , try them and choose) , once the feature gets added to Affinity Photo, you get a 2x combo advantage (euh, I passed too many hours playing Street Figther II in my teen years...;D ) ; As I was saying, there are complex things no macro system would typically do, inside an already complex main 2D package, that you can do instead with specialized batch tools, and viceversa, some macros will be only possible inside A. Photo. My 1 million $ advice : Do get used to both things (well, now only with the utilities and the macros already available) , as is a win-win situation. I keep seeing that in the end, there's some slight resistance to using several UIs and apps inside a project. Working inside software developers you get fully cured from this problem, as at least in graphic production tasks (what the heck, front end "development" (if you can define it so) is one of the more contest changing environments I've suffered) you get through your work day changing among apps, tools, utilities, engine previewers, texturing tools, test systems, and coffee makers...But once one gets deeply used to that, the sky is the limit. You surely do know all this very well. My only point here is that having used the macro-batch-actions system of PS, I do know well that often it doesn't cut it as well as certain really advanced conversion features in those specialized tools. So, it doesn't hurt to try those free tools (in your case, one fully free, the other dirty cheap if used commercially (but can play with it for years freely at home. And 26 bucks do not make any one poorer ;).... )) I yet to work at a place (will be probably soon working yet again inside another developer (if I get to convince certain ppl, hehe), seems is my destiny, lol) where you don't need like water all these context changes and not needing to use this arsenal or perfect orchestra of different software tools. And you get workflows working as a perfect machine, so is not sth crazy, at all. Anyway, all macro improvements are welcome (IMO, there are things that definitely get priority right now, even by what is the definition of priority in a software application... I mean, wouldn't be strange that those things get solved first.... ) as they are extremely useful. But i wouldn't fix them before some core matters are attended. (the apps do not have show stopping issues, but definitely things to attend a bit more, and it seems by every sign and post that hey are working very heavily on all that, right now.)
  13. They are not listening, they are reading, and I believe they read it all (hopefully not my 20 miles long threads). Yet though, as some other forum member replied in another forum thread, "listening" is not the same than "agreeing" (or... "obeying".... ) PD: I for one always liked a good book. Now, just at my 45 year old age, I need the glasses for almost any sort of reading (I blame the huge non stop work over the years in too many profiles, I probably should have taken a more money grabbing, issues-free job path than 2D/3D and painting... but is late now). I believe, though, a good old book is yet quite an experience some of the younger ones are not giving its real value (and the massive attraction that social media (of endless crappy TV reality shows) makes on them isn't helping (in many cases removing time from "real life" interaction, from studies, or even attending in classrooms. Book reading is completely out of the picture in this situation, sadly)). That said, as I can zoom in, I can read without the glasses with a tablet (and not counting on huge amplifying, these glasses, so , with them I read well and draw/paint to hyper realistic detail) but without them, not easily and certainly not small fonts.... . The tablet is a nice solution for this case...but any pdf or whatever the format is just fine. Anyway, I tend not to read the manuals, it removes excitement/exploring from the experience, hehe. Nah, seriously, I tend to learn as I use the tools, only use manuals in most apps when sth is reaaally non intuitive and I need to check the doc (extremely rare even with the worse apps out there)... Still, I recommend everyone else to go first to the manuals, you'll learn faster and more happily, is the easiest way. Should have done that in the past when learning the basics in general in 2D/3D (after that you get the global "UI philosophy" and everything can be guessed fast)
  14. I'm curious... why do you move from Corel to AD, being most companies in your country corel based, and, actually Corel Draw being a quite complete suite ? Is mere curiosity.
  15. Well... http://www.irfanview.com/ https://www.imagemagick.org https://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp Indeed, I have not used batch conversion in the specific case of XnView MP (but I used the fast viewer, the older classic version (non MP) at a company, is AMAZING), but it has a module for batch conversion, and even there's an utility apart for just doing that, if don't want the whole viewer. https://www.xnview.com/en/xnconvert/ IrfanView (freeware for non comercial, but can register/donate for commercial) and XnView (idem) are free for non commercial (understood also as commercial the usage at a company, but licenses are different, as always, just check them). But both dirty cheap (12$ donation-register for irfan, 26$ for XnView, if am not wrong, at this moment in Feb 2018). Imagemagick, whose flexibility and capabilities are close to infinite, instead is fully free, open source. Irfanview has a really easy UI just launch the app and get it working. IrfanView and XnView share the ability of loading really fast when you want to check images at light speed. I really like both a lot. Imagemagick can do so many things that is absolutely crazy. (but is more of a console utility, more for the tech savvy) IrfanView is Windows only (32 and 64 bits. I (almost) always try to use 64 bits apps, for a bunch of reasons). Imagemagick is cross platform: Runs on Linux, Windows, Mac Os X, iOS, Android OS, and others. (need to scroll a lot the download page, lol, the Windows version is almost at the end ) XnView runs in Windows, Mac and Linux. With ANY of those (though you might be interested in one or another depending on specific features) I never missed batch conversion / resize / other editing, etc in a 2D package. It is not just a theory, it is for intense and long experience, at work and home. I do work editing a bazillion frames in just a button touch (batch operations), often for editing game animations, of video frames which I exported or plan to later on import in a video app, or editing a folder of illustrations, processing them for a lot of different tasks, even fields of professional activity: I know this works great no matter which is your 2D main application apart from your helper (batch and other types) utilities Cheers,
  16. Some of us Windows users are quite happy with the way things go.
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