azartguy

Well, Bones, I don't expect AP to be Photoshop; in fact, I hoped it wouldn't be. I expected it to be better, and it may well be. But I won't find out if I have to labor through these basic interface problems of terminology and tool applications. The folks at Serif are getting in their own way.

And there's the rub, Alfred, it's not whether or not the terminology "makes sense," it's whether or not a newcomer can look at the term and intuit what sense it makes. Consider that you want to fix a leaking pipe under the kitchen sink and say to me, "I have a leak in the main, hand me a spanner." I can guess you mean a leaking water pipe and you need a wrench, but I I might not even know that "main" = "pipe" or that "spanner" = "wrench." What I want, I suppose, is an Affinity/Photoshop phrase book.

A simple example, Alfred Using my ABCD model in the original post , "... if you used the Magic Wand tool and the Paint Bucket in Photoshop to fill in a color, to do the same thing in Affinity you should use the Flood Select tool and the Flood Fill tool to change a selected color.” Add to that, the outcomes are described differently: PS says to fill in a color, and AP says "change a selected color." Notice that not only are the tool names different, but the described outcomes are different: PS says to fill in a color, AP says to change a color. And that leads to your second question about what changes AP should adopt... perhaps none. But a type of thesaurus would be welcome.

First of all, Affinity Photo is a great app. It may well be the equal too, and in some ways, superior to Photoshop. The problem isn't the tool but in the interface. Or more precisely, learning the interface. Choosing to appeal to PS users, disaffected or otherwise, I believe the Serif team made two incorrect assumptions about those users in development, including: 1. That changing terminology from the gold standard Photoshop wouldn't be a problem. The words we call things matter. Example, if common usage (the base term) is that A is a process that uses tool B, changing the base term to C means that user has to learn that C now redefines the process, renames it and so moves it into a different indexed space, just to find, and use, tool B. That is further complicated if the assignment of A to C using tool B is changed to assign it to tool D without a reference , e.g., "if you used B in Photoshop to do A, to do the same thing in Affinity you should use D to do C." Without that guide, a digital Rosetta Stone, the learning curve becomes much more difficult. 2. That everybody who used Photoshop used the tools in the same way. This may be the greater mistaken: PS users do not use PS the same way. The many-ways approach isn't just a marketing term for PS, it was integral to how many long-term users learned and applied the program. Like many other PS users, I've been at it through several generations of the app, and learned which of the myriad PS ways to completing a task worked best for me. Not the best ways, perhaps, but my ways. In fact, these two assumptions are why I'm struggling with AP and may have to switch back to PS.

First of all, AP is a great app. It may well be the equal too, and in some ways, superior to Photoshop. The problem isn't the tool but in the interface. Or more precisely, learning the interface. Choosing to appeal to PS users, disaffected or otherwise, I believe the Serif team made two incorrect assumptions about those users in development, including: 1. That changing terminology from the gold standard Photoshop wouldn't be a problem. The words we call things matter. Example, if common usage (the base term) is that A is a process that uses tool B, changing the base term to C means that user has to learn that C now redefines the process, renames it and so moves it into a different indexed space, just to find, and use, tool B. That is further complicated if the assignment of A to C using tool B is changed to assign it to tool D without a reference , e.g., "if you used B in Photoshop to do A, to do the same thing in Affinity you should use D to do C." Without that guide, a digital Rosetta Stone, the learning curve becomes much more difficult. 2. That everybody who used Photoshop used the tools in the same way. This may be the greater mistaken: PS users do not use PS the same way. The many-ways approach isn't just a marketing term for PS, it was integral to how many long-term users learned and applied the program. Like many other PS users, I've been at it through several generations of the app, and learned which of the myriad PS ways to completing a task worked best for me. Not the best ways, perhaps, but my ways. In fact, these two assumptions are why I'm struggling with AP and may have to switch back to PS.

Depends what you are trying to do... save, share, export? Those three words mean something different to each app, and so too with "save file" and "save to files" and "save as." Don't make yourself crazy; if all you want to get the image out of Dropbox, Google Photos and into Apple Photos do this: OPEN BOTH APPLE PHOTOS AND ANOTHER CLOUD APP IN SPLIT SCREEN If Google Photos, hold on GOOGLE PHOTO image until it “lifts” > drag n drop onto APPLE PHOTOS If in Dropbox, DOUBLE-TAP on DROPBOX PHOTO image > “SAVE TO CAMERA ROLL” However, it doesn't work going the other direction from AP into Google Photos or Dropbox. You'll have to use the AP "share" system (as obscure and difficult as it is) Once in Affinity, you can: save it to Apple Photos with Export>Share>Share Image save the the image back into Dropbox with Export>Share>Save to Dropbox (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it will work one day and not the next) save the the image back into Google Photos with Export>Share>Drive (google symbol)>Upload> folder NOTE: while Google Photos syncs with Google Drive (the cloud app) Google Drive does not sync with Google Photos so you cannot see the imported file; you must close and reopen Google Photos app and you must have "Backup & Sync" enabled (if you don't want all your Apple Photos saved to Google Photos, or maybe Google Drive, and doubling your storage you must then turn Backup & Sync" off ( and no, nobody knows why this is except Google and they aren't saying other than that's the way it's designed) OPINION: Apple iOS Photos is crap. Unless you need it to use an iPad specific app (iColorama for example) it isn't worth trying to make sense of it. Apple doesn't want you to make sense of it. Apple wants you to shut up and do it Apple's way. Among the things Apple iOS Photos WILL NOT do are: Show any metadata Use Apple “Tags” to sort images Show OS X applied file names or titles Show the original (camera) file number Show file names or titles from any other app Show file names or titles from any cloud storage site Load separate files for RAW+JPEG Load edited in-camera converted RAW > JPEG files as separate files even with different file numbers Allow a search by name, rating, Tag, keyword .

I've been using Photoshop since the CS days. After years of conditioning, switching to Affinity has been a real problem. It's one thing to learn something new, it's another to un-learn then re-learn the same basic process. Mostly the Affinity approach improves the process, but for old codgers with several years of PS under our belts it's a steep learning curve to do the same old thing in a new way (consider how hard it for a British driver for the first time to shift to left hand drive, and vice versa; it's all the same, it's still a steering wheel and gear shift and pedals but it's all different). So my question, has anybody seen an Affinity/Photoshop cross reference guide? If not I'd be happy to collaborate with somebody with solid Affinity experience then put it up on the Forum for input to fill in the blanks.

I don't think you're doing anything wrong, it's just that "Unsharp Mask" isn't particularly good. I've just started using Affinity, so maybe there's a way to coax more out, but so far this seems (to me) to be the one area Affinity lags behind other software. You may want to go to a third-party sharpener. Somebody here with greater experience may have some recommendations what integrates best with Affinity.

Got it, thank you...

I don't know if this is a bug or the way the trial version is setup. I'd like to compare RAW conversions and AP jpeg against Photoshop, but if I can't save a file...