Daniele Salvatore

This isn't about AP placing images as an object, it's about the tools changing when attempting to paste.  The move tool is active when you make a copy but when you want to paste the copy on another image, the tool switches back to  the View tool.  I am happy that it does paste as an object, that's how it should be.  The problem is in the tools.  It works great in Affinity Designer, but not in Photo.

Hi Daniele Salvatore, cokerms,
You don't have to change to The Move Tool. If the layer is already a pixel layer (and most of the times it is - all layers created in Affinity Photo are pixel layers, only placed images are "stored" as Image layers) just press ctrl + C then ctrl + V (even with a Selection Marquee Tool selected) to paste it to a new layer.
 
@cokerms,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

I tested this and see...
 
Preview works - Extra large icon, large icons, medium icons, tiles & content
 
Preview is not working - List, small icons
 
 
Ryan.

Aha!  This is what I have been looking for.  There's nothing about this in the HELP system that I could find.
 
It's a very convoluted adjustment though, I'd really prefer to have two keypresses instead of two mouse-buttons.  Also, I have to say I prefer the wheel for adjusting things, instead of mouse movements.  I'm old, my reflex motions don't adapt quickly.  ;)
 
It's a bit wish-list-y, but I'd love to be able to change these commands.  

Hi Daniele,
 
I see that MEB was able to help you your questions. Sorry, I was out all day long.
 
Happy masking  :)
 
d.

Right click on the photo and select from context menu 'Transform > Flip Horizontal'
 
Or from the menu 'Arrange > Flip Horizontal'   :)
 
d.

I've been a Serif Photoplus user for 15 years, almost every version, but I'm struggling with Serif Affinity Photo and the help menu with the program doesn't seem to yield the results I'm after. 
 
How on earth do you cut out an image, please?  I want to cut out one of my products (usually a complex shape) from an image to leave it on a transparent background which will then save as a png (in order to preserve the transparency). In online retail, this is known as a cutout shot. In Photoplus it's simply a case of opening an image, using Cutout Studio, and then using export function to save the image as the required png.
But in Affinity there seems to be no cutout menu at all. And when I search the help menu it returns options, none of which say it's cutout. Or Cutting out.
In fact everything in Affinity seems far less intuitive and so much more complicated.  I've accepted the loss of Photofix (although I hope the programmers might consider adding it to Affinity - along with Cutout Studio -at some point at it's great for the amateur user who will probably find Affinity Photo way beyond their understanding) and have had limited success replicating the use of curves and HSL in Affinity to achieve what is very simply done in Photoplus, but Cutout seems just not to exist.
 
 
As an aside, I find the instructions for use of any of the functions very 'jargonesque', almost as if you need some sort of qualification in photo editing and/or programming language to even begin to use it so I'm sorry if I'm asking for something that IS already explained. It's just that the "laymen's" terms don't seem to exist in the Affinity help section!  (I'm only half an hour down the road from you Serif guys in Nottingham so it's not as if we're in different universes!)
 
Any help on whether Cutout is available in the Photo Beta - and how I find it - would be greatly appreciated. It's an integral part of my weekly work in my business.
Thank you in advance.
Helen

When I try to use the Gradient Tool the whole image changes, becoming white with gradient effects, i.e. white to gray.

I congratulate all of you for this great achievement; thank you so much.

I have started the use of AD incidentally, I was actually looking for a Photo Retouching; since your Affinity Photo was not yet ready I starded by mistake and curiosity looking at AD that I found much more interesting that I was expecting. Now I am very fond of it and I would raccomand to everybody.
Yes, I am not a Professional Designer; I noticed that mostly of the people of this forum comes from previous experiences with other high level softwares. They speak a language that often for me is incomprehensible (I am a normal Technical Engineer with familiarity on CAD 3D). 
My opinion is that you should pay more attention to a huge potential users that usually are afraid to approach programs such as Photoshop, not just because of the cost, but mainly due to the fact taht they are afraid of the difficulties to use them.
Before AD I tried only GIMP that I did not like because looks easy, but it is actually too complex; maybe my statement looks strange, but it is easier to learn how to use Affinity Designer.
A minimum additional struggle will allow many people to have the great chance to use your very appealing software that allows even naive people, like I am, to use and appreciate it; you are much closer thatn maybe you feel.
The rule is very simple: do not only look at people that are already expert, as the market is incredibly massive with the new potential users.
Definitely I will buy either AD and AP, when available.
In any case I congratulate for the great efforts you are facing.

Hi Daniele,
 
It's nice to have this conversation with you.
Two things struck my attention.
 
First: you are a technical engineer who works with 3d cad applications. I guess you might be familiar with something like Autocad or Solidworks, or similar.
I do 3d for motion graphics, not the same thing but bear with me for a moment.
In 3ds Max, users can set up a different type of units, as 3ds Max can render a quite accurate representation of actual models (a house, a furniture, and so on). Now, if the user doesn't take the units into account, as you can easily imagine the result will be a disaster. That said, 3ds Max doesn't know that the user is building, say, a chair, so the units are not its business ;)
The thing is, if the units are wrong, the resulting chair might be good for a giant or for a bug, but not for a human.
In other words, as I'm sure you've had to learn the technicalities of Cad, same is required for any other professional applications, not only AD.
You could argue that you don't need to output a real chair from AD, and in fact, you wouldn't have had any issues if your work would have stopped at the creation process within AD. But the very moment you export something, you are basically doing a render, which means, you are using a professional application with a concrete purpose. And same as with Cad or 3ds Max, you the user only know what the purpose is, hence you need to have the knowledge in order to proper prepare your renders.
 
Second: I can understand why Gimp didn't click. Is not that is just complicated it is also a matter of consistency (someone would say "patterns"). A user interface is a serious business.
When you do some type of operation, say, using a keystroke combination, you would expect to use the same paradigm in a similar context. Very basic example: if I press B in order to use the Brush tool in AD Draw Persona, I would expect the same shortcut when I want to use the brush tool in Pixel Persona (and in fact, that's exactly how it works).
Now, creating a unified, coherent environment is one thing, providing feedback to an entire workflow (what are you exporting for?) it's a different thing.
The potential users you are talking about, they probably don't need to print a poster for a commercial campaign, and I think they can still enjoy AD. But if they do need to move to the next step, and do a professional job, well there are no shortcuts, they need to learn.
 
We saw this happening in the smartphone industry. People expect constant feedback from their phones. The more you try to dimish the level of interaction required, the less you get in terms of operability. And in fact, there are several restrictions regarding what you can do with a phone (and thus people rooting or jailbreaking). In the end, with a phone you can do only that much, hence the plethora of apps created to do specific tasks.
 
Best,
Andrew

I have started the use of AD incidentally, I was actually looking for a Photo Retouching; since your Affinity Photo was not yet ready I starded by mistake and curiosity looking at AD that I found much more interesting that I was expecting. Now I am very fond of it and I would raccomand to everybody.
Yes, I am not a Professional Designer; I noticed that mostly of the people of this forum comes from previous experiences with other high level softwares. They speak a language that often for me is incomprehensible (I am a normal Technical Engineer with familiarity on CAD 3D). 
My opinion is that you should pay more attention to a huge potential users that usually are afraid to approach programs such as Photoshop, not just because of the cost, but mainly due to the fact taht they are afraid of the difficulties to use them.
Before AD I tried only GIMP that I did not like because looks easy, but it is actually too complex; maybe my statement looks strange, but it is easier to learn how to use Affinity Designer.
A minimum additional struggle will allow many people to have the great chance to use your very appealing software that allows even naive people, like I am, to use and appreciate it; you are much closer thatn maybe you feel.
The rule is very simple: do not only look at people that are already expert, as the market is incredibly massive with the new potential users.
Definitely I will buy either AD and AP, when available.
In any case I congratulate for the great efforts you are facing.

Hi Daniele,
 
I respect your point of view and I'm only adding my 2 c. here because the issue about simplicity vs complexity is a very interesting topic.
Yes, UI needs to be clear enough to let the user move his own steps and in fact, it seems to me that you didn't face any particular problem in order to create the vector file. The problem showed up when you needed to export the file.
Now, as others have already mentioned, one needs to know what the file is going to be used for and handling dpi, format, units and so forth is not something you can expect the software to take care for you.
One thing is having fun with the creative part of the software, another thing is getting technical because of the technical needs.
 
For instance, I was having headaches with the colors of my images being inconsistent, even on my same computer between applications.
I've had to read about color calibration, color profiles (even file format can make a difference). Now I have a little better understanding of what's going on under the hood. Or for example, when I create an animation in After Effects I need to know frame rate, safe area, output, and so on so forth.
 
The idea that everything has to be simple and we need to get a feedback from the applications we use, is actually wrong when it comes to a professional environment. Why? Because if the applications would do the job for you, you wouldn't bother investigating further the issue, and your professional level would be the same as any other average user.
 
Best,
Andrew

Could spread it over multiple cores utilizing less than 100% in total.
 
Nothing I use maxes out this lowly computer with two cores. RAM usage is generally moderate--unless I am exporting a massive file to PDF. Even then, the CPU isn't quite maxed out and I am able to do other tasks as I use those other applications. RAM usage steadily climbs but never runs out (thinking XDP here with exporting a > than 150" banner at 150 dpi, which is my worse-case scenario.
 
Daniele, your file took a few seconds to export at 300 dpi as a PDF/X-4 file. It exported the file as a PNG image, the full page, in 5 seconds or so. My CPU spiked at 95% for 2 seconds or so with the PDF, about the same with the PNG. RAM usage hardly blipped. With the file loaded, AD was using about 245 megs of RAM and I didn't really catch much a rise.
 
Mike

I too have the same problem as Shalom3 and have had since updating to AD1.5.0.25. We are now up to .29 and still have the same problem!!

Hallo,
I observe in a few last versions that Affinity is working very slowly. This can be seen even by simple shapes, by basic action (for example by selecting and deselecting of any shape). Timeout can be more than 2-3 second. Upstairs in the window bar often appears that the program is not responding.
Previously, the program operated on the same computer quickly (using OS Windows 7, 64 bit).

Daniele is a Windows user, like me, so the option of switching to Affinity Photo isn't available yet.

Yes, I have the second intersecting line. And I need the point to be moved to intersection, and to get straight line also. In Illustrator I just can add point into intersection, no problem with that.

I know how to bring up the Measurement guides by holding CMD with an object selected. However, at 100% this is fairly useless for objects near one another, as the label font is microscopic (see attached.)
 
How can I make it so I can actually read the text without needing to zoom in to ~1200% every time? 
 
Thanks!

The dark UI is OK when options are clearly visible, such as ticked or unticked checkboxes. However when you have a small set of buttons (for example the Typography section of the text Character dialog box) it is not clear which buttons are enabled, disabled or already selected.
Enabled is grey text on a dark-grey background. Disabled is feint-grey text on a dark-grey background. Selected is grey text on a very-dark-grey background. You do not need to make the whole UI lighter, just use colours with more contrast. I have tried to illustrate this on the attached picture using the [Tr] button as an example. 

No, it isn't currently possible in Affinity Designer. A Distort/Perspective/MeshWarp Tool is planned, but it probably won't be added until after AD 1.5 is released commercially.

It is possible to change the shape of a photo with Affinity Designer (Windows beta) from a typical JPG rectangular to a trapezoidal one?

Hi Mvdarbs,
Here's a way (clip without sound).
You can perform the subtract boolean operation directly without converting the text to curves first but you may have to fill the resulting shape with color.

Hi MEB, 
 
Nice and simple again, I like it. Thanks again for the help. By the way, keep doing those little videos, thats a great idea!
 
Thanks folks
Mark

Hi edferrigan,
Go to menu File ▸ Document Setup..., change to the Colour tab (in the middle of the Document Setup dialog), there's a Transparent Background check box on bottom.