SandraC

I signed up for the public beta, and was very impressed with the features and functionality. I do have issue that has nothing to do with 3rd party plugins, but with Affinity itself. Will post it appropriate forum.

Viveza 2 crashing when you add a control point it common issue when used with non adobe editing software. It will crash PSPx8 and 9, but works with PSPx7 and Affinity. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why it works with ONE Non-Adobe program but crashes others. Until NIK makes it open source.. *shrug*

Tested some other plugins - PTLens Correction by PaperPress, causes the program to shut down without an error message. Same applies to DxO ViewPoint2 and FilmPack. Anthropics Tech Portrait Professional works. A few follow ups about NIK software; Yes, it does work, with a few caveats. You lose the Brush features with Viveza and Define. You also can't 'save recipes' with ColorEfex Pro 4. Also, with Viveza 2, the colors of your image in the 'preview' window won't look correct on the entire image, unless you zoom to at least 33%, but are correct in the 'thumbnail' window. There are known 'glitches' when NIK is used with other 'non-Adobe' photo editors.

So far, once I figured out that they wouldn't work on CR2/ORF/RAW or other raw files, I exported image as a JPG. So far, I have gotten good results with Nik Viveza 2, Define 2, Color Efex Pro 4, HDR Efex Pro 2, Silver Efex Pro 2, Topaz Labs, and Focus Magic. Alien Skin plugins have issues with Pixel transparency, Piccure and Piccure Plus just don't start, and neither do Redfield plugins. Now I know that many of these haven't been tested by Affinity programmers, but I thought I would give them a try. Overall, I am rather impressed.