pixelrain

Yes, it's a little bit different to how we've done it before, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Previously, once a beta had "ended", it was difficult to know when a new one had started. So now, any beta user can just continuously use the beta, without having to worry about switching over to the retail one at some point, and then watching out for when a new customer beta starts, and switching back to that. 
 
The key bit of information which people might need to know is that the latest beta version and retail versions are exactly the same. 

Brushes have a "Protect Alpha" tickbox available is that what you're looking for ?

What's New in Affinity Photo 1.6
 
New light user interface option New stroke stabiliser for all pencil and brush tools New "Edit In" integration with Apple Photos  Metal 2 accelerated view optimised for macOS High Sierra Improved view pan/zoom performance and Improved performance with large documents New font chooser dropdown with recents, used fonts and favourites New Glyph browser Align to key items  Text frame vertical alignment options  Fit frame to text Custom brush wet edges Outlier stacking mode Improved Photoshop Plugin support Improved Live Filters performance Many PDF export improvements including vector export of multi-stop gradients Numerous bug fixes and other improvements
  For more information about the Affinity Photo launch and how to buy go here. 
 
What's New in Affinity Designer 1.6
 
New light user interface option New stroke stabiliser for all pencil and brush tools Metal 2 accelerated view optimised for macOS High Sierra  New font chooser dropdown with recents, used fonts and favourites New Glyph browser Improved view pan/zoom performance  Improved performance with large documents Align to key items  Text frame vertical alignment options Fit frame to text  Many PDF export improvements including vector export of multi-stop gradients Added 'Unlock All' and 'Show All' commands Numerous bug fixes and other improvements  
For more information about the Affinity Designer launch and how to buy go here. 

I'm experiencing the same issue in Affinity Photo (probably Designer too). In Autodesk SketchBook it works fine, so there's nothing wrong with my tablet. I'm using a Wacom Intuos Pro S.
 
The stabiliser makes the strokes smooth, but I can't draw like that because stabiliser causes a delay (that's how it works) so it's not an acceptable solution. Also the vector persona in Designer isn't acceptable because I want to draw with pixels, not vectors (also the strokes change a bit after they are drawn because of the smoothing algorithm).
 
So currently I can't draw in Affinity software. 

Organic texture Brushes Pack 1 Version 2.0
 
 
I have been working on updating the original texture brush packs so that it complies with more recent uploads
 
The original 11 brush packs(.zip) files have been removed and replaced with a single file containing all the original brush packs so that they are stil accessible
Added a new set now containing 12 brush packs (120 brushes) also in a single file for download.
 
Made significant changes to the original brushes
a. simplified the nozzles by removing the intense pattern overlays and added 28 new additional png files to increase pattern variation.
b. Reduced the initial size of the some of the original brushes.
c. Adjusted the brush dynamics to allow for use of flow and accumulation in the general brush tab
d. Where possible reduced the reliance on random size variation in brush dynamics
d. Added sample 4 page PDF for download
e. Removed original sample images (11) and replaced with just 4  
 
enjoy!
 
 
New Versions
TB ORGANICS V2.zip
 
OB 1 Set 1.pdf
 
Old Brush Set
ORGANICS 1 ALL V1.zip 
 
 




 

The application does not freeze or use more memory than normal. It is fine and stable, but the line quality in Pixel Persona is unusable. I'm primarily focused on digital painting which I would like to completely do trough AD, but it is not possible yet. Images - AD (High Precision disabled + Star 03) versus Clip Studio and Rebelle side by side with tablet settings.

Making available new set of isometric Raster Pattern Brushes some of which were used in the creation of 'Tin Man'
6 Packs (60 Brushes)
Initial Brush Size to 100px
Added 2 A4 sample sheets for reference [PDF]
Enjoy!


PB ISO PATTERNS Set 1-01-03.pdf
PB ISO 01 P 01-03.zip
 
PB ISO PATTERNS Set 1-04-06.pdf
PB ISO 01 P 04-06.zip

Don't think its system colour profile related as it happens with anything other that default srgb used as profile in document, seems that the colour selector does that especially if you drag vertically in it.

Thanks, Mark. My new document in AD – where I originally saw the effect – had a non-sRGB colour profile (ROMM RGB: ISO 22928-2:2013) set for the document. My new document in APh – where I didn't see the effect – was set to sRGB IEC61966-2.1; changing this to ROMM RGB: ISO 22928-2:2013 makes the same problem show up (and changing the colour profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 in AD makes the problem go away).

Hi, I have recently purchased Affinity Photo and have been quite happy with what I can achieve with it. I'm a photographer and I normally go through the workflow of Iridient X-Transformer --> Lightroom --> Affinity Photo on my PC. Affinity Photo is only used for stacking and tone mapping purposes using TIF files generated by Lightroom. More and more I am finding myself going through the same performance pain points where I am basically sitting there for minutes waiting for Affinity Photo to do something (which I will get into below). Last night I downloaded the trial version of Affinity Photo on my Macbook Pro and did a few tests. Turns out Affinity Photo consistently performs up to 3 times faster on the MBP using the same set of files.
 
I am hoping someone with more experience here can give me some advice on how I could improve the performance of Affinity Photo on PC.
 
Below are the specs for my PC and MBP:
PC
Intel i7-4790K OC'd @ 4.40 Ghz (with a large Noctua air cooler)
16GB DDR3 RAM @ 2400 MHz with XMP profile 1 enabled (G.Skill Trident-X 8Gx2 F3-2400C10D-16GTX)
Nvidia 1080 GPU (a Gigabyte OC model)
 
Macbook Pro (Mid 2015, 15'')
Intel i7 @ 2.5 Ghz
16GB DDR3 @ 1600 MHz
AMD Radeon R9 M370X + Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB
 
As you can see the PC's spec is significantly higher than the macbook's. It is winter here at the moment (<0C outside) and the system is well ventilated (has no problem in 144hz gaming) so there is no thermal limitation.
 
The photos that I edit generally sit on a NAS. The PC is connected to the NAS via ethernet and the MBP via wireless AC.
 
I have uploaded a sample of 4 RAF files generated by a Fujifilm X-T2 onto Dropbox. Here's the link.
 
To test the performance. I always repeated the following steps and timed each one on each machine:
Create a new stack in Affinity Photo using the 4 RAF files Set Live Stack Group blending to minimum Rasterize the Live Stack Group Tone map the pixel layer  
Here are some observations I made from the tests:
Affinity Photo loads up faster on the MBP than the PC. Creating a Live Stack Group is consistently quicker on the MBP. Live Stack group blend mode live preview is a lot faster on the MBP than the PC. Live Stack group rasterizing is significantly faster on the MBP than the PC (10sec vs minutes) PC tone mapping consistently takes 00:50 ~ 1:30 to process. MBP tone mapping consistently takes 00:20 ~ 00:22 to process. CPU heavy tasks will utilise 100% of the CPU on the MBP but only 60~80% on the PC in some cases. There is no CPU throttling on the PC at all (winter + large cooler) GPU utilisation never goes above 1% on the PC. There is very little disk/network bandwidth utilitsation during any of these tasks.  
All of the above are true regardless of which renderer I use on PC and whether I have hyper-threading enabled or not.
Having the RAF files on SSD's instead of the NAS made no differences either.
I have tried the latest 1.6 beta and it made no differences in performance on PC using the same steps above.
 
I don't understand why a PC with much better hardware is being out performed by a Macbook by 3 times as much and generally have a much smoother experience...
I am getting to the point where I am seriously considering using the MBP as a photo editing machine but that would mean some significant investment into repurchasing software licenses and some new hardware so I could actually dock the MBP to my PC monitors and input peripherals and I would rather not have to do that. Any help is much appreciated!
 
EDIT: more info on the spec's and additional notes on the observations.

This is the my first foray into using AD.
I guess I would say I'm a casual user but I absolutely love it!
Initially started with hand drawing but have decided to start to vectorize them.

That almost rhymes if you read it aloud. :D

The "blend mode" drop down selector in "Layer Effects" panel is very stubborn in this build; it keeps resetting back to the default value, no matter what i change it to.
 

 
Affinity Photo CB 1.5.2.62

Is it just me or brushes / drawing with them just feels slower compared to non beta build ?

Unhandled Exception (0x80131502) app crash while customizing toolbar; pretty sure last step was to move "assistant" icon to the end; guess he didn't like that :P
 

 
And the dump.
 
Affinity Photo CB 1.5.2.63

Is it just me or brushes / drawing with them just feels slower compared to non beta build ?

Unhandled Exception (0x80131502) app crash while customizing toolbar; pretty sure last step was to move "assistant" icon to the end; guess he didn't like that :P
 

 
And the dump.
 
Affinity Photo CB 1.5.2.63

If you need an color profile aware application to test images; you can use the portable Fullscreen Photo Viewer; just unzip and run it. The color management toggle is the F12 key. If the yellow tint is there too = color profile problems. :)

Hi Pixelrain,

It was indeed! This was something I had spotted and has now been fixed (as you've seen) in the latest build! 

hi pixelrain
 
Thanks for letting us know we shall get this reported

Click here to download the latest beta

Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Stability
Requirements: A valid product key, issued when Windows Affinity Photo version 1.5 was purchased.

As this is a beta release, it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that you may be adversely affected by the application failing.

We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post here and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.

Fixes
Fixed Export allows decimal point pixel sizes Fixed can't reset specific text style values Fixed unable to drag and drop .abr brushes to import them Fixed Equations aren't flagged red if they are not complete and correct Fixed Coarse Histogram warning doesn't have a tooltip Fixed images copied from MS paint appear flipped in Affinity Fixed input fields are clipped on the right edge in Live Filter Layers Fixed text blend gamma default set at 1 Fixed Tone Mapping clipped text field Fixed Tone Mapping moving a preset doesn't work and causes it to be lost Fixed Ctrl start doesn't restore deleted Tone Mapping presets Fixed undo set brush source missing tooltip Fixed Channel Image Icons not constrained by width Fixed typing a value for Vibrance Adjustment doesn't always apply that value Fixed tooltip typo on the Character Panel Fixed macros set effect colour control not appearing for macros Fixed blend modes cannot be changed in any Layer Effects Fixed some Pantone Palettes showing spot icon 

If you frequently work with 8000 x 8000 image sizes you mentioned, you really need more RAM (lots of it) for a smooth experience; also, Krita doesn't work very well with integrated Intel graphics. 

If you frequently work with 8000 x 8000 image sizes you mentioned, you really need more RAM (lots of it) for a smooth experience; also, Krita doesn't work very well with integrated Intel graphics. 

You can test your tablet with old windows Paint. If you ask me, I'm more inclined to think there is some issue in .net or visual c++ as this issues seem to love apps that use those things. :)

While I'm on a roll, I figured I may as well post some more recent photography edited in Photo  ;)
 
Some of these you may recognise from the video tutorials:
 

Lone Purple by James Ritson, on Flickr
 
One of those nice surprises you get sometimes, I didn't think much of this photo until I started experimenting with blend modes - at which point it became very moody and striking.
 

Spinning Out by James Ritson, on Flickr
 
An abstract long-exposure shot of a spinning record. I was shooting some video for a personal project and decided to grab a few stills too.
 

Monsal Tunnel by James Ritson, on Flickr
 
A very wet day in Derbyshire, which kind of spoiled the view over Monsal Dale. There was this tunnel, however, which is really atmospheric with all the reflections from the damp areas.
 

Sugar Factory At Night by James Ritson, on Flickr
 
Shot at night, the initial image lacked impact until I brought in some brush work and blend modes - this resulted in the Creative Painting tutorial, where you can enhance colours in images with artificial lighting.
 

Robin Hood Hotel by James Ritson, on Flickr
 
A disused hotel building in Newark (Nottinghamshire), and I've brought some colour into the sign using brush work with blend modes (mainly Overlay, Reflect and Screen).
 
 
That's all for now - just wanted to share some work, hope you find it interesting!