krbo

19/12/22: Added Vibrance Adjustment

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!
I wanted to sneak in another video before the new year, so here you go:
High Dynamic Range Workflows HDR/EDR technology has actually been present in Affinity Photo for a few years now (since around 1.7 I believe), but with V2 introducing JPEG-XL export I thought it was about time to do a proper video on high dynamic range editing. This video was shot in HDR and mastered to 1600 nits of peak brightness, so if you have a display capable of that brightness (for example, the M1 Pro/Max MacBook displays), you're in for a visual treat! For those viewing on SDR displays, the content will be tone mapped and will of course lose a bit of its impact...

Hi, I've checked around the forum and I've seen this question come up before, so I'll mention it again.
Can we please have the ability to have "Save History with Document" as a default in app preferences. I like to have my history saved with my work so I can backtrack if I don't like something in the future, and often forget to click it before I save.
Thanks!

Why is that even in there? Who went "here's a brilliant idea, let's waste the user's time by forcing them to wait on a beachball for each and every settings change"?! WTF. I wish upon that person zero trusts in their farts for the rest of their life.

The chaotic rollout of Affinity 2 speaks once again to the lack of systematic, user-focused, real-world beta testing of Affinity products.
1.) Did beta testing really miss the fact that many users, perhaps especially in business environments, would not be able to install Affinity 2 programs on machines they've been using with Affinity 1 for years?
2.) Did beta testing really miss the fact that widely-used image management software like Faststone Image Viewer and XnView MP could no longer be used to launch Affinity 2 unless users wrote their own .bat files or obtained a helper program to serve as an intermediary program launcher?
Everyday users (mostly non-technical types) discovered these two problems in the first seconds after downloading and running the Affinity 2 installers. Did not one beta tester report these problems?
Just these two foundational issues have generated many new forum topics and more are appearing today. Some of the topics now have hundreds of posts. How many users have time to wade through hundreds of posts in hopes of finding a solution?
Affinity users have spent days working on the software to make it usable. Many are trying to determine whether or not to continue to use Affinity 2 software. They worry about the future of their businesses. If they choose to continue, how is it possible to incorporate Affinity 2 software into familiar workflows used for years with Affinity 1?
It appears that Affinity support personnel were taken by surprise by the deluge of questions and complaints concerning the unusability of Affinity 2 software. 
I admire the Affinity support personnel who have worked patiently, courteously, and it seems frantically, to respond to users about these problems and to develop workarounds that will make Affinity 2 functional.
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I understand from Mark's posts this morning that a second installer alternative that eliminates these two install and launch problems will be available soon, or to quote Mark "we hope it won't be long." An MSI installer will be made available that enables users to avoid the dysfunction caused by the MSIX installer currently in use.
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/171506-installing-affinity-photo-2-in-windows-11-from-the-serif-msix-file/&do=findComment&comment=988773

All this frustration, turmoil, disillusionment, anger, and time-wasting could have been avoided by implementing a proper beta testing program. Affinity 2 now calls to mind a Dilbert cartoon, with sales hype taking precedence over user requirements and preferences. 
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I have commented previously about the inadequate beta testing of Affinity software. Things are missed in Affinity beta testing that the average, non-technical user discovers immediately. Testing now seems worse than ever as the most obvious installation and startup failures are not being caught. Perhaps it is just cheaper to do it this way--limited testing followed by mopping up after users complain.
Examples of surprises with previous releases:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/87151-lost-keyboard-shortcuts-170-split/#comment-462884
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/87186-file-sizes-in-photo-for-windows-170-split/#comment-473255

Affinity 2 user interfaces seem less readable than in Affinity 1. Difficulties with discerning what is on the screen have been described in numerous posts in several threads in these forums.
I'm willing to attribute some of my difficulties to my aging eyes, though dozens of other applications do not cause me problems. I have also noticed in recent years that it is fashionable to make printed publications less readable by using dark gray or dark blue text on black backgrounds and even worse. I also find the controls on the dashboard of my 2014 Honda Accord to be far less usable than the controls on my 1998 Accord. The 1998 controls could be set almost entirely by touch. The 2014 controls, which consist of rows of identical buttons, require actually looking at the dash to first find the needed control and then to make the desired adjustment.
This leads me to ask three questions in regard to user interface design:
1.) What principles of ergonomic design suggest that reducing visibility/contrast/distinctiveness produces a better user experience?
2.) What advantages accrue to the user through the use of very low contrast and very low distinctness in the user interface? 
3.) Do reduced contrast and easily-confused icons reduce the possibilities for user error?
Perhaps those in the graphical design business could educate me about this.

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash

Affinity V2 does not currently have scripting support but it's something our developers are working towards, as mentioned here and demonstrated here.

Pros:
MSI had an installation success rate of ~85% (and we have many requests to our tech support team for v1 install failures). MSIX promises a 99.9% success rate.  MSI requires admin privileges to install. MSIX installs per-user, but files are deduplicated so that disk space isn't wasted. MSI apps are not sandboxed from other applications, meaning other applications can break those apps (we have seen this with several third-party apps in the past). MSIX apps are sandboxed to prevent this. MSI updates require a manual download of the full ~550mb installer which must be manually installed. MSIX can perform in-app delta updates which are smaller and faster. MSI updates can only be performed one at a time. MSIX can update all three apps simultaneously. MSI cannot guarantee that an uninstall will leave your machine in the exact state prior to install. MSIX installs are segregated and don't rely on the registry or special filesystem locations meaning an uninstall always leaves you in a clean state. Installation and app data paths are cleaned on uninstall. MSI apps cannot integrate with Microsoft Photos app to provide "Edit In..." style features. MSIX can. MSI does not require a digital signature. MSIX does (this means any MSIX that appears to be from Serif, will be guaranteed to be from us and only us). Cons:
MSI can allow the user to change the installation directory. MSIX can move installed apps to different drives, but it cannot choose a specific directory (due to the sandbox). See below: MSI can allow an option to install a desktop shortcut. MSIX doesn't provide this as an option, but you can pin the apps to either the Start Menu or the Taskbar. There is also the secret Shell:AppsFolder location in Explorer that allows you to right-click or drag the icon to your Desktop for a shortcut as a workaround if you need it.  MSI has easy discovery of undocumented app locations for launching from a third-party. MSIX hides the install location due to the sandbox, but we use App Execution Alias to enable this scenario. You can find the aliases in the following location: C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\AffinityDesigner2.exe
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\AffinityPhoto2.exe
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\AffinityPublisher2.exe
Remembering to replace username with your Windows username. Also, those paths are already in your %PATH% variable so you can often launch them without even specifying the full path, e.g. just AffinityPhoto2.exe. There are bugs in some third-party applications with the App Execution Alias , and the next post includes aflaunch.exe as a work around if you need that instead. 
 

Yes, we will be providing MSI installers to customers who require them. This FAQ will be updated with links to MSI downloads when they become available.
Yes. These are now available
 

Technically correct, because you'd have to drag Serif to court to actively assist you with transferring the license. But software purchased within the EU can be sold regardless what the EULA says. Latter renders invalid in this point since The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that publishers cannot stop you from reselling apps or digital licenses for them.

There were lovely check marks in a Layers panel, I can saw from a Moon which layer is active, which not
Now they are replaced with awful dark grey and not-so-dark grey dots on which I waste time clicking to detect what is active what not active.
(can't give sample right now as Win7 support is dropped off)

Horrible UI
previously:

There were lovely check marks in a Layers panel, I can saw from a Moon which layer is active, which not
Now they are replaced with awful dark grey and not-so-dark grey dots on which I waste time clicking to detect what is active what not active.
(can't give sample right now as Win7 support is dropped off)

Horrible UI
previously:

Sorry, we are focussing our efforts on a major release (new features and fixes) and consequently have not done any minor patches for a long time, as you say. But no not dead.

I've had today twice small install glitch - update starts and fail during prepare phase (very soon)
It was too low free space on my Windows drive - 2Gb were not enough.
 
I would prefer, if you can modify installer, some message with more sense like "not enough space on your target drive" instead of non descriptive "setup failed".
thanks!
 

opened all your samples simultaneously on Win7 x64 (so no OpenCL)
played with RAW, developed, played more in photo persona - not a single hickup!
 
 

@Mark Ingram Thanks for the reply.  I've attached the log file.  
It crashed twice for me this morning - but since your reply I've done all I can to make it misbehave and it's been perfect.  If/when it does crash again I'll send the dump.
@krbo Thanks for the driver suggestion.  I use Topaz labs (denoise, sharpen and gigapixel) pretty extensively, bith as plug-ins to Affinity Photo and as standalones.  This current driver has given me no issues at all with using them.  The previous one did.  The fun of computers, eh?  Makes me glad I'm not a programmer / in QA!  Tracking down bugs must be a nightmare when experiences differ so.  If I ever manage to get the crashing to be repeatable (or at least find a way of triggering it a bit more frequently than at present) then I'll try rolling back to the version you suggest.
 
Log.txt

Glad you like it.

This new "change" passed pretty much under a radar.

I've just tested it by adding one lens profile from Adobe product and it worked great - now have two lens correction profiles to choose from.
 
NIce one, liked it a lot!
 
 

This new "change" passed pretty much under a radar.

I've just tested it by adding one lens profile from Adobe product and it worked great - now have two lens correction profiles to choose from.
 
NIce one, liked it a lot!
 
 

This new "change" passed pretty much under a radar.

I've just tested it by adding one lens profile from Adobe product and it worked great - now have two lens correction profiles to choose from.
 
NIce one, liked it a lot!
 
 

This new "change" passed pretty much under a radar.

I've just tested it by adding one lens profile from Adobe product and it worked great - now have two lens correction profiles to choose from.
 
NIce one, liked it a lot!
 
 

yes!
problem solved!
 

yes!
problem solved!
 

latest beta 780
latest Intel drivers (27.20.100.8783 few days ago)
 
nothing changed in HD 630 and OpenCL - still hardware deceleration in use