dmstraker

Assuming Affinity gets massively popular (like it deserves to be), then an interesting crossover point happens at some point where Adobe begin to feel the pain of people switching to Affinity. What then does the Adobe gorilla do? There's plenty of historical examples of big companies scratching such itches, even with such underhanded methods as repeatedly suing the smaller company for no purpose other than to drain them of resources (Dyson got a lot of this, btw).

Oh yes! The flipping bits seems to have fallen off the right hand edge of my Surface Pro. Little arrow things revealed them. So: Select clone tool. Find 'flip' on top toolbar on right. Maybe clicking little double-arrow thing. Select Flip Horizontal. Clone away! (possibly on a new pixel layer). Thanks, smadell. Learned something new today!

Mmm. The Nik HDR Efex is different to others. To install, you may need to separately add the HDR Efex folder (typically under Program Files/Google/Nik Collection). You can then access it via the Filters/Plugins route. Yet this does not allow you to enter multiple files, which is normally initiated in Photoshop via the File menu. There is, however, an executable within the HDR Efex folder as above. You can just navigate there and run it stand-alone, in which you can File/Open, run the HDR processing and then File/Save as. It'll let you save as JPEG or TIFF. Not quite integrated into Affinity, but usable.

Just go through the queries in this forum. This will show real examples of where people have got frustrated by doing the wrong thing. A classic way to catch frustration is when a user repeats the same ineffective action. When we do something that we think should work and it doesn't, then our first step is typically to do the same thing again. How you warn would be an application standard, maybe configurable, like limited-flash red text in bottom status bar.

For mirroring a cloned area, you can: Add new pixel layer (Layer/New Layer). Stay on this layer for the steps below. Select Clone Stamp tool. On top bar, set Source: Current Layer & Below. Clone the area you want to mirror, placed only roughly where it should go (it won't yet be mirrored). Arrange/Flip Horizontal (this flips just the cloned area). Use Move tool (arrow on left toolbar) to drag the mirrored clone into exact place. Erase unwanted parts of the cloned area with left toolbar Erase Brush (or use masking). Because this is all done on a new layer, it is non-destructive and can be adjusted later. You can also Layer/Merge Down to squish it into the original layer if you like.

DarkClown, on 12 Apr 2017 - 5:52 PM, said: Can't find mirroring in AP clone stamp. Source as Current Layer, etc. but not mirroring. Am I missing something?

I spent a while when first getting used to AP swearing at it because it seemed to be 'broken'. But then I found I'd done something wrong. A typical example is trying to clone from an adjustment layer. Wouldn't it be nice if (WIBNI) AP noticed that I was doing something stupid and popped up some kind of help. One day the computer's built-in cortisol detector will help spot user stress, but until then, a bit of intelligence could save nephyte idiocy and help build a loyal following. [Aside: Machine intelligence doesn't always need much intelligence. Back in the 80s I was working on a wordprocessor system. We did a 'special' version and put it on our secretary's machine. All it did was count backspace frequency and, when a threshold was hit, would pop up a box saying 'You're tired. Go and have a cup of coffee'. She was amazed and became convinced it was reading her mind.]

Stars rotate rather than shift, of course. If you can find Polaris (assuming you're in the Northern hemisphere) in your star map, you could perhaps rotate images about this. From the help system: "To move the rotation centre: Select layer content. Select the Move Tool, then click Show Rotation Centre on the context toolbar. The centre shows centrally within the selected layer content. Drag the rotation centre to a new position in the selected layer content or anywhere on the page. Once you've moved the centre, you can rotate your layer content about it as described above"

Photoshop CS6/ACR now won't process Sony .arw files from my RX100V (though it does cope with .arw from my A7R2). Photoshop/Lightroom CC is 10 pounds/month in the UK. Ach. Why AP for me (a super-keen amateur photographer)? Some reasons: Excellent selection/layer/mask/blend mode non-destructive editing. Genius blend ranges (blend-if killer). Magical lighting tool. All I need in luminance and colour edting. Superb help system and training videos. Lots of photoshop compatibility (also means magazine articles, youtube etc are easy to translate). Dynamic company with responsive staff and regular updates. I feel more than a statistic. Nik/Topaz compatibility. Yet I am still currently still using Lightroom (purchased version, not rental) as front end because (a) reasonable browse facility, but more about ( b ) better lens corrections (esp. chromatic aberration) and better HDR merge. But then I switch to AP for general editing. When AP fix these I'll be a very happy bunny. I'm currently building a presentation for photo clubs in my are (South Wales and vicinity) called 'Anything but Photoshop'). This means I've chewed through much of the competition. On1 comes second but is a very different animal. Affinity is the clear winner by a country mile.

Lens glare in spectacles is similar to lens flare when there is a bright light ahead (like the sun). Here's a video I found very helpful from the official Affinity set: My personal notes from this: Use Filters/Frequency Separation. Turn up radius until flare is not visible on high-pass layer. On low-frequency layer, use soft clone brush (LH toolbar) to remove flare colour. Then use soft healing brush tool (LH toolbar) to improve blending around this area. Look at just high frequency layer for colour. Use Sponge brush tool (LH toolbar), with Desaturate and HSL Saturation (on top toolbar) to ensure all colours are equally removed. (A higher radius on the Frequency separation controls might have avoided the need for this). You can also use Inpainting brush tool (LH toolbar) to paint out stronger colours on high frequency layer. Desaturate again as needed.

In Win10 AP, Ctrl-C worked for me (I was able to paste it into a powerpoint, for example). Ctrl-X also cuts (removes). Ctrl-V pastes as new layer. A trap I fell into a number of times was that I was on an adjustment layer. You have to have the pixel layer selected. When something like this which should work doesn't I will also if necessary go back and reboot the PC.

Note: On1 Photo RAW (major competitor) also offers Shift-[ and -] to feather. It also offers Control-[ and -] to change opacity, which would be great to see in Affinity.

Googling Finnish keyboards, it seems [ is AltGr-8 and ] is AltGr-9. Try these for changing brush size. AltGr is to the right of the spacebar. If this works, { and } should be AltGr-7 and -0.

Yes. Photoshop does something similar. Yet sometimes you just want to use the keyboard.

Interesting principle about priors. And the general notion of how to know which are the "right" edges. Like if you divided the image into little squares, then isolated those with the widest lines running through them. Or only chose lines of greater length or width. Hmm.

Both Photoshop and Affinity Photo use [ and ] to change brush size. This is very helpful alignment. It would be great if I could also change brush feathering in Affinity with Shift-[ (ie. '{') and Shift-]. Thanks!

Thanks, MBd! I'm still a beginner, really. Happy to share experiments but not be authoritative. I'll have a go with curves. I did try blend ranges with no improvement in the images with which I used this, but it is indeed a powerful option. I tried Gaussian blur but not min/max/others - I'll experiment with these.

I wanted to enhance dark lines in an architectural image, so needed a layer with only outlines and otherwise transparent. Here's what I did. Duplicate background Detect edges Adjustment layer: Black/white, Merge Layer/Invert Adjustment layer: Levels black 50%, Merge Filters/Colours/Erase White Paper Opacity to suit. (Yes, I could Blend Mode: Darken rather than erase white paper, but having just the lines gives a bit more flexibility). Is there a better way?

Following on from a previous post, I've created three sets of macros for selecting a part of an image based on five Blend Ranges 'luminosity' curves (nominally called Blacks, Shadows, Mid-tones, Highlights and Whites). You can download the zip file here (the forum doesn't seem to like zip files, so I put it on my website). A few points of note (more in the included .pdf file): The 'Preview' set just cuts out the selection so you can see exactly what is being selected. It also lets you inspect the Blend Ranges curves. The 'Select' set turns this into a selection in the image. The 'Blend' set does the same for adjustments and filters. Curve overlaps are deliberately symmetrical so together they should sum to 100%. All sets include all contiguous combinations, such as 'Blacks+Shadows'.

It would be great to be able to nest categories within the library. For example I could then put all my macro sets for luminosity control under one top-level category. Thanks!

Aha! Many thanks!!

Could we be allowed to add a shortcut key to toggle the macro panel, please? Edit/Preferences, Shortcut keys. Photo, View. Studio > Macro. Thanks!

Yup. Got me too. Amazing there's a person called Sloof Lirfa. Or maybe that's a con too. Gullible is my middle name.

Eh? Is this something to do with the time of year? https://www.footasylum.com/lowdown-worldwide-exclusive-sloof-lirpa-on-sneaks-style-and-beats

Hooray for Affinity Photo and for every single person working on it. At last a programme that is serious enough to let me slough off of the Adobe shackles. Hooray also for all the enthusiasts out there who contribute and make this a dynamic and friendly community. (maybe I should change my name to Henry ;) )