Bilbo Bowman

I concur!

Well said, I 100% agree with you! 2025 is a few weeks away, and this is still a problem. The "Save As" dialogue is identical to the "Save" dialogue, which begs the question, why have "Save As" at all? There are several "goofy and confusing" UI things that need some love in my opinion. The implementation of some features could be improved. Fine-tuning the UI and existing features is every bit as important as adding new functionality…possibly even more important. I know of many Adobe users that give Affinity a try only to get so frustrated that they give up. I'm not saying that they have to clone Photoshop, because it's not perfect either. Just make sure that things make sense and the UI is as clean and easy to use as possible. I want Affinity to kick Adobe's ass. I give a shit. The Affinity apps frustrate me every damn day–some things just don't make sense. Other things aren't as easy as they could be. I keep telling myself "Just go with it, it's a far better value than Adobe." While this is true, some things would be so easy to fix!

This is both ridiculous and frustrating!

Could be.

Sadly, it does get muddled and the update button does not seem to do much of anything. Hopefully this feature gets some love in a future update.

My apologies for the typo. I get the feeling that for some reason, you are taking this personal. I'm only expressing my opinion on how Affinity could make the software better and easier to use which will help it gain more new users. I like the Affinity apps, I want them to improve, I want their marketshare to grow. With that said, keeping an open mind where there might possibly be ways to make improvements is a good thing and a valid discussion to have. My question remains… How is introducing Primary and Secondary terminology into the mix in addition to using Foreground and Background to describe the very same swatches of any actual benefit to the user? Does it make things easier? Does it allow the user to do something that it otherwise couldn't do if it stayed with the consistent terms of Foreground/Background, and Fill/Stroke like other graphics apps? I'm not trying to be a smart-ass and it's a legitimate question, I just can't think or any advantage. I would respectfully argue that it takes a simple concept and makes it more complicated than it needs to be. In my opinion sticking with Foreground/Background and Fill/Stroke would be an improvement from a user experience standpoint. That's just my opinion. You may have a different opinion and that's okay me.

Thanks, that is helpful. That's an awful lot to forget however and their own documentation needs to be both correct and clearer than it is now. I totally disagree with introducing Primary and Secondary Colours into the mix–why complicate things? It makes more sense to stick with Foreground/Background colours and Fill/Stroke depending on what is selected and the front-most swatch is ALWAYS considered to be the foreground colour and the swatch in behind is ALWAYS considered to be the background colour. That is intuitive. In my opinion, the user experience is every bit as important as adding new features. If Affinity are serious about pulling people away from Adobe, they need a team whose sole purpose is sanding off rough edges, simplifying concepts, and making sure sure existing tools work as advertised. If users get frustrated, they'll go right back to Adobe. I'm not saying that they have to make Affinity work exactly like Photoshop, far from it! Affinity do some things better than Photoshop. The way Affinity's Gradient Tool works for example, is far better than Adobe's implementation.

Greetings, I am a longtime Adobe user who is making the shift to Affinity. While I am not nearly as fast using Affinity, things have largely gone pretty well. I have some frustration regarding Foreground and Background Colours, and Primary Colours and Secondary Colours. From Affinity's online documentation: • Primary Colour-uses the currently set foreground colour from the Colour panel. • Second Colour-uses the currently set background colour from the Colour panel. If I have a pixel layer targeted and I want to fill that layer with the foreground colour (AKA, the Primary Colour) I can go to Edit>Fill With Primary Colour or use the keyboard shortcut Option-Delete. When I do so, it doesn't fill with the primary colour at all, it actually fills with the background colour. Can anyone shed some light on this behaviour? What is the purpose of having Primary Colours and Secondary Colours in addition to Foreground and Background Colours? I feel it unnecessarily complicates things.

The whole purpose of States is to remember groups of visible layers and effects, no? It does not currently do that very well, which is my point. If it did, I could use it. I'm not concerned about capturing metadata with my workflow, but I can see how others might.

I agree with Paul's post above. For my workflow, I need Layer States to behave more like Layer Comps in Photoshop. (If Affinity can make it even better, that would be a bonus) Layer States needs to be able to remember layer visibility, layer position, and applied effects. Also the "update" feature seems to be broken. I was pretty pumped when Layer States was added thinking it would be a replacement for Photoshop's Layer Comps, sadly by excitement was short-lived once I tried to use it. I rely heavily on Layer Comps in Photoshop and cannot ditch Adobe for good until Affinity's Layer States is on par.

If I make a change to a saved Layer State, like adding a new layer to that State, then update the State, the change does not stick. Also, if I add a new layer to my file, then randomly select one of my saved States, the new layer's visibility should get switched off, no? This layer was never saved to any of my existing premade States. In my opinion, the States feature seems to be half-baked and needs a little more time in the oven. In addition to a State remembering layer visibility, and effect settings, I'd like it to also remember position. (Technically, it doesn't seem to reliably remember visibility, so that needs to be fixed.) If they are attempting replicate the Layer Comps feature in Photoshop, it's a swing and a miss! I use this feature a ton for one of my clients and Affinity Photo's States feature in it's current iteration isn't getting the job done. Quite frankly, it feels broken. Maybe it worked at one time and an update broke it. Who knows? If they can get it working correctly, States would be a really useful feature…especially if they give it the ability to export out all of the saved states at once.

Actually, as it turns out, it doesn't work for me. If I make a change to a Layer State, like adding a new layer to that State, then update the State, the change does not stick. Also, if I add a new layer to my file, then randomly select one of my saved States, the new layer's visibility should be switched off, no? This layer was never saved to any of my existing premade States. In my opinion, the States feature seems to be half-baked and needs a little more time in the oven. In addition to a State remembering layer visibility, and effect settings, I'd like it to also remember position. (Technically, it doesn't seem to reliably remember visibility, so that needs to be fixed.)

It appears exporting functionality is coming in a future update. (Soon I hope!) Thanks again for pointing me to Layer States, it appears to do exactly what I need. (Apart from exporting.) B

Thanks, I wasn't aware of Layer States, but it sounds like it will do what I want. Hopefully I'll have the ability to export each state to single files in a single step. I'll investigate that further. I am still investigating whether I can make the switch away from Adobe and your suggestion is most definitely helpful. Thanks again.

I use Layer comps all of the time for one of my clients. This particular client manufactures antique and retro styled ranges and refrigerators. From one single master image I can generate multiple different range configurations images in all of their colours. Some ranges have gas cooktops, some might have ceramic burners, some have glass cooktops, some have nickel trim, or brass trim, or copper trim, or even no trim. Once I save a layer comp for each burner and trim configuration in each colour, in seconds, I can export out each range configuration in each colour as a png, jpeg, psd etc. This is especially handy if they make a change to the gas burners for example. I simply swap in the new gas burners into my master file, update the layer comps and export new final images…so efficient! Using layer comps to manage a single master file that can generate 40 or so ranges in all configurations and colours in mere seconds is a MASSIVE time-saver and so much easier than having separate layered master files for each range and colour. A poster earlier in this thread mentioned that you would lose a lot of work if that one master file got corrupted. My response would be, that's why I have a robust back-up strategy. I have multiple local back-ups of everything as well as off-site back-ups. Any professional that doesn't have a good back-up strategy is playing with fire. I generally pull a copy of the master file into the new project folder before making any major edits anyway. Fortunately I've never had the master .psd file get corrupted, but it could happen.

I really miss not being able to have pixel based imaged placed on a layer to trace and not being able to designate it as a "Template" as I can in Illustrator. When the layer is designated as a "template", it will be visible both in preview AND outline mode. Currently in AD, a raster image will only show as a box when being viewed in outline mode. I use this feature a lot in Adobe Illustrator. It's not flashy, but it's super useful. Template layers can also be ghosted back, locked, and set to not print all from the template dialogue box.

I have had this issue across the entire Affinity suite. I am running a two-year old Mac Studio with 32 gb of RAM. It runs like a top, I have lots of free disk space. No issues with any other apps or utilities. I can't send the Affinity Designer file as the contents of that document are covered under an client NDA (unreleased product). Here is a Publisher file that contains nothing but a rectangle with a fill and stroke and I get the "Open recovery file?" error. When I get the error, I have just been opening the recovery file and carrying on. I am currently trying to decide if I can leave Adobe once and for all. I want to, but truthfully, I feel like Affinity/Canva are close, but not quite there yet. Test.afpub

Sure. Let me see if I still have it.

I've had the same issue, but my file has no fonts, just paths drawn with the pen tool.

I absolutely agree with you. It's super handy being able to toggle back and forth between outline mode and preview mode while always being able to see the bitmap image that you are tracing. The above workaround helps (it's what I do) but it's not the same thing. I would like them to add this feature.

I agree. Something along the lines of Illustrator's Actions would be very useful. It's on my wish list.

Being able to organize swatches into groups or folders would be extremely helpful. Hopefully this feature gets added soon.

I keep hitting roadblocks when I try to duplicate my typical Photoshop workflow using Affinity Photo. The latest one is the fact that there is no Paths Panel so PSD Paths don't make the trip to AF. If I open a PSD file in Affinity Photo that has existing paths that I need, the paths do not come along for the ride. I'm not sure if this is the best work-around, but if I create vector shapes from the paths in Photoshop first, they will appear as a vector curves in AF. While this works, it is a major pain, not to mention this would require me to keep an active Photoshop license too, which defeats the purpose. I have years worth of PSD files that contain needed paths. I'm not expecting AF to have feature for feature parody with Photoshop, but it should have the core tools covered if they want users to make the switch. I would consider the Paths Panel a core tool. Last night I forced myself to rebuild an existing typical project from scratch, and wow, it took a lot longer! I expect that it is largely because I have 25 years of Photoshop muscle memory and still need to get fully acclimated with an AF workflow. PLEASE, add a paths panel that will keep the paths of existing PSD files! I want to make the switch and fire Adobe.

The user experience for making feature requests is pretty bad. As an example, I really want a Paths Panel in Affinity Photo and have paths import from PSDs. I tried to search for the request first and the results were everything under the sun related to paths. (maybe I'm doing something wrong) Why not set each feature request as a poll and make any search limited to feature requests only? This way, I could search for "Paths Panel" and find the feature request poll right away so I can add my support for that feature to be added. I would guess that this kind of system would be better and yield more accurate feature requests which would help Serif better allocate their resources. I really like the Affinity software, but I continually run into issues that keep me from leaving the Adobe ecosystem. Sometimes there are work-arounds that are easy, some are more difficult and time consuming and sometimes it just can't be done. I'm not here to bitch, I'm here because I want the Affinity software to continue to improve and add the most requested features first so I can finally say "see ya later" to Adobe.