AMC68

Hi Dan Thanks for the response. Unfortunately (for solution purposes), the crop tool has behaved perfectly this afternoon, no matter what I have thrown at it. It happened first with the Mac and I thought it was just user error as my husband is new to Affinity Photo. Later it happened to me on Windows 10. If it happens again I will try and get a recording. Thanks for your quick reply

Attempting to crop a photo this evening when I found that it wouldn't work. The double-headed arrow appeared and could be moved about but it didn't move the grid and wouldn't allow a crop. My husband had exactly the same issue with a different photo about an hour earlier. He has a Mac and I am using Windows 10. We were both using graphics tablets. Closing the photo down and reopening allowed the crop. But then it happened a couple more times with other photos. Prior to that I had no problems with cropping. I have just tried cropping again and now it is working. Baffled. I saw a previous post on the same issue and tried Reset-ing the crop tool but that made no difference. Any ideas? Thanks

It does actually save as JPEG. Presumably us non-beta types should await a 'proper' update?

Photo for iPad would not open after the update. I deleted and tried to reinstall but it wants full payment. My husband shares the App with me and it worked fine before. All sharing options are set on both iPads. Any ideas?

Thanks for the reply. I am going to be away from my computer for a few days so I will get back to you then with more info. The grey splodges are what shows up on my image when I use the soft proofing adjustment. I remove them using curves but have very little leeway with Levels, HSL etc

Thanks for the reply, jedorme. I have had a quick go at increasing the brightness but anything beyond 1% produced the dreaded grey splodges again in one photo but I did manage a 7% increase in another. I have yet to try printing again but hope to do so later this week. I seem to have very little leeway when it comes to the adjustments. Most only allow me a tiny adjustment before I get the grey splodges again. I don't know if that is normal behaviour.

I printed an A4 montage as a Christmas present only to discover that it emerged from the printer as a disappointingly washed-out print. I know now this was mostly my fault as I had never set up Affinity for printing and it was using its default settings. I usually save my photos from Affinity and print from the Epson Easy Print programme. However as it was A4 I printed direct. I watched the videos about printing and soft proofing hoping I had found the solution. I didn't know what document profile to use so I chose Adobe RGB (1998) as that's what I used in Photoshop. I set the soft proofing to the printer paper I was going to use and ticked gamut check. I tweaked the curves (as shown in the video) until the grey splodges had disappeared. I increased the vibrance and HSL a little as too much brought some grey splodges back. I also found I needed to sharpen the photo more. The rendering intent was Absolute Colourimetric (None of them seemed to make any difference.) I did remember to turn off the soft proofing layer. In the print dialogue I chose the printer profile to match the printer paper but I didn't know what to put in the Profile option at the top so that was left as Custom. The photos I printed were certainly an improvement as far as colour intensity was concerned but were a bit darker and rather muddy. As you can tell I am well out of my comfort zone when dealing with setting up the printer and soft proofing (which is totally new to me) so if any experts out there could give me some pointers on printing from Affinity and soft proofing I would be very grateful (or point me to some info already available that I might have missed). TIA And a belated Happy New Year to all

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I have returned to the problem with a clearer head this morning. Yesterday I was trying to link the Topaz plugins from the Photoshop plugin folder as that's what I thought I was supposed to do and that failed. I have tried this morning going directly to C:\ProgramFiles\Topazlabs and C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\Topazlabs and that has worked.

Hi Walt Thanks for replying. I tried it both with and without enabling that option. With “allow unknown plugins..” ticked I got lots of ones I didn’t want but no Topaz plug-ins. It just doesn’t seem to see the Topaz plugins in the Photoshop Plugin folder. I’m sure it worked automatically originally.

Help! I have been using my topaz plugins quite happily with Affinity Photo ever since I got it over a year ago. Until today when all the Topaz plugins have disappeared from the Plugin option. I seem to remember that they were detected automatically originally. Now I cannot get Photo to recognise them even though I am trying to bring them in through Edit>Preferences>Photoshop plugins. They are still working in Photoshop CS5. Has anyone any ideas? Thanks

Brilliant! Thanks. I can now see the test document made in .57. Impressed

Hi Walt Thanks for the suggestion. I was trying to set up a four-page newsletter like the one I currently have in a different DTP programme. I had two master pages. One for the front page with a heading and three columns and the other for the remaining three pages with a small date header and three columns. I didn't use any guides as the number and size photos and clip art vary from one publication to another. The front page master did have a jpeg file in the title banner and it was applied to a document page. However .57 handled that without any issues. It only crashed after I upgraded to .58. I haven't yet got round to starting again but I will try using the same image in the title and see what happens.

I have the same issue with ...58. I had three versions of a file which I had been modifying whilst I tried to learn a bit about Publisher. I tried to load the latest one and that crashed the programme, so did the second file. However the first file - which doesn't hve much more than text in columns and a master page did load Any ideas, apart from stepping back to ...57? Thanks

Thanks everyone. owenr hit on the solution. When I opened the file again this morning and looked at 'Protect alpha' it wasn't ticked so I assumed my hopes were going to be dashed. However I ticked it and then unticked it. To my surprise the masking tools then worked as I had originally expected! Having denied all knowledge of 'Protect alpha' I now have a vague recollection of making use of it in a tutorial I was doing a little while ago. I suppose the problem was a legacy of that even though it didn't appear to be ticked today. Problem solved. I knew it had to be something I had done. Thanks again

Thanks, toltec. That’s what I am trying to do - it just isn’t working. Thanks, owenr - No, I didn’t even know Protect Alpha existed! It sounds promising. I have just stopped for the night having banged my head against a brick wall for too long. I will check this out tomorrow. Many thanks to you both for your time. Fingers crossed!

Thanks. I tried that and masking still doesn't work. I can use the Erase brush to remove the portion I want but I can't amend the mask. Neither black nor white has any effect when I paint the mask. I am obviously doing something very silly but i cannot work out why! Its driving me mad.

I want to make a backgound montage of several photos. In Photoshop I put each photo on a separate layer, position them on the background and then use masks on the photos to blend the backgrounds, taking out the hard edges. I've tried this in Affinity and can't get it to work. If I layer one photo on to another, add a mask layer and try paint out the edges absolutely nothing happens! I've tried with red rectangles and green restangle and they mask just fine but it doesn't seem to work with photos as it does in Photoshop. Can someone point out what I have missed. Thank you

Thank you johnjay and MEB for your swift replies. That worked perfectly

Yes, they appear at the bottom under 'Filter>TopazLabs'

I am new to Affinity Photo. I was pleased to see that it was possible to use Topaz plugins. However I cannot workout how to get Affinity to recognise where they are. I have followed the Help topic and looked on this forum but am not getting anywhere. I have Photoshop CS5 (which is where I looked for the plugins.) I am using a PC with Windows 10 I am aware that using these plugins is a work in progress. It is a bonus I was not expecting. I suspect I am missing something obvious in the instructions so help would be appreciated I have attached a screenshot of the position I have reached. I hope it helps

Thank you - works fine. No more frustration.

Thank you - excellent resource. Just what I need

I cannot download the files from affin.co/coreskills on my PC as both Firefox and Edge 'helpfully' add www. at the start. That results in an error message. I have just spent a frustrating hour trying - and I was so looking forward to learning from this workbook How do I access these files, please? Thanks