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What a pity! the macro persona is one of the things I'm looking forward to

Hi all,
 
The Macro persona will not debut in the initial release - it will be delivered as one of a number of free updates, post release.
 
Don't worry about the printing capabilities Alan, I now know what is required (from the other thread) - it will get done.
 
Andy.

hi Andy,
 
Looks good. But, will the Macros Persona ever return ..?
 
John

Hi,
 
Just thought I'd spend a little time giving an update about where we are with Photo, and what we plan to use the rest of our development time for. There is no fixed "release date" for Photo - it will ship when we feel it's ready to ship. That said, I feel we are probably just over half way through development of the beta. Here's what we think we need to do before we can ship:
 
1.) Finish Photo Persona - mainly, mask and channels improvements, printing improvements and crop tool improvements. Lots of little odds and ends to clean up.
 
2.) Develop Persona - we're going to rewrite the processing engine and change the UI significantly. Most of our remaining time will be spent here.
 
3.) Photoshop Plugins - we're going to spend a lot of time improving the plugin engine, and reach out to plugin makers to help us get everything where it should be.
 
Obviously, we will always be taking on bug reports - and they will continue to get fixed as they come in. Soon though, we will stop accepting "Feature Requests" for the main Photo Persona (you can still make them, and they will still be read, but we only move things into the "Accepted" sub forum if we plan to implement them before the next full release). We'll start accepting those requests again, once the first version of the app has shipped. Photo development will be, eventually, exactly the same as Designer - a retail version of the app in the MAS, and weekly beta builds for customers containing the latest features / improvements, so even though your feature requests might stay a while longer now before they get accepted, we'll be back to accepting them the week after Photo ships.
 
That said, we often get feature requests which we consider "low hanging fruit" - ie. a useful feature which turns out to be very easy to implement. It's likely we'll still be accepting and implementing some of those throughout the remaining beta time.
 
I think we have maybe one of two weeks of work on the Photo Persona, then we'll start working on Develop :)
 
Thanks,
 
Andy.
 
 

hi to all,

I'm John and I've been a professional user of Photoshop since the day that Windows 95 was released. Have worked also for two developers of plug-ins for Photoshop, most recently on this one: http://postworkshop.net/. And am currently a member of Adobe's Pre-Release team (the Photoshop CC and ACR beta test crew - jeez, maybe that's supposed to be a secret ...).
 
Anyways, I'm really impressed with Designer and very encouraged by the Photo beta. I think that's it's vital, for good commercial uptake, for Serif/Affinity to aim really high with both applications. And to keep ease-of-use in the forefront of the development goals. It's clear that a lot of new users of Illustrator and Photoshop - particularly since the introduction of the $9.99 per month plan for the latter - are struggling with the learning curve(s). I've become interested in developing automated "helpers" for Photoshop, in the form of Actions there. So, I'm hoping that whatever problems the Macro Persona in Photo has encountered, that they can be fixed soon.
 
More news and views later ... go Affinity, GO!

I started out in version 1.0
And... I also got my hands on version 0.63 (a friend got me a diskette with this, can't even remember in what year... and I found it again, some years ago :) )
Here it is a movie I made (sorry for my english. I'm portuguese).
 

hi to all,

I'm John and I've been a professional user of Photoshop since the day that Windows 95 was released. Have worked also for two developers of plug-ins for Photoshop, most recently on this one: http://postworkshop.net/. And am currently a member of Adobe's Pre-Release team (the Photoshop CC and ACR beta test crew - jeez, maybe that's supposed to be a secret ...).
 
Anyways, I'm really impressed with Designer and very encouraged by the Photo beta. I think that's it's vital, for good commercial uptake, for Serif/Affinity to aim really high with both applications. And to keep ease-of-use in the forefront of the development goals. It's clear that a lot of new users of Illustrator and Photoshop - particularly since the introduction of the $9.99 per month plan for the latter - are struggling with the learning curve(s). I've become interested in developing automated "helpers" for Photoshop, in the form of Actions there. So, I'm hoping that whatever problems the Macro Persona in Photo has encountered, that they can be fixed soon.
 
More news and views later ... go Affinity, GO!

hi to all,

I'm John and I've been a professional user of Photoshop since the day that Windows 95 was released. Have worked also for two developers of plug-ins for Photoshop, most recently on this one: http://postworkshop.net/. And am currently a member of Adobe's Pre-Release team (the Photoshop CC and ACR beta test crew - jeez, maybe that's supposed to be a secret ...).
 
Anyways, I'm really impressed with Designer and very encouraged by the Photo beta. I think that's it's vital, for good commercial uptake, for Serif/Affinity to aim really high with both applications. And to keep ease-of-use in the forefront of the development goals. It's clear that a lot of new users of Illustrator and Photoshop - particularly since the introduction of the $9.99 per month plan for the latter - are struggling with the learning curve(s). I've become interested in developing automated "helpers" for Photoshop, in the form of Actions there. So, I'm hoping that whatever problems the Macro Persona in Photo has encountered, that they can be fixed soon.
 
More news and views later ... go Affinity, GO!

Not 100% done, but this is a portion of a new art piece done by commission for an upcoming card game. All painting done in Affinity Photo Beta. So far it's been fantastic with few hiccups. The new beta does seem a bit friendlier to my Wacom as well. :)
 
More updates will pop up at SteamCourt.com soon!

Thanks for the response above Andy.
 
Overall, on the Macro Persona - I truly encourage you (all) to persevere. Adobe has done diddley-squat on upgrading Actions for a long while. Plus, the Extensions scheme for Photoshop is basically a minefield. Even key Adobe guys themselves have a hard time mastering it. And so, a whole slice of what could be accomplished therefore with ease via some type of automated platform has essentially been abandoned. From what I saw at the outset of beta testing here, you can fill that gap - BIG TIME!
 
John
_________________________________________
a.k.a. the best developer of Actions for Photoshop (and Photoshop plug-ins) who you have never heard of, 'til now!

Thanks for the response above Andy.
 
Overall, on the Macro Persona - I truly encourage you (all) to persevere. Adobe has done diddley-squat on upgrading Actions for a long while. Plus, the Extensions scheme for Photoshop is basically a minefield. Even key Adobe guys themselves have a hard time mastering it. And so, a whole slice of what could be accomplished therefore with ease via some type of automated platform has essentially been abandoned. From what I saw at the outset of beta testing here, you can fill that gap - BIG TIME!
 
John
_________________________________________
a.k.a. the best developer of Actions for Photoshop (and Photoshop plug-ins) who you have never heard of, 'til now!

Hi,
 
The Macro Persona is gone until further notice I'm afraid - it was disabled anyway and we'll be lucky to get it in a state where we would be happy to ship it before we launch the app. Photo, Liquify, Develop and Export Persona have priority - once they are done, we will go back to working on Macro.
 
Thanks,
 
Andy.

Sent you input profiles for Fuji Xt-1.

Thanks Andrew - what you say makes much more sense than an "it's Monday so here's an update" approach  :)

There isn't any real schedule although we try to release a beta every Tuesday, but it isn't guaranteed. It all depends on how many bugs we introduced, or whether we are waiting on any crucial fixes (or features). So the beta might be delayed until near the end of the week, or even later. :)

Filter layers would be a big and helpful addition and I am very interested in what you will be doing. As for your questions:
 
1.) Which filters would you like to be available as non-destructive layers?
The Blur, Sharpen and Color groups. I currently use all of them and expect I would also use all of them as layers.
 
2.) Would you generally use them by applying them to the whole document (outside of any group), or clipped to a particular layer / group?
Both. Some would be used mostly clipped, others for the whole document.
 
3.) If they carried a rendering performance penalty, how would you react to that?
That would not bother me overly and I would probably try to determine when to use them based, at least partly, on what the impact was.
 
4.) Would you use them early in your workflow, or at the end? If you used them early, how likely would you be to tweak their settings later on?
As mentioned above, it would depend as it would depend upon the image I was adjusting at the time.
 
Everything I see on this forum about this product just makes me more and more interested in owning it. You guys are doing a great job.

It was great for painting.
But after some time painting( half hour to an hour ) evrything started behaving heavy, slower.
I also found that after the painting time, and after closing AP, the whole system acted up somewhat.
After restarting my iMac, everything went back to normal.
 
But all in all, a fun job to do.Though I have some personal troubles with the likeness, I am interested in painting some more stuff in AP.
Great work ,and congratzz to the programming team.
 
I intend to place all my paintings in this topic, to save up the space of the forum.
 

1.) Which filters would you like to be available as non-destructive layers?
     Unsharp Mask, Clarity, Vibrance, Vignette, Blur and so on.
 
2.) Would you generally use them by applying them to the whole document (outside of any group), or clipped to a particular layer / group?
     Clipped.
 
3.) If they carried a rendering performance penalty, how would you react to that?
    Speed and quality is the new mix we all need. Sorry.
 
4.) Would you use them early in your workflow, or at the end? If you used them early, how likely would you be to tweak their settings later on?
   Early and sometimes at the end. There isn't a precise answer here. I'd like to tweak theme all always.

I really am excited about the possibilities of piping this functionality through a Brush tool to modulate it and apply as a real-time brush! You could even tie some of the filters main settings to your tablet, so that pressure drives not only the Brush's opacity, but also the strength of the filter, or velocity drives the radius, etc... This could be REALLY cool!! I started this post in Feature Requests...

Purpose: Features / Improvements / Fixes
Status: Beta
Requirements: None
Mac App Store: Not submitted
New beta sign-ups: https://affinity.serif.com/photo
 
Update: Run the app to get the link
 
 
 
 
Features
 
- German, Spanish, French and US English translations - first phase - some buttons are too small, etc. We will continue to improve this.   - Numerous extra scopes in Develop Persona. - Scopes available in main Photo Persona. - Blend Ranges. - Affine Filter (like Offset, but a bit fancier). - “Hide All Text” / “Show All Text” options in the Text menu. - New “Group” button in the layers panel. - New “Channels” capabilities. - “ Clip canvas” counterpart to “Unclip canvas”. - Develop now has an undo / redo history. - Save / Load pixel selection (to file at the moment, new panel coming soon!).  
Improvements
 
- Handle EXIF rotation properly when loading rotated images. - Dragging a layer to the trash icon in the layers panel works. - Painting on mask layers behaves correctly. - “Selection From Layer” now does not delete the object itself. - Many more cameras supported in Develop Persona (list coming soon). - Arrow keys can change profile in Soft Proof adjustment. - RAW readout updates correctly when switching documents. - Adjustment panel - many cosmetic improvements. - Adjustment panel - add adjustment when opening a category. - Unsharp Mask now has a threshold control. - Deselect layers by clicking on an empty area of the canvas. - “More” button in the Mixer tool context bar. - Marquee tools deselect when clicking outside the selection. - Eliminated lag with brush tools. - Photo will now try to open all the RAW formats it claims to open. - TIFF export - compatibility with other applications is improved.  
Fixes
 
- Numerous crash fixes. - Macro Persona was unstable and has been disabled until the issues are corrected.