matisso

Lots of work, and not enough time
Thanks for the support!

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Added Studio Presets Fixed Contour and Corner tool radius context toolbar options showing in pixels Fixed filter effects rendering Added ability to rotate view around mouse with Alt+MouseWheel. Shift+Alt+MouseWheel will rotate around the centre. Holding Ctrl at the same time will increase rotation speed. Added Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R as new default shortcut for resetting the view rotation.  1.9.0.767 release notes

Doh! It got added to Photo only. No good reason, should be in Designer too. Will fix for next build.

Been experimenting with using Affinity Photo for digital painting recently and it's been loads of fun - even made some new painterly brushes in the process!
Here are a few tentacles I illustrated to start the week off on the right foot. 

http://www.instagram.com/christidutoit 

Hi there!
First of all, thanks to the Dev Team for this release and hats off to @MattP for the first implementation of the long awaited "Select Same" feature. After playing a bit with it, I thought of some things that could be great additions:
Select by Font: select all that is Arial, event if on text object is Arial Black, and another text object is Arial Regular. Select by Font Style: same as above but for an specific font style, Arial Black only, even if there is another text object that is set to Arial Regular. Select different: sometimes you simply want to select anything else... either anything that is not the same color / fill / font / opacity, etc. That's it for now, but if I think of something that could be useful, I will add it to this post.
Best regards!

Hi GarryP,

Good spot! Getting the same results as you - I then checked my Mac and its not present on there so it looks like a mistake on the Windows side. Though I'll get that clarified for you!

Just in case anyone wonders where the new Contour Tools is (if not visible by default), go to View > Customize Tools...

Best regards!

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: New features, performance, fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Added initial support for hardware acceleration (must be enabled in Preferences | Performance, "Enable OpenCL compute acceleration") Added benchmark capability (Help | Benchmark) Added Text on Path Added more filter support for masks / adjustments / spare channels (Add Noise, Perlin Noise, etc.) Added ability to edit a spare channel in the Channels panel to edit it like a layer (single click the channel) Improved Blend modes to work on “alpha only” layers (masks, adjustments, live filters, etc.) Added a new Divide blend mode Added "Create from centre" for the Elliptical Marquee tool Added ability to snap to the bounds of the pixel selection Added ability to create brushes from the current pixel selection with one click 1.8.5.703 release notes

We've had a query about what is viewed as 'acceptable' content, and what our stance on it is.
 
This topic is one which is typically fairly volatile because everyone is so different and what is acceptable for one person, can be shocking or inflammatory to another. We don't want everyone to feel cautious about what they click, just in case they are faced with something they'd rather not see, but we also don't want to discourage people from sharing the amazing work they've been creating, so... We think the simplest, clearest thing to do is:
 
If you think your image could in any way be described as controversial...
 
- Start a new topic with an appropriate title
- Upload your image to a sharing site (Flickr, Behance, Instagram, etc) - you can even use the 'Share' link in the app's File menu
- Write a proper description of your work in the body of your post and add a text link to the image you have shared
 
 
Now, if people think they'd be offended, they just don't have to click the link and they won't see it at all.
 
Thanks,
Matt

I agree that it's not telegraphed very well, but essentially colour decontamination is linked to the issue @carl123 has mentioned as well as yourself in the above part I've quoted with using output to mask. Basically:
Output to Selection/Output to Mask is for when you intend to mask an adjustment or filter layer, or perhaps create mask bounds for brush work. Because the pixel layer is not modified, no colour decontamination can be applied, so you only get the refined selection. Output to New layer/New layer with mask is for when you want to cut content out or isolate it from its background. Because the pixel content is modified, it means colour decontamination can be performed. The confusion may arise because the preview modes (Overlay, Transparent, Black/White) apply the colour decontamination procedure, whereas if you output to an active selection or mask there is of course no way to apply this because it requires modifying the pixel content.
If you need to do this, you are better off outputting to a selection or mask as you mentioned. The artefacts are a result of discarding the background colour contribution and using only the foreground colours over the matted areas—the intention is for these to always be hidden by the mask (or discarded if you just output to a new layer).
Should you choose to output as a new layer with mask, you also have other options to modify the mask:
Add a Curves or Levels adjustment, drag it over the thumbnail of the mask (this will place it beneath the mask). Set the channel target to Alpha. You can now control the matte blending. Right click the mask layer and choose Refine Mask. Uncheck Matte edges (since the masking is already matted and you don't want to further matte the decontaminated areas) and set the preview mode to Transparent. You can then use Smooth, Feather and Ramp to further adjust the mask.

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Fixed tablet input problems by reverting the default input method to be Low Precision mode, the same as in 1.8.3.  Added tablet input preference (in Tools section) to opt-in to High Precision mode, or Windows Ink mode (previous command line options --legacy-wintab and --disable-wintab are now ignored). Fixed cursor disappearing following keyboard shortcuts that display dialogs, while using a brush tool 1.8.4.693 release notes

Hi MadCat,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Selection by attributes is already planned for a future version. We have a small team/limited resources so we have to prioritise/balance things according to our development plans, dependency on other features already or still being developed/finished, users requests as well as other variables. The dev teams are already doing the best they can to close those gaps/missing features as possible. Please bear with us while we work to expand/improve the app.
 

+1
Definitely a must.

Everybody has a favorite scripting language, Frank.  But no scripting language is everybody's favorite.
In practice, the Affinity document/object API and its binding to the scripting language is going to be far more significant than the language itself.  An incomplete, poorly organized and badly documented API/DOM will be agony to use in any scripting language.  Conversely, a comprehensive, modular and well-documented API/DOM will be easy to use in any scripting language.  We don't need Serif to give us Python, or Lua, or Perl, or ECMAScript, or FORTH, etc.  We need them to give us an API.

There are several posts on the Designer and Photo forums requesting some sort of Automation, so I thought I'd echo the sentiment here.
It would be great to see the Affinity Suite using AppleScript, or JavaScript or Lua. Or python!   (Assuming I'm not missing something!)
There are many people who are dependent on Adobe because of the scripting capabilities.

I don't know what it is that you are doing to get values over 1. You say "CGI generated files", all I can say is that 1 is the pure white and if you want more than that you will only ever get a value of 1. Think of the pixel as some container which holds exactly one liner of water, once you have 1000 ccs in it you cannot put more water into it, you can pour more water into the container but it won't hold more than one litre. 
Are there more than one file/layer in you document from the CGI generated files?

No. There are no values greater than 1 (255, 255, 255).

1 is the highest value for 8-bit/channel images. For 32-bit/channel HDR values, there is no maximum value, just the way light has no maximum value. In computational photography, you can combine multiple photos to get how bright a white value is—something that's 255/255/255 at -10 stops would still be 255/255/255 in an 8-bit image at +10, but in a HDR image it would have a much, much higher value (I'm not sure what the actual value would be—I don't think it's as linear as +20. 
For modern rendering engines creating CGI images, you can save renders in 32-bit formats (usually EXR) that preserve light intensity, which is important for toning images to reflect the way our eyes see them.

I don't know what you mean by there are no values greater than 1. With HDRs, there are values greater than 1. Sometimes much greater. Is it just that you can't select them?

I hope this article written by native English speakers will explain it? 🙂
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/understanding-dpi/

@AspiringDesigner and @DM1
DPI is just a metatag. The pixel resolution won't be affected by it. If you export to PNG/JPG as 6000 x 6000, you will get a 6000 x 6000 pixel image no matter what DPI you chose.
So if you need 8000 x 8000 pixels change the DPI to 72 if that is what it takes for Designer to output the file and not crash.
DPI is the most misunderstood term I have ever encountered. 🙂

Impressive! Great work there, Isabel.

Had a break from a new "proper" drawing,. Another V for vector, nice to do without having to think too much.