MasterBooth
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Everything posted by MasterBooth
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We live in the 21st century where a program meant for a wide range of users is expected to be user friendly and intuitive, meaning that the majority of users should get what they expect by default and with the least amount of clicks. To me the conclusion of this (and other) issues is that Affinity Photo is optimised for a limited group of professionals who reportedly can make good use of the current default behaviours while sacrificing being user friendly and intuitive for the average user. I find this unfortunate and annoying personally but more importantly it doesn't seem to make sense from the view of the success of Affinity Photo either: advanced users wouldn't suffer from a few extra clicks to get what they want or go into their menus to change the default behaviour but thousands of average users do suffer and get disappointed from not getting what they expect, not even understanding why. Most of them never have the time and effort it takes to understand and even if they do it doesn't change the fact that Affinity Photo remains ceremonious and tiring to use because of the extra steps - the program where you're made to click 3 times more to get what you wanted. This is a great program but miles & miles away from being intuitive. Even after using it for years I'm annoyed by the extra steps every time I use it.
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Hello DWright, how can it be then that Backspace works correctly for me as the Snapping toggle shortcut? In the below discussion HVDB Photography posted a screenshot on November 24, 2018 showing that the Snapping toggle shortcut *was* possible to change then. I do wonder why would AffinityPhoto change to be a more rigid, less customizable program instead of a more flexible one with time?
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Hello, I use custom keyboard shortcuts in Affinity Photo 1.8.5.703 on Windows. I must have changed the shortcut for toggle snapping on/off because my working shortcut is now Backspace. I'm now trying to change it to another custom key but can not find it in the list at all. I can see it used to be under Miscellaneous. It's not there now and can't find it anywhere. Can you help? By the way, changing custom keyboard shortcuts can be really tiresome as it is now. It would be really nice to make it work more user friendly..
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Same here... my custom keyboard shortcuts were saved in a .afshort file. Now after updating, loading the file does noting! My shortcuts are gone, some tools I had a shortcut for I can't even find in the menus, I simply can not continue work! Not a very nice welcome to 1.7! I'd be very-very much interested in a solution to this as I haven't got the time to re-assigne all my shortcust one by one.
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I know this very well, it's been mentioned here before and as I said I've followed the topic and read the posts. My point is that these checkboxes don't solve the problem, even if you understand what they're supposed to do and have them checked/unchecked the way suggested here earlier.
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I've followed this topic since my last post because checking/unchecking "Force pixel alignment" and "Move by whole pixels" certainly did not solve this problem and I've lost hours of work myself noticing too late that my merged layer has been blurred. I really admire you advanced users for your patience taking the time and effort to investigate, doing your homework to find out how and when the blurring happens, how to work around and sharing all these results. The ignorance of Affinity Developers frustrates me also. I imagine if I delivered work to my customers with such "anti-aliased" line-art, trying to explain to them that the file was a perfectly healthy, high quality image, not corrupted or blurred just anti-aliased which is perfectly normal, they wouldn't be very happy with me... so instead I calmed down, did the lost work again and delivered a quality file as expected of me. I would expect a similar professional behaviour from developers. Bug or not bug, this blurring has no place in Affinity Photo which is supposed to be an intuitive program, behaving as expected, that lets you concentrate on creative work instead of worrying all the time trying to notice the moment your layer goes corrupted/blurred.
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I tried this and in the quick test I did this worked: the blur was not there. I'll continue with "Move by whole pixels" off and see if it solves the problem completely. Thank you walt.farrell !
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"Force Pixel Alignment" and "Move by whole pixels" have been checked in the snapping section all the time - it does not prevent the type of blurring I/we are talking about...
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Yes Affinity Photo blurs layer content losing image quality when merging down layers. In my case I create multiple copies of a layer that has close to pixel art hand painted detail. I move around the copies (no scaling/resizing/rotating, just moving around) and then would like to merge them onto a single layer. Merging them not only blurs them but blurs them incrementally, meaning that the 4th copy will be blurred 4 times ect. I'm sad seeing that this problem is not a minor, unimportant issue but one that belongs to the deal-breaker category for a number of us and still it's not officially confirmed or acknowledged. I'm sure an issue like this must be well known to developers, advanced users ect. - we're not talking about some hard to identify, hidden bug but a very obvious problem. It'd be nice to at least see that this problem is acknowledged and being worked on. At least a hope that it's not going to be there forever.
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The amount of sharpening I need to correct a photo does not vary widely, it's often the same. I'm an end user, an artist and a practical person, not a developer nor a philosopher. What I do is compare the edited and saved result with the original or with the idea I had in mind. Display it 1:1 on the screen or study a printed copy of the result. If I find no fault with it then I'm satisfied and do not think much about what compression is doing to my pixels. I find that a default quality setting works well with this kind of work. What I may lose using 95% jpg instead of 100% is something nobody will ever notice at my place unlike what I lose by having thousands of 15MB photos instead of 4MB ones...
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I do adjust it accordingly when using export. I set jpg quality to 95% and get a ~4MB image. I just wish I didn't have to do it every single time again... I use export now and unfortunately it does not remember my quality setting... (I also thought it does - I seem to remember so - but it doesn't now) Also, because of exporting instead of saving it will ask me whether I want to save - every time I close the image. That's +1 step. As it is now I use export and it takes 6 steps to have my file overwriten with the quality setting I want.
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I do understand that a healthy workflow is to save and keep the edited file at the highest possible quality and save a lower quality version when needed. I do the same thing when doing creative work on an image with lot's of edits. However it's a completely different case with everyday photos that only need quick improving before archiving. There's hundreds of them and I won't ever want to come back to them later to change adjustments settings. Undistructive editing is not an issue here - efficient and quick workflow is. A 10Mp photo is 3-4MB size as it comes from the camera. In most cases all I need is quick tonal adjustments, sharpen and save back without losing quality. I do understand that sharpen for example can increase file size. But ending up with 10-15MB size photos is definitely not justified in this case... has no advantages at all but disadvantages. When doing creative work on an image for hours it only takes a single shortcut to save at the desired quality (AF file) - which is nice. When only doing a few quick improvements that take less than a minute it takes three steps or more to save at the desired quality - :( ... It would be very nice to be able to set the default save quality.
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To use export: 1. I press shortcut to bring up export settings, 2. set the quality, 3. click more, 4. set parameters there, 5. click close, 6. click export, 7. click save, 8. confirm overwriting = 8 steps... (!) To use the save command takes a single shortcut. Makes a whole world of difference when you've got hundreds of photos to edit and typically spend no more than 1 minute with a photo... That is why I asked for a way to do this "by pressing a single shortcut"
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I'm trying to find a quick and efficient way to save modified .jpg photos by overwriting the original file. I understand that the save command does that but the file size increases to 3-4 times the original size every time I do that. I haven't got 'save with history' turned on so why this unreasonable increase in file size? Is there a way to overwrite the original file by pressing a single shortcut without ending up with an unreasonably large file?
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This is what I wrote in the other thread in my latest update: I find that assigning keyboard shortcuts with the 'Ignore Modifier' checkbox unchecked generally work well enough to be useful and reliable but there are still limitations that I don't understand, that are not explained.
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The issue I described above still isn't solved and I'm still wondering whether this can be reproduced with other users? Whether it is a known limitation or a bug or if it's just me doing something wrong. I can live without using Shift or Ctrl or Alt + any letter key shortcut for a tool but it would be nice to find out about it so I know how to plan my custom shortcuts chart. Can you help?
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Just wanted to give feedback to this topic: I bought Affinity Photo the next day and was able to assign my custom keyboard shortcuts just fine: I made sure the "Ignore Modifier" checkbox is not checked and now all shortcuts behave as expected. What a relief! ^_^ I was really confused and disappointed by the strange behaviour while I was trying to assign shortcuts with the "Ignore Modifier" box checked. I still run into very few exceptions (eg.: trying to assign a shortcut to grow/shrink selection crashes AP or trying to assign a Ctrl or Shift or Alt + letter key shortcut to a tool does not seem to work) but one can live with these and some have already been fixed in the beta. I tried improving some challenging photos where details were lost and I'm impressed! The results I could get out of a not so perfect shot are far better than with any other image editing software I have tried. The workflow is efficient and smooth. I love it!
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I'm assigning my own custom keyboard shortcut system (have cleared the default one) and have experienced the following: (Affinity Photo on Windows 10, non English keyboard) When I try to assign a shortcut for a tool in the form of Shift or Ctrl or Alt + any letter key, the new shortcut is accepted but does not work. Single letter shortcuts work, Shift or Ctrl or Alt + any letter key shortcuts also work for other functions (like select all or filters ect.) but not for tools. Am I doing something wrong here or is this some limitation I don't know about or is it a bug? :huh: Example: - Go to Edit>Preferences>Custom Keyboard Shortcuts, click "clear all shortcuts" - Open the Tools panel and assign Ctrl+d for the flood fill tool. the shortcut doesn't work. Nor any other Shift or Ctrl or Alt + any letter key shortcut for any tool.
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Fantastic :lol: that makes a whole world of difference to me! It means that 1. I have not gone crazy after all 2. I can buy and use Affinity Photo with custom keyboard shortcuts that work consistently. That's great news, I was about to give up on this.
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"Ignore Modifier—Lets you create shortcuts using a single letter designation instead of using keyboard modifiers" So, if I get this right, this means that if I want a single letter shortcut for a function then I should have this checked before assigning my shortcut. That's what I did (I had both checkboxes checked) and I was getting the unexpected behaviour described in post #12. When I quickly tried without checking this box (both checkboxes unchecked) I was still able to assign single letter shortcuts and they worked fine. Can you reproduce this?
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Yesterday evening I quickly tried the whole thing one more time. I did exactly the same thing than described in my example in post #12 - except I did not check the two checkboxes in the preferences>keyboard shortcuts dialog - and it seemed that everything worked just fine... I thought I would investigate more today to see if perhaps all my problems came from checking the checkboxes when assigning shortcuts but unfortunately my trial has expired and I can not do so. In the beginning I read in help about what those checkboxes do and I thought I understand and thought I need both checked. But now I'm not sure about the second (I think) checkbox: not the one that makes sure that the shortcuts you assign apply in all the personas but the other checkbox. Could you explain what exactly does that checkbox do and whether you believe it could have caused all the unexpected behaviour I described? This really makes a difference for me: if this solves all the unexpected cycle behaviour of custom keyboard shortcuts, then I could buy Affinity Photo with a peace of mind and start using it for production within a short time.
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So then what I need is a bug fix, not a feature request? :huh: As far as I tried the default shortcuts work fine: as expected and according to your description.
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I'm afraid even after understanding all that you wrote, trying out in Affinity Photo and experimenting for hours I still get unexpected results with custom keyboard shortcuts half the time... Half the time they just don't make sense the way tools toggle and cycle - even tools that aren't in the same group and don't share the same shortcut. Others I want to make toggel/cycle I can't because assigning the same key to them simply displays the warning sign showing that the key has been taken already. I feel really disappointed about the shortcut toggle/cycle behaviour being so unreliable :( this makes working with custom shortcuts very annoying... example: I started everything anew from scratch, re-started Affinity Photo and cleared all shortcuts. Then I assigned 5 different shortcuts for 5 basic tools: 'q' for view tool, 'w' for rectangular select tool, 'e' for flood select tool, 'a' for the color picker and 'x' for move tool and I closed the preferences window. Now if I press any of the 5 assigned keys it activates one of the five tools in a seemingly completely random way and if I press any of the five keys repeatedly it cycles through all five tools - any of the five keys does the same thing... Am I right in thinking that none of the things you wrote in your earlier posts explains this behaviour? Surely this can't be right?
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Thank you. I tried and the 'last tool' toggle works just as you have described. I have no problem with that. So I guess my only remaining question for now is: does the 'alternate tool' toggle mean I can not access one particular tool within a group of tools by just hitting a single key? I'm trying this now and this is what I get: I have assigned 'q' to rectangular, elliptical, column, row and freehand selection tools and it works just as expected (toggles). Then I have assigned 'w' to the flood select tool alone. Now when I use the move tool for example and want to change over to the flood select tool and hit 'w' it takes me to the rectangle select tool... if I keep hitting 'w' it takes me through all the selection tools before arriving to the flood select tool that I need. Is this behaviour normal or am I doing something wrong?
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I understand. I'm trying this out now. So when a tool does belong to a group, like the selection tools, and I want to activate a particular one of them, say the flood select tool, even if I have assigned a key to the flood select tool alone, pressing the key might activate a different selection tool first and I would have to keep pressing the same key until I reach the flood selection tool, right? That could take up to 7 key storks to arrive to the tool I want :huh:. So if I understand correctly, grouping tools belongs to the keyboard shortcut logic that cannot be overridden, right?
