paristo

Couldn't get the quote box right and reply anymore so write here second. Adobe products does break many of the HIG rules, but so does Microsoft as well. They actually did a very few very good implementations, but it is actually accident as these things has been researched already at 70's how graphical user interfaces should be done. Like Microsoft got the Windows Phone correct by placing the actions to bottom of screen, not to top. The top part worked when screens were 2.8-3.5" but not since going to 4" or above. What I would like to see in Affinity Photo is option to spawn the dialogs under the mouse cursor or to specific position so I can predict and move the mouse there. But Affinity has many lot better than many Adobe implementations. But some are just requiring too many routes to do. Like how to fill a selected area with a color? With GIMP it is simply that you drag and drop the color from your color palette/wheel on the selection. To get in affinity photo "Selected color as transparent" really requires to google it how it is done, while with GIMP it is "Color > Color to Transparency". But when GIMP requires to know the workflow how to do a given effect by knowing the order and filters etc, with Affinity and Photoshop it is often predone process by click-be-done, but if you want to have the control, you need to do how GIMP does it. Oh, and I would take commandline for many many tasks anyday.

That former is impossible to really do. Reason is why the Shift+Click is used is because you will define the direction from starting point and so on get correct angle. With Shift+Draw your hand is not so accurate to draw a line to exactly correct position after few pixels when starting to draw, so automatic angle detection would throw you always off many degrees, most often even 5-15 degree so you would end up drawing a line again and again and again to get it right. That leads instant frustration. The answer for that would be the virtual ruler, what the shift+click really is (or could be) First click couple times to end / start of the points and then draw the line with your tool to control the pressure etc.

Three different things here discussed. 1) Image manipulation application = Affinity Photo 2) Digital Assets Management = Wanted / use third party applications like digiKam. 3) Digital photograph raw conversion application = Wanted / Affinity Photo having basic functions If Affinity/Serif would do something great, they would make a own standalone raw converter that can be used as plugin with their applications. So you could insert a memory card, open the converter, drag'n'drop files from card to it as listed and point a new directory where to convert them as wanted other format, by applying the lens corrections etc. Make it small and tiny application, like example what a Rapid Image Downloader is for Linux https://www.damonlynch.net/rapid/ that can do you everything alone by just inserting memory card, doing the backups to multiple destinations and organize the files based wanted exif data etc. For majority of the people, they come home after week or two trip and their camera has maybe a 200-500 photos. They don't need complex things to manage files, just get them "Event > Days" directory tree. And then they browse files via file manager and use image editor to process picked ones. Then when more complex things are we going, more demanding situations and setups come around. Like running a studio you have 4-5 photographers working there, each one having a 2-3 cameras and produce weekly thousands of frames that each need to get to centralized local server and then to their wanted services or storage mediums and workstations. Some shoot with JPEG and some shoot raw, card management is done correctly so everyone is using multiple cards in the shoot/task and they get rotated etc. Some prefer Adobe tools, some needs some other ones... So if Affinity comes with a applications for one task, does it very well, it is great for many. So separate converter (standalone and plugin for Affinity) as DAM and all should come better.

I think that the history panel should be more of the "mother panel" for all. So you can work around it. Like if you open a adjustment and it has own window to delete it, reset it all and do adjustments, then it should be possible to do reverse in that window itself since opening it, adding it or last adjustment you just did, without going to main history panel that is whole workflow history.

Totally need this. After year still double clicking individual sliders to reset to default. I think there should be two modes. 1) Double click to reset previous setting after opening the adjustment 2) Shift+Double click to reset default regardless what was last adjustment. This is like if I add a layer filter and set some adjustments and then close it. Open up for re-adjustment after some other filters and do something but notice I don't like it. I want to get easily it back to previous state when adding the filter. But sometimes I want to set very specific one to defaults as creating a new one.

DAM doesn't need to convert raw at all! That is the whole point of the DNG as well. The DNG file is "like a ZIP file", just like every other raw file is just a container. Most raw files inside holds a sidecar file with metadata, a low resolution preview JPEG file and then three TIFF files, one for each bayer filter color. The raw converter job is to import the TIFF files (and if manufacturer has done, decrypt the encryption) and then read the metadata and then proceed to do the demosaicing by combining three TIFF files to one by the commands that there are given. The DNG does the same thing, except that the TIFF files are never encrypted, there comes a sidecar file for metadata and all the modifications done to the image, there are two preview JPEG (large and small) and you can even embed the original raw file inside, to be used in future with a raw converter that can read the original file instead converted clear images DNG offers. So when ever you have a DAM, all it needs to know is to read the raw file container JPEG file for preview, read the metadata sidecar file and that's it. No need to what so ever to do conversion. So everytime you save your "non-destructive" file, its preview JPEG is updated and DAM reads that. It is all already solved long long time ago, the only difference is that you really get a new window to do your image editing, instead swapping to "Develop module" or such "tab" otherwise. And that is as well better in multi-screen environments, with low memory systems etc as you have more flexibility to choose what you use and when. That is one of the great things with the Affinity Photo that you can just double click raw file in memory card to open it, make the adjustments, save the Affinity file to memory card. Take the card out and move to other computer and do the DAM import there and you get that Affinity file correcly with the original raw file and then you can just double click the Affinity file in DAM on any computer and get it opened in Affinity Photo in those computers. The raw file stays intact without any problems.

I am still having the problem. Done re-install, run manually regedit to delete every single key pointing to Affinity, and still can't launch any version of Affinity that installers I have. There comes nothing, a process starts for a second and then disappears.

The luminar problem is that it is designed to work with a very few files. It is as well designed mainly to be "Wow" for your already edited files. A DAM point to exist is very simple: 1) Digital collection of all your hundreds of thousands/millions of digital files 2) Manage the metadata by tagging and applying identifications, rating etc. 3) Search/Filter/Browse files by metadata (time, location, gear, setting, people, tag) by combining them to narrow down what you are looking for, even by drawing a sketch about photo you are searching. 4) To backup, copy, move files, print them, order prints, have multiple variations, upload to remote service etc. 5) To view them, slideshows, individually etc. A DAM is not there to edit files, to convert raw files or do anything to those. That is the job of the image editing and image manipulation applications. As DAM is exactly where you manage your photos so that you example can insert a memory card to computer, copy the files from card to computer, backup copied ones, tag them, insert other metadata like people. And then rate them. Then you easily find the successful ones, import them to image editing application, do the edit and finish by tagging edited ones as "Finished". And in time you are handling a same DAM, but you use multiple other editing tools to do your work for the images editing. Luminar etc are designed more like for smartphone user, who goes to holiday and takes a 50 photos in a week trip and then all are so fancy and great that they need more "pop" so it is just couple sliders and "it is better". Instead DAM is for professionals who come day after day with thousands of the frames. Every frame needs to be backed up, marked, tagged and ranked so you are not wasting time for the photos that isn't going to be sold or used. But you don't delete the others as you can need to use them any time later in future. Then you will send the files to someone else who edits them and sends them back to you. If Affinity is going to do a DAM, it needs to be very well focused just for the management of image files of all sorts. And get them opened with Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and finally in Affinity Publisher. The DAM even should support to use a any third party raw converter to process raw files.

If you didn't read, I did. "Clean Boot" means that you disable every service from Windows boot stack. Nothing special really. One of the first things you should try if you often install all kind software. This problem became only after updating Affinity Photo.

I am assuming no one else has come up with this problem? As I can't make a Windows refresh just to check does it help or not. Now my main workstation in studio is incapable run Affinity and I need to use a laptop to do the work as well there... Not a nice situation :-(

No help. I even created a new account for test and nothing starts. Command line start doesn't reveal anything. Everything is just totally silent.

Just a odd thing happened. I haven't used Affinity Photo for few weeks on workstation but only on laptop and now I tried to launch it (1.6.0 version) it doesn't start. No splashscreen or anything. Mouse cursor just states background process but no Affinity Photo process appear to process manager or anything other. I have renamed the Affinity AppData profile directory without success. I have upgraded it to 1.6.1 without success. I have uninstalled Affinity, rebooted and then reinstalled without success. I have tried to launch Affinity by holding Ctrl down while double clicking icon. I just can't get any information WHY it doesn't launch. Only security system is the Microsoft's Defender.

Yes, more options for the directories (defaults, as common defaults) are needed. - Save Affinity file to same location as the opened file by default, unless otherwise pointed elsewhere. - Export file to same location as the opened file, unless pointed elsewhere. - Remember different Export and Save As -directories per file opened (file from C: doesn't get offered being saved where file from D: got opened) It would be nice to be able just unpack package full of image files, open to Affinity Photo and save file and get it saved to "Affinity" directory after pointing in first save time. Then get export as well saved to "Export" directory after pointing the first time there. It would speed up the processing multiple files in same directory (detect the directory path is it same as "Session" or is it as "Project".

Yes, that is a problem when having more than two files open and you lose track of the order where you are processing files. A slight lighter/darker color or even a single pixel thick line above the tab is good.

Challenge with the progress bars is that you need to be accurate with them, and you need to know the ending time. Everyone should be familiar with the infamous Windows progress bars where it hangs at 5%, 6%, 7% and then suddenly jumps to 98%, 99% and sits there half of the time until gets to 100% and still rolls? How to calculate the process then? Okay, you have 45 frames focus stacking, should we split the 100% to a 90 frames so first you show progress when a frame is processed for alignment so then when all 45 frames are aligned, you end up 50% part and then is focus stacking started. So after every frame is processed and added for the stack, you progress the bar? Sounds easy right? But it aint'... How to calculate process when loading an image? By the amount of data read from disk, or by the processed the data in memory or what? Then when it comes to simple "processing" informations like a circling balls in Windows now, or a circle going around like Google etc, it is as well not so good. As the animation is a own thread running, but doesn't tell that thread doing process hasn't hanged! So you can be in infinite loop in data processing, but the animation "I am working!" is as well in infinite loop. And ain't better from "Loading 1 Document" One of the easiest really is the data input/output about reading and writing data to disk. But that too is very far from reality as there can be many complex background operations waiting to be processed. Like if you save a file to a memory stick, it can take anywhere from 180 to 720 seconds that the data is actually flushed from the RAM to the actual memory stick so it is there when you pull it out! Even when the application doing the writing says "100% completed"! That is why the correct drives ejection is required as you tell the OS that specific storage device is about to be removed and it needs to flush the data from RAM to it so it is there correctly. I worked with a few dozen Affinity Photo files last week in one day over a network drive. The Affinity told that the file was saved and then I went to make a phone call that lasted about 4 min and came back and shut the laptop and went away. Later on I opened the files on a another computer from the network drive, only to find out that the layers with TIFF files were corrupted by few pixels rows. Every single one that I had saved in a batch, had the similar effects, from few rows to tens of rows. The fault was mine, as I didn't follow my standard procedure, save first locally and only then copy the files over network drive and check the disconnection. I knew better, I just wanted to trust that things would go right as I didn't have time. And now, by trying to save the couple minutes, I wasted days! (Okay, I didn't as I had backups from the process elsewhere). Even when a simple "Save Dialog" gets closed as "Save is Completed", it doesn't mean it is! So how you make a progress bar for that?

Yes, in a way. But you said not to do a DAM while I recommend Affinity to go a head and do a DAM, but really get it right. Affinity should do a DAM that is purely focused for managing images. Then they have their Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for working. And what they need to do is a "raw persona" that is own separate product for raw conversion that is used with all two (DAM and Affinity Photo) as integrated unit, instead both having something. Bring the updates to the raw converter quickly and even backport for older versions if possible.

But the look (user interface) is very important to the user as it makes tool nice to use so you like to use it. Features are important so you can use the tool for the purpose (don't try to hammer nailes on wood with a saw...) but if you can use a little more inefficient tool that is just pleasure to use, it is better. No matter how powerful the tool is, if it is not nice to use (usability based to user interface) then it is frustrating to use such and reason to pick it over something else is lower. If it is only tool you can use to do the work, then you will use it, and hate it same time.

There is always a room for a good DAM. The best on the industry at the moment is digiKam when it comes to manage your digital images. Search tools second to none and allows flexibility to run on all systems. If Affinity would provide even half of the features that digiKam does, then Affinity would have a true jewel in their hands on Windows and iPad markets.

What I want (and haven't checked one yet) is a support for a USB controllers. Very simply joystick support! It is what the industry needs! Because that means you can go and buy a Joystick board like http://www.leobodnar.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=180 And then buy a bunch of buttons, knobs and rotaries and build your own controller, just like you want it! All it requires is that board, wires and then wanted buttons and other parts. Not even soldering is required (if someone is so afraid about that). And you can build something simple and nice like http://www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/1780-how-the-hollywood-film-whiskey-tango-foxtrot-was-edited-on-final-cut-pro-x It is about 50€ for the Joystick board, a 10-20€ for the buttons, knobs, rotaries and wires. And then just some time to design the layouts, build the boards / platforms and plug all in. No programming required by the end user than set it up in Affinity settings. All it requires is that Affinity Photo would recognize a normal USB joysticks with 8 analog axis, 32 buttons / 16 rotaries and even one 8-way hat. And have support to have multiple of those devices (not just one). That should be easy as DirectX on Windows (and same what ever system it was for OS X) API supports it so Affinity Photo only needs to know to communicate with it. No need to go buy those 300€ devices when you can make your own exactly for your purposes and needs! And what I really would love to see, is someone to use https://voiceattack.com/ with Affinity Photo (doesn't require support from developers). Think about it. You have microphone on laptop or on workstation and you can just say "Black and White", "New layer" or a "Mask" and you just get those. With a voice control and USB joystick support, Affinity tools could be managed very easily! Forget the MIDI devices, they are already past in most cases.

Thanks, fixed the problem. I have always considered that every application that relies something in a TEMP directory (or places something large and critical hidden from user in a AppData) is wrongly designed.

AP is informing that there is an update available and links to download. I have downloaded the update twice and each time it gives a warning middle of the update that network source error has happened and.msi installer at AppData/Local/Temp/Affinity/<string> is missing and update can't proceed. AP can't even be uninstalled as the same warning pop-up that it is missing. So is it just now safe to go to a registry editor and remove all the information about Affinity ever existed to get this problem fixed? (No, I don't use any temp files removing or done any cleaning etc, all is by windows own work if any).

This would belong to DAM features, or you just get a Google Drive application to make it so.

The education needs to happen with correct information from the start, or the whole learning process for the future is destroyed. This is like why learning to count from 1 to 10 is crucial skill as a child, later to sum up numbers or extract like 5+2=7 or 5-2=3, or learning to crawl before walk, because every new learning is required to be used in the future. Now what would happen if suddenly in the 7th grade a match teacher would come and say that everything you have learned about math has been wasted and you need to learn that there is no symbol + anymore to be available? Your head would explode as you can't learn something so deep things away anymore! The same thing is with information of the history, as it is teaching what is a action > re-action > consequence logic. This is why when talking about history and so on, it is important to be as accurate and precise as possible so the information itself that is given in shorter time, is still usable in the future and valid. We can all see this happening with the languages, that gets transformed and changed by the users, because laziness! And it as well often comes because user doesn't know the meaning of the word, so it gets used in wrong place by a wrong way and wrong reasons and that causes misunderstandings and even weakens the communication. Like what is said that Mark Twain wrote: “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” and I totally fit for that. As I don't have time to go through my writing three or four times to correct spelling etc. But if I would, I would definetly get my writings shorter and better. But then again so many isn't even willing to spend time to read longer posts than 2-3 lines (about 30-40 words) so it raises question, why to even write to them anyways when they are not willing to read even a postcard? We live in twitter era, 140 letters and that's it. But what happens when you need to deliver the complex message over in short form? Well, it reminds me from the joke of the blond and brunette sisters: https://www.sandrahill.net/BlondeJokes.html It is like why we tell the short stories for our children before going to bed. They don't get them first, but later when adults, they find the logics and the teachings behind them. Like example: You have been walking on the desert for days with little water and you tumble on a stone middle of nowhere. You course at it and then you spot that there is encarved something on the stone. It says "Deserts are hot". So first thing that you might think is that "Who the f*ng smartass wrote that obvious thing?!?!". Without even thinking the wisdom of the stone, that there are cooler places than a desert on earth.... The history, happenings etc are like a "broken telephone" game, where you needed to go and squeeze the right side person hand in the signal you received from person at left. And then see how the code changed when it did go through the people. Or put different people to deliver message from mouth to mouth and see how the message turns different in the end. The history of the GNU and Linux are very interesting as the idea of GNU/Linux is nothing more than propaganda. And it can be even traced back by using the GNU tools development changelogs where suddenly they changed the names of GNU and Linux to GNU/Linux, years after the popularisation of Linux. Suddenly RMS started to talk about GNU/Linux and the thing really did go viral. There were very few key people who were maintaining key programs and libraries, and they modified the codes and added new features, that weren't in the technical standards, only to get RMS egoistic believe fitted to the story! And it is really a funny that the Open Source own spirit that RMS wanted to preserve, reveals the lie of the GNU/Linux and RMS! But who cares when the popularity writes the history? Right? So everyone of us should try to keep the open mind and do some investing about the happenings instead just repeat (and alter) what others say. But that is off-topic partially, but wanted just to write my own memo of that here too, that sometimes in the future someone might find this writing as well and get them thinking "What if...?" and that is crucial thing in human history.

Is there any decisions to get in the future AP to work like a Multi Document Interface instead the current Single Document Interface so it could be like photoshop on old Mac OS X (panther/jaguar etc)? As back when System OS and Windows 98 etc existed, we didn't have the 3D accelerated desktops and fancy effects etc. What we had was just a simple and stupid 2D CPU heavy toolkits and it was difficult to handle really. Then became this idea to go again back to SDI design where every content needs to be inside a single main window. And this is now the thing how even Adobe pushes their view. But we didn't have this: And since then when Windows Vista got out, Microsoft tried to release something similar but in fancy way: And you can see it just didn't work, was nothing for the feature rich and the userfriendly. But quick stepping to modern time and we have Windows 10 that has the Exposé effect! FINALLY! We can now Win+Tab to get all windows presented at once on windows too (after OS X, KDE, GNOME etc)! And it makes so easy to find all windows and swap between them. Affinity Photo allows us to get toolbars etc undocked (or docks undocked?) but the main toolbar stays in main window, and we need to drag every document tab from that main window to separate it. And when we create/open new document, it is by default binded back to the main window, even when every other document is separated! Affinity photo works with Windows 10 feature well, when you view all windows, the toolbars are hidden and only document windows as the main window are presented. So how about adding a feature that makes every new/opened document to become Individual document windows when ticking a option in a settings? We can have a main window to have the toolbar (as Windows doesn't have the universal dock above like OS X) but dragging the documents from it is just tiring! Especially when we can resize the mainwindow to small one in 4K big screens (so it doesn't take whole screen and we don't need to move mouse across the display all the time) but then every document is by default zoomed to tiny thumbnail and requires zooming and resizing when unbinding from main window! 80-90% of the functionality is right there, just needs the polishing on Windows!