Leftshark

If you are using a Mac Retina/Windows HiDPI screen, this is technically correct...and Photoshop does it too. Photoshop and Affinity Photo define 100% to mean 1:1, which is one screen pixel to one image pixel. On a high resolution display, these pixels are much smaller than on older screens, so if you show an image 1:1 on a higher resolution screen, it is natural that it be much smaller too. 514px wide is a lot shorter distance across on a high resolution screen. Now to explain the web browser. This is the tricky one. Modern web standards measure web pages in pixels that are not hardware screen pixels. Instead they are CSS reference pixels, which are intended to be device independent so that an object will be a consistent size across screens of multiple resolutions. (Technically, a CSS web pixel is based on an angular measure.) This is actually a very good thing, for example, it is why web graphics did not all suddenly start to look tiny on high res computer and phone screens. But it is a different way of defining 100% than most photo editors use, so 100% is a different size, and yes that is frustrating. Personally I have compensated for this in Affinity Photo and Photoshop by using the keyboard shortcut editor in both programs to redefine the 200% view shortcut to use the shortcut usually assigned to 100% (on a Mac that is Command-1). I hit Command-1 and I get 200%. It isn't perfect, because the scaling factor is not always exactly 2x, but at least it's not too tiny any more. The other workaround...do all your work on an older low resolution monitor (72-120 ppi).

Congratulations on the release! It is great to have a real competitor to Photoshop. Thank you for giving us real choice.

In any good photo editor, a mask is grayscale so that it can also function as a partial selection, which produces a soft or aliased selection edge. If you didn't have that, a mask would only have black and white, and that would make for hard, jaggy mask edges. That aliased edge appears in the mask as intermediate gray shades at the transition between the white subject and black mask areas. One purpose of running levels or curves on a mask is to manipulate the gray shades at that transition. If you have a mask for a person and the mask edge is too soft, you can harden the mask edge in Photoshop by opening Levels and increasing contrast just for the mask. That mask edge can be manipulated using various combinations of blur or sharpen, increase or decrease contrast, etc. Using these techniques the mask edge can be softened, hardened, shifted in, shifted out... Another purpose for levels and curves in a mask in Photoshop is to limit the minimum or maximum effect of the mask by moving the Levels white point or black point for a mask so that its minimum or maximum output tonal value is now away from black or white. Because this is about masks, this is certainly not just about graphic design. It is definitely applicable to photography. Masks are central to advanced photographic tone and color correction in Photoshop because of their power in controlling the mask effect intensity and the quality and position of the mask edge, so being able to run levels and curves on a mask to manipulate its tones is an extremely useful ability that should be in Affinity Photo or any true professional image editor.

I can't say I fully understand it all, but this Color.org white paper "Using ICC Profiles with Digital Camera Images" (PDF) that I found on Google talks about why ICC profiles are not always appropriate for use as camera profiles. It says for instance The paper is 10 years old so I don't know what has changed or improved, but it certainly seems to indicate the original reasons why DNG profiling is often used instead of ICC profiling, for cameras.

I took a closer look at this and looked at an Affinity Photo TIFF in different programs. Most did not list the compression but Media Pro says "TIFF (LZW)" so it looks like the TIFF that comes out of Affinity Photo is compressed with LZW. If you have to be limited to just one compression, LZW is a good compromise.

I might not be seeing all the options but when I try to export as TIFF in Affinity Photo, I can't find any compression options. I don't know if it has any. The reason that's important is that it can make the TIFF file size vary across a wide range. If you export TIFF from Photoshop, you can set the same image to uncompressed TIFF, LZW TIFF, or ZIP TIFF and they're all going to be very different file sizes. I believe PSD uses Run Length compression which would result in yet another file size. I think uncompressed TIFF normally is much larger than any of the others, and ZIP TIFF would be much smaller. What's not clear is if Affinity exported TIFFs are compressed and if so, using what.

When you say "Most of the Designer users..." I wonder what about the rest of them. I agree with Bill and AlanH. For the last 30 years, the OS X Page Setup dialog box has told the Print dialog box which printer is selected and which paper size is selected, among other things. Many of the features have migrated to the OS X Print dialog, but not all of them. Some of the missing ones are useful to photographers. Some other current OS X applications do not have a Page Setup command in the menus, but in those applications it is not a problem. Why? Because they instead provide the functionality in the Print dialog box, so you can still choose a different paper size. Examples of these applications include Safari and Photoshop. Safari makes sure Paper Size is present in Print, while Photoshop includes a Page Setup button in Print so you can get the entire standard OS X Page Setup dialog box. The above is the bare minimum that is required. Choosing a paper size informs the Print dialog box not only about the paper size, but the available print margins, and with some photo printers, in Page Setup you choose a paper size that also sets the paper input (sheet feeder, front feed, rear feed, roll feed...). Unless I can't find it, those are currently things Affinity Photo can't do. Beyond the bare minimum are the features that truly professional photo editors have: XY positioning of the print within the available printable area, print scaling, flipping, negative, and maybe a soft proof preview. I really appreciate the detail and control that Photoshop and Lightroom provide in their print interfaces. I would expect Affinity to provide a comparable level of power and control, in a sleeker and hopefully simpler and more interactive way. And if you're wondering why this is so important, it's because printing is not free. Whether you are paying the high costs of inks and photo papers at home, or trying to output to a high-end printer for an important client, every screwed up print job costs money, and the bigger the job the more money you waste on prints that did not come out as expected. The reason I appreciate the print controls in Photoshop & LR is because if you do it right you can almost completely anticipate how your print is going to come out, get the print right the first time, and avoid wasting money on prints you had to throw away! A 17x22 sheet of exhibition quality photo paper can cost $5. Right now the problem with Affinity is you have to trust that Affinity is going to do the right thing when it prints, and if Affinity gets it wrong, that's money out of your pocket. You could blow more money on a single bad print than you would on a trip to the coffee shop for a sip and a snack.

That file size would only be wrong if it was radically out of line with the file size of a conversion made from raw to native format in any other program that does it, like Photoshop. A raw file is one channel, 12 to 16 bits depending on the camera. There should be a major increase in file size when converted to an RGB file, because then it is three channels at 8 or 16 bits. Naturally if you go from one 12-bit channel to three 16-bit channels, the file size increase will seem steep. And then if you for example add a single layer to the RGB file, that should double the file size. Add more layers, masks, and channels, and a composite preview image, and what used to be a small raw file will be quite large.

Thanks for the additional details. They are what I expected. Except for one thing, it is not the same with Photoshop and there is no need for LR to understand the layers. Photoshop can save layered TIFF, so I can have LR send a TIFF to Photoshop, add layers, save as layered TIFF, return to Lightroom, then Edit Original same image back to Photoshop and all the layers are still editable, including text. That's what I miss when opening in other apps and it's missing in Affinity too: the ability to save their features in non-flat TIFF so that LR does not have to understand the proprietary format.

You added some text in your movie, but I didn't see Affinity ask you to save the document. Was the saving step not shown? Because when I send a TIF from LR to AF and add text or an adjustment like Curves, when it is time to save something must be done with those feature layers. Did you choose to flatten them or did you Save As an Affinity format document? And when you have your edited version in LIghtroom, can you open that up again in Affinity and edit the text?

Having used Lightroom with some other apps like, I think I see the problem. While Lightroom can open an image in Affinity, how should the finished document be returned to Lightroom so you can see it there? If it is returned as an Affinity document, it cannot show up in Lightroom. (Affinity file format not supported by Lightroom.) If it is returned as a TIFF, Affinity has to do an Export to TIFF, not a Save. That would create a second file. And if it exports to TIFF, it will probably have to be flattened and lose all Affinity layers and effects. Either Adobe needs to add Affinity format support (unlikely), or Affinity needs to have a way of saving in a format like layered TIFF that Lightroom can read without losing full Affinity editability.

Thanks for answering my earlier question. Your answer leads to another question: If memory sharing between CPU and GPU can make GPU acceleration of some operations practical, where they might not have been if you had to go out across a bus to get to the discrete GPU, is there ever a case on a Mac where GPU acceleration of a feature is more practical with Iris/Iris Pro level integrated graphics than with a discrete GPU? I ask because if that was true, that would go against the conventional wisdom that a discrete GPU is always better. But I don't know if Mac integrated graphics result in the same penalty-free GPU use as your iPad example of GPU/CPU shared memory.

When you say "too costly" what is that cost? Does that mean the amount of time it takes to transfer the data from RAM (or storage) to the card and back, can be more than the amount of time saved applying the GPU to the data?

Although the "bug" is being "fixed" I think it's a better practice to deselect with menu or keyboard instead of the mouse. Especially if you are zoomed in, with clicking it's too easy to accidentally select something else underneath.

And we need control over it. At the very least, choices for exporting all metadata (including EXIF), no metadata, just copyright/contact info, yes/no options for export of GPS info and keywords, and so on.

Yes, extensive and very context-sensitive right-click menus should be part of any professional program including this one.

I love Photoshop, use it every day, as we all know Photoshop is #1 for a reason. But...I have to agree with that comment. When I tried the Affinity Photo beta, I was almost disappointed in how much like Photoshop it looks. The last big revolution was when Aperture/iPhoto and later Lightroom and others gave us a high end photo editing UI that intentionally looked nothing like Photoshop because they felt they had a better way that fit better with what we need today. It has also been said by others that the biggest problem with the free alternatives to Microsoft Office is that they all tried to copy the Office UI instead of finding a better way. This is also a big problem with the GIMP. They assume that there no one is interested in another UI even if it is better. But it seems inconceivable that Microsoft and Adobe already found the best possible UI 25 years ago. As long as other apps visually refer to the Microsoft and Adobe suites, customers will get the impression that the gold reference standards must be Microsoft and Adobe, not this new unknown app. And it may make it harder to convince users that Affinity is "in a different league" if it looks like it actually plays on the same field. If the Affinity Photo team does believe they that can do the exact Photoshop paradigm better than Photoshop, then that's OK, go for it and we'll enjoy it! But if you see an opportunity to, for instance, reinvent layers in a better way than anyone else has, even if it looks nothing like Photoshop, as long as it is better, please please do it.

Mac-centric? If you read their About Us page, they were previously 100% Windows: If they intend to develop Affinity Photo for Windows, there's no doubt they'll get there.

Maybe the developers could clarify what advantages there are in implementing soft proof as an adjustment. I can see a potential advantage if it's implemented properly. In Photoshop I would sometimes store layer groups that have adjustments for different specific media. One layer group might contain adjustments that only apply to Luster paper, while another layer group might contain adjustments only appropriate for Matte paper. I would turn on only one of those layer groups at a time depending on which medium I'm about to print to. Of course, if I turned on the Luster layer group I would also turn on the preset for soft-proofing Luster. Where Affinity Photo could one-up Photoshop is if you had these adjustment sets integrated with soft proofing, so for instance if I want to print on Luster, I click some sort of preset or adjustment group in the UI that I named Luster, and when I do that one click, not only do I turn on that media's adjustments but I also turn on that media's soft-proofing preview. If I then click on something I named Matte, Affinity Photo would switch the whole thing over to soft-proofing for Matte and the adjustments only meant for Matte. That would be great. Now, I noticed that you can group a soft-proof adjustment with a Curves adjustment. Is that because the developers intended them to be used like I described in the preceding paragraph? If that's true, I get it. However, it is not looking like an ideal implementation because it is currently possible to have more than one soft proof active, and that can potentially confuse and mislead users. If there is some way that Affinity Designer can allow document-level soft-proofing with presets (like Photoshop) so that only one soft proof setting can be active at a time, but somehow make it possible for the selection of a soft proof to also activate some kind of "soft proof layer group" associated with that soft proof preset (and deactivate any other layer groups associated with other soft proof presets), that would probably be better. But maybe I just don't understand what Affinity is going for here: Why is it possible to have multiple soft proof adjustments active? What are some uses for the opacity and blend mode choices in the soft proof adjustment?