Google has just announced that their Google Nik Collection composed of seven Photoshop plug-ins is now free for everyone.
Click here for more details. You can download them from here.
Currently Analog Efex Pro 2, Color Efex Pro 4, Silver Efex Pro 2 work with Affinity Photo. HDR Efex Pro 2 only works partially.
First, apologies for not showing UI screens in English, but I believe all items are in the same place, so is easy to deduce which options are which.
Also for this being way too obvious for the majority. But from what I have read in some posts, some people might not know they can do this: Almost totally disabling the visual style that aero brings, but keeping what the application needs. I've experimented no performance loss, indeed this loss could happen in XP and Vista times, but seems not anymore (I put my machine to its limits of performance every day, and is a first generation i7 with only 8gb, arcane card)
The first thing would obviously be to select an aero theme (right click on desktop, customize). I would advice choosing "Windows 7" standard, and probably remove that way too intense blue desktop background by hitting "desktop background" at the bottom of the themes window, and then selecting "solid color" , and choosing a custom color, I pick my very specific neutral grey.
You would go then to to Control Panel, then System (or if have your desktop so, right click on the machine icon, "properties"), then hit Advanced Configuration, then hit Advanced Options, and in that window, in the "Performance" area, hit the "Configuration" button (it says there you can change visual effects). You would click the "Customize" radio button instead of the default. And you only need 4 options, actually you could leave only two (I believe first and last of my below list), but I'd recommend setting the following 4, however they might be worded in English Windows 7 version :
-Desktop Window Manager Composition
-Show thumbnails instead of icons
-Fonts smoothing
-Use visual styles in Windows and buttons.
If you disable font smoothing you will see bad fonts aliasing. If disable thumbnails, obviously wont see those raw files previews, not even having installed the raw cameras codec pack from MS (neither JPGs or other images thumbnails) in "open" dialog in AP (or in the whole OS).
Then, just right click in the desktop (or go to control panel) and hit customize,
Then, click on "Window color"
Then select what you prefer (grey-ish is fine for me). I just hate blue color in any interface element. I prefer not to deal more with it, is quite pleasant for me as is at that point. Also, because I like simple workflows: Easy to remember, and fast to replicate, which is good if you change things more than once.
EDIT: Important...Doing so, it triggers back ON the not so cool settigns of visual glass and Windows drop shadow (well, I deeply dislike those, and don't need the extra load, and my point here is to get back some of the more sober look, less overloaded which several of us prefer) , just get back to performance settings as explained and un check those 2 :
(again, excuse the Spanish language, am sure you will know which are the options for visual glass and windows' drop shadows )
Hope it serves at least for 2% of the group of unhappy non aero win7 users
Edit (15/01/2017) : Just some silly extra detail, not sure if I mentioned: if you save your themes, both your classic one, and your Aero one, is easy to switch just clicking on each theme icon. Of course, life couldn't be so simple, we are in Windows, the middle step in OSes in what is of ease of use and problem free usage without freedom in fine tuning, vs flexibility and stuff to deal with : When clicking on the Aero one, there's 2 or 3 defaults Windows "thinks" you deeply desire to have, no mater what you (you gotta love that in Windows, how it "knows" what you prefer... //Sarcasm) selected, they are triggered back on (hello stupid glass, back here again!). Just deselect those as I explained above. But the colors, and etc, are kept.
Edit (13/11/2019 ) : As we approach to Windows 7 total end of support, and mostly because I like to keep information well interconnected (tends to be helpful) a more recent tutorial explaining this is in the following post . It is explained maybe in a more succinct style (maybe as I myself have become a more brief and to the point poster, lol. Or...nah, I didn't ) . Also, with the UI items and menus in English, but no screenshots. For some will be easier to follow, others might prefer this one (this old one here provides the extra tip for how to change the look of this minimal "aero" config, so, there's that). In case you are not following this well, feel free to visit the more recent tutorial. Affinity is really worth it putting up with some changes in the OS, or even using a totally new Windows 10. Huge tip here: Install it CLEAN, even after a disk format, not over the Windows 7 you have. There are known issues if not, and not only with the lovely Affinity apps: I have helped solving several of those issues/cases here (initially attributed to Affinity when it was NOT the case) but also in other forums apps from other brands, not Serif. So, clean install, highly recommended. Oh, and Windows 10 has come a long way since its bad start. A lot has improved through the patches and updates, more flexibility on install, less imposed stuff. A good re-config after setup following some of the more RECENT tutorials in configuration (you end up not needing those once you get familiar with it all) do go a long way. Just be sure to check the date of the tutorial/article!. Don't use even 3 month old tutorials (neither old negative opinions/articles about Windows 10 ...) for this, much of that has been fixed. These tutorials help to remove not so great defaults about privacy and UI configuration, making of Win 10 a really pleasant ride. It is a fact. About privacy, with the right config, it kindda bothers me WAY less than using Google, google services, several government administration tasks or my phone. And I can't work without making use of those, so, anyway.... For any platform, one needs to be slightly nerdy to get the OS well configured and to one's liking (said this by a Linux passionate user), but it pays greatly in the long run , trust me on this one!. So... yeah, if you are reading between the lines.... my advice is, tho having remade my years-old tutorial (there are more instances of this which I created) my major advice (not as a guru or authority, as am none of that, but as a professional user who happily used the three platforms (Mac, Win, Linux) with no limitation or issue -I found always happy workarounds) here is to... evolve and adapt, and use Windows 10, it ain't that terrible. At ALL. And enjoy your "Affiniting", it's a lot of fun and a professionally viable suite !
The usual practice is to respond within the forum thread so that other users can benefit, but it's a good idea to start your own thread if your question is not related to the topic of the current thread. As this is a public forum, you might want to edit your email address out of your post to avoid attracting spam.
During the installation of the Affinity range on Windows, the following issues can be flagged. Please see below the descriptions and possible mitigations available.
Unable to upgrade applications - "There is a problem with this Windows Installer Package."
This is a known issue with MSI based installers on Windows. Microsoft have a tool to repair corrupted install databases
- Please see https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/17588/fix-problems-that-block-programs-from-being-installed-or-removed
How do I know if my PC is running a 64-bit or 32-bit Operating system
Affinity on Windows requires a 64-bit Operating System. Some PCs and laptops run 32-bit OS.
- Please see https://support.microsoft.com/help/13443 Which Windows operating system am I running?
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or higher not found
Affinity requires Windows 7 Service pack 1 - this can be installed through Windows Update.
DirectX 11 not found
Affinity uses DirectX 11 acceleration to achieve smooth panning and zooming of the design canvas.
- Please see https://support.microsoft.com/kb/179113 for how to install DirectX 11.
Platform Update for Windows 7 not found
Affinity requires the platform update for Windows 7.
- Please see www.microsoft.com/download/details.aspx?id=36805
64-bit CPU not found
Your PC only has a 32-bit CPU. Unfortunately Affinity will not run on your PC unless it has a 64-bit CPU.
64-bit Windows not found (but CPU is 64-bit)
Your PC has a 64-bit CPU but you are currently running a 32-bit version of Windows.
- Please install a 64-bit version of Windows.
Aero requirement to run the Software
We require Desktop Windows Management Composition, rather than native Graphics drivers. This is natively on for Windows 8 and 10, but on Windows 7 this is most easily achieved by turning Aero ON. If you are not willing to turn the Aero theme on there is a work around described in this post, but any issues when running the software won't be logged unless they've been verified as still occurring with DWM Composition enabled.
A more general FAQ regarding the Affinity range including Affinity Designer can be found here in the Questions forum.
Hello Tom, and welcome aboard. It might be a long and tedious task, but I think the best thing to do is to open those files in the program you used to make them (Paint Shop Pro), and convert them to common file types that Affinity Photo will recognize but still keep the layer structure. PSD is good for photos and paintings, and PDF is good for vectors.
