dave2017

It seems that this problem has been known for some time, yet there is little evidence of a fix coming along soon. The comment about Windows suggests that there are different issues for the desktop versions. I use a Mac for "desktop" work, but the iPad version is hopeless for some applications even with an Apple pencil, as it's not possible to see what's actually happening well enough.
In the meantime Serif seem to be putting effort into Publisher and other products. This is a pity, as perhaps a little attention to some problems and user feedback for existing products would pay dividends. I still fee that the Serif tools are good, but the problem with not being able to see the size of the brush with visual feedback in the iPad versions is a real pain.

I noticed today when trying to download and save a photo that I had an option of HEIF format - which may be going to become a new "standard".
Out of curiosity I created one, and then tried to open it with Affinity Photo. It seems that AP doesn't handle this format - yet. This may become more important in the future.

In Affinity Photo blend modes are a feature - and I guess most people with some experience have tried them or know how to use them.
They are arranged in groups - but it would be helpful if the menu could be presented either with spaces or other delimiters between groups in the menu,
of with different backgrounds or features so that the groups become clearer - e.g. Darkening group, LIghtening group and so on.
I've not checked right now with the iPad version as well, but it would be good if this also applied to that version.
This wouldn't alter the functionality, but might make the interface easier for some people.

I've now regained the use of my MacBook Pro, so can now do more comparisons. Some features of the iPad interface seem easier/better than the desktop version. I am now getting to like the way that parameters can be adjusted by moving fingers left/right over the screen in the iPad version, though sometimes this can lead to "conflicts".
Some features of the desktop version are hidden away - unless one knows where/how to look for them. For example, the scopes which are available under the Studio menu. In the iPad version the scopes are accessible via the icon which looks like a camer on the RHS.

Hi- I'm Dave (Dave2017). I have worked with computers for many years - perhaps too many, and written software, though not so much in recent years. Actually most of the time I taught other people maths and computing in various countries, including the UK, but also the USA and Sweden.
 
I gave up official work a few years ago, but am still active in other areas, including making recordings and films of concerts - now settling on Final Cut Pro X - but have use Adobe Premiere, and other tools, such as Quicktime.
 
I generally don't like Windows much, and have been using Apple kit since 1985, and in recent years have become fully committed to Macs once more - having scrapped my two most used PCs last year. I did have the Serif software - PagePlus and also the Photo Plus software - sorry - probably no way they're going to get used again as I'm probably not going to set up another Windows based PC.
 
I have quite a lot of software on my machines, including basic photo editing (Apple Preview), GIMP, Photoshop Elements, but recently I bought Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer which seem easy to use and mostly very good.
 
Mostly I do photo editing, but sometimes I have to annotate photos or even make up graphics. I still miss Claris/AppleWorks for some tasks - and indeed I still keep one machine running in Snow Leopard (OS 10.6.8) for that reason. For some very quick figures that was much the best I ever came across. It's all very well having tools which will do everything, but if they're hard to learn or tricksy to use that's no good for most of us. What I really liked about the Claris/Appleworks package was the ability to link together shapes and text boxes etc. with connectors. It's possible to do similar things in Powerpoint, but it's really just not so nice.
 
OK - that's me done for an intro. Now onto the forum and questions.

Hi IRB:
 
Thanks for this, and I'm sure the information will be helpful. Unfortunately I think I may have closed my test file now, so perhaps I can't trace what went wrong, but I'll remember this for the future. I might just have a version which still has the history trace. I'll figure it out eventually.