MikeFromMesa
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Posts posted by MikeFromMesa
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For some reason I thought that AP did support scripting, but that was probably just me misremembering some scripting I did years ago with CaptureOne. If AP does not support scripting then I guess the idea of somehow launching apps from it is hopeless, at least now. As for recompiling plugins, if the plugin companies wanted to do that they would already have done so.
I have thought about looking into writing a simple plugin which would then allow the launching of an app, but have not looked at the SDKs so I have no idea how much work is involved, and since none of my software experience was involved with handling and processing photos I guess that means a long and involved learning curve.
The simple solutions seem to be to either use Photoshop (which has an automation feature) or returning to PhotoLine which already contains the ability to launch apps.
Thanks for the post.
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5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:
As a workaround, have you considered running Photo under Rosetta (or is it Rosetta 2)?
Yes. I did that before I posted. If I run Photo under Rosetta it will then run some of my plugins, but not others, and those that do run do not run properly. I am not referring to the Nik plugins, which do run properly in Photo.
I had the same issue with another pixel editor (PhotoLine) but it allows the user to run the app version of the plugins and those run properly. I tried to find some way to run the apps under Photo, but can not find anything that works. I have not yet looked into scripting, and thought I would ask if anyone has done that before I spend the time and possibly redo someone else's efforts.
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To the best of my knowledge (and after doing a forum search) there is not any way to launch an app from within Affinity Photo (I have version 1) in any native AP way. Being able to do that would solve some problems for me as some of my older plugins (that have not been updated) do not work with AP, but their app versions would work if I could launch them from within AP. This problem probably stems mostly from the fact that I work on a Mac M2 machine, AP is a Universal app and the plugins and external apps are Intel based.
I thought that someone might have figured out a way to do this using scripting so I thought I would ask. Has anyone found any way to launch other apps from within Affinity Photo, version 1 or 2, and use the apps as substitutes for plugins? Some other pixel editors that I have used do this and perhaps I just don't know how to do it with AP.
Thank you for any help.
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9 minutes ago, R C-R said:
Alternately, maybe refer to this https://www.photography-raw.com/install-nik-collection-plugins-affinity-photo/, taking careful note of what it says about adding a location on the Compatible Host screen & particularly about creating a new destination folder for the plugins.
I put aside all of my past experiences and decided to give my system another look for any possible hidden ".plugin" folders. The install instructions seemed pretty clear in saying that the installation would end up in the /Applications/Nik Collection folder, but then I have seen enough installation instructions that were just plain wrong that it seemed worth another look. And, sure enough, I found the .plugin files in a completely separate and un-noted location. So you were right and I was wrong. Thank you for that.
None of that means that the plugins actually work, but that is a different issue. Sorry if I wasted everyone's time, but it did goad me into looking at my system again.
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24 minutes ago, R C-R said:
No, on Macs there should be both the apps (with the *.app extension) & usually nested in subfolders in the same parent folder, the plugins (with the *.plugin extension).
If not, it means the plugins were not installed or were installed in some other location. I don't have v5 installed on my Mac, just the older Google versions, but I assure you that regardless of the version, there should be a set of plugin files as well as the app files once the collection is installed correctly.
I had exactly this same issue with Nik 4, Run the installer and you only get the apps, not anything marked .plugin. The Nik instructions are quite clear in saying that the plugins will be installed in the /Applications/Nik Collection folder, and that is where the apps are. But no plugins. And I did a file system search looking for any images marked .plugin, and found nothing from Nik.
However I guess I should do what I should have done initially, and that is contact Nik support and ask them. My idea was to find out if anyone on this forum had any success running plugins with AP, and Nik was only the most convenient because they are the only company that says that they guarantee that their plugins work with AP. Topaz no longer seems to be making plugins for Apple Silicon machines and their older plugins are mostly either not supported or not Silicon compatible. Skylum's Neo plugin also does not work with AP. It does show up in the list, but doesn't work at all. Every attempt to call it resulted in either a crash or a hang.
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17 minutes ago, R C-R said:
For the Plugins Search Folders item, can you verify that in anywhere in Applications/Nik Collection there are items with the extension "*.plugin"? To do that, open Applications/Nik Collection in Finder & expand all its subfolders. Somewhere in there should be all the *.plugin items, separate from the items with the *.app extension.
That is one of the things that has puzzled me for some time. On the Mac the Nik "plugins" are not plugins, but apps, and that is how I referred to them earlier (item 4 in my initial post). That is true on the Mac, although I don't know about Windows.
On the Mac apps are really data structures and their contents can be viewed by examining the Contents folder in the app. For most apps that have plugins, like Skylum's Luminar Neo, you can find the actual plugin by examining the Contents subfolders and copy them out, but I have looked through the Nik apps for a plugin and there is not one there. In any of them. They are not really plugins in that sense; they are apps.
But Nik refers to them as plugins and the contents of the Application/Nik Collection, which Nik says contains the plugins, contains only apps. And the apps do not contain actual .plugin files. However if you look at the contents of the Nik apps you can see a Helper folder and I assumed that Nik had worked out some way to use the contents of their Resource or Helper folders to allow the use of the apps as plugins. Nik says that they are guaranteed to work with Affinity Photo, and yet they are apps, so I don't know what is really going on here. The obvious comment is that they don't work with AP because they are apps, not plugins, but according to Nik they are guaranteed to work. Go figure ...
I would do a trial install of Photoshop and see if the app plugins work with it, but I just rebuilt my system and don't want to clutter it up with extra garbage. I would end up uninstalling PS anyway.
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10 minutes ago, Return said:
Make sure the selected layer is a pixel layer, image layers needs to be rasterized first.
Thanks for the information. I did not know that, so I learned something today.
However the problem is that the plugins do not even show up to be called, so the problem is not that the layer is not rasterized or that the plugin call does not function properly. Still, I did another trial, made sure the layer was rasterized and tried again, but again no luck. But if I ever get this figured out then I will know now that the layer (or layers) have to be rasterized before making a plugin call, so thank you for that.
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Just for the sake of completeness here is what I get when I try to access a plugin. As you can see there is nothing listed under the Plugins link.
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3 hours ago, R C-R said:
How specifically did you do that, & what folder were they in? In Preferences (or Settings) > Photoshop Plugins, what do you have set for Plugins Search Folders & Plugin Support Folders? (A screenshot of this window would help.)
Finally, if you are using a Silicon Mac, you probably have to run AP in Intel emulation mode unless the plugins have been (re?)released as Universal ones. Do that by Getting Info for AP & check the “Open using Rosetta” option. For more about this, search the web on "Rosetta 2 Mac" or similar.
As to how I did the installation, I followed the instructions in the Nik manual. That is, I specified that there was another app I wanted included by using the "+" sign, and got the Adobe Custom1 label that it said I should get, and I verified after the install that the apps had been copied to the /Applications/Nik Collection folder.
As to what I have in the Preferences -> Settings -> Photoshop Plugins entry, I first specified the Applications/Nik Collection folder in the search folder, checked the Unknown Plugins checkbox and authorized Global, specifying the root Macintosh folder. I did not know what to do with the Support folder because there were no instructions concerning it. I then restarted AP and when I did not see the plugins I then added the apps directly to the AP plugins folder and restarted again. Still no luck. Rebooting did not help either.
As to trying AP with the Rosetta setting ON, I tried that as well, but still no luck. No indication that anything had any affect, no listings of the Nik stuff and no indication that AP even knows that they are there. See the attached screen shot for what the AP Plugins dialog box looks like.
1 - Opened the default folder and copied the Nik apps into it.
2 - Added the Nik Collection folder to the Search folder
3 - Checked the Unknown plugins, just in case
4 - Authorized Global, using the Macintosh folder. Tired this with just the Nik folder as well, but it made no difference.
5 - There were no instructions I could find that said what to do with the support folder, so I tried it without one and with the system root folder. No difference.
Nothing shows up in the AP plugins list. Nothing.
If you can see something here that might help please let me know. I am reluctant to upgrade to version 2 since I can not get version 1 to work with the plugins and some of them are important to my editing. Thanks for any help you can provide.
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I guess I was not clear enough in my initial post. I searched for Nik, but when I wrote that I did not find "it" I meant I did not find an answer to my questions, not that I did not get any responses.
In fact I got a ton of responses, but when I looked through them I could not find anything that explained why a Nik app could be used in AP V1 as a plugin, or why installing the Nik apps and setting up the plugin dialog box in AP did not even show them.
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I am sure this question has been asked before, but I could not find it in a search.
I returned to Affinity Photo (version 1) recently, having used Photoshop for a while, and again ran into the same issue that made me turn to Photoshop before. I could not get any plugins to work with Affinity Photo. What made me return was Nik saying that Nik 5 was compatible with Affinity Photo and guaranteed to work, so I installed Nik 5, making sure it copied the plugins to a specific folder, and then tried to set them in in AP, but it (AP) never saw the plugins so I am back where I was before. Hence some questions.
1) Is anyone using the Nik plugins with AP? If so, with AP? Or AP2?
2) Is there some support folder that needs to be specified in the AP plugins dialog box? If so, what?
3) Is AP compatible with Nik? Or only AP2?
4) The Nik "plugins" are all apps, and as far as I know AP does not support running external apps, so how are the Nik plugins supposed to work? Or am I missing something (again)?
Thanks for any help. I am using AP 1.10.6 which I believe is the latest version for V1 and am working on an M2 silicons Mac.
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5 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:
The Customer betas check to see if you are a Customer. To do this,....
(1) First it looks for proof of being a MAS customers, so it looks at the Mac App Store release build to see if it's one it "knows about" (the betas currently do not recognise the new MAS release ones as they were made after the beta).
(2) Secondly the beta looks for proof of being an Affinity Store customers (looking for an installed version using a product key written away)
(3) Finally having found neither it prompts for a product key. This is so Affinity Store owners can test betas on new machines by simply typing in the key, without having to install the release software first.
This prompt for a key happens to MAS owners because of the new MAS version not being recognised, and falling through to case (3). I think that if the MAS file is found (but is not recognosed as valid) that the text on that dialog in step 3 should be different sayiong that the MAS version is later than the beta.
Once there is a 1.7.1.x beta the 1.7.0 MAS release will be recognised in step 1 and the new beta will go back to not prompting for a product key
Interesting to know, and it does explain why this is happening, but it does not fix my problem. I would have thought that the developers would have considered this condition when releasing the Beta.
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5 hours ago, mac_heibu said:
There is no actual beta! The shipped version is newer than the (old) beta. Just wait, until a new beta is released and all will be fine!
There is a significant difference between how the regular release works with my Topaz Studio plugin and how the Beta works with it. The Beta version, at least the last one, allows me to call Topaz Studio and then call the Topaz plugins. The regular release (1.7) does not. I do not know why there is such a basic difference between how the two operate, but I use the Beta rather than the regular release because of that.
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20 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:
You can’t „update the beta from the AppStore“, because a „beta“ isn’t available in the AppStore. You have to update version 1.6 via AppStore, if you have bought it in the AppStore.
Yes. I realized that after I posted.My mistake. I updated the regular AP from the App Store and updated the beta from the link sent to me via email.
The fact remains that I can not use the beta because it asks me to validate it using my email, but when I enter the email there is no button to press to validate using that email. The Validate button seems to validate the serial number and, having bought in the App Store, I do not have one of those.
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This is puzzling to me.
I updated the beta from the App Store and now it is asking me to validate it using either my email address or a SN. Since I bought it from the App Store I entered my current email address but the dialog box does nothing. When I press the Validate button it tells me that the information is invalid, presumably because there is no SN. How can I get it to accept my email address?
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I tried using Luminar Flex (which is their plugin) and it never launched. Flex did not crash. It just did not run.
Once AP/APB goes into plugin mode you are stuck if the plugin does not run.
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Sent via PM.
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I am not sure that this post belongs in the beta or regular AP forum, or even sure if it should be in either, but I think it may be an AP issue and I did want to raise visibility in case it is a real issue.
Topaz is marketing an app called JPG to RAW that users can use to create dng files from jpg images. While I don't know exactly what it does to the jpg to produce a dng, and I do not know if the resulting image is any different or better than what the free Adobe DNG converter produces, I did want to give it a try. I generally shoot in raw so ignored this app when it was first released, but tried it yesterday out of curiosity. I do shoot my backup photos in jpg so there is that, and my Olympus E-M1.2 does automatic de-fishing of images I take with my 8mm fisheye, but those images are (of course) jpgs so I might have some use for it.
In any case I loaded the resulting dng file into Photoshop ACR opened it and the auto-adjust looked just fine. I did not have to do anything.
I then loaded it into Affinity Photo (both the regular and the Beta) and got a terribly over-exposed image. When I tried to compensate by lowering the exposure (2+ stops) the result was badly tinted as well. You can see both screen shots here (PS) and here (APB).
As I said I do not know that this is an AP/APB bug but thought the developers at Serif might want to know. I would be happy to send the actual dng image if desired.
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I have been able to reliably repeat this problem on the latest Beta (1.7.0.130), but not on the regular release (1.6.7). On the Beta I get it with both raws and jpgs and with every photo I have used.
Here is a screen shot of what I see: https://www.dropbox.com/s/30t9r0azu9yrudi/RollingSelection.jpg?dl=0 although it is only a snapshot of the rolling selection.
Here is what I did to create a luminosity mask:
1) Load an image,
2) If the image is raw, press the Develop button,
3) Unlock the background layer and duplicate it,
4) Make sure the new layer is selected,
5) Add an HSL adjustment, make sure the Master is set and turn down the saturation all the way,
6) I also then selected the Blue setting and raised the Luminosity to include more of the sky, but I do not believe this has any bearing,
7) Merge the HSL adjustment with the top selection,
8) Make sure the top merge layer is selected, right click on the Red Composite entry in the Channels panel and select Create Spare Channel,
9) When the channel has been created delete the top merged layer so that only the background layer remains. Make sure it is selected,
10) Press the Reset on the RGBA Channel entry to restore color to the image,
11) Right click on the newly created Spare Channel and select Load To Pixel Selection
Here is a screen recording of the whole process.
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This issue is apparently repeatable. I have followed the same sequence twice and gotten the "rolling selection" each time. I guess I should file an official support request.
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I was experimenting with creating Luminosity Masks with the Beta. I was using the tutorial at this link and although it worked reasonably well I also so what I can only describe as a "rolling selection" when I loaded the LM to pixels. Here is a video of what I saw. I will go through this again to see if I can reliably repeat this issue.
This reminds me of an issue that I reported some years ago, so something may have re-surfaced.
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OK. Thanks. That was what I expected, but it is always good to get confirmation.
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My basic question was whether or not there was any way out of having a plugin not run. That is, AP is in a state where no commands can be called because of the plugin that is not running. Is there any way out of that situation other than terminating AP?
Launch apps with Affinity Photo
in Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows)
Posted
It probably is not worth the time and effort involved. After all I can just save an image, start the app I want, process the image, save it again and load it into Affinity Photo.
On the other hand I am retired and have lots of time and not all that much interesting to do, so this might be a bit of fun. Or pain. Depending on how things go. 😀