MikeFromMesa

If you have a link to a current roadmap I would appreciate seeing it. I am not doubting you; I just don't know where to find a current roadmap. I am not asking for a release date for every feature. Only a current roadmap with some indication as to when we might see some of the features we know are to be implemented. I have not asked about automation since it is not particularly important to me but your roadmap link would be a help.

I am reasonably sure that the developers are still working on some of the missing or partial functionality and expect to see the Macro Persona some time in the future. It would be nice if they posted some kind of roadmap so we could see what was on track for release and when it might be available.

Thank you for the reply. Part of my frustration was that we had heard nothing about what, if anything, was going on concerning plugin functionality. While I have a general concern as I have many plugins my main concern has to do with my Topaz plugins and they reside in /Library/Application Support/Topaz Labs. To the best of my knowledge the NIK plugins also live in a well-defined location. I do not speak for anyone else but I assume that the majority of people who are using plugins are using either of these two groups and would be satisfied if both of them worked. If it turns out that implementation of these plugins is not possible, given the environment AP has to live in, I think most people would appreciate knowing that so we could try to plan how to work around the restriction. I know I would prefer to know what the current state is. I assume Serif will not get very much help, if any, from the Topaz people given their response to me when I asked about that. Again, thank you for the reply.

csp: Yes. It is frustrating and we have been promised this problem will be solved. > i understand your frustration but i think tonyB is absolut right, without some support from the pluggin developers side the problem is not really solvable. I disagree. Clearly other pixel developers have solved this problem since my Topaz plugins all work in those other editors, so the problem must be solvable. If photoLine can launch my plugins there is no reason I can see that AP should not be able to. And, as I said, there are other solutions to this problem. 1) Surely there are contract engineers who know how to solve this problem. Serif could let a contract for one or two of them to work to complete the interface. The companies that I worked for before I returned did that sort of thing all the time to solve knotty problems. 2) They could implement an external application call rather than just a plugin interface. That would allow users to call external apps and the plugins could be called through those. An external app interface would solve many of my problems. 3) They could tell us what is going on. They have been completely silent on this whole subject for some time now. If they are working on the problem and have some expected solution date, then they should tell us. If they believe that the present state of the plugin functionality is all that will be developed, then they should tell us so. tonyB's comment was that the plugin manufacturers place files where Adobe products are and the implication is that they will not be anyplace accessible if there are no Adobe products on the system, but Topaz places its products in /Library/Application Support/Topaz Labs and they are there for all to see and use. Dxo places its plugins at /Library/Application Support/Dxo Labs. OnOne places its plugins at /Library/Application Support/OnOne Software. And so on. It is not like they are hidden. I don't want this to sound like a rant. I love AP but I am just frustrated by the lack of communications about this and feel that I have no idea when, if ever, this problem will be addressed. If Serif were Adobe I would expect this kind of silence but the moderators and developers of AP were been so willing to share what was happening up to launch that I am puzzled by this lack of information. As an owner of AP I want it to prosper and grow but I believe it will never become what it is capable of without the ability to run plugins in some fashion.

I have never tried impressions. Perhaps it is worth looking at, especially if it actually works using AP. As for some of the plugins working and some not, it does seem strange to me. I have never written any plugin interfaces so I am at a disadvantage here but Adobe does define the interface and make the information available in their SDK so it puzzles me as to why this is such a big deal. I do not mean to suggest it is easy, but it is doable since there are other pixel editors besides Photoshop and Elements that have this working properly. If photoLine can do it so can Serif and I assume it would be a simple process for them to hire a temporary contractor who was familiar with implementing plugin interfaces. I do not want to be telling the developers what to do. They have done a tremendous job with AP but it would be a help if they would take a moment and try to keep us up to speed on what, if anything, is going on.

Bill, All of the Topaz stuff comes in two flavors - app and plugin. I know they are all referred to as plugins but if you look in /Library/Application Support/Topaz Labs/Adjust 5 you will see the app version and if you look in the Adjust5 folder under that path you will see the plugin version. This seems to be true for all Topaz plugins (and for photoFXlab as well). When I first saw this I assumed that there was an app version (meaning an actual stand-alone version) and a plugin version, but I have never been able to get the app version to run properly. When I try to run it as an app it crashes. When I try to set it up as an external editor for some other application and then run it, it crashes. For example setting it as the external editor for Elements and then calling it results in a crash. I have been trying to figure out what is actually happening here. Perhaps the plugin version calls the app version. Perhaps some applications require the app version and some the plugin version. I just don't know, but that means that understanding what is actually happening here may be more complex than I first assumed. One interesting side note is that photoFXlab is different. That is an actual app for that and it can be called as a stand-alone app. Further, when setup as the external editor for some pixel editor like Elements (or photoLine) it works properly and is not as "ugly" as the plugin version. For me that means that the application UI is easier to use and that it fits onto the screen properly. The plugin version present an app that is too large for the screen and can not be shrunk to fit the screen at any resolution < 1920 x 1080 and in 16x9 format. It seems very odd.

Whatever the problem is when opening jpgs it can not be just the size. I open my wife's jpgs from her Nikon point-and-shoot without any problem and they are 6-7 MB and 15-16 MP in size.

I am interested in your experiences. As I have posted before Adjust and Detail work for me. Clarity works once, but then causes a crash when any plugin is subsequently called. ReMask will not launch. DeNoise works. photoFXlab works and will run all of my plugins without a problem, but is a pain to use and has not been updated in about 3 years. Your mileage may vary but, if so, I would like to know about it. Perhaps there is something I should be doing but am not.

If you look carefully at the ReMask message you will see it actually says "unclock", not "unlock". I had a conversation with the AP people and they told me that the message is from Topaz, not from AP, so it is an error message. I am guessing that Topaz believes that the layer is locked and wants it to be unlocked. However unlocking the layer has no affect so I assume there is an interface issue in AP. I reported the spelling "unclock" to Topaz but never heard back.

I have 5 Topaz plugins (Adjust, Clarity, Detail, DeNoise and ReMask 4) and they all show up in the Filters dropdown. ReMask will not launch and Clarity can only (generally) be run once before something starts crashing all of the other plugins, but Adjust and Detail do well. I also have photoFXlab (which I really don't like) and it will run as a plugin. The only advantage is that when it runs I can run all of my other Topaz plugins through it, even ReMask, repeatedly and they all run properly. Have you set up the folders properly? Here is a screen shot of my setup. And here is a screen shot of my Filters dropdown menu.

We were promised that the Macro Persona which was present in an earlier version of APB would be fixed and included in a later release. That would allow the ability to script actions but I don't know if it would include Record and Playback. These would be very welcome.

Still no improvement in the plugin functionality? I am still getting the same plugin crashes with this latest customer beta.

Bill, Actually I have a thumbnail in both situations. AP -> File -> Open -> Folder -> File gives me a thumbnail for afphoto images as well as with Safari.

I assume you are referring to the display in the dialog box when you open an image in AP (File -> Open). I can not say what is happening on your system but I do see the afphoto thumbnails when I open an afphoto image using File -> Open. I have tried it with both the official release and the latest customer beta and have tried with afphoto files both on my main MBP SSD and on an external drive. All of those worked properly for me in that they displayed the thumbnail.

Ah, well. Sorry for the trouble. I thought it might work.

I have to say that I am also not fond of the solution. I don't much like photoFXlab but I use it because I don't have any other choice if I expect to use my Topaz plugins with AP. My plugins are location all over my system. Some are in /Library, some in /Applications and some in the Elements folder in Applications. One thing I noticed while playing around is that when I use the plugins in one location plugins X, Y and Z work but A, B and C do not. When I run them from another location plugins A, C and Y work but X, Z and B do not. I think that I will try some mix-and-match and see if I can get them all to work, even if the locations vary. In particular I found that when I run my plugins from Application Support Adjust, Detail and DeNoise work, but not Clarity and, of course, not ReMask (which does not work from any location I have tried). If I have any success with this mix-and-match approach I will post and let people know. UPDATE: Upon closer examination it turns out that some of the locations where I have installed plugins are really only aliases, not actual installations. Mixing and matching did allow me to run Clarity, but only once and then Adjust crashed when I ran it. It is all very odd.

Yes. Exactly.

Out of curiosity I downloaded NeatImage and installed it on my system to use as a trial. Since it would not work for you in AP I was sure it would not work for me as well, but I was curious if it would work when run through photoFXlab which is Topaz's platform for running plugins from pixel editors. As I have mentioned in other posts all of my Topaz plugins run when called from photoFXlab and it (photoFXlab) does run when called from AP and that is the way I have to use my Topaz plugins for now. Topaz advertises that photoFXlab will also run 3rd party plugins as well so I thought I would give it a try, even though its history of success with other plugins has been spotty. I loaded a tiff, called the photoFXlab plugin and added NeatImage to it as an additional plugin. I then tried to call it but got an error telling me that the trial version of NeatImage would only work with 8 bit images. I changed the document to 8 bits in AP and tried again, but got the same message. I then loaded a jpg into AP and tried again, but got the same 8 bit message. The only reason I am posting this is that it might work without the 8 bit restriction in the trial. I don't know but, if you are interested, you could download the photoFXlab plugin as a trial, run it from AP, add NeatImage and see if it works. It is a bit of trouble but is free as the Topaz trial should work properly for however long the Topaz trial period is and you could see if NeatImage would run through that plugin. Just a suggestion.

> Perfect Effects 9.plugin None of the OnOne plugins will work. They are designed to run through the PS Automation interface and AP does not seem to have any plans to implement that. It is a shame because a simple external app interface would allow someone to run all of the OnOne stuff. I would like that. > ToneMapping.plugin [HDRsoft] I assume you are referring to the Photomatix plugin from HDRSoft. Yes, that also works through the PS Automation Interface. > PTLensPhotoshop.plugin PTLens had a PTLensEdit plugin that I thought might work but I don't have it on my system. Since I use Optics Pro as a workflow tool and since it automatically adjusts for lens correction for all of my lenses, I have not looked into this. > Putting them in the library under com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/ data/ library/ applications support/ plugins gives the same result as having them in another search folder. That is an interesting thought and I have not (yet) tried that. It would be nice to have a central location and my Topaz plugins work differently depending upon where they are located. ​I have asked repeatedly for an external editor interface so much of these problems could be bypassed by using the external app for the plugins, but without any success. Topaz has those, OnOne of course, Photomatix and PTLens. I am not familiar with NeatImage and FocusMagic.

As it turns out I am pretty sure that the change in how my plugins are working has resulted from a change I made to the Preferences location of those plugins rather than from anything else. For some reason my Topaz plugins reside in multiple places on my system. They are in the Applications folder under Topaz Labs, they are in the /Library/Application Support folder as well as located in the various Adobe application folders. Apparently how they work with AP depends upon which of those locations you select to add to the plugins folder in AP. Using the /Library/Application Support location resulted in Clarity working but Adjust crashing. Changing that to the /Applications/Topaz Labs folder reverses that condition so that now Adjust is working and Clarity is crashing. For the meantime I will continue to use photoFXlab to run the plugins as that works.

Do you find that your Topaz plugins all work when used through photoFXlab? Mine do, but I don't much like the extra overhead needed to use the platform. It is better than nothing, but I have seen complaints that image colors change when opened in photoFXlab and make adjusting difficult. It is better than nothing, but still the plugins should work in their native format. I am on 10.10.3.

I have been working with the latest customer beta and wondering if the developers have been updating the plugin interface. There was nothing in the release notes to indicate that (or at least I did not see anything to indicate that there was any progress in making my Topaz plugins work) but for the first time I was able to call the Topaz Clarity plugin and not have it or AP crash. Just in case this was not a side-effect of some other change I thought it might be helpful to post what is happening now when I call my Topaz plugins. Repeated calling of Adjust, DeNoise and Detail work properly. A call to Clarity works once but all subsequent calls to my Topaz plugins fail and cause a Topaz crash. Calls to ReMask 4 still will not launch. photoFXlab is still working as a platform for all of my Topaz plugins. PerfectlyClear does not work. Dxo ViewPoint 2 crashes when launched. None of the OnOne plugins work (although they are probably designed for the Photoshop Automation interface and I would not expect them to work). It would be nice if someone would share the plugin work schedule so we can have some idea if the developers are working on the plugin interfaces and when we might expect them to be working properly.

Billtils suggested that the quality setting was really only a compression setting and, if that is true, then the fact that the output file size is larger than the input may only mean that the compression algorithm used for that setting does less compression than the original jpg was compressed and, while logically a bit odd (the output will be lower quality because jpg compression is lossy so one would assume it would not be actually larger) that would make perfect sense. As for the settings under More, many of those settings reflect (and are tied to) the settings on the main Export window. However I have never tried to write out a jpg in other than RGB 8 bit and I have no idea what size effect changing the Matte setting would make or, for that matter, what actual affect it would have on the jpg. I can see no difference when I load a jpg saved with a white matte and one saved with a blue matte.

My question has more to do with why resampling is even being done if there is no change in the size of the image. Or am I missing the whole point here? As an aside I just don't see why all of the jpg exports of a jpg input should be twice the size. It just does not make any sense to me. That may well be do to my ignorance of the processing that has to be done, but on its surface it just seems very odd and wrong for what appears to be a "pass-through" image (no adjustments, no changes in size, same input and output types) to suddenly double in size.

I don't use 100% as an export value when doing real work. I assume there is no real difference between my tired old eyes can see at 100% and, perhaps, 75%, so I use a smaller value when saving for screen viewing. However when I am doing export for further processing I do use 100% with the understanding that I will not save the final version at 100%. As to what should be the default value, I don't know. As for me, I would prefer that the export window remember what the previous export quality setting was (along with the export resampling type) and just populate the window with those values.