MikeFromMesa

I would like to know this also.

And as I have pointed out in several posts my experience with the Topaz plugins has been mixed at best. I have my system setup as specified, both search and support folders. When I use the CC plugins folder for the search location sometimes the plugins work, sometimes the plugins crash and sometimes Affinity Photo crashes. When I specify each plugin separately in the search location some plugins work, some don't work and some work or crash, depending on their mood, I guess. photoFXLab, which is really an executable, has never worked. Clarity crashes about half the time, Detail normally works, DeNoise has always worked, Adjust sometimes crashes and ReMask has never actually been able to run because nothing I do to the layers prevents the error message telling me that it cannot run using a Background Layer. It is very discouraging. I contacted Topaz and they said that as far as they knew they were not compatible with Affinity Photo but would put it on the list and see what was wrong. None of the non-Topaz plugins work for me at all. The Dxo plugin never starts, the PhotoNinja plugin never starts and the PerfectlyClear plugin, which is a real plugin (the Dxo and PhotoNinja "plugins" are really more like separate executable apps) wants to deactivate all my other PerfectlyClear plugin activations on my MacBook Pro and, even then, won't start. Athentech, which makes PerfectlyClear, says it should not be compatible with Affinity Photo, but they say the same thing about PhotoLine but it works with that editor without issue.

I put a question mark in the title because I am not sure if this lack of functionality is a bug or by design. When editing a raw file after a commit each step taken creates an entry in the History list, but there is no "first" entry which would allow a user to go back to the state after the commit was made. That is, each adjustment/plugin creates a history list entry like Step1, Step2, Step3 and so on. But there is no Step0 indicating the state before the first adjustment was made so it is not possible to go all the way back to immediately after the commit was issued.

There is no way to save or reload a selection at this time and a request to add that functionality has already been added to the request thread. As for the add and remove selection functionality, I have also not found a way to do that and have asked about it.

Is there some way to minimize the Media Browser without closing it? The only active window buttons seem to be the full screen and close buttons. I would like to minimize it so I don't have to re-launch it every time. The same issue exists for some other windows (the Apple Colour Picker, for example) but it is only the Media Browser that is a bother for me now. It would be really nice if it could be docked somewhere in a reduced form like a filmstrip.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your post, but why do you not reverse the selection before you create the mask rather than after? You can do that easily enough with Select -> Invert Pixel Selection and that is what I do. If I am misunderstanding your question, my apologies.

What other application? And, if it asked, did you select the setting form max compatibility? Single layer file? Or multi-layer file? I ask because I have had no problem loading psd files from Elements 13 (single and multi-layer), PhotoLine and CaptureOne.

Thank you for your reply. I guess I will skip PhotoPlus as I am not interested in spending $100 just to see if the software fits my needs. I would just rather not have to go through the trouble of charging it, finding myself unhappy and then waiting for a refund. But, as I said, thank you for the reply.

What are you saying here? That AP cannot open psd files from other editors? Or that other editors cannot open psd files created in AP? Or both? I have seen the second, but not the first.

+1. I was stunned (and I do not use that word lightly) to see the apology and, if anything, that kind of honesty makes me all the more interested in buying this product when it is released.

I apologize if this is the wrong place to post this but I could not find any other place to get this question answered. I have been trying out the new Photo beta and was so impressed that I wanted to see if other Serif software, which was in product release, was as good. I looked for a trial version of PhotoPlus so I could see if it was functionally complete enough and produced good enough editing results for me to consider buying but could not find a trial version on the website. Does Serif offer trial versions? Or do they expect someone to buy the software to do a trial and then get a refund if they don't like it? Thank you.

I understand this is Beta software and hence still in a QA phase. I don't expect it to work completely perfectly yet and I think you folks are very smart to have issued this Beta and asked for comments. But I wanted to drop a line and tell you all how impressed I am with what is available so far and to let you know that people like me are pleased, even though there are still a lot of bugs. I am really looking forward to the released product. Great work so far.

I had the same problem until I read the instructions on how to use AP with Topaz plugins. You must set up the plugin support folder entry as well as the plugin search folder setting. See this link: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4825-photoshop-plugins/ or the link: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/4671-how-to-install-plug-ins/ for help in how to set these up properly.

While I don't want to sound like a shill I have downloaded and tested the Affinity Photo beta and it is very slick and the more I practice with it the better my results are. There are issues. I still have some serious troubles with my plugins (Topaz Clarity crashes every time) and I cannot get ReMask to work at all, PerfectlyClear will not activate without my de-activating any other installation on my machine, I cannot see how to save my selections and I am having some troubles with some of the tools, but most other tools are very nice indeed. The InPainting works wonderfully, even for large patches. I have been able to remove my own shadow from some photos just through its use. The selection tool works as well as the one in Photoshop which I have always thought was the gold standard for selection tools. The Clone Tool does a nice job (once you figure out how to select the source spot). I really like the mesh and perspective tools. I am looking forward to the product release, along with its full functionality, and wanted the developers to know that, in spite of the problems I have had, this looks like it will be a really nice product when finished.

Thank you for the post. That did indeed fix my problem with the Topaz plugins, but now the plugin is asking me to activate it (or start the trial). The plugins have been activated on this machine for the past 18 months so I don't understand why it now wishes to activate again. And my other plugin, the Athentech PerfectlyClear plugin, which I find very helpful, is doing exactly the same thing. It also has been activated on this machine for about 6 months and now wishes to de-activate my usage for other software on this machine to activate it for Affinity. Very strange. Affinity tells me that the plugin is licensed for all uses on this machine, not for association with one specific application. So both plugins, with Affinity, seem to have activation issues.

I have tried this with my Topaz plugins and they don't work, at least for me. I posted a question about the difference between the plugin search and the plugin support folders, but never got an answer. In any case none of the Topaz plugins I have added to the plugin search folder entry worked and I always got an error message: \ Cannot proceed - IPC Memory in use or Image size is too big for the system. My Athentech PerfectlyClear plugin does not work either. I am on a MacBook Pro Retina with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD running Yosemite.

Are there any courses like for for Affinity Photo? I know it is only in beta but even a brief Photo tutorial would be helpful. And anything put together now could be expanded when the full product is released.

It is worth mentioning that almost all popular editors do some adjustments on raw images when they are opened. For example, Lightroom has a series of default adjustments that it automatically does to all opened raw images unless the user has specifically told it to not make any changes. Default setting is add brightness and sharpening. Similarly Dxo OP (which I have on my system) also adds default adjustments when the image is opened unless the settings are changed. It is rare that an editor does not do automatic adjustments. PhotoLine does not and (perhaps) Affinity does not. Elements, CaptureOne, Optics Pro and Photoshop all add adjustments to the raw image by default. You can add a preset to Affinity to do the same if you wish.

When you shoot raw/jpg your camera adds auto adjustments to the jpg, but the raw is only the data from the sensor, so the jpg will probably always be sharper and brighter. I posted screen shots of both the Affinity and PhotoLine displays from a raw image I shot a bit ago and you can see that, if anything, the Affinity image is brighter than the PhotoLine, not darker. I am not sure why it should be brighter (or darker) since they are both supposed to be unadjusted renderings of the sensor data but the Affinity image seems a bit nicer than that from PhotoLine. I am certainly interested in seeing what the release of Affinity Photo is like because I think that the beta is very well done and really helpful.

The Finder preview is taken from the embedded jpg in the raw image and not from the raw image itself. The jpg will contain a bunch of automated adjustments, one of which is almost certainly an added brightness, so it is reasonable that it would be lighter than the actual raw. I was comparing the Affinity Photo raw with the raw from other photo editors (Elements 13, PhotoLine, even Photoshop) where no brightness was added. ADDED: I have loaded a sample image into both Affinity and PhotoLine and here are the comparisons. Both are editors that do not adjust the loaded raw image and, if anything, the unadjusted Affinity image is actually brighter than unadjusted PhotoLine image. Affinity PhotoLine

What camera model are you using? I have tried this with my cr2 files (Canon 5D3) and I don't see the same darkness.

What is the difference between plugin search folders and plugin support folders? I assumed that the plugin search folders setting was for folders containing plugins and that Affinity Photo would search for any applicable plugins in that folder, but the plugins strangely when I do that. The Topaz plugins simply will not run and I get the message Cannot Proceed IPC Memory in use or Image size is too big for the system. and when I try to use PerfectlyClear I get a message telling me to activate it as though I was working on a new machine. I have these set up under the plugin search folders. Is this wrong? And what is the support folder setting for? Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. That worked. I guess there will be a lot for me to learn in the next couple of weeks before I can use this editor efficiently.

I am brand new to Affinity and hence new to the UI so there may well already be a way to do this, but I have not found it yet. I work on a 15" MacBook Pro Retina and have the resolution set to Best For Retina. But when I am working in Affinity I find there is not very much room to display any layers that I have in use. I tried to collapse the Histogram to provide more more but could not find any way to do that. Is there some way to collapse the histogram display so as to provide more display room for the layers list?