MelG

Welcome to the forum. This has been pointed out a few times already and Serif is aware. In the meantime, here are the correct links:
Publisher 2 Learning Portal: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/learn/publisher/desktop/ Publisher 2 Quickstart Guide: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/learn/publisher/desktop/quickstart/ Publisher 2 What's New: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVqOON7Rg34

Url to Publisher 2 learning portal is incorrect.
Current behaviour:
Help>Affinity Publisher 2 Learning Portal = https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/learn/designer/desktop/
Expected behaviour:
Help>Affinity Publisher 2 Learning Portal = https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/learn/publisher/desktop/

It just occurred to me that the color conversion for printing could possibly be handled by a Soft Proof adjustment layer. Since the adjustment layer provides settings for assigning a printer profile, a rendering intent, and black point compensation, I believe if I execute the print job with the soft proof layer unhidden and turn off color management in the print driver, that this will render colors accurately. I'll have to test the process to know.
Is there anyone on this forum who has tried this and can weigh in?
Thanks.
The screenshot is from Affinity's Help document...

Would love to be able to adjust where to place the center of my vignette, using the Live Vignette filter. Often the area to emphasized is not in the center of the image.

With the Adobe's announcement of Lightroom CC (and cloud only storage) and depreciation of Lightroom Classic CC is it time to strike with Affinity DAM while the iron is hot...
 
 

It is a service that includes access to certain software applications that vary depending on the subscription plan, but there is no way to keep using the software without also subscribing to one of the plans. That is what has so many people ready to dump Adobe.

A-ha! I figured it out. It's a naming convention thing.
 
Any of the AP crop presets or any custom presets will remain constrained only if they are named in this specific format-
 
16 : 9
1 : 1
5 : 7
etc...
 
i.e. number space colon space number
 
I made a 16x9 preset, but I called it 16:9, without the spaces. AP will still save that crop as a preset with the dimensions that I dictate, but it will be unconstrained if I try to expand or contract it. I renamed it 16 : 9 and it remained constrained.
 
You'll notice that the other AP presets that are not named in that format (6" x 4", 8.5" x 11", 1024px x 768px) are all unconstrained, whereas the others (1 : 1 and 5 : 7 and 8 : 10) will remain constrained.
 
It makes no difference if it's a CR2 or a jpg or anything else, and AP behaves the same way in Develop and Photo personas.

I second that.

I think you are right, R C-R. We need more contrast on the interface. However, it is clear that a certain balance has to be found, and such a balance is not easily achieved. If you turn up the contrast too much, the user interface will get distracting. The single elements will simply pop out of the window. So apart from the valid point you made, I believe the readability of a user interface depends on many factors, not only on increasing contrast. Here are some additional thoughts and observations:
I believe we will need a clear hierarchy of available options. In my opinion, the Character and Paragraph panels lack such a clear visual hierarchy the most. I really have problems using them intuitively. It is somewhat better in the light version, but I still believe there is room for improvement. The spacing and the aligning of elements need to be reworked, as I mentioned elsewhere (here and here). We must be able to see at first glance which interface elements belong together, which elements form a series on the same logical or instrumental level. Similar elements should be styled similarly, dissimilar ones dissimilarly. I cannot understand, for instance, why there should be a variety of button styles on the interface, when the buttons themselves share the same purpose. Compare, for instance, the Create and Detach buttons on the Symbols panel with the Character and Paragraph buttons of the context toolbar of the text tools. All of them are trigger buttons, but the first ones are styled differently from the latter ones. The same goes for some instances of radio-button-style selectors. Compare, for example, the selectors for the node size in the preferences and the selectors for the text alignment on the context toolbar of the text tool. Same function, different appearance. I fear many users will find that such considerations are nit-picking. However, I still believe that the Affinity apps (which are unrivalled in speed and feature a lot of great innovations) should have a user interface that is on a par with the technical framework …  :)
 
Hope that makes sense …  :)

Thanks! I never would have found it without this helpful tip.
 
On my 27" iMac it is effectively invisible at my normal UI gamma setting (at least to my old eyes) so it is pretty much useless unless I stack two divider lines to create a more noticeable gap.
 
There are times I think all the Affinity developers must have young eyes, perfect vision, & never do any testing on large screen displays -- I can think of no other reason why there are still so many low contrast elements in the UI that some of us have been complaining about since day one. The betas' light UI option is not a viable remedy for this problem -- even combined with adjusting the gamma, there is no "just right" setting that increases the contrast enough without washing out the rest of the UI too much.  :(

I see, that makes sense – at least Apple's compatibility limit problem allowed me to buy it with the discount without having a supported device  ;)
 
Based on the tutorial videos, it really seems quite capable. I'll post my first impressions in a separate thread.

It would appear that Adobe Bridge is now available as a free download. This will allow metadata entry and editing, including presets. I use it as my fist port of call in my workflow to enter metadata before any editing.
 
John

I am new to this forum. I am unable to access, edit, and/or view metadata associated with images in Affinity Photo v1.5.1. I note that the most recent post on this topic (within this forum) is dated March, 2016 (nearly a year ago). At that point, a post by "MEB" indicated: "Currently there's no way to edit/add metadata info inside Affinity Photo." As of today (Feb. 8, 2017) I am unable to access, edit, and/or view metadata within Affinity Photo. Has this feature been added to Affinity Photo sometime during the past year (or not)? I would be most appreciative for any help in relation to working with metadata within Affinity Photo. As a professional photographer, being able to access, view, and edit metadata remains a vital and necessary element to working with images that are posted online in a public setting. (i.e.- Copyright, Copyright URL, Rights Usage info, etc.)
 
Many thanks for any help that might be provided...
 
rebellatimer.

Hello all,
 
Just to let you know that I've gone back and updated three older videos to improve them - the Image/Canvas resize video has also now been split into two separate videos, covering document resizing and canvas resizing separately. Here are the updated videos:
Live Filter Layers Mask Layers (was previously Layer Masking) Document/Image Resizing Canvas Resizing Hope you find them useful!

Attached is a simple file with two layers containing bars of colours and greys. If you're exploring blend modes, blend ranges and opacity, try selecting the top layer and just playing with the modes, ranges and opacity options. It can help make sense of how they all work.
overlaid colours.afphoto

Phew. I've just ploughed through the full set of in-house AP video tutorials, done by the most excellent James Ritson. To help me learn and provide a reference, I made personal notes along the way. Here they are, complete with links to each video, in case they may be of help for you. No guarantees and all that.
 
Update 25 Mar 17: File with notes on change up to 23 March added.
Update 30 Mar 17: File with notes on change up to 29 March added.
170314 Affinity Photo Video Notes.pdf
170325 Affinity Photo Video Notes.pdf
170329 Affinity Photo Video Notes V3.pdf

You judge the power of Affinity Photo based on a media browser? WoW!
 
Yes Affinity does not have everything Adobe offers yet it offers stuff Adobe does not offer.
 
We just switched the complete department and my students away from Adobe to Affinity.

The gamut of the ProPhoto RGB color space is very large. This means the gradient steps between colors will become more noticeable & "posterized" if exported to an 8 bit format like JPG unless something is done to remap the colors into a narrower gamut, avoid clipping, & so on.
 
So in practical terms, working on the document in 16 bit (or more) ProPhoto color space is fine but one way or another you need to reduce it to 8 bit color for exporting to JPG if you want the best results possible.

I'm wondering if this is a Sierra issue. Sierra has screwed quite a few other things on my system.

I have a Huion 610 Pro, which is far from the newest model, that I am very happy with.  Very responsive and a great price.

What is obvious & to whom is a ... wait for it ... gray area. 
 
(Somebody had to say it. It might as well be me.)  :lol:

In the digital realm, grayscale images are defined as those having only one value per image pixel, which specifies its intensity (also known as brightness, grayness, luminosity or luma). They have no color channels, no color space from which color information can be extracted.
 
Without some other external reference for this information, like a neural network AI that has analyzed thousands of color images & can recognize the similarities in the grayscale image to make an educated guess about what its colors should be, there is no way this would be possible.
 
In short, you can't manufacture information out of nothing.

In Affinity Photo you can edit mask attached to layer but with only limited number of tools. Mask editing can be a frustrating process but only in a situation when you rely on other programs behavior. This is a problem for designers because Affinity Photo should not have to be an exact copy of any other program GIMP included.
 
So forget about GIMP, PS, whatever. Try to build the new mindset for Affinity Photo and all frustrations will go away. I am not sure if this is the case, but masks in Affinity Photo are connected conceptually with an idea of selection or qualification. This is in my opinion better approach than thinking about masks as normal layers.

The tutorials for Affinity Photo are excellent. I would love to see a video tutorial on displacement mapping using AP.  From everything I've seen on other techniques and methods, AP consistently seems to do things easier and faster (fewer steps) than the PS methods.
 
I hope the AP staff will make a video.

Noticed its not possible to name the brush or gradient overlays when added. Would be good to know what overlay is doing what on the images.