Gnobelix

Even worse here...  1st run and on WACOM CTH-460 (8 year old Bamboo Pen & Touch) pen side buttons both WORKED OK, for around 20 seconds. Resized brush Ok, but then my pointer in Win10 would not click on  any of the UI and work. Had to kill AP.
 
2nd run and  PEN buttons would not work, selected a brush and then the Win10 cursor disappeared. Only reappeared when I pressed the Windows Keyboard key. All of UI was unresponsive. Killed AP.
 
3rd run. A mix of 1st and 2nd run above....! UI was eventually inoperative. Cursor stayed as Brush Resize, still painted occasionally. Killed AP.
 
No crash. Removed beta. HTH...

Having the Windows Ink replaced by the Win Tab caused the Resize to break when using a Pen Tablet. I have mine set using the Side Button and Click-drag for the shortcuts. It works in the Retail version.
1. Select the Brush Tool.
2. Press the side button on the Pen, a blue circle appears in the center and there's a constant flicker.
3. Unable to resize the pen by pressing it to the canvas and dragging.
This was attempted with and without WIndows Ink enabled in the Wacom Tablet Properties. With Windows Ink enabled in the Wacom Properties, the Pressure sensitivity worked, albeit with the flickering. Disabled and and there's not pressure sensitivity and flicker goes away.
 
 

Can confirm this as well. There are just too many bugs with it right now. Sometimes the pen stroke does not respond and you keep drawing without anything happening on the canvas. Then there are tons of broken shortcuts like alt+R click+L click where you are only able to make the UI for the shortcut to appear, but you can't confirm anything by dragging or clicking L click. When using the colour picker on alt+L click/L click drag you get locked into colour picking the canvas without being able to confirm which colour you want, thus locking the entire software to being stuck in colour picker mode. Finally you can't use the side buttons on your digital pen to create normal L clicks without pen pressure, so there are multiple levels stuff going wrong.
Here's an example video showing what I mean. The times I do confirm shortcuts I use the mouse or reset the program using Esc to get back to normal mode. The only thing that actually works right now is drawing with pen pressure, but if some other bug appears, it eventually stops working until you manage to reset everything back to normal. Before you ask, yes, I changed my Wacom tablet settings by enabling/disabling Windows Ink and switching between Hover Click and Click & Tap. Makes absolutely no difference.

Desktop 2020.06.27 - 04.59.01.01.mp4

@thomaso
TK-Panel is an interactive action collection for Photoshop, which is steplessly controlled by slider e.g. for luminance masks.
@Tony77

There are no such or similar panels for Affinity-Photo.

Similar results of a brightness mask can be achieved as follows.
Duplicate the opened image and create a grayscale image from the duplicate.
Create a new adjustment layer e.g. a level or a curve and adjust the brightness according to your needs,
with the shortcut CTRL and ALT and with a mouse click on the thumnail, a selection is made,
or alternatively rasterize the grayscale layer as a mask.
 
Cheers
 
 

Hello @Powaysteve,
I wish you a happy new year.
The shortcut J is set by default for the Inpainting tool,
likewise for the Red Eye Removal Tool, the Healing Brush Tool and the Patch Tool.
The individual brushes are activated by repeatedly pressing the shortcut Shift  + J
I hope it helps.
Cheers
 

I confirm that in the 1.8.4.647 beta the bug is not existent any longer.

Hello @rpnfan,
I confirm this crash, this bug is fixed in the current beta version (1.8.4.647.
Try the current beta version.
Cheers

Hello @Mordraug,
Welcome to in this forum.
Deactivate the option "Use Windows INK for Tablet input", then yours should Tablet work as expected.
Cheers

Be careful, the entire Affinity team and all users.

OMG, it works! Thank you so much! You're the best 😀

Hello @igorshmigor ,
Welcome to this forum .
try the following.
Edit
Preferences
Tools
and Deactivate the option "use Ink for Tablet input"
now it should work as expected
 
Cheers

Hallo Zandimann,
Willkommen in den Foren
Vielen Dank für Ihren Bericht. Dies ist ein bekanntes Problem mit der neuesten Version von Affinity Photo beim Laden von Canon COMPRESSED RAW-Dateien.
Dies ist etwas, das in unserer neuesten Beta-Version als behoben markiert ist, oder Sie können dies tatsächlich umgehen, indem Sie die RAW-Engine wie oben empfohlen auf Apple Core ändern.
Ich hoffe das hilft - entschuldige mich für etwaige Unannehmlichkeiten!

Also: I wonder if perhaps you're using a beta version, not the retail version, as someone else reported this problem with the latest 1.8.1.611 beta.
If you are using the beta, you should have posted in Photo Beta on Windows, instead.

fantastic work

Only as a note, if lnk is not activated in Affinity, there are no problems with Huion tablets.
 
 
Cheers

Just to clarify, I am using WACOM Bamboo pen & touch CTH-460, (8 year) old tablet input device using the OLD Wacom  drivers and Preferences UI. 
In beta USING Windows Ink works perfectly, using pen top button to adjust pen hardness and size.
In beta NOT using WI, identical performance, no issues.
Pen usage and speed unaffected in either situation.
I believe that the drivers for recent Wacom tablets are fundamentally different to these old devices.
HTH. 
 

Hi,
There's a bug since the start with the levels adjustement that is reverse in CMYK when compared to RVB mode:
Original image

 
Darken or lighten as expecedd in RVB mode:

 
Reversed and counter intuitive in CMYK mode:

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
(Hopefully) fixed crash at startup related to fonts and font managers Fixed PDF export outputting some 1-bit masks as inverted, leaving them mostly transparent Fixed crash reordering layers via drag/drop when Layers panel is floating  Added "Use Windows Ink for tablet input" preference (enabled by default, disable to use WinTab) 1.8.1.604 release notes

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
(Hopefully) fixed crash at startup related to fonts and font managers Fixed PDF export outputting some 1-bit masks as inverted, leaving them mostly transparent Fixed crash reordering layers via drag/drop when Layers panel is floating  Added "Use Windows Ink for tablet input" preference (enabled by default, disable to use WinTab) 1.8.1.604 release notes

This time a Humboldt's squirrel monkey from the Saimiri genus. Affinity Designer pixel persona 100% - Roughly one single brush pressure on, pressure off.Challenging to get the colours always right as I try to pick form the wheel and not using the colour picker. It helps to train better the artist's eye.

 
I also leave here this time-lapse I have created. I explain a bit some differences I find when painting in Designer vs Photo.  
 
 
 

Hi Gnobelix, I checked your file in 1.8.0.585 and used your settings in develop assistant manager and I had no crashes but a blank image as you can see

Downloaded your file, and did not experience any crashes.

Out of curiosity, I extracted the embedded JPEG from the DNG file. It's a low resolution copy but looks like this:

I realise everything is subjective, but I don't find this result particularly pleasant, and some light editing in Affinity Photo can absolutely achieve a much better image.
The camera tech in the Pixel 3A clearly has some shortcomings, namely severely narrow dynamic range which appears to be compensated for with underexposure and heavy in-camera image processing. Looks like some degree of tone mapping is applied to compress the tonal range, but unfortunately it can't mitigate the ugly clipped dark tones. These are especially noticeable in the foliage on the left hand side of the image.
Affinity Photo's RAW engine doesn't apply any kind of "adaptive" tone curve or initial processing, which leads users into believing it has shortcomings in this department when they are presented with a dark, underexposed image to begin with. The Pixel 3A has intentionally underexposed the image and then attempted to correct for the underexposure with in-camera processing. However:
 
Ignoring the "fix it or die" comment which is a little inflammatory, I can reassure you that the app isn't "destroying" the photo. RAW files are processed in linear, unbounded floats. This means that no pixel colour values are being clipped or compromised during the development process. Yes, the DNG is initially quite dark. With processing, however, you can not only achieve the result you see with the in-camera JPEG, but frankly you can far surpass it.
Editing is mostly subjective, a matter of taste, therefore everyone's opinion on how you would process this image will be different. I had a quick go at editing: I removed the default tone curve, used Curves for my own tone curve, then developed the image. I then used some adjustment and filter layers in the main Photo Persona to create a fairly balanced edit. My main goal was simply to even out the tonal range of the scene and have a pleasing, natural looking result. I also straightened/rotated it, as the original orientation was a little crooked.  I've attached it below:

 
The reality is that Affinity Photo may not be for you (and there's nothing wrong with that). If you want the RAW development to match the exact result you get with the in-camera processed image, that cannot be guaranteed. Aside from an adapted tone curve, there may be additional in-camera processing (e.g. structure enhancement, tone compression, noise reduction, sharpening) that is introduced to take what is technically a very underwhelming initial result and make it more palatable. You can of course apply all of these techniques and more in Affinity Photo, but that requires engaging with the software and finding a workflow that suits you.
 
There is actually an argument to be made here. I've mentioned it above briefly, but for how much smart phone photography has come the last few years, they are still technically compromised devices: tiny image sensors, trying to cram in greater pixel density in the name of the megapixel race, coupled with small optics. Any linear RAW data from a smartphone camera is going to be quite underwhelming, and there's been a lot of focus recently on AI enhancement/machine learning to overcome these physics-based limitations. Generally speaking, photographers shooting on larger sensor devices like typical DSLRs/compact system cameras have far fewer complaints with Affinity Photo's RAW processing. There are fewer issues with dark images because the camera metering generally exposes for a balanced scene, rather than underexposing to compensate for limited dynamic range. The other factor here is that photographers generally want manual control over their camera settings, so will be more likely to determine their own exposure, and this is reflected accurately when you open the RAW file in Affinity Photo.
The main sticking point is, as you mention, not automatically applying some "smart" initial processing which would have to vary between each RAW format, and indeed each camera. There is perhaps some work that could be done here, but crucially not so that it compromises existing photographer's workflows who are happy with the RAW handling. Hopefully that's understandable.
Thanks for reading!

No you don't need an editor, you need a photo viewer. You seem to not have the patience, or desire to learn anything. Plus your first post is totally out of line. I would think Serif boot you and ban you from the forum. Images shot with a cellphone are notoriously low quality, unless the photographer is very highly skilled. (moderated)
My recommendation for you is to forget about shooting or converting your images to DNG (which is a type of raw file), and just use the jpeg (jpg) images. They have been processed by your cellphone camera, which saves you the headache.

Chapeau!