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Rpen

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Everything posted by Rpen

  1. Ah, I see. If I bother to open the Preferences panel and use the drop-down list to visit each section panel in turn, WITHOUT going again to the main panel, THEN when I am on the last section panel, I can use the little arrow buttons to move back through the panels I have already visited, and forward again through that list, without seeing any of the panels I forgot to add to the list. I must learn to carefully prepare the Preferences dialog for use, and I must be very careful to never click one of the big section buttons on the main panel, because if I find myself on the main panel and click a section button, the arrows completely forget all the other panels I have been on and now remember only the main panel and the section I opened with a click. With all due respect and a friendly smile, I suggest the current implementation is absurd. It is so close to what it should actually do, and yet it does not do it unless I prepare it and carefully tend to it. Affinity could easily preload the buttons with the knowledge of every panel, and we can click click click our way through each panel in turn when we don't know exactly which panel we're looking for. I have seen preferences panels that make it easy to walk to every section in turn, forward or reverse, by pressing buttons that look very much like these. I have never felt the need for the peculiar service these buttons provide. Thanks for the experience.
  2. Yes, as I documented in my post, the caret-arrow-keys do that, and only that. Those actions can also be performed with other actions. When you are on the main page, there are two other ways to call up a specific section, so once you have visited a section and returned to the main page the right-caret-arrow-key makes a third way to get to that section. By performing this redundant action they are completely unnecessary here. Other programs that offer such directional keys on a multi-page settings panel use these keys to progress through the individual panels in turn. That is logical. This situation is not. Therefore I suggest it is a bug. Buttons that do something they are not originally designed to do are not properly coded, regardless of how they behave on a Mac. The bug could easily be in both systems. If the original designer actually intended that there be two ways to get to the Colors section when Preferences is first opened, and three ways to get there if it has just been visited, the designer has a bug and should be questioned as to why this real estate has been wasted and the customer intentionally set up for confusion.
  3. Windows 10 Affinity Photo 1.6.4.104 Edit > Preferences A main panel shows (a) large buttons for each section, (B) two caret-arrow-keys on the top left, (C) a "main panel" button that comes back to the main panel, and (D) a drop-down list to choose a specific section. Normally, I would expect the caret-arrow-keys to allow me to easily navigate section-by-section so I can discover what is available or locate a specific adjustment. But no. When Preferences is first opened and the main large section buttons are displayed, clicking a caret-arrow-key does nothing. If I enter some section (eg, General) via the drop-down list or clicking a large button, then the right-caret-arrow-key does nothing and the left-caret-arrow-key brings me back to the main panel (which I could just as easily summon by clicking the specific "main panel" button). If I enter another section (eg, Color), again the right-caret-arrow-key does nothing and the left-caret-arrow-key brings me back to the main panel. However, once I have returned to the main panel from a section, then the right-caret-arrow-key button will take me back to the section I was just in. I have no idea when this might be useful. To visit each section to locate interesting settings, I am forced to either continually return to the main panel (by clicking the left-caret-arrow-key or the "main panel" button) and then click a different section button, or, more sensibly, I can use the drop-down list to choose another section from whatever section I am in. But still, in these days of automation, to make me manually choose each section seems unnecessary. And to make the left-caret-arrow-button merely duplicate the "main panel" button seems a waste of resources. It seems natural to me that this behaviour is a bug. The caret-arrow-key buttons should always take me to the next or previous section. The sections are clearly in some specific order on the main panel and the drop-down list. The left-caret-arrow-key should provide "the previous" section (which would be "the last one" if I am looking at the main panel with no sections open). The right-caret-arrow-key should always take me to "the next" section (which would be "the first one" if I am on the main panel). Then we could easily browse the preference sections to find the one we need instead of having to laboriously and intentionally choose each one. Thanks for listening.
  4. There is a similar problem with Designer that seems half-fixed. If I use File Explorer to open a folder and start Designer by clicking an afdesign file, and ask Designer to Export an image, that export will target the current folder as expected, so my png (for instance) will be beside my afdesign file. If I CLOSE Designer, use File Explorer to locate another folder, and click open an afdesign file there, then Designer will be there too, and an Export (or Place) will correctly offer this current folder. Affinity Photo is no good at this. If I use File Explorer to start it on an image file, it will offer to Export into (or Place from) the last used folder. And if I don't close Designer before clicking to open a file in another folder, Designer acts like Photo and doesn't move; an Export (or Place) will offer the old folder. However... If I use the OPEN FILE DIALOG in Designer OR Photo to browse for a file in another folder, they will be correctly in that folder. An Export (or Place) will by default target that folder, as I expected they should. But... if I use the Recent File menu in either program, they don't move to that other folder, they just open that file from a distance while standing in the old folder. A request to Export will offer this old (wrong) folder, not the folder holding the file being edited. A request to Place will also open this (wrong) folder. The Recent File menu is therefore practically useless. It is not the same as using the Open file dialog, although it appears to be a shortcut way of doing just that. Luckily, in both programs, the Open file dialog is able to get the program into the proper folder, so it should be easy enough for that logic to be approved for coding into the other methods of opening a file so they all work the same. Please.
  5. I'm on Windows... Without insult intended, since Affinity decided to sell to Windows customers, they shouldn't restrict the program to OSX behaviour. And besides, the essence of my problem is simple and the solution seems logical to me. When I open an image file in a folder, and save (export) a variation of that file, I fully expect it should go in the same folder by default, just as the Save As dialog offers, not into whatever folder I happened to export a completely different image into. I cannot imagine a reason for Export to work differently than Save As, except for the purpose of exporting a bunch of different images into some particular folder as a collection, and for that I suggested the ability to assign a target folder that would not change until the user changed it on purpose. Then the user could save in the current folder or the target folder, as desired, with a simple checkbutton. I don't need this myself. I would almost always prefer to keep my variants with the original and deal with assembling collections outside of the Image Editor. Affinity Photo is not supposed to be a Catalog program. So, again, for clarity: The default for Export should be to save the image in the same folder as the image that was opened, not whatever folder was last used as a target for some other image. If I intentionally export this image into some other folder, and in this same editing session want to export it again, then the "last folder used" concept makes sense. But when I reopen the image file, or open another one, I should be working in whatever folder holds that image file. That folder became the "last folder used" when I used it to open the file. A new file should save here by default.. Thanks for playing Where Should The File Go.
  6. Thanks, Pšenda. Simple is better. By default, we should export to the current folder for the source image, and have a checkbox that would target some assigned Export folder for those times we want to create a collection of exports.
  7. When I Export (a PNG or JPG, etc) from Affinity Photo, the Export dialog panel offers the previous Export folder, regardless of where the current source image resides. I have to go browsing through deep photo collections to choose the original image folder. But when I use Save As, the output dialog always offers the source image folder for the new file. This inconsistency is awkward, and not particularly useful when editing a series of photographs that reside in different folders. There are times I want the exports from a series of images to all be placed in the same folder, sure, but usually I need the Export to live beside the original for comparison and future use. I see two ways to achieve this. (1) Leave the behaviour as it is but provide a checkbox on the Export dialog that would allow us to choose "current folder". It should remember its state between sessions. If we toggle it off before finalizing the Export, we want to target the previous Export folder. The remembering of the previous folder shouldn't change when we use the current folder via the checkbox, so that repeatedly saving some Exports to a specific folder will be easy, no matter how many times we also use "current folder". (You're already saving that path, so don't change it when you place the Export in the current folder.) The previous folder path would be set when we specifically browse for some target folder, just as it works today. The difference is that we could toggle on the "current folder" checkbox to save the Export beside the source image. Or (2) You could use the concept you already use in Save As, and consistently offer the current image folder as the default folder. To avoid annoying people who enjoy the "remember the previous Export folder" concept, you could provide a way to choose some remembered Export folder and make a checkbox for "use assigned Export folder". With that toggled off, Export will use the folder holding the source image, just like Save As. An expectable place. Or just have a toggle for "use previous folder". That works too, but it doesn't seem as reliable as assigning an export folder on purpose. I would think that people wanting to always use some "previous folder" will actually prefer that the folder be consistent until they specifically ask it to be changed, so they can browse to export in some folder without accidentally altering their assigned export folder. Thanks for reading. Great software you have here. Hope we can all enjoy improving it.
  8. Tab seems to be a way to continue working on the document without the side panels. Using Tab, the top menu bar is still visible, and if Rulers are on, they are also visible. If the image happens to be the same size as the screen, going 1:1 won't show the entire image because of these extra widgets. So Tab is no replacement for a simple FullScreen view. And going 1:1 doesn't quite solve the rendering problem because unless I turn on Pixel view mode I will still see the working design lines, not rendered output. Then I'll have to turn off Pixel view mode to get back to editing. I understand the complications of fullscreen in a document with multiple artboards, but in my opinion, only the current artboard need be shown fullscreen. The concept is to quickly and easily see the particular image being worked on, rendered as if a PNG, without surrounding widgets. It is not a request to make a FullScreen Edit Workspace. The Tab view works fine for that, and personally I wouldn't want to get rid of the side panels at all if I could just get the fullscreen preview. So, to repeat for clarity: if the image is smaller than the screen, it should render 1:1 in the center of the display, with a black background. No frame. No buttons. No labels. Nothing but the image. (I suppose the background color could be set in Preferences). If the image is larger than the display, it should be scaled to fit, and if the aspect ratio is different, any non-image area should be the background color. I suppose some people might want a larger document to be rendered 1:1 as well, and the mouse could drag the rendered view as needed. Perhaps the mouse wheel could even be used to zoom the rendered view. It depends on how much work you want to put into this, but for me the simple fullscreen render first mentioned would be enough. ps. Thanks for being. Great software. Great forum.
  9. A FullScreen Preview would be very useful. As it is now, I have to (1) export the image to a temp file, (2) open File Explorer, (3) locate the exported image, (4) open it with Irfanview, (5) press Enter to see it FullScreen (pixel-perfect size if smaller than screen, or scaled to fit if larger), (6) consider the view, (7) close Irfanview, (8) delete the exported temporary file, and finally (9) switch back to Designer. That's a lot of work just to see the image without the distraction of surrounding widgets. Please?
  10. Just downloaded and installed Affinity Photo Trial on a fairly new Win 10 laptop. CROP is unable to work because there is no APPLY button on the Context Menu. The Context Menu is visible, and seems to have all the appropriate buttons and switches for the Crop function as explained in the Help documentation, except there is no Apply button. Attached is an image of the context menu as I see it. I can adjust a crop area, with or without constraints, and rotate it, etc, but there is no way to finalize/accept/confirm/apply the crop. I can only cancel it or choose some other tool. Perhaps I am misunderstanding where it should be...
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