hifred

It may apply to you that pricing is a critical factor. There's other users who have totally different reasons to avoid / escape Adobe's Software rental and actually had no issues to pay more. Setting up pricing was entirely up to Serif though... I think that negative, even harsh feedback may be very useful for Software makers too.There's certainly nothing wrong in asking for additional Features.

I had another look. You are actually correct – there seems to be something in preparation. There's masks and gradients and these indeed allow for combination of several tools, nice! But thus far one seems to be restricted to a single brushed or gradient based mask per image. Edit: One can actually have several of them, but they may not identify and re-edit already painted masks. Also the non-destructive nature ends, as soon as one leaves the Develop Persona.

Have you ever worked in Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, Capture One and the like? Imagine very nice interactive control for refinement of single images, but without layers. One may apply all tools globally to the whole image as in Affinty's Develop-Persona, but there's also various ways to apply these tools (and any combination of them) locally to just parts an image. If one looks at this concept at first one might come to the conclusion that this is some quick fluff for beginners, as it's so easy to use. In fact the underlying concept is totally non-destructive, allows users to freely combine various tools in one stroke, to dial in more strength for one tool while lowering the impact of another (at any point in time). I'm well familiar with layer based editing too – I'm just wondering if Serif is considering a highly attractive alternative concept as well.

Hi James, first off – thanks a lot for creating all these very well made video clips! When watching this particular clip I wonder if what you show here will remain the preferred or rather the exclusive way to deal with RAWs: Bring them in, apply a few global adjustments and hit develop. From there work with a 16-bit image using Layer based operations with adjustments and masks as well as extra channels for intricate details. There's no question that many people are very used to this editing principle. All steps are neatly organized in a stack and ready for further refinement. Then again there are likely people who say: I'm able to do all you show in this clip, without even leaving my preferred Raw Editor. I get the same level of control – but I don't need to fumble around with lots of layers, masks and channels – and am not even limited to using a single tool at a time. I just create an editing point and may brush in local sharpening and tonal adjustments and can even lighten up shadows within that same (pressure sensitive) stroke. Every aspect of this way of editing is non-destructive and may get further tweaked at any point in time. When it's time to add text or create a composition with other images I can still switch over to layer based editing. What would you say to this second group of users?

Photoshop gives you various options to work with preprocessed RAWs. In case you choose to embed the whole Raw into the psd as a Smart Object (which I find is the most powerful option) the file size will immediately jump to about 10 times the size of the RAW file. In the sample image I only dragged the contrast slider somewhat and brought the 16bit result to PS. 22MB vs 208MB...

That works, given your pen has buttons. Then just map one of the buttons to RMB. But the current mapping requires you to actually touch the tablet for changing the size, which might cause some undesired changes to the Design. Serif really should hook up Hover Click for interactive Pen property changes, it makes a world of a difference.

I think it also had advantages to embed all Raw Data (as in Photoshop alternative approach, with smart objects). Yeah, file size increases, but one has everything in one place, the RAW image(s), as well as the final composition with all other graphic elements. One still can go back and further edit the RAW file. File size considerations do not play a role in all use cases – I personally don't care if a complex file has half a GB in size – for as long as it opens quickly (which clearly is the case in PS). I think that the destructive nature of Affinity Photo's RAW workspace is its biggest limitation. Whether one uses sidecar files or uses any other route – it's crucial to go on editing where one has left, with all sliders still in the position they had, before switching to another Persona.

Thank you for the surprisingly quick release of Photo Beta for Windows! I have a few questions / comments on RAW editing as a heavy user of Photoshop and its upstream ACR workspace. While I like that Serif actually chose a common interface for traditional photo-retouching / compositing as well as RAW developing there's also features I miss right away. Photoshop's RAW development allows for global editing of image properties – pretty much in the way the Develop Persona works. That way one can raise the exposure or increase contrast – changes do apply to the whole image. Apart from that one may use any combination of tools for non-destructive brush based operations, as well as graduated filters. The impact of any contributing tool may get changed at any point in time. Even after bringing the edited RAW image into the main PS application as a smart object and having worked for hours in a composition, one can still go back and each and any global, operation as well as brush based RAW operations are still Life. One at that point can even delete the original RAW file, as it has completely gotten embedded into the .psd. If so desired, one could strip out any changes and export to .dng again. The Affinity RAW editor seems not to have any of the tools I just described. Also, RAW development in Affinity seems to be understood as the first step in a linear stream of editing operations. One may of course re-enter the Develop workspace, but all tools have forgotten the settings one had dialed in initially. I wonder what your plans are in terms of RAW editing: Do you plan to keep Develop-setting Live? Is non-destructive brush / gradient-based editing with any combination of tools on the roadmap? I also wonder what happens if one uses a couple of RAW based images on a large Poster. In Photoshop one may use these images at their full size or as a thumbnail. But one can scale that thumbnail up again or paste it into a new file and raise the output size here. As the RAW information is encapsulated in the Smart Object one never loses resolution. Obviously one shouldn't go larger that the original RAW but for all smaller output sizes one can practically forget about resolution issues. Is there a similar solution inside Affinity Photo?

Testing on a Cintiq I'd still say that (Ctrl+Spacebar based) Zoom and Pan work and feel inferior when compared to Photoshop, unfortunately. The same is true for interactive brush size/hardness change. I wrote about these issues here (last paragraph) and here.

Is there any info on the 10 bit capabilities of the upcoming windows products?

Thanks for your offer Ryan, my guess is that there's indeed some incompatibility between the old and the newer cms version / template But the idea isn't to completely mirror the formatting of the old site anyway. Pages which used to be separate in the old, non-responsive site now need to get consolidated to a Onepager and I'd like to define its overall appearance first (within the rules of the new theme). In other places I need custom menus and again would like to set up something which just works. I'll send you a PM with some sample links to have a look.

Hi All, this is not strictly an Affinity question, but as Affinity Designer has all sorts of Website prototyping tools and quite a few of your seem to work in this area I thought this was a good place to ask... I usually work in another field but we've now hired an external web-coder for the relaunch of a cms based business website/shop based on a purchased template. Content got migrated but the whole CSS styling is still off. You can imagine lots of text which all looks alike, no titles, no other definition and a programmer who needs to get told what to do next. The template is there, we don't need skinning from scratch, just utilizing the pre-defined styles which come with the template would be enough. I would now like to deliver the Coder a mockup of the final appearance of all pages in the most useful format, which doesn't cause him a lot of fuzz transferring to code. I have close practically no CMS backend-editing or web coding experience though... Ideal for me was some way to read out all relevant styling data from that existing cms template and to create static graphics files in the same look, using the same fonts and line pitch as defined in the template. The result should serve as a pixel accurate "paint by numbers" template for the Coder. Is there something which at least comes half way close? How would you approach this?

A few more wishes for pen-based work with a Cintiq (or any other pressure-based device): Resizing pens / changing hardness in Affinity currently works by actually touching the touch sensitive surface and dragging while holding pen buttons and modifier keys. That works somehow, but always at the risk of either accidently painting a few dots or calling the colour sampler instead, which conflicts with the Alt-Key. Not ideal, really. There's a far better and secure way to allow users access to this sort of interactive controls: Hover click/drag. Currently, afaik this feature is entirely unsupported in Affinity. The idea is that one lifts the pen slightly above the touch-sensitive surface and drags while holding keys and/or pen-buttons. That way one can zoom, pan, resize pens or change their hardness, without running at risk of accidently painting or pushing around stuff on screen. I doubt that not having Hover Click available is caused by drivers or setting on my side as the feature works in Photoshop, Zbrush, 3DCoat...This fellow user seems to have the same problem.

Thanks Mark, I hope you have the time to revisit the functionality of your editor windows. There's still room for improvement.

To me none of this makes just a bit of sense, unfortunately. 1) The Preferences dialog applies all changes in real-time, that's nice. It is even technically a modeless dialog, but it is not being used that way. Preferences is a large, non-resizable and non-dockable window. This Editor doesn't need regular input or readout. Even if one has a large screen or several of them ... nobody will leave this dialog open, even across sessions. Browsing Preferences is a great way to get aquainted with a program and the degree of workflow refinement it offers. Being able to freely play around with parameters, checking out what happens, when one dials in new values and colours is a very effective way for learning software. The ubiquitous Cancel Option gives Preferences this familiar Sandbox quality, leaving it away makes the program worse. If one by all means doesn't want to use another button using Adobe's Alt+Click to reset was a welcome addition. 2) You make it sound as if the Mac Interface is being used as a 1:1 template for the Windows version. I can well understand that there's a desire to streamline GUI work – but does that mean that there's no way at all to get anything what's mindless Mac UX kicked out of the application? You're building a multi-OS app now (and will pretty likely sell far more Win licenses) – there's simply no proper reason to force Mac UX as the development paradigm to windows users. Most successful cross-platform applications use their GUI principles, which neither use Mac nor Windows Standards, some are also available on Linux (such as Maya or Houdini) I would appreciate a short comment – I'd simply like to know whether it further makes sense to engage in GUI discussions...

Yeah, having no way to cancel changes is really bad! If one at least could hold the Alt-Key as in Adobe to reset changes... The preferences dialog really deserves work – at this point it is worse that the most vanilla implementations found anywhere else. See also here

Thanks Chris!

The Preferences Dialog shows a bold Home-Page with large buttons. As soon as one has clicked one of these options one is left with a very minimal navigation. In case one wants to change to another page... one can either figure out that the middle section which shows the name of the current page is in fact an oldschool dropdown menu (these's hardly any visual cue and no MouseOver Info). Changing to another page in this case takes one click. Or one can opt to return to that Home Page by pressing a quite uncommon icon - the dotted Hamburger (again no MouseOver Info). Using this option takes you two clicks to change from page to page. I fail discovering the slightest advantage over traditional Tabs, I think this solution is in fact far inferior. The overview of Preferences sections available is hidden most of the time. In case users don't find a setting where they first assumed it to be they usually start searching for alternative locations. In Affinity one can't do so without getting into action. Offering a Preferences Home Page and hiding other Pages is needlessly clicky. Tabs offer the same overview quality without making an additional Start Page necessary. This overview remains visible all of the time, which is very helpful. Having two separate controls to change between sections (one for the visually oriented person and one for readers who prefer things sober) is frankly totally absurd. Your dialog gives access to a very manageable set of options – deep 3D programs for instance not rarely offer ten times the volume of settings (with tabs or tree). What's your point in deviating from proven interfaces?

Thanks Chris, I guess we are both right. I was referring to the modal window which pops up when clicking the fx icon in the layer editor. When using this interface one has no offset tool at disposal in Beta 19. If one instead uses the effects panel there's indeed that button. So I guess one can also log this omission. For future implementations I wished that as soon as an effect has focus a multifunctional widget was shown (without having to press a button first), which lets users set all available parameters, not just the offset, as an alternative interface to sliders. Some PS plugins use such things, let me know if an image was helpful. Edit: Just found a nice example on the Astute-Graphics website (showing their Stylism Plugin for Illustrator – which essentially improves interactive editing of Layer-Styles). Such pick and edit in situ tools could also make sense in other areas, such as colour editing. Picking a red tone and dragging in various directions while holding down again various modifier keys changes Hue, Saturation etc. of that particular channel. Photoshop offers such for quite a few versions already. Please don't take offense but my impression of the GUI is that it's very well made but with an in tendency conservative approach (which may be part of your application's success, as many people will feel instantly familiar). I quite personally would like to have as much as possible control available at mouse (pen) point and don't like to move my cursor 20cm to the main menu bar again and again just to pick some button here. Instead, I preferred more dynamic context menus (currently I get the same generic options offered, regardless of object selection – and even with nothing selected, which makes no sense). I found great if one could get rid of submenus in context menus and instead offered several of them (filtered by Modifiers+RMB) or Pie Menus. At least for the Photo app Nodes sure were very desirable too – Blender has a very nice implementation. Ok, enough for today :o)

Hi Developers, thanks a lot for the Windows Beta! I have only worked briefly with it, as my daily Vector editing needs are actually quite limited. I probably could give more feedback on Photo. The app looks very good overall, but in this post I'll concentrate on things which deserve improvement. Here's a quick list of errors, oversights and wishes, as well of things I consider poorly implemented. Monochrome buttons: Thank god this option exists – you forgot some buttons though. Also all sorts of dockable window still show coloured icons (colour pickers in swatches panel, colour panel) as well as Document Setup (padlock), Exporters (padlock/image type icons). I quite likely have forgotten some program areas. Please check again and desaturate all of the remaining items, it looks ugly otherwise. New Document dialog This should be solved differently. Looks ugly. Shorter primary description, full version on hover or scrolling text would be options which come to my mind. Unnecessary window clutter: This might be Apple logic but stacking modal windows is not what I can consider contemporary GUI practice. Advanced options in Exporters or in any other tool by all means should get appended to the already open window, accordion style. User preferences here should get remembered. If one always wants to see the full set of options so be it. Good implementations are found in all Adobe DTP applications. Adjustments (and other places) I miss a quicker way to reset slider values, such as a double click on the Slider Knob (Adobe) or deliberate "over-dragging" sliders to each direction (again Adobe). Mousing for a dedicated reset button is slow and unnecessary imo. Layer Effects: Interactive Viewport controls missing, such as dragging in the vp for the Shadow direction. Rulers: I miss Right click on Ruler to access relevant settings and options for precisely placing and moving Guides, including Modifier key use for snapping. To me this stuff feels too indirect (but I admittedly feel so in a lot of graphics programs). I see that there's a dedicated Guides Editor but that's again indirect and overkill for most situations. I would rather expect to RMB click a Guideline and to get all relevant options offered in situ (including delete). Right now RMB does nothing... I miss the Alt+Click direction swap as offed in Adobe apps as well. Pan and Zoom with Pen Tablets / Pen Displays: Being a Zbrush user and therefore perfectly acquainted with unconventional keyboard mappings I still have to call the Ctrl+Spacebar mapping for interactive Zoom pretty odd (press Spacebar first, then press Ctrl) and also quite unreliable. There's some filtering issues going on, if the timing isn't perfectly right one rather gets a zoom rectangle (which I find useless) instead of interactive Zoom. This really has to work flawlessly, otherwise editing with a Cintiq is no joy. Zoom behavior also feels quite jittery here. Some subtle damping (inertia) might be helpful – Adobe does this a lot better. One thing which also bugs me too is drag Pen left and right to zoom, this is totally non-standard. All relevant apps (including 3D apps) use up and down. Please reconsider this or at least offer remapping options for these functions. The Pen issued Pan behavior also doesn't match my expectations yet – Adobe's flick-pan again with a dash of inertia injected looks and feels a lot more elegant.

Ok, even Illustrator 8 then! The limitation with that ancient .ai version in Pre Affinity Windows World was, that linework transfer indeed worked less than ideal, the Rhino forum is full of such reports. Not sure whose fault this actually is, but when looking at the details it gets pretty obvious that at least Adobe seems not to care any more about this legacy format: One may neither place Rhino authored .ai files in Illustrator nor bring them into Photoshop. If Serif wanted to support the pre pdf AI format one should make things better. Dxf may exist for a long time but it is an actively maintained format which every serious CAD app outputs anyway.

Rhino afaik uses the stoneage Illustrator 10 format for its Exporter and I wouldn't be surprised if MoI does the same. As a workaround one may use pdf authoring tools to get curve data out. CAD users who want to re-use their existing linework inside AD were likely served best with an option to import a widely used CAD exchange format, such as dxf.

Whether one can well imagine having Vector Pixel and Page Layout combined in one app or finds that a plain terrible idea: It's at least peculiar how one opted for strict separation in 2D graphics applications and how the exact opposite total integration took place in many 3D graphics apps. A 3D program like say Autodesk Maya by the sheer volume of content, its offerings for different professional specializations and its overall complexity is so deep... One could combine any raster/vector/dtp tool together, add the most comprehensive font creator, a serious textile pattern creation tool and any other industry specific plugin and still wouldn't have reached half the extend and complexity of the mentioned 3D app: A program which still proved learnable for large numbers of users around the world...

How could I? As said initially – I have never before encountered anything similar in software discussion fora.

You would not give Windows support. You would help a fellow user of a graphics program who has a problem. I was more than happy to read todays news but it clearly was a bad idea to come reading the forums! This religious Mac centrism one may encounter here really knocks me out. Please someone point me to some thread in any software forum thread where Windows users expose the same odd ways... Just to put things into proportion. I at least in > 15 years can not recall a Windows user who ever claimed that he/she can not bear being in one (fo)room with persons who happen to prefer another OS. The 3D Software I use most was recently ported to the Mac platform after almost 20 years of exclusive existence on Windows. Nobody felt afraid about development focus and nobody even bothered to comment as the Mac specific section got added to the forum...