hifred

If you don't like that but are a Cloud Subsciber you can use Photoshop + ACR for RAW processing. It's exactly the same engine as in Lightroom and works without a catalogue.

Adobe uses it's pdf-Notes in Photoshop (which also appear in pdfs exported from Photoshop). I utilize that feature a lot, e.g. with E-commerce images I process (to collect preliminary product data along with the stack of images). It would be very helpful if Serif hooked up a similar feature + there's a variety of 3rd party pdf editors which read and write such comments.

There's no way one can make a good deal, when automated processing makes images worse than they were before :o) I don't want to offend you and your work but I usually find this the case (talking of showcase images of dedicated retouching programs/plugins).

Yup. There's likely no software genre on earth whose marketing works worse for me. It's exactly inverse – I always prefer the unprocessed version of their samples. I'd pay for not having to use their products.

Currently you afaik do not provide options to the users to create custom stacks of tools anyway, do you? I'm getting an error traffic sign shown when assigning the same key twice and while the Double Assignment appears in the Menus it seems that only the first assignment actually registers. With that scheme (no custom stacks of tools) unchanged you could reserve the Shift key Toggle for the few letters needed to control the default stacks and keep Shift + Letter available for any other letter. The Shift+ Letter event could become available after completely disolving any of your default tool groups – but that's very likely what only a handful of Nerds will do.

That's a valid point :o) As a counter argument one could possibly count that with such a change you could keep a lot of people from dismembering all your consolidated under one single key collection of tools. That way there were a lot more options left for their other custom hotkeys so that they don't need the Shift- Letter hotkeys after all...

Hi @Mark Ingram thanks for your answer :o) I think I understand the intended behaviours, but I'm convinced that they are not as userfriendly as they could. Grouped similar tools, calling them with a single key and cycling through them is efficient, no question. But the current implementation lacks a protection from ending up with the wrong tool. In speed editing sessions under time pressure the user realistically makes a lot of little mistakes. It sure happens a lot that I press B a second or third time, although I still have the Brush tool active. Maybe there was a phone call or one of my other screens had focus and I can't see the Brush cursor. Photoshop groups similar tools in the same way and allows cycling through them – but I can be sure that the last used brush tool is still active even after pressing B ten times in a row. The cure to unwanted tool change is dead-simple – one has to hold Shift to cycle – this automatically makes tool change a -still quick- but deliberate action. My issue with your jump back to previous tool behaviour is not the bug you found but the feature implementation itself (even in its corrected form). What you do here is unconventional without discernible good justification, + one can't turn this pretty impactful feature off + there's established much stronger implementations of Toggles between two tools. The alternative implementation I described doesn't only give the user more control, it is also impossible that the feature gets in the way. Just give yourself a nudge and hook this up properly ;o). I described the functionality here:

Hmm, Photoshop already in CS6 from 2012 that I'm still using gave you all Filters as Live Filters on Smart Objects. Yeah, that might be useful with weak hardware, but it really should not be required on modern hardware. It makes me scratch my head when I read recommendations to collapse all nondestructive Image Modifiers when happy with the result. This may be valid as a workaround for as long as performance problems exist – but this by no means should get called best practice. I also avoid subscription –I buy and test Affinity products + give feedback. For work I stick to what performs best. That's for the time being my last perpetual license of Photoshop / the Creative Suite. Hopefully this will change at some point.

Understood. I wrote seemingly random because this behavior will appear unexpected in a lot of instances and one can't even turn this off. And could you give me a good reason not to implement the the way more versatile option (temp switch to any other tool with key held down)? This functionality would not even need an option for deactivation – it is one of those advanced features, which by design can not get in the way (resetting sliders to the last [default or custom] value by overdragging is another example of a feature with this quality). I miss this sort of slickness in Aphoto. No, this is no big thing. But when switching between Affinity and a more than half a decade old version of Photoshop I find loads and loads of of such non big things – I really appreciate Photoshop more and more, the longer I test Affinity. Add performance issues and latency practically everywhere (some filters remind me of bucket based raytracing + even Layer Miniatures need time to catch up) and round up with very questionable RAW handling and there's room to be unhappy. i7 8650k | Win 10 | GTX 1070 | 32 GB RAM

This is understood by likely everyone and a statements that's getting stale. The issue in this particular case is that you lose something in principle very good when removing the default hotkey from the brush group. Consolidated similar tools and cycling through them generally makes sense, you'll have to spend more hotkeys for no proper reason. Also when you remove the default mapping and hit the B-key a second time (with the Brush still active) you'll now run into into another oddity, as Affinity switches to other tools, seemingly at random (with no way to turn this behaviour off). There's broadly used conventions for temporary tool switching (keeping a hotkey pressed) but it's again not utilized by Serif. Let's get real: These are not crazy deep tools like say Houdini, which make even experienced computer-users feel humble and silly – we are discussing 2D graphics programs with rather conventional and broadly understood GUI and interaction concepts. I at least have not yet seen any aspect in Serifs interaction scheme which differed from Photoshop deliberately and in a way that I could appreciate as a necessary consequence of a consistent and clearly deviating paradigm. I rather discover a lot of stuff, which likely hasn't been on the radar of the programmer, at implementation time: Omissions. Simple as that and certainly worth a nudge or two.

It's fantastic that Affinity (likely on Mac) gives you everything you need. But it certainly doesn't help anyone to call all users with complaints morons, who are only stuck in old conventions and unable to see these apps' pure awesomeness.

That's really kind of funny... This thread brought to my attention that Serif already uses a system to toggle between two tools – generally a super helpful feature – I even opened a feature request for this. Serif just happened to implement that tool-toggle a way that it either gets terribly in the way or doesn't get discovered at all. I dare calling the current implementation plain wrong – it doesn't do anything good and can not even get turned off – it really should get fixed asap. What I am used to from quite a variety of programs (including Photoshop) is that one may temporarily call another tool by pressing and holding down a letter key. That way one may lay down a couple of brush-strokes while actually drawing a path: Press (and release) P to call the path tool and click to lay down anchor points. In order to access to the brush tool one would press (and hold!) the letter B. As soon as you let go the B-key one reverts to the Pen tool exactly in the position where one had left off – one may continue laying down points in that path. The greatest advantage of this implementation is that it can not get called by accident. There's simply no other reason to press and keep holding a (Non Modifier-Key) right now = it can not get in the way. The second great advantage is that this sort of toogle is broadly known and expected behaviour. Hooking this up should not conflict with anything, as you don't use this event yet (normal keys held down).

I'm in the same position as at OP - I'd love to switch over but there's so much one would lose. Yes, using arrow keys while cropping is super helpful. The Photoshop crop tool controls also look better - they don't appear like a simple vector rectangle slapped onto the image. And at least on Windows the missing hardware acceleration in Aphoto totally spoils the performance of the tool. In PS there's no way to make the crop tool stutter.

Background saving really doesn't exist?* That's painful. *I didn't notice as I so far didn't save anything I did with APhoto.

Sounds as if DxO was a great choice for your needs! But one can also get the impression that you here can do to your RAWs pretty much everything you need and only quite rarely in comparison need to edit images in a layer based fashion. Is that impression correct? I think the more regularly one needs RAW development as well as compositing the more desirable it gets to have a suite of applications by the same vendor, which play perfectly together: in the same way as is highly advantagous to use Photoshop for the source graphics when regularly creating Layouts with Indesign. In my situation leaving the Adobe Suite towards Affinities current RAW develop-workspace would be a terrible step backwards. But using two separate programs for RAWs and Layer based editing was unacceptable too.

Thanks for voting :o) This part I don't understand. Most people would expect a DAM to be a separate piece of software. Some would be content with just a competent media management tool, others would wish RAW development to take place in this environment, for possible later compositing inside Affinity Photo. Do you think a RAW Editor which matches your expectations would be too complex a task for Serif?

No, I wanted to say that those who stick to Photoshop have the same RAW processing engine at disposal as Lightroom users. I don't use Lightroom as its database and Import before you Browse scheme feels too strict for my needs.

While what you say is correct I don't understand why you quoted me here :o) I described my Photoshop-centric RAW workflow which comes along without Lightroom. For culling / browsing I use Bridge, which offers very broad file support. My CS6 version even supports viewing 3D models (got removed in CC).

I can't, but I usually don't edit third party RAW data :o). Converting to dng first was an option, I guess. I think one needs to applaud Adobe for offering a lot of possible combinations for RAW editing. Photoshop with ACR and Bridge let you either work with a central database or with the usual file system and sidecars. Then there's the strictly catalog based program Lightroom if you prefer this approach – and obviously you can also integrate third party RAW editing plugins or dedicated standalone programs into both Photoshop and Lightroom based workflows.

There hardly can be a person who dislikes rental schemes for content authoring software more than I do. I still can not believe that it's legal to cut access to intellectual propery and artwork after letting a software contract run out. That being said – I like the functionality of Photoshop a lot. Hence I continue using CS6 until Affinity Photo (or another program) is good enough for my needs to switch over. I think it's still valid to say that everyone who has access to Photoshop (any legacy version released after 2004) or any version of CC (including the cheaper Photography version) at the same time has access to RAW editing (even without Lightroom on disk). I always embed the RAW files into the psd as Smart Objects – this way you can go return to ACR at any time. The RAW integration feels totally seamless.

Well, I consider this bit only of academic value. If you own Photoshop you as a matter of fact have access to these components and they indeed integrate seamlessly. I never touch Lightroom but I still can deal with hundreds or thousands of RAWs efficently – with Photoshop.

And here's my consistent take on it: This Photoshop comparison totally doesn't fly. Photoshop in terms of RAW handling is just as powerful as Lightroom (uses the same engine) and lets you work with whole folders of RAWs in parallel. Photoshop together with ACR and Bridge offers an awesome DAM + RAW Editor experience for those who prefer managing their assets without a database.

The Affinity range for Windows at this point isn't particularly performance-optimized yet - it thus far doesn't use GPU acceleration at all. Even on strong hardware with many CPU cores you will therefore see lags in operations which make the viewpoint redraw frequently. I7 6850K, GTX 1070, 32 GB RAM

You can simply duplicate any document view and drag it onto a second screen.

I just saw this: You likely want to say that ACR opens these RAWs in 4-5 seconds with Photoshop (as the host program for the RAW processor) not yet running, right? With PS already running, I would be surprised if you had to wait at all - ACR CS6 here opens dozens of images without any delay... To be fair one really needs to say that there's currently a huge performance difference between Photoshop and Affinity Photo in RAW handling. Affinity Photo lets you wait for every single RAW file - even with the program already running. And obviously one should not even consider working on a dozen or more RAW files at once, as easily doable with Photoshop.