hifred

Can't try this out myself right now - but it was very painful when this indeed wasn't hooked up at all. Blend modes in the brush tool are essential for improving detailed masks.

The thing about that is often those "smaller" bugs require rewriting more code than one might think to prevent other new bugs from occurring. Worse, if a section of the code is already being rewritten to support new features that have not yet made it into the release versions, then the time & effort spent on doing those short term incremental fixes is wasted & would be better spent on getting the code finalized to support the new stuff.
The developers have explained this quite a few times, though not in those words. They have also told us they are working on some major code changes for the much anticipated 1.7 versions of the apps, so it is not as if they are just ignoring fixing the 'smaller' bugs to work on adding new features.

Totally agree, Serif should amend or fix existing features more frequently IMHO. I empathise with the devs to a point, they have a continuous hill to climb but I think there should be a fast track patching system in place for smaller bugs, I think this would at least show some incremental progress and alleviate continuous postings of known issues.
Making everyone wait a long time for a job lot release is frustrating and having a more frequent smaller 1.7.1 or even 1.7.1.1 cycle in between 1.7, 1.8 releases would encourage confidence in Affinity products as they are being visibly proactive. As it is there are long pauses between fixes and updates. 
Having said that, I would rather wait for something to be fixed properly and features to be added that go beyond what the competition are putting out. What I don't want is "Affinistrator," I want something more than just a clone of adobe software.

This is really a needless irritation for new users and a workflow block for everyone. Again something that is solved in a perfectly consistant, much simpler and less error prone way in Photoshop. Ctrl+clicking the Layer miniature in the stack turns its content into a pixel selection, regardless what it is - even if it's an embedded layer Photoshop can't edit natively. No need to have a particular tool active, no need to create a bitmap copy first - the right object is targeted automatically, by having to click the layer. Affinity really needs to get rid of such traps and needlessly convoluted workflows. Nesting universally useful and often needed functionality (create selection) inside tools (here the pen tool) is a really bad UX idea.
PS: That same Ctrl-clicking also works with masks in Photoshop. This time one clicks the mask miniature.

You guys know that if you ctrl+click on a layer image you get it's contour as a selection.
That said, in Photoshop, it is possible to ctrl+click on a first layer and ctrl+shift+click on other layers to add to that initial selection. I couldn't do this on AD or AP. Is it possible to be done?
Showcase:
First I ctrl+click, then I try to ctrl+shift+click on the other layers.

SHOWCASING.mp4

Thanks. If one modified the dimension boxes in unconstrained mode, so that they don't just display the dimensions of the rectangle drawn in the viewpoint but also allowed Input one btw. could get rid of the absolute dimensions mode.
Coming from Photoshop I would not look for that separate mode - unconstrained means unconstrained, regardless of input method chosen. Now I'm waiting what R C-R has to say :o).

Nope, you have to use the mouse/sliders/brush-window for deeper edit!
There is NO way for fast direction flip, no way for hold "size/opacity..." for all brushes independet ist own settings, but if you set "wet corners" for One brush, THIS will take for all brushes...
Adjustments in the brush-panel will OVERWRITE that brush without asking and so on.
But you can set special oppacity with 2time-it of eg. 4 to 4 or with 3-time hit to 444 = 100. 
Its a version one, all is working fine, but lot of comfort is missing, eg. better views for the brushes (if you want just one-click-textures...) or the possibility to reorganize the categorizes, batch move.... flip/flop...take a size temporially....

Hey,

is there any way to get brush opacity and size get work like in photoshop?
What i am talking about is that when i press alt key and mouse right button and move mouse left to right i can change brush size, and when i move mouse up and down i can change opacity of brush or tool what uses size and opacity values.

Have a nice day indeed.

Hi hifred,
If you are not interested in the clipping path at all and all you want is a mask from a path do the following:
- create you path with the Pen Tool to get the overall shape
- with the Pen Tool still selected click the Selection button in the context toolbar (you should now have a selection above the image layer);
- go to menu Selection ▸ Refine Edges... or change to any of the selection tools and click the Refine... button in the context toolbar
- refine/adjust the selection with the Refine Selection dialog controls/tools and set the Output dropdown to Mask (on the bottom). Click the Apply button.
You should end up with a mask nested to the image. You don't have to use the Refine Selection dialog if you don't want it: from the second step simply click the Mask Layer button on the bottom of the Layers panel and adjust the mask with the usual brush tools.

Proper Channel Editing is on my list too, although I don't work in the print business.

I personally mostly miss an awful lot of small workflow details from Photoshop....
Just looking at the layer stack I miss useful previews for Layers and Masks (larger + in document aspect ratio), the ability to copy every Layer stack item with Alt pressed, including Layer-Effects!, better ways to bulk change visibility of layers (hold LMB and drag over Eye-Icon). Layer states were awesome too.
I also much miss truckloads of hotkey options. I want to set brush opacity and flow with the keyboard and assign Blend Modes via keyboard, when retouching I need this 3 times a minute. Existing essential keyboard mapping for Pen users are poorly executed – such as scrubby zoom and interactive Pen Size + Falloff change via keyboard.

In all programs I miss context sensitive RMB menus – having to go to the Top of the screen each time I can not perceive as an improvement over Photoshop :o)
But also in terms of basic things like panning and zooming I find Affinity lacks refinement.
I also fail to discover a powerful concept for dealing with RAW files – Photoshop is super good and flexible in this regard. I'm not talking about the quality of tools offered in the develop workspace and not even about the fact that everything executed inside this workspace is destructive /can not get re-edited.

I rather think that the present implementation architecture completely disregards in what ways many people work with RAW – and what performance standards do apply. I certainly will not wait for 10 seconds for a camera image to open, when I can browse through whole libraries of (true)RAWs in the same time. Things might change with the possible release of a DAM which (again possibly) includes a Develop workspace which would allow for for editing in an 'inside folder / across all images of the session situation' ... But I think one should offer something more meaningful and compatible (> sidecars) for the meantime.
_________________________________
Performance on Windows finally is the show stopper for me for the time being – that has nothing to do with features, but it's sure a part of my Affinity editing experience. On my pretty good machine Aphoto is just terribly slow in almost everything. Opening files, cropping, selecting, refine selection... In all editing scenarios my old Photoshop CS6 is ridiculously much faster.
 
Machine specs: Win10, i76850K, 32GB RAM, GTX1070

Hi hifred,
After creating the path in Affinity Photo you can also convert it to a pixel based mask for further refinement. Click the Selection button in the context toolbar with the Pen Tool selected to convert the path to a selection then click the Mask Layer button on the bottom of the Layers panel to convert the selection to a mask. You will have to duplicate the original path before if you intend to keep it. Maybe we can add a new button in the context toolbar to convert the path directly to a pixel mask.

Workaround suggestions like these don't make sense in the feature request section...
How is that of equal value or even better than having Nudge inside the Crop tool? Using the rectangle tool to crop...
isn't obvious to the user one needs to configure the tool each time (remove fill, set line width)  there's no access to preset aspect ratios there's no crop overlays (golden ratio, rule of thirds...) From Photoshop I also miss modifier keys to lock the current aspect ratio in unconstrained mode (shift) and for scaling the crop rectangle from the selection
center (alt). Both modifiers may get combined. When working with shapes or editing selections I miss these modifier options as well.
 
@ developers: While writing I noticed how incredibly slow the Crop tool is on Windows 10 – compared to my six years old Photoshop CS6.  When using the rotate handle I get very jittery updates even on simple jpgs. Doing the same on much larger RAW files in PS works smooth as butter, without the slightest delay. In my old Photoshop I may freely spin the image in circles at interactive framerate – there's no way to do the same in APhoto. I have recorded two samples, the Photoshop sample even looks way too slow, recorded at 30 frames/second...

Crop Tool performance APhoto
Crop Tool performance Photoshop CS6
Please work on performance on Windows.
At this point my more than half a decade old Photoshop runs in circles around Affinity Photo in all areas I have checked.
Machine specs: Win10, i76850K, 32GB RAM, GTX1070

Hiding unused Menu entries an old feature in Photoshop. It's great for removing stuff one considers useless or in the way,  to get rid of ugly filters or functions which simply don't apply to the own field of work. There's a quick temporary reset for all menus though: Holding down Ctrl while browsing the Menu shows all default entries. Would be nice if this was also available in Affinity apps.
 

Hiding unused Menu entries an old feature in Photoshop. It's great for removing stuff one considers useless or in the way,  to get rid of ugly filters or functions which simply don't apply to the own field of work. There's a quick temporary reset for all menus though: Holding down Ctrl while browsing the Menu shows all default entries. Would be nice if this was also available in Affinity apps.
 

Seems like everybody is busy checking out the Publisher Beta and that there's no time left to discuss RAW support :o).

I still think that a broader discussion on Serifs strategy in terms of RAW handling made a lot of sense. Comparison with Adobe is of course a bit unfair but what I find quite intriguing is that they really offer workflows for any RAW editing scenario and preference I can imagine...

You want to browse and edit RAWs but prefer sticking to the OS file system?
Use Bridge to browse and ACR to edit one file or as many as your system can handle. All you do is non-destructive, settings are written into a sidecar file.
Import the file(s) directly into Photoshop (without having to export to bitmap first).
You like that catalog less workflow but you can't stand these silly sidecar thingies?
Then use Bridge to browse and ACR to edit one file or as many as your system can handle. Press Shift when bringing the edited files into Photoshop. The RAW file (with nondestructive settings) now gets embeded into the psd file for further compositing. At that point you can savely delete the input RAW file (and its linked sidecars). If you change your mind totally or need a completely reset version of the input file you can still export (just the RAW) as a dng.
You firmly believe that this is all fine and dandy but that one should never touch images without a catalog in place?
Then use Lightroom to work on one image at a time or a full folder and bring your edited files into Photoshop as either bitmaps or Smart objects (with their editing history encapsulated).
 
But enough with Adobe.
It's also interesting to look around and see what programs like Luminar, Alien Skin Exposure, ON1 and ACDC are up to lately. All of them have long moved away from the 'I let you browse and sort images also let you do some RAW preprocessing (before you go to your "proper" image editor' paradigm. They all have Layers now and support complex masking – some even let you build multi image composites. None of them needs several seconds to open just a single RAW file and of course one can instantly transfer settings from one file to the next without even having to open them.
 
 

Seems like everybody is busy checking out the Publisher Beta and that there's no time left to discuss RAW support :o).

I still think that a broader discussion on Serifs strategy in terms of RAW handling made a lot of sense. Comparison with Adobe is of course a bit unfair but what I find quite intriguing is that they really offer workflows for any RAW editing scenario and preference I can imagine...

You want to browse and edit RAWs but prefer sticking to the OS file system?
Use Bridge to browse and ACR to edit one file or as many as your system can handle. All you do is non-destructive, settings are written into a sidecar file.
Import the file(s) directly into Photoshop (without having to export to bitmap first).
You like that catalog less workflow but you can't stand these silly sidecar thingies?
Then use Bridge to browse and ACR to edit one file or as many as your system can handle. Press Shift when bringing the edited files into Photoshop. The RAW file (with nondestructive settings) now gets embeded into the psd file for further compositing. At that point you can savely delete the input RAW file (and its linked sidecars). If you change your mind totally or need a completely reset version of the input file you can still export (just the RAW) as a dng.
You firmly believe that this is all fine and dandy but that one should never touch images without a catalog in place?
Then use Lightroom to work on one image at a time or a full folder and bring your edited files into Photoshop as either bitmaps or Smart objects (with their editing history encapsulated).
 
But enough with Adobe.
It's also interesting to look around and see what programs like Luminar, Alien Skin Exposure, ON1 and ACDC are up to lately. All of them have long moved away from the 'I let you browse and sort images also let you do some RAW preprocessing (before you go to your "proper" image editor' paradigm. They all have Layers now and support complex masking – some even let you build multi image composites. None of them needs several seconds to open just a single RAW file and of course one can instantly transfer settings from one file to the next without even having to open them.
 
 

RMB=Right Mouse button
I see that one of the underlying principles in Affinity apps is what is called Context Toolbars (under the Menu bar). This probably works well for many users – but I have to admit that I prefer moving my mouse or pen even less, whenever it makes sense. Obviously I'm a heavy user of keyboard shortcuts – but there's a lot of options which don't really lend themselves for shortcuts.

From Photoshop I'm super used to /spoiled from a wealth of context sensitive RMB menus: For every tool there's a matching RMB menu, which offers a drilldown of exactly the options required in this very second by that very tool.

Affinity apps have context sensitive RMB menus in their dockable editors, but on the canvas there's only one generic RMB context menu – but (looking at Photo right now) most of your tools don't even offer an RMB option at all. When trying out Affinity I can not tell how many times I already right-clicked without any effect... Am I the only one who finds this painful?

Please let me know – are there plans to add context sensitive RMB menus everywhere?


Some samples of Photoshop's RMB menus: 

Context Menu of Photoshop CS 6 Crop tool

That's what you get inside the text tool...

Extremely useful in Photoshop's Brush tool. No equivalent in APhoto.
 

Also sorely missed: Further options in Free Transform via RMB
 
 

Hi hifred.
Photoshop has both smart objects (embedded in the file) and linked smart objects (which reference an external file). It also let's you convert between the two. Since the PSD format is not that well documented i'm not sure what we will be able to support. That's what i meant.

Well I really do apologize if I unintentionally insulted you or anybody else by calling attention to something that certainly help me to understand the intention of the software developer behind the Develop Persona.  You might have noticed that not only Advanced Members have been posting in this thread.  It was started by a Newbie, and I am one, too.  

I also don’t think that such are helpful statements. It’s awesome that Affinity products live fully up to expectations in your game development context. It's equally nice for everyone else who made similar experiences. It’s very bold though, to state that customers with all sorts of other backgrounds, working habbits and hardware must be equally happy ‘otherwise they just haven’t tried properly’.
I as a longtime Adobe user was very furious about their SAAS switch and the fact that they don’t let you access your intellectual property after letting expire their service contract. Hence I never subscribed to CC – heck I even wrote several protest notes to offices at European Union, in charge of guarding competition and intellectual property.

Yes, I would be more than happy to stop using my 5 years old Adobe CS6 products. But should I do this right now?
No, at least for my use case and my hardware this would be plain foolish – and I have purchased both Affinity apps as soon as they got available for Windows.
Thus far with Affinity I can not edit at the speed I’m used to. Batch loading of RAW files takes forever (they are instantly there in PS), I can’t develop stacks of of files with equal settings, I experience latency in numerous tools (the software even needs to think for a second to fill a blank canvas with a solid colour). I’m even running into show stopping graphics defects on pretty decent hardware.
Win10, i76850K, 32GB RAM, GTX1070

Well, I don't think it's quite clear. Yes, people often expect everything to be as they want it, and I agree with you that users more often than not post questions when it would take them just a few clicks to figure it out by themselves (and if not by exploring the programs, at least by looking up on Google, but we live in lazy societies). On the other hand, there are situations where things can simply go unnoticed because of some unusual choice for the GUI, largely discussed. It took me a while to get used to the cycle through different tools by just pressing B on the keyboard: initially, I was always ending up using the color replacement brush instead of the regular brush (just to cite one of the several episodes) and I remember I thought something wasn't quite working.
That said, your statement still sounds quite strong, at least I personally felt it like that especially because of "people saying that Affinity Photo is not even close to Photoshop", which is what I wrote right above. I stand by what I wrote and, believe me, I used, learned and squeezed a lot Affinity Photo (and for the most part, Designer): considered my experience, unfortunately, they are indeed not close and I really, really wanted to like them (reason why, if possible, I'm even more disappointed by the outcome).
Lastly, it's also worth to be noted, as there are lazy people who are not exactly willing to make the transition, there are also a lot of beginners or hobbyist who pick up Serif products, mainly because of the price. What I mean is, most likely to many users AP/AD will be close if not better than PS/AI because A) They are not professional/advanced users and B) With Affinity they get all they need.

You seem to assume a lot of things, only you didn't get them right.
As for the A, I'm just referring to the people who post here, whereas your reply was actually mentioning what I wrote. By the way, I have been using Photoshop since 1995 (and I use Android, oh, and FOSS).
In regards to B, you didn't get what I meant: those users get all they need for their job, therefore, it's obvious that for them Affinity is close or better than PS. If they weren't, their opinions would be different. So, when you criticize people for their opinions, you should think twice and realize that we all have different needs. I understand that AP may be fine for you, but it is not for me. Telling me that it's just because I didn't make the effort to study the program is just a sign of preconception. Granted, you were speaking in general (or not exactly), and my point is there are other cases and is not fair to include them in this big bowl.
I couldn't care less about flames and wars between software. I use what suits my needs and my job. Do I like Adobe's business model? No. Is it Adobe bugs free? No. Does a real alternative exist for my job? No. I paid for Affinity and spent a lot of time with it but I'm simply left with no choices.
Apparently, you searched some of my posts (and no, there is nothing magical about one-click selection, just coding), but you missed the older posts where I added my contribution figuring out workarounds and other ways to get things done in AP, I say not very respectful.

Setting a custom stream to default works as well:
 

We're constrained to the limitations of Invision coding here, but I think there is a way to create what you are looking for.
Under the Activity tab at the top is My Activity Streams with a drop-down list. Here you can create a new 'stream' with your own custom settings. The closest I can match to your description would be to change Show me to 'Content items only' and Default View to 'Condensed', then simply name the stream and save it.

You can then access this stream anytime from the drop-down list, perhaps bookmark it for quicker access