[Affinity Designer Customer Beta (1.7.2.2 - RC1) [BETA CLOSED]]

1 hour ago, Patrick Connor said:

It may work, but that may require another beta build of Affinity Publisher, for reasons too complicated to go into here

StudioLink doesn't work for either Designer or Photo.  OK will just use MAS and store versions until new release comes. Thanks for all the hard work.

[Affinity Publisher Customer Beta - 1.7.2.422]

10 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It may well be a bug, but this is not the appropriate topic to address your concern, and posting here will not get your concern properly tracked by Serif. As AdamW mentioned in the first post in this topic, to report problems using the beta you need to create a new topic in Report Bugs in Publisher Beta on Mac.

(Also, if the problem exists in the retail version it may be better to report it in Pubisher Bugs Found on MacOS rather than in the beta forums.)

posted on a new thread per your location recommendation and hid here. thanks, 

[Font organization bug across all Affinity products]

I started a thread in feedback on font organization but now honestly this issue has turned into a bug or a glitch and wanted to address it here.  My original request/complaint was that Affinity Publisher (or any Affinity product) could handle font organization better, grouping the widths together as a condensed/normal/extended format. Adobe does it this way and it works well.

Now however, I sent feedback to a font foundry because I thought they had mislabeled SemiExpanded to be wider that Expanded. They told me it was the case with my software not their font. I looked again and realized they were correct and want to share a screen grab from Affinity and another from Photoshop to compare. Please see how the weights and widths organization is messy but the optical illusions of the widths. It seems the word length is squeezing down the sizes as well. 

Since Affinity Publisher is a master layout assembly tool especially where typography plays a critical role, and where many designers use thousands of fonts and many superfamilies that are extremely difficult to navigate through in the current font organization scheme, I ask for the fonts to be displayed as they are with Adobe.  This would help tremendously. I love Affinity products but this is issue a thing to deal with.

[Please fix font organization - normal, condensed, expanded groups]

3 minutes ago, Hilltop said:

It might have to do with the APub version as the Windows version lists grouped font families.d.

Mac AP sorts the same way. I'm referring to when you open each of these families. 

[Please fix font organization - normal, condensed, expanded groups]

6 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Your first screenshot shows that they are sorted by weight: thin, light, book, regular, medium, etc. The problem is that they’re not sorted such that, for example, all of the condensed variants are grouped together.

you are correct - I meant width.  But anyway just see the images as that shows how much easier it is in one vs. the other

[Please fix font organization - normal, condensed, expanded groups]

1 hour ago, Fixx said:

This is a regular problem with any software. Things were so much better when we had Adobe Type Reunion 

It would really help if all font families were forced to groups, not like now when some font are families, some spread all over the place.

Yes I know - there are a few foundries that don't organize well. For that (license rights to modify notwithstanding) there is a great tool to use called TransType4 by FontLab. This fixes all these badly organized font issues. Either that or ask the foundry to fix - I have occasionally done that as well.

But excluding those the main issue is that a lot of well-behaved font families are organized by weights - condensed, expanded etc and Adobe organizes these in groups.  In Affinity there is no sorting by weight and I would have a fantastically easy time as a designer who works with a ton of fonts if this problem were fixed.

[Please fix font organization - normal, condensed, expanded groups]

Hi Affinity,

While I love the way OpenType features are handled much better than in Adobe, I really cannot navigate font superfamilies. If you have any family that has different weight groups then navigating through the font list is very difficult.  Can you guys please fix the font organization. It really slows down my work otherwise.

I am showing screenshots for one particular font family. I have licensed countless superfamilies and I really don't like working with them in Affinity products for this reason.

[what stops me from using Photo - suggestions for improvement]

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Did you press the cogwheel in the Layers panel next to Lock/Unlock? Personally I find the blending options in Affinity to be more advanced than Photoshop, since you can work with nodes and curves instead of just two sliders.

Yes I use that cogwheel all the time. Agree with you that a curves-type blend modality is more powerful that sliders, in which you have to press option to feather (hate that part of Photoshop).  But still that blending feature is separated from the rest of the layer effects and I use both modalities in unison in Photoshop. I have tried duplicating my workflow in Photoshop and yes there are other (more complex ways) around it but I like simplicity.

[what stops me from using Photo - suggestions for improvement]

7 hours ago, fde101 said:

No, layer effects have an effect on the layer itself, but the blend options control how the layer is combined with other layers.  They are two different things.

In Photoshop I can apply an effect or fill and then change the blending option and then the blend range (Blend If). If I want to add a color fill and then change the blend range and then uncheck the color fill I am able to specifically target highlights or shadows. I tried doing this in Photo but wasn't able to. This might seem like a specialized thing I do but it's part of my daily workflow.

[what stops me from using Photo - suggestions for improvement]

Hi Affinity,

 

As a member of the Affinity converted with Designer and Publisher, I have used Affinity software for my digital agency and there are presentations of mine in the exec offices of some global automakers. This work used to be done with InDesign but I switched over to Designer two years ago and used multipage artboards to work on my projects. When Publisher Beta came out I was on cloud nine, and then when StudioLink came out I really needed psychotherapy to cure my OCD with Publisher. Such an amazing, groundbreaking workflow.

 

I also took a very deep dive on Photo, the latest store version and also the beta. I have a collection of thousands of Photoshop files and many of them opened up flawlessly. I also love the refined UI. And now rotating brushes are amazing! I seriously don’t know why Photoshop hasn’t done that yet, but consider that it took them many years to enable CMD-Z. You guys had live preview first but they soon adopted that, so it is clear they are watching what you are doing. I would like to come over 100% to Affinity but I have several issues that prevent me from doing so. Also, I do realize that this is a monumental task - Photoshop really is Adobe’s flagship, more so than any of their products. It was easy to switch over to Designer from Illustrator, really easy even with features missing (perspective warp please! - although doing that in StudioLink). Right now I am adept enough at Photo as and use it within a StudioLink context but not standalone and here’s what’s preventing me:

 

Smart Objects. Before I begin, I know Adobe is never going to let you in on Smart Objects. PSD documents that include them will open up with these layers rasterized. But let’s consider that your embedded documents are pretty much there. I can add a Photo or Designer file to Photo or Designer or Publisher and I can edit the document just as I would a smart object, and see live updating on the master document - which is ahead of Photoshop in that regard.  Also if it’s a Designer file in Photo I can edit in Designer without leaving Publisher or Photo.) In Photoshop you can only edit a vector with Illustrator). Then with the embedded document I can add a few live filters such as Distort>Perspective - which is a favorite in working in a mockup scenario. As a live filter I can go back and change the settings. I can also add some live blurs and a few other things.  Sadly, the other Distort live filters don’t work as they have no effect on the embedded object. If you apply a non-live filter then the embedded document rasterizes, and then this gets destructive especially when placing a vector in a Photo document. I don’t mind converting my Photoshop PSB files (smart object files) to PSD then placing as embedded documents.  This way I can have my entire core design and logo files standardized as Affinity vector and raster files, but the inability to do pinching and liquifying and other types of warping and shading stops me from doing this.  Also there is no way to take a group of layers in Photo and convert easily to an embedded document. I really love how this works in Photoshop. It’s essential to my work, and this is the main thing keeps me on Photoshop. Hopefully Affinity can continue development here.

 

Brushes. While I was praising brushes in Photo there is one simply itsy bitsy thing that is absolutely essential to my work. I need the brushes labeled with their actual names, as they are done in Photoshop. Photoshop has brush flyout panels - if you extend the panels. I have over two thousand brushes and it’s just too difficult to know what’s what in Photo.  Even if there are groups, I can’t tell what the individual brushes are if there are two many.  I can hover over the brush and then see if I’ve selected the correct one - this works well if you have a few brushes but not if you have so so many.

 

LUTs. I love the live presets on LUTs. But honestly it is a chore to import them as presets.  Also it takes too long to load the adjust layer presets. Photoshop allows you to add all the LUT files to the programs preset folder. Restart photoshop and they are all there.

 

Pattern fills. Oh pattern fills. I keep reading in the forum that this is a badly needed feature and so I am throwing myself into this group. Yes I can work around this and have done so… but why? It’s so easy in Photoshop and I have a library of so many .pat files that I would love to use in Photo, just as I have converted my brushes, color files (with online converters) and gradients.

 

Blend Options. I love your layer blend options UI - really easier to use than Photoshop.  But shouldn’t it be part of Layer Effects?  I want to add color fills for instance and select the blend options right then and there, so I can see what I’m doing as I can in Photoshop.

 

Feathered masks. If I want to feather a mask in Photoshop I simply go to the mask properties and then adjust the feathering. In Photo I can’t feather a mask that’s been applied to an adjustment effect directly. I have to move the mask to a layer above, then apply a live filter, and then move the mask and its filter under the adjustment effect.  I have to do these things all the time and this seems oddly cumbersome.

 

 

[Affinity Publisher Customer Beta - 1.7.2.422]

I'm sure you guys are working hard and so meekly ask if there is an approximate ETA for the Designer beta. I only ask because I'm holding back on using Publisher beta until StudioLink is fully active.

[How to edit smart object mockup in affinity photo?]

Affinity Photo already has Smart Object-like features. While actual smart objects are a proprietary Adobe thing, and they obviously don't want to share that and lose their own market share - here's what you can do:

1. In Photoshop take a mockup PSD and open the smart object and save that as a PSD file. Repeat for as many smart objects there are.

2. Open the original mockup PSD file in Affinity Photo and notice where the smart objects got flattened - replace those with the PSDs you saved from the smart objects. Place those objects. Then use the Live Perspective Filter (don't use the Perspective Tool as that will flatten the embedded document you placed).  Use as many Live Filters as you want to recolor, distort, blur etc.  

What I really would love to see Affinity do is take a group of layers and convert to an Embedded Document without have to copy these to a new document then saving then placing again (that seems tedious for no reason!).

Here is one that I did.  (Including the original PSD as well).  Notice how much smaller the file size is as well.

Apple Watch mockup for Affinity.afphoto

mockups_-2Apple-Watch_Space_Grey_Aluminum_Case_Black_Sport_Band(free-mockup).psd

However, much more need to be developed to make the Embedded Documents function like smart objects.  You can't really warp them or liquify. Other than simple planar displacements they aren't at Photoshop's level of working with more complex mockups.

[How do I feather Affinity Photo masks]

6 minutes ago, Murfee said:

Hi abarkalo, I can see the vignetting in your file, I only have access to Photo on the iPad at the moment, and I can not find a way of inverting the curves layer  I think that the light & dark curves are supposed to be used together. Have you tried adding the light curve to your file? 

yes added that but only want to focus on why the gaussian blur is vignetting all sides of the photo.  It doesn't do that in Photoshop - strict comparison of only one adjustment. When I use the light adjustment layer in Photo what happens is that there is a reverse vignette on all sides, so yes the two cancel each other out but this is not a good effect overall.  It seems to me that Affinity Photo masks need a direct feathering on their own.  I would think that Gaussian blur is the same as feathering but perhaps the way it's tuned in Photo is for the fading to be done closer to the outer edge, so thus the vignetting is really a stretched out blur, whereas in Photoshop is it more evenly distributed.  Wish I could control that.  Maybe a Feathering Live Layer that fine tunes the radius and offset of the blur.

[How do I feather Affinity Photo masks]

45 minutes ago, Murfee said:

I didn’t see any type of vignetting, I pushed the highlights a lot further to start with but they were too much for the image I used. I did not use an additional mask, my results were pretty close to the effect in the video. If I used the same image as the video I think that the results would have matched exactly

I used a harsh photo as a test - and please see attached.  There is a lot of vignetting in the Photo example.  I didn't use lightening here - just the darks as a test. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for you help. 

test_in_APhoto.afphoto

test_in_photoshop.psd

[How do I feather Affinity Photo masks]

thank for this. I tried it a few on some images. The issue is that in the video the curves really blow out the highlights and shadows to the extreme. I think that's part of the trick. Then the built-in feather properties of the mask blurs out in pixels, not %.

In Photo I am not able to push the curves to the extreme.  If I do then I can't blur to a desired range - only to 100%.  If I type in 200% then it starts to look more like the video but then I get a strong vignette effect around the entire image, not just where I painted.  If I lower the Gaussian blur to say 88% then go back to the curves I really can't get that realistic effect that I am looking for.  I think what's going wrong here is that I'm blurring the overall effect :  Blur * (curves + mask) not curves * blur (mask). I'm only guessing.  Hope I can fine tune this. I really like this sculpting. Or I suppose it might be same thing to paint with a very soft white brush on a dodge/burn layer (overlay of 50% gray).

[How do I feather Affinity Photo masks]

Also I really want to be able to feather masks (as I am able to in Photoshop's mask properties).  Right now I can apply a Gaussian live filter to the mask but it just doesn't create the same effect I'm after.  Please take a look at this video - I want to be able to do this exactly.  What ends up happening is that I end up vignetting the whole image.

[Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.7.2.146)]

(I added this in feature quests for retail store discussion, but perhaps this is also relevant in the beta discussion).

As a longtime Photoshop user coming into Affinity Photo for pro work I wanted to suggest improvement for Photo's curve adjustment tool.

Curves works great but I think the picker tool needs to be able to instantly pick on the curves graph as I click on areas in the picture. Right now I can add points but I have to wiggle left or right in order for the point to be added, and then I might accidentally pull the curve up or down slightly when all I wanted to do was to select a point.  Use case for this is that I might want to select all the color areas in a face and protect those ranges.  Or select a few area in a landscape and pull all those areas up and down.  I mention this because I can easily and quickly do this in Photoshop but this is one of those things where I really struggle with in Photo.

However I have an idea for making curves better in Photo than Photoshop.  What if I could lasso or shift-select a given range of points I have made in curves?  How amazing would that be.  Then I can pull a select group of points up or down and this becomes quite powerful. Think of this like the ability to move a selected group of vector points in Designer. You can't do this in Photoshop. Perhaps you can just pull up the points or stretch the selection - I'm referring to all that you can do in Designer with selected vector points.

[Picker suggestion for Curves adjustment in Affinity Photo]

As a longtime Photoshop user coming into Affinity Photo for pro work I wanted to suggest improvement for Photo's curve adjustment tool.

Curves works great but I think the picker tool needs to be able to instantly pick on the curves graph as I click on areas in the picture. Right now I can add points but I have to wiggle left or right in order for the point to be added, and then I might accidentally pull the curve up or down slightly when all I wanted to do was to select a point.  Use case for this is that I might want to select all the color areas in a face and protect those ranges.  Or select a few area in a landscape and pull all those areas up and down.  I mention this because I can easily and quickly do this in Photoshop but this is one of those things where I really struggle with in Photo.

However I have an idea for making curves better in Photo than Photoshop.  What if I could lasso or shift-select a given range of points I have made in curves?  How amazing would that be.  Then I can pull a select group of points up or down and this becomes quite powerful. Think of this like the ability to move a selected group of vector points in Designer. You can't do this in Photoshop. Perhaps you can just pull up the points or stretch the selection - I'm referring to all that you can do in Designer with selected vector points.

[Affinity Publisher Customer Beta - 1.7.2.420]

I wrote an earlier note about my preference to keep using the MAS versions and have more frequent updates, and to use the betas only as new features not as bug fixes. I think maybe it was perceived a bit negatively and that was far from my intent. I love all the Affinity products and even like using the betas but my preference was to have more regular updates on the MAS and Affinity store versions. 1.6.x to 1.7.x took a year and the betas were the more useful versions, and the different file formats created a slight mess on my end.  All this is just a slight complaint to be overcome by the massive increase in productivity you have given my design life.

Right now there are three products, and with StudioLink it almost seems a Boolean multiple of nine versions - Photo Beta editing in Publisher or Publisher Beta - but I know you guys have it better organized than that as there are really two systems, Photo Beta/Designer Beta/Publisher Beta and then the store group.  We are just waiting on Designer Beta so that the beta system works all intact.

But let me offer another suggestion here - if I am to now use the beta system of apps can you guys make it easier to export all settings to the betas. Right now in Photo I have many groups, thousands of brushes and macros etc, and I have to export each group one by one.  Also I cannot export the presets that I have spent a lot of time creating them from LUTs (also would love to batch import LUTs as presets perhaps).  I can export Macros and colors and I believe keyboard shortcuts (not sure on this one).  To summarize, there is a lot of work to bring everything I have imported and customized into the beta. Can there be an auto import tool for all these settings and assets?  This would really help in transitioning to the beta because right now I haven't done this as it is too much work.

[blank icon layer view when copying]

also this happens when I copy the entire full screen layer.  Will try on the beta to see if this happens on that.

[blank icon layer view when copying]

it started with small thumbnails.  I switched to bigger thumbnails and seems to be fixed.  

[blank icon layer view when copying]

Hi I was using the common CMD-J when I made a layer selection. I thought that the CMD-J function wasn't working because the icon layer was blank (black actually but no image inside of it).  I later realized that the CMD-J function does work but that the image was not updating.  A minute later the pixel layer thumbnail did show there was an image there.  It was just very slow to update.

[Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.7.2.146)]

2 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi abarkalo,
All changes we made are first implemented in the Customer Beta version so a large number of users can also test them and report issues. We then release an update for the retail versions which include all those fixes. If you don't want to use the Beta, uninstall it from your system and just use the retail version you bought. Minor updates/fixes like these will be quickly available as an update soon.

Only the major 1.7 release took exceptionally more time due to all the code changes/integration necessary for Publisher.

Perfect that's all I wanted to hear. I want more periodic fixes these days since Affinity "Everything" is now part of my design paradigm, and less so that other company. 

[Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.7.2.146)]

1 hour ago, Andy Somerfield said:

- Fixed healing brush bugs.
- Fixed badly placed stepper buttons in tone mapping UI.
- Pantone palettes are now sorted alphabetically.
- Fixed crash when starting app in a folder containing weird characters.

Hi Affinity I really and truly love ALL your products but I also really dislike the way these fixes are rolling out.  I don't want a beta running alongside the official app... anymore.  This really confuses my overall workflow. I just don't know which version to use. I'm not a beta tester, I'm a designer and want to use software that gets more periodic updates especially on important issues such as critical bug fixes as crashes.  Perhaps new features that are being designed for an upcoming version can be brought into a new beta version but the items I quotes above at least should just be regular updates. I could ignore the beta versions but now I know these bugs are there.

Evernote, Sketch and many other software apps allow the user to pick their update preferences for beta builds or only stable builds. But they don't run two separate apps. I bought Designer and Photo from the MAS and would be willing to buy your store versions if only to have the regular updates in one app and not separate beta builds.

[StudioLink doesn't work (macOS)]

Hi Everyone, I reported this problem first yesterday. I was also annoyed but there is a simple fix.  If you bought Designer or Photo from the Mac Store then you need to be aware that the store doesn't immediately update the apps.  There is a seven day update cycle (you can change this frequency with a Terminal command - but still you have to wait a day).  Best solution, and what I did, was to delete the apps and then reinstall from the Mac store. A tiny bit of a hassle but then all will work.