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Paul Coddington

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  1. My perspective is that any application that has a metadata editing feature is, in effect, a metadata editor and expected to conform to the established standards of metadata editing. Recompressing an otherwise unaltered JPEG is unexpected behaviour because the standards are designed to avoid that. Turns out I got around the immediate problem using EXIFTool GUI, but it is much slower and more cumbersome to correct metadata that way (open another app, then browse down through a tree of folders, rather than just drag and drop from the currently open Explorer project working folder into an already open AFPhoto).
  2. Affinity Photo recompresses JPEG images when metadata is edited even though the image itself has no changes. Steps: 1. Make a copy of a test JPEG image as backup. 2. Edit metadata in one copy of the image in Affinity Photo. 3. Stack before and after images in layers and view as Difference.
  3. I too am having trouble with HDR workflow but on Windows 11. AFPhoto does not seem to report levels in nits that I can find so far, and the Clip Warning does not accept arbitrary numbers to do any meaningful sanity tests in lieu of a nit picker tool. When I export an image to HDR or EXR format, the max nits reported by Clip Warning are not what is saved when exporting, not even close. Since v1 I have encountered problems trying to expand SDR images to HDR, attempting to create HDR vector illustrations, such as color swatch menus not even being close to matching tool output and documents containing vectors having their colors grossly distorted when converted to 32-bit. Yesterday, I discovered AFPhoto color management is broken on Windows 11 for SDR images when the HDR desktop is enabled. It cannot display wide gamut images because AFPhoto does not use the new color management API and Windows 11 remaps the AFPhoto window to display as sRGB. To remedy this, you have to set a compatibility setting in the Start Menu shortcut ("use legacy display ICC color profile"). But if you turn this on, will AFPhoto still be able to display HDR images correctly in HDR or will it remap them to SDR through ICC? Additionally, SDR images are displayed well below the correct brightness levels. I would really like to hear from anyone who has (or can point to) a successful HDR workflow for: 1) expanding SDR to HDR with specified targets for nit levels in AFPhoto, 2) creating vector artwork in HDR in AFDesigner, 3) converting existing SDR AFPhoto/AFDesigner projects to HDR intact and non-destructively. Hopefully one that does not require additional purchases or a great deal of study into cinema/gaming industry workflows, because color-managed HDR ideally shouldn't be any harder to work with and less intuitive than color-managed SDR, it should be point and click WSYWIG, simple enough for non-technical artists and photographers to use.
  4. Clearly a bug because the EXIF specification stores dates as strings in YYYY-MM-YY HH:NN format. It is hard to believe that is 2024 and there it is still an uphill battle to tag images with the most basic and fundamental metadata, such as a correctly spelled name (unicode, not bastardized to ASCII and not abbreviated in length to fit an arbitrarily short field) or a date taken so that libraries of images can be accessed and retrieved using Search. Adobe, Affinity and Microsoft all have fundamental metadata bugs that halt progress, and some metadata bugs have been ignored by Adobe and Microsoft for more than 10-15 years. Now my hopes that I can tag images with Affinity are dashed for the time being as well.
  5. 1. It is not possible to set a date taken for old photographs. Try tagging a photo taken in, say, 1926. It will not be saved and will come back blank when the file is reopened. 2. IPTC fields are short, for example, some longer country names must be entered abbreviated rather than in their correct form.
  6. Suggested improvements to States feature: Ability to rearrange order of States. Ability to rename States. Ability to group States in names Groups. Ability to capture unique File/EXIF/IPTC data per State. Safeguard accidental deletion of States. Safeguard accidental update of States. Safeguard accidental deletion: the Add and Delete buttons for States are very small and very close together. The incidence of accidentally clicking Delete while trying to add a new State is very high. Delete has no confirmation and no undo. Options: relocate buttons or confirm delete or undo delete State using document History? Same problem with hitting Update when aiming for Settings. Metadata: layer States are effectively subdocuments/variants, which when exported often need specific amendments to metadata (eg: if a layer containing a cat is turned off, there should no longer be a metadata tag for 'cat' when exported). At the moment, the only solution is to mash metadata for all States together and then amend metadata manually when exporting them, as was the case before States were available. If States captured metadata it would be very useful. [As an aside, I would add editing tag metadata is currently difficult because there is a text justification and scrolling bug for that field creating abnormally large gaps between tags that constantly shift while typing, making it hard to proof-read tags for punctuation and spacing errors. Tags have to be edited in Notepad and pasted in because it is too difficult to type them directly.]
  7. I have a nagging doubt that I have previously encountered a truncation problem with tags. When this problem is investigated, it would be a good idea to check that the full length of the Tags field is always preserved and not truncated to something shorter than it should be. The Tags field can hold an large amount of data to cater for a long list of many hierarchical tags with potentially long paths. Some apps have been known to truncate it to 255 or even fewer characters, and/or limit each semicolon delimited item to an unrealistically short length. The Tags in the attached sample file have been truncated, but I think I accidentally did that while copy-pasting them (the last tag should end with the word "FILM" but ends with "F").
  8. Problem: When exporting to TIFF, any of the Subject, Tags, Comments metadata fields are corrupted (changed to Chinese characters). Usually the Subject and Tags or the Subject and Comments fields are corrupted depending on scenario. Steps (Scenario 1): 1. Add metadata tags to a TIFF file in File Explorer. 2. Open in Affinity Photo. 3. Export to TIFF unaltered (with ZIP compression). Steps (Scenario 2): 1. Add metadata tags to an image in Affinity Photo. 2. Export to TIFF (with ZIP compression). Steps (Scenario 3): 1. Add tagged TIFF files to Batch process in Affinity Photo. 2. Use Batch process to export TIFF files unaltered to TIFF (with ZIP compression). The goal of resaving the file with ZIP compression is to workaround the bug in File Explorer that saves tagged TIFF (Zip) as TIFF (LZW) at about three times the size. However, I currently have no editors available that can save a TIFF file with metadata intact without corrupting it (this is also a bug in all Adobe products last time I used them, which was quite some time ago, and the reason I would attempt to use File Explorer to add metadata after editing). Side discussion: Compression is an interesting problem. On top of the metadata tagging in File Explorer roughly tripling the file size by converting to LZW, simply embedding a TIFF in an AFPHOTO file roughly doubles its size, and if the layer is rasterised with no modifications whatsoever, the AFPHOTO file doubles in size again (even when saved as a fresh copy to compact it). All of this adds up to massive (and expensive) storage waste. They say storage is cheap, but it isn't cheap enough to want to buy three times as many hard drives at several hundred dollars a pop to do the job of one. For the sake of not sharing family photos, examples are a frame exported from Blu-ray movie for desktop wallpaper. Tags made up to be "typical" (with Unicode characters). [Explorer bug has been reported to Microsoft.] export.tiff original.tiff
  9. Windows 11 Pro 22H2, Ryzen 7 3700X with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super New issues 2.2: Project file sometimes silently fails to save latest session changes (do not know how to reproduce). Other people now reporting same problem on Facebook. Project file can be missing hours of work when re-opened. Running a macro instantly crashes the application (crash report uploaded, 100% reproducible). Application does not crash when applying macro actions manually. Macros created in 2.1. Blemish Removal tool when used to dab away dust spots slows down with each successive use, until eventually the application becomes unresponsive for long periods of time. Application does not crash (so far), eventually recovers, but I have always given up when the unresponsive periods become intolerable (30s to 1 min), never pushed it further (frequently reproduceable). Merge Visible sometimes produces a result that has somewhat shifted levels/color (not easily reproduceable). Workaround is to break up merge into batches of fewer layers and then merge the results. Issues 2.2 (carried over from 2.0/2.1): Blur Brush region of influence does not preview blur effect, it previews like an erase tool (reveals layer underneath or transparency grey squares) (100% reproducible). Blur Brush tool is often reluctant to make any changes or makes some small amount of change and then becomes unable to make any more changes (even at 100%) (frequently reproducible). Grid cannot be turned on (100% reproducible). Makes it difficult to snap objects. Amending a TIFF file and saving it directly (without export) severely corrupts metadata (Subject, Tags, Comments). Comments and Subject are completely replaced by seemingly random bursts of Chinese characters, long hierarchical tags and large lists of tags are truncated even though they have not exceeded any limits imposed by File Explorer or dedicated tagging applications (100% reproducible). Application repeatedly displays a reminder dialog to turn on crash reporting when launched. Apart from settings choices being repeatedly questioned, the reminder dialog frequently interrupts train of thought. If it only comes up after a failure, then this suggests there are frequent silent failures happening in the background going unnoticed.
  10. I wonder if this will cause problems when there are multiple profiles on the machine from different vendors? For example, different vendors install their own sRGB profiles, but they differ in accuracy, so assigning the wrong one by accident can throw the colours out. After installations and updates, I tend to review all the ICC profiles on my machine to unclutter selection lists and make it easier to use the same profile each time. Anything I don't use, I put aside in a ZIP file in case it is needed down the track.
  11. I am working on compiling a list of problems, but it might take me a little while to check them thoroughly and decide how best to present them. As a heads up, I am encountering serious problems with Affinity Photo on Windows with HDR desktop enabled (color pickers, previews, displaying SDR documents, converting 16-bit to 32-bit, clipping warnings, some tools, are not working correctly for me). As much as I want to have MSI installers, it is more important to me to be able to archive my scanned slides in HDR format for viewing on modern displays, as the results are far more lifelike and invoke a much stronger feeling of "being there". So, prioritising fixes, especially for features not completely working yet, is most welcome.
  12. On Windows, the settings for all three apps are stored in the "%UserProfile%\.Affinity" folder (copy paste that path "as is" into File Explorer to see it, the system will automatically autocomplete the username and drive letter). It seems to me very likely that will be preserved and carried forward during uninstallation/reinstallation. The MSI should be identical to MSIX except for installation method and executable location. It would not surprise me if they could live side-by-side, but there would be no point in doing that because they will be the same version. I am assuming all this on the basis that I wouldn't expect the program code to be re-written to package it with a different installer, and .NET-based code tends to be quite portable (it is a framework that usually allows deployment by simply copying files to the installation folder without any need for an installer at all).
  13. The point of confusion here is that they have just been officially announced today as available "now" (see above link in OP post) yet have not appeared in the locations described. Perhaps we are looking too soon after the announcement and there is an update to the downloads page that has not had enough time to roll out yet? Or today's announcement accidentally rolled out a bit early and jumped the gun a bit? Patience. Sounds like they will be here very soon.
  14. Ditto. I avoid Store/MSIX apps as much as possible on my Windows desktop workstation. It is important for me to be able to arrange the Start Menu in subfolders by task/topic so I don't have to memorise all my apps and can find apps when I have forgotten the names, shorten Start Menu names for speed reading legibility, remove brand names to improve alphabetic sorting, have short names on pinned items so there are no extra eye movement zig-zags to navigate text wrapping when speed reading/scrolling them. I have some neurological problems where I become fatigued quite quickly and can be impacted by clutter, messy text wrapping, and sometimes forget what name I need to type in the search box to launch an app, so for me controlling the Start Menu entries shortcuts for as many apps as possible is an accessibility issue. If only Microsoft would allow MSIX apps to be given user-defined aliases and be put in sub menus in the advanced options it would not be an issue, but the display name is locked in when the MSIX is packaged and can't be altered after the fact without breaking package certification (so far as I know).
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