walt.farrell

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. Looking at the Affinity applications historically: Designer supports three basic view modes (View > View Mode) Vector, Pixel, and Split. Photo supports only Pixel view mode. Publisher does not let you specify a view mode, except for Split. When you are not in Split mode, then the Publisher and Designer Personas are in Vector view mode. Photo is always in Pixel view mode, as it is a pixel editor. So yes, I would expect that quality difference if you're working zoomed in in the Photo Persona, based on the display technology being used.

Yes, to all three. Except that using File > Place won't add them to the focus merge or to the stack. They would just be additional layers, but you could add them after completing work on the focus merge or finalizing the stack processing.

Does it need to remain vector once exported? Do you want it to end up blurred, but still visible as something blurred? Or do you want it gone from view completely?

A RAW file typically uses between 10 and 14 bits per pixel. To keep things simple, let's say it uses 14 bits per pixel. Suppose your image size is 3000 x 2000 pixels. That would mean that your RAW image would have 6,000,000 pixels, and would need 84,000,000 bits or 10,500,000 bytes (10MB) in the RAW format. Now you develop it to an RGBA/16 format. Each pixel of the developed image needs 16 bits for the R, 16 bits for the G, 16 for the B, and 16 for the A (opacity). That's 64 bits per pixel in the developed format vs 14 bits per pixel RAW. And the developed format takes 6,000,000 x 64 = 384,000,000 bits, or 48,000,000 bytes (45.8 MB). This makes the developed format a bit over 4 times bigger, just to hold the image data. An .afphoto file has more than just the image data, even if you don't make any other adjustments after developing. For example, it includes a snapshot of the initial image, so you can always revert back to or examine the original image later in your processing.

You're welcome.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. Check the Character panel in the Studio (View > Studio > Character if necessary) which has a setting for the character background color: If it's happening on new documents you may have set a color as the default. To fix that, you could do one of these: Select some artistic text with the wrong background color, and change it in the Character panel. Then use the menu Edit > Defaults > Synchronize from Selection followed by Edit > Defaults > Save. or Edit > Defaults > Factory Reset (which is more drastic and unpredictable in its effects)

You can use RAW images now for New Stack or New Focus Merge. It's just likely that you won't like the results as well as if you used Developed images instead, because only Open and New Batch Job include the full set of Develop Assistant options in their processing of RAW images. Manual development by using Open will probably give the best results, as it gives you the ability to hand-tailor each image in the Develop Persona before moving to the Photo Persona, where you could save it as a TIFF to keep the best fidelity before further processing. But New Batch Job and saving as a TIFF will probably at least give better results than putting the RAW images directly into New Stack or New Focus Merge. Another possibility, if you have similar RAW files, is to Open one of them, click Develop without making any adjustments in the Develop Persona, and then record a macro as you make further adjustments in the Photo Persona. Then you could save that Macro in the Library, and apply it to your other similar files when you develop them using the batch job.

As it's a composite, perhaps there's an (Image) layer that needs to be rasterized to a (Pixel) layer?

As I said above, possibly one should not be able to specify it at all in Photo. So I agree with you on that. It's also a potential problem in the Publisher Persona and Photo Persona in Publisher, and in the Pixel Persona in Designer. All of them allow specifying the Textured Line option when they do not have any applicable brushes. But note that the control needs to be present in all cases, because such a stroke may be created in Designer (Designer Persona), and then the file may be used in a different application or in the Pixel Persona, and the user needs to know that a Textured Line is set for the stroke. And the user needs to be able to turn that option off, at a minimum. So it's not as simple as removing that control completely in the Personas where it's not usable. And I don't think there's a good way to have it shown as grayed out (not usable) while also showing that it's set. So it's not an easy problem to resolve.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. Most likely:

Thanks. FYI, there's something a bit weird with your file, but it does not seem to be related to the problem. For example, the "r" in the first "regular" has a character style of Strong+, which shows in the Text Styles panel as being "Strong + Font Weight: Normal". So I created my own file, which does not have that problem, but it has the same issue. In playing around, I came up with this: If I search for .+ with a format of "font weight: bold" or character style Strong it fails. Substituting [a-z0-9 ]+ also fails. Substituting [a-z0-9]+ (without allowing a space) works. And substituting \w+ works. But substituting (\w| )+ fails, as does [\w ]+ So even though the bold/strong text does not have any spaces, if you specify a format option, and you have a pattern that allows matching a space, the search fails to work properly. Note: "Fails" in this post means that the correct text is found and shows up in the results list, but is not properly selected on the page and repeated pressing of Find does not advance to the next result in the results list. Here's my file, created in the 1.9 beta: regex_test2.afpub

I think that browser bookmarks are the appropriate solution for what you're doing, Paul, and that you will need to use a browser to access those external resources, anyway. But thanks for the clarification on what you were asking for.

Because you could print on smaller sheets of paper? Thus less paper would be wasted when trimmed, as the overall sheet size would be smaller.

I think it's a bug that the Text Frame button is there. It's there on Windows, too, in the 1.9 beta, but doesn't do anything for me. It's not there in 1.8.5 on Windows. It should be reported in the beta forum, probably.

Or: With the Rulers showing, right click on the units at the upper-left where the rulers intersect, and choose a different unit. (Works with most Tools; certainly works with the Move Tool.) or Select the Pan Tool (the Hand), and change the units in the Context Toolbar. or Just use the units you want in the Transform panel. They will be converted to the document units automatically.

It's not just files. It's also Registry contents that may be significant. On Windows you cannot simply install the programs on a different disk and have them all work properly after the Registry is wiped and recreated during the Windows reinstall. You would need to use special programs to backup their registry entries before the Windows reinstall, and then reinstall the programs' Registry settings after. And there are additional items stored in c:\users\<your-user-name>\ProgramData\Affinity\.... and c:\users\<your-user-name>\AppData\Roaming that you will have lost. Some of those will be recreated automatically (at least the ones in AppData), but I'm not sure about the ones in ProgramData. It is at least theoretically possible to direct Affinity to put those files on your extra disk, if you set up the proper directory symlinks (or hard links?) before you first install Affinity, but I have not seen any reports from anyone who has done that, or tried it. So I don't know if will actually work. And that doesn't solve the Registry issue. It will be faster for you to simply reinstall the Affinity applications, I think, than to try to find/recreate other things that are missing. And that would be my recommendation.

There may be something similar in the Resources forum, @AffinityNewbie7. Here is a search to look for macros there: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&q=macro&type=forums_topic&nodes=11 Certainly there are macros that will do step 2. For example: Or you can do resizing in a batch job. But I'm not sure your exact workflow works. I think you need to: Resize the image to 2000px. Increase the canvas size, leaving the image centered. Add the fill layer at the bottom. Once you have the fill layer, I don't see the need for adding an additional border, or I don't understand what you're trying to do.

The Textured Line Style stroke setting requires a vector brush, @Uwe367. Photo has only raster brushes, so it's not usable there. It's only usable in the Designer Persona of Designer or Publisher. Not a bug, except possibly that one should not even be able to try to select it in Photo.

Wine is not a virtual machine. The Affinity applications should run (though probably slower) in a true virtual machine that is running a full installation of Windows. I don't recall seeing any reports of having the applications running under Windows emulators such as Wine, but I don't keep track of that closely.

If you're truly meaning websites, I doubt that will happen, beyond what is currently available (or made available in the future) via the Stock panel. Each external website has its own requirements for how a program accesses it, both for searching and file retrieval. And sometimes they require prior signup and an authorization key. What you're proposing would, I think, require a panel that implements a pretty complete web browser within the Affinity applications, and I don't see that happening. Only Serif know for sure, of course.

Yes. Just look in the Photo Beta section of these forums: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/61-affinity-photo-beta-forums/ (Please note the warning that the betas should be used for testing only.)

You're welcome.

No. Designer does not support plug-ins.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @andri salim. If you look carefully at the Import Brushes popup message, you will see that the brush pack you imported has Raster Brushes. You will find them in the Brushes panel after you switch to the Pixel Persona in Designer. They are not usable in the Designer Persona, which is the default Persona that you are probably using. You need this one:

Unfortunately it is entirely in Apple's hands, I think. Their OS, their Store, and their servers are failing to download a program that they sold to you. If they have a record of that sale (which they have in your store account) then they should provide you with the updated program (which they have on their server) or they should refund your purchase price so you can buy directly from Serif. (This is all my opinion, of course.)