[HOW TO SET PERFORMANCE?]

Could you please try to deactivate OpenCL in

Edit>Preferences>Performance

This avoids issues caused by GPU drivers bugs.

[Efficient gradient fill for retouching]

23 minutes ago, Annehouw said:

• Activate the move tool
• Move selection out of the way (as it blocks the area I want to pick colors from)
• Activate the gradient fill tool

Hi,

 

agree that gradient UI is a bit overly complex.

what do you mean by step 5? Normally you move layers and not selections.
You can just deactivate the fill layer to samples colors beneath. This will make at least 4 steps redundant.

Why not draw the gradient directly after step 2?

May watch the tutorial about divide, showing a better sequence for color sampling to fill layers.

https://youtu.be/Ldwx_wG4X6c

You could speed up creating gradients by saving and using swatches, to use any pre-defined colors you want.

[Strange Affinity Photo 1.10 Freeze on Windows (apparently after update to latest Nvidia driver?)]

There are bug reports from other users who lead to the assumption of a potential memory leak in 1.10.

Occasionally i see a similar issue, but not reproducible.

[A Growing Lack of Confidence]

Agree mostly.

When you have limited resources you must prioritize.

I cannot understand that Affinity prioritizes new features over crash fixing and functional issues. And i don’t think of OpenCL related bugs, im thinking of crash by unchecked user input, functionality not reached.

And when users request a functionality for years, Affinity should simply provide a clear statement (e.g. no support for Linux next x years) instead of ignoring the discussion completely. 

[A Growing Lack of Confidence]

My top priority are

1. No data loss. Save always possible, no corrupt files.
2. QA to ensure regression tests performed (automatically) before user beta
3. Solving crash issues 
4. Functional issues (nested alpha layers not working)
5. Rendering issues 
6. Performance improvements
7. Adding new functionality based on user feedback
8. Adding new functionality from Affinity backlog

Why not let forum vote for most needed new function? To name a few requested since years:

• Set your own defaults for all UI defaults (current layer / & below)
• show current brush
• crop to selection
• Edit alpha channel, copy/paste channels 
• More control over alpha channel during Import / Export 
• Palettized file formats import / export
• export history as video
• Shape builder

[A Growing Lack of Confidence]

I fully share the frustration.

I will continue to use the Affinity suite, based on heavy investment of my time to master the product and find efficient workflows. Never the less, i think it is high time that someone at Affinity like a product owner / product manager really starts to communicate with the active user base (forum users), hear their voice about priorities, and provide a raw roadmap how to overcome the painful issues. 
 

Still convinced that all Affinity staff is really working hard, never the less I‘m deeply dissatisfied with Affinity as a company regarding their autistic behavior and complete ignorance to well documented user feedback.

 

 

[Posterize not functioning as expected]

It would help if you could upload the afphoto file.

however, i can  reproduce  the issue by using Layer FX, Gaussian blur on e.g. a vector shape.

 

The issue is resulting from partial transparent pixels. You need all pixels full opaque to avoid the issue. The best way to achieve this depends on the actual document content, e.g.:

• adding a Channels Adjustment, select Alpha, set offset to 100%
• add a fill layer with suitable color as bottom layer

 

posterize on layer fx issue.afphoto

[Affinity Designer: blurry text on export]

In case you cannot create the logo as text at your own and depend on using the png, you could

• add a threshold adjustment  

This assumes the logo is black&white.

If it has 2 colors (text and background), the colors needed to be restored e.g. by two fill layers and using the logo rasterized to mask.

Below a made a PNG containing text of different size, exported as PNG, imported again, copied, and applied threshold to the right, exported all as PNG again.

If it does not look sharp for you: then the app you are using to view the result might cause the issue. E.g. Apple Photo on iPad makes it look blurry when zoomed in. 

 

sharp text.afdesign

[Affinity Designer: blurry text on export]

38 minutes ago, JML90 said:

Can you explain in steps like on which buttons I have to click in Affinity and perhaps with screen shots?

1. Select the text layer which looks blurry
2. Zoom in 400% or more to be able to spot the result
3. Click the little cog wheel in the right of the layer stack (1)
4. Change "Anti-Aliasing" to "Forced off" (2)
5. Click "Coverage Map" and change it to L-shape profile. Adjust to taste / optimal result. You need to shift the middle gradient to the left or right.

With this method, you can achieve perfect pixel-art text. But you need to adjust the coverage map depending on selected font, font size etc.

 

Below some sample fonts, zoomed 10x to really see individual pixels.

I've added the .afphoto file so you can check the settings (they differ for every text layer, and are not final). Check e.g. the dot from the small letter i, it could be square or round depending on font.

The fonts are about 20px high and the result is quite usable. No. 2 from top is not yet edited, try on your own.

Have fun!

To learn more about the background, have a look at the video.

 

sharp text.afphoto

[Copy layer values into a mask?]

16 minutes ago, spacecat said:

That's odd, at first your suggestion didn't work ...  If I use any grey/black layers it gives me an empty mask. But if I use any other color or white, your suggestion works fine. I wonder if this feature is by design(?) 

I had to do a workaround by Inverting that shading layer to white values ... now it works : ) 

The most important step is to "Rasterize as Mask". Affinity handles regular RGB pixel layers and Mask completely different, despite all based on numeric values between 0-255 (or appropriate upper limits based on 8/16/32 bit depth). You can convert between them with help of some arcane magic like Spare Channels, Channels Adjustment, Procedural Texture Filters, but Affinity tried - and unfortunately absolutely succeeded - to make this even more complicated and un-intuitive as i could image in my worst nightmares. I especially hate the Channels Panel, as it requires such a painful toe-dance between layers, channels, right-mouse and select from 10s of sub-menu items ...

[Blend Range / anti-aliasing / Coverage Map non-functional in Designer]

This might be by design, then it is at least an UI issue:

In Photo, you can use blend range / blend options, anti-aliasing and coverage maps to influence anti-aliasing.

When you open the same file in designer, it shows the same well known cog wheel symbol and UI elements to change these settings.

But the rendering ignores these settings completely.

• Why is the cog wheel / blend ranges editable in Designer if Designer ignores these settings completely?
• Would it be possible for Designer to render the image based correctly, including blend ranges (specifically: anti-aliasing and coverage map)?

Instead, you find the pixel / retina / outline view mode who seem to have baked-in special settings for the parameters else-wise set by the blend options.

Special issue:

• If you changed the Coverage Map in Photo, some text layers become invisible in Designer Outline View.

Photo:

Designer "normal" view:

Designer Pixel View:

Designer Retina View:

Designer Outline View:

sharp text.afphoto

[Copy layer values into a mask?]

Yes, there are several ways. Try this:

1. Ensure that the channels panel is visible (View>Studio>Channels)
2. Select the mask layer in the layers stack
3. In Channels panel, right-click on "Mask Alpha", choose "Create Spare Channel". It creates a new channel at the bottom of channels panel
4. Select the HSL adjustment layer in the layers stack
5. In Channels panel, right-click on the spare channel created before, and choose "Load to HSL Shift Adjustment Alpha"

 

[Copy layer values into a mask?]

1. Duplicate layer
2. Rasterize to Mask (right-click on layer / context menu)
3. Move mask layer nested as mask to the layer you want it to be applied

[FX bug on Export.]

Even copying the layer from Photo to e.g. MS Word leads to 3D effect, despite Photo showing a single color. Evil bug.

[Paste not resampling as Closest Neighbor]

This is all the issue:

all pixel layers are positioned at fractional px. If you simply align them to integer positions, the problem is gone.

To see the damage occur and vanish:

• zoom in 400%,
• select the move tool,
• click into the x position in transform panel,
• use the mouse wheel while holding the ctrl-button.

This will shift the layer by 1/10 of a pixel. If the decimal digits are 0, its sharp. If not equal to 0, it gets blurry, maximum at 0.5px.

[Affinity Designer: blurry text on export]

If you want to achieve perfectly sharp text, there are better options, as other users already commented.

• Keep the text as text layer, and do all resizing and positioning with text layer. Do not raster (until export)
• Ensure text layers are positioned on exact pixel positions (no fractional / decimal), use transform panel
• Check the pixel dimension of a single letter. It will become blurry if going below ca. 100px.
• Deactivate anti-aliasing for text layer. Adjust Coverage Map.
  This still requires a reasonable text size and can’t solve 8-16 pix size, as letters could become to blocky to read.

please have a look at the tutorial:

 

[Paste not resampling as Closest Neighbor]

6 hours ago, WillJ said:

In the Preferences, under Performance, the View Quality was set to Bilinear. I switched that to Nearest Neighbor and that fixed it.

Sorry i don’t think this could solve the issue. It only covers/hides it while viewing the image in Photo. As soon as you export the image, Photo will resample for export and the issue becomes visible again - unless you adjust the export settings, too. But then again you only hide the issue with that workaround without solving it.

It would really help if you could upload an afphoto file to definitely find the root cause. 

[How to crop an object on a layer but not the layer ?]

6 hours ago, Miles Xx said:

And yes I have searched google and came up with desktop solutions but not ipad solutions. 

Would you mind sharing the „desktop solution“ with us?
 

[levels adjustment on alpha not working 1.10.0.1127]

Despite bugfix announcement for this 1.10.0.1127 beta:

• Fixed Adjustment enclosures which affect alpha (curves, levels) not working

The levels adjustment still does not work on alpha - unless you add another neutral curves adjustment

 

1.10.0.1127 alpha nested bug.afphoto

[OCIO environment variable overrides entered file path]

In cause you are looking for a workaround:

You could use a tiny 2 line .cmd file settings the path for Affinity and starting Photo, instead of directly starting the app. This ensures every App gets the environment it needs.

 

[Box has randomly started appearing whilst making new curves]

Could be related to OpenCL. Please disable Edit>Preferences>Performance>OpenCL and restart Designer.

[Mask Lost - 1.10.0.1115]

Cannot reproduce this issue either.

The layer "Reflexio_base" has absolutely no impact to the visible image, and adding or hiding a mask to that layer changes nothing. Assuming a GPU driver issue on your PC.

As the Windows beta got updated since your initial post, could you please re-test if the issue is still active on your PC? Then please update GPU drivers, and try again with OpenCL deactivated.

 

tested on older beta 1.10.0.1115

[FX bug on Export.]

On 8/8/2021 at 10:22 PM, VeganPete said:

Every time I try to export an image (regardless of image format - jpg/png etc), the image has FX applied to it (even though the FX are not actually turned "on" in the image layers.)

I cannot turn the layer FX off (they are applied during export) - the exported image always looks totally different to the edited image.

Could you explain how you created and edited the blue rectangle pixel layer?

[export persona adding to dimension?]

Hi,

could you please provide more details allowing to reproduce the issue?

• Does export add the extra pixel in the transform panel (see scrennshot below), or the exported file?
• Screenshots of your export settings (including transform panel in Designer and Export persona)
• A sample afdesign file
• Upload of sample export files showing the issue
• screen recording when issue hapens

[Paste not resampling as Closest Neighbor]

Hi,

i would assume the pasted layer is not correctly pixel-aligned, but moved or resized by 0.5px.

could you please check if the pasted layers are pixel-aligned in transform panel ?

you may need to change document setup to px (instead of mm), and select at least 4 decimals in Preferences to spot the issue. If you can upload the actual afphoto file, we can check for you.

 

the issue might be caused by having these 2 settings active in parallel:

• move by whole pixel
• forced pixel alignment

Please temporary  uncheck the first setting to correctly pixel-align a mis-aligned layer, or use numeric input in transform panel.

 

the image below shows that one layer is mis-aligned on x-axes (using blend mode difference). It has probably nothing to do with resampling