Granddaddy

I bought APhoto about seven years ago in part because of claims that it was the future of photo editing. The emphasis on non-destructive editing seemed to me the way things ought to be. Non-destructive editing was a concept I had never encountered in my previous 15 years experience with a couple of other photo editors aimed at amateurs. So I bought it for what it could do then, but also because there was the promise of future advances that would keep it ahead of the competition. I quickly found that I had bought into a new way of thinking about photo editing and a new way of working. It was a very different kind of editing environment. I liked it, but the learning curve was steep and at times frustrating. Fortunately there were many people producing excellent tutorials on using APhoto. Sadly, APhoto today has fallen behind its competition in basic areas. I have now purchased a competing photo editor along with courses on using the competing product. I thought there was a compelling reason to try something new. I am learning once again that switching software environments requires a new way of thinking and a new way of working. The concepts are different, the workflow is different. Perhaps a professional doing photo editing all day every day would not find it so. As an amateur whose editing activity is episodic, the learning curve is steeper than I expected. I continue to wonder whether Canva/Serif will provide a compelling reason for me to purchase any future upgrades to APhoto. So far they have not given me a reason to expect that they will. Hence my investment in something completely different that improves my capabilities beyond what I learned while using APhoto.

What have you heard from Canva/Serif that implies there will be a compelling reason to buy a V3 if and when it becomes available?

See my post from June 22, 2024, for links to the decade-long history of this problem and for a partial solution using Windows Settings/Ease of Access to adjust those UI elements that use the system font rather than hard-coded fonts. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201195-increase-font-size-and-the-size-of-the-icons-in-the-dashboard/&do=findComment&comment=1238370

A poor, or at least very incomplete, suggestion as might be expected from Faux Intelligence machines. Pressing <Enter> usually begins a new paragraph, not simply a new line. In these forums this means the insertion point first skips a line and then begins typing a new paragraph. To simply create a new line within the same post without creating a new paragraph you should press <Shift-Enter>. This is often very useful in setting off thoughts even within one sentence in a given paragraph, as shown in the next paragraph. It all has something to do with Carriage Returns, Line Feeds, and the two together, at least it did in the days when I programmatically manipulated such control characters explicitly. The e-mail I received from this thread containing the quoted post contains what I suppose was the original post said to be from Copilot. That original text does not have any boldfacing nor numbering nor triple spacing between paragraphs as it appears when I'm viewing it above at this moment. It appears that the original AI response previously posted has been edited after that initial posting, either by further AI processing or by an actual intelligence. The fact of that editing is not indicated in the post as it appears now.

When I bought a Wacom tablet 7 years ago, I disconnected my mouse and put it away in a drawer. I worked diligently for a week without a mouse. After one week of determined effort I reconnected my mouse. Today I use the tablet for some selection and cleanup tasks when extracting a subject from a background while photo editing. Otherwise I use it not at all. I find a mouse much quicker and more accurate for most things I do on a computer, including most aspects of photo editing. I have zero drawing skills, my handwriting is awful, so maybe that has something to do with my experience. I can use my mouse with either hand. I can't do that with a tablet. You will not find any agreement on this choice. If you find your hand or wrist getting very tired when doing a lot of selecting or mask cleanup, then treat yourself to a birthday present of an inexpensive tablet and play with it. But it could never serve to replace my mouse.

In the 7 years I've been using APhoto I've watched with sadness and some frustration as it fell further and further behind its competition. One can speculate endlessly about the reasons this was allowed to happen. My own speculation is that Affinity is not much interested in the photo editing community. The company concentrates on desktop publishing. There has never been any voting about such decisions. We have often been told that Affinity directions are not decided by vote tallies. Fortunately for us photo enthusiasts, inexpensive, competing products have surpassed APhoto for non-destructive editing using modern computer techniques. Many may find compelling reasons to try those competing products. Whether or not there is any compelling reason to continue with APhoto is unclear. Clarity may come with the next major release, as I discussed recently at https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/206072-affinity-does-not-provide-quality-it-is-time-to-part-with-serif/page/2/#comment-1238379

I agree. Affinity Revolution tutorials have been foundational for me for several years. I've bought many of their courses. Another great source of tutorials is InAffinity. The author has posted several hundred tutorials over several years. Some are beginner level, others are highly technical. https://www.youtube.com/@inaffinityforaffinityphoto3220/featured There is a detailed index to all the tutorials at https://changingminds.org/disciplines/photography/affinity_photo/inaffinity_video_index.htm There are more than a dozen other producers who regularly post tutorials to YouTube, but Affinity Revolution and InAffinity are the most complete and systematic. Some other excellent sources seem no longer to be posting about APhoto. All are easily found through the usual Internet search engines.

As a retired amateur whose livelihood and general contentment do not depend on what happens to Affinity Photo, I find no reason to become angry at the company nor at the people who work there. Elsewhere I gave my reasons for choosing Affinity about 7 years ago. I remain grateful to the people who created it. I've also described why I bought the Affinity V2 Universal License. With APhoto, I've produced many wonderful photo prints, collages, and family portraits that are framed on our walls. I've restored ancient, damaged photos for friends. It's been great fun. But this does seem like a good place to recall Granddaddy's Principles of the Compelling Reason that I stated at https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/201403-canva/page/3/#comment-1192784 Granddaddy's Principles of the Compelling Reason 1.) When a person is satisfied using software that is good enough, only a compelling reason will persuade that person to change to different software 2.) When a person is dissatisfied using particular software, then only a compelling reason will persuade that person to continue using that software I recently started using a competing photo editor for my routine photo processing. I at least found compelling reasons to pay for this competing product. Among these are (in no particular order) completely non-destructive editing absence of extraneous white lines around images on screen tiny sidecar files instead of humongous .afphoto files to preserve work for future modification somewhat scalable UI powerful AI masking/selecting that saves me a lot of time, labor, and frustration image file management flexible and customizable export to desired folder emphasis photo editing (my main interest) rather than desktop publishing frequent free updates with very significant functional improvements every month or two Each of these benefits and more addresses APhoto issues that I've reported on in these forums over several years, issues that many others have discussed also, issues that Affinity has never addressed. To be sure, I am not certain after just a couple of months experience with this new product whether I will find enough compelling reasons to abandon APhoto. The learning curve on the new software was surprisingly steep as the concepts seem almost the inverse of what I've grown comfortable with in Affinity. There seems to be far less user support. Especially there is a dearth of high-quality, user-produced tutorials when compared to Affinity. There is no free user forum. The fundamental question for me will come when Canva releases the next major upgrade to APhoto (V. 3, I assume) Will the next paid release of Affinity provide compelling reasons for me to buy that new version? At the moment, based on experience, I have strong doubts that it will, but I hope Canva can accomplish such a compelling upgrade.

For newcomers just encountering this issue, know that it has a decade long history. See my post from May 3, 2024 for links to history and partial solutions in Windows. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/180602-ui-generally-too-small-windows-no-scale-option/#comment-1211111 One of the partial solutions uses Settings/Ease of Access/Display to at least make text bigger that uses the system font in the Affinity UI, avoiding the problems that arise when you scale the entire display.

How in the world did this get through Affinity testing procedures? Does anyone actually launch the software to see if it can be installed on the targeted platforms? I've written elsewhere in these forums about the lack of systematic, rigorous beta testing by Affinity, but this one takes the cake. It's the kind of childish programming error that is not acceptable even with free shareware, nor even in introductory programming courses for hobbyists. Dare we hope that Canva will bring more rigorous programming standards to Affinity's further development? I conclude it is not the installer that is confused. Rather, it is the management, development, and testing personnel that are confused. Hoping that the users will criticize some semblance of quality into Affinity's new releases is not a viable business model.

It is indeed true that there are some who attack anyone who submits a suggestion for a new feature or improvement. But that should never cause one to stop contributing ideas. Nothing can stop you from having your say. Ignore the naysayers while they have their say. There are lots of smart, discerning people reading these forums. They are perfectly capable of sorting the comments and extracting value. Personally I find the frequent remarks against suggestions quite humorous. They are typical of a certain mindset described more than 100 years ago by F. M. Cornford in his delightful "Microcosmographia Academica" in which he explains why nothing ever gets done. He was speaking in particular about universities and elite professors, but the arguments can be extended to other fields. https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/iau/cornford/cornford.html Cornford describes the Principle of the Wedge and the Principle of the Dangerous Precedent in Chapter VII of his essay. Ultimately it follows that nothing should ever be done for the first time. https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/iau/cornford/cornford7.html For almost any request or suggestion included in the Feedback and Suggestions forum you can expect to see one or more of the following responses: 1. Your suggestion should not be implemented because I have no use for it. 2. Your suggestion is unnecessary because you can easily achieve the effect by following this ten-step procedure... 3. Your suggestion is unnecessary because you have been doing things wrong for years. Just follow my example and you will be happier. 4. Your suggestion should not be taken seriously because I can't imagine how the developers could actually implement it. 5. Your suggestion has been made many times over many years so it is unnecessary to repeat it. 6. Your suggestion has been made many times in the past and it is logged with the developers. 7. Many more boiler-plate responses could be listed, but it's supper time here in Virginia and so I must sign off

Surely The Big Debacle that brought us Affinity 2.0 was far more egregious than this Affinity 2.5 kerfuffle. Whole categories of users were unable to even install version 2.0. The support staff was totally unprepared to handle the questions as they were never warned and never trained to handle problems that should have been anticipated by management and developers. It became obvious that Serif had no idea how Affinity was actually used in the real world and that beta testing had been completely inadequate. The problems went on for a few months beginning in November 2022. It's all well documented in these forums. See for instance my comments on the failures of beta testing and my comments on Affinity 2 making the user interface even more difficult to use than in Affinity 1 https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/173835-what-ergonomic-design-principles-call-for-minimal-contrast-and-reduced-readability-in-user-interfaces/

Yes, this has been an issue from the beginning of Affinity Photo. It was discussed in a thread that began in 2018. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/59980-white-line-along-the-left-and-top-of-the-picture/ It was explained then as a "...known side effect of how we render images on screen." We were told it was logged and well known to everyone at Serif. The white line affects more than just the outline of an image. It also affects other boundaries within the image. I have used a dozen or more image viewers and editors over the past few decades. Not one of them displays spurious lines that mislead the user into thinking he has made an error in alignment or cropping. I've been told that "We [Serif] define a bug as something that isn't working the way the code intends it to. " https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/171185-search-box-in-preferences-does-nothing/ Since the code is performing as expected when displaying the image, spurious white lines are not considered a bug by Serif. I am unable to comprehend why the intent of the software should be to display spurious white lines. Perhaps Canva will have a different idea of what constitutes a software bug.

I cannot agree with a return to three character file extensions in modern computer systems. I suffered long enough 45 years ago with the 8.3 limitations of IBM mainframe filenames that continued into DOS on what were then called microcomputers, On my Windows 10 desktop system there are more than 140 filetypes with 5 or more characters in the file extension. Longer extensions are now normal, convenient, and useful. Your screen capture shows an image browser with an extraordinarily limited display. It is actually truncating the name itself after only five or six characters. It is really quite dysfunctional. I use Faststone Image Viewer and XnView MP to browse images on Windows 10. Both give complete or nearly complete customizable displays of filenames consisting of 30 or more characters. They also display many other properties of the image at the same time. I could also use Windows File Explorer that wraps the entire filename under each thumbnail image. Indeed, that is the default view when you choose File/Open in APhoto. You should ask the developer of your image browser to provide a more complete display of filenames and other properties commensurate with modern computer systems.

R C_R is correct that there never was a UI Font Size option in APhoto for Windows in any earlier version. See my post last year for a summary concerning UI readability issues in Windows https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/171054-accessibility-customising-the-ui-font-size/&do=findComment&comment=1075020 Windows Ease of Access settings are the best you can do to improve readability of some text elements in the APhoto UI https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/171054-accessibility-customising-the-ui-font-size/&do=findComment&comment=1075020 My post from five years ago described in detail which APhoto UI text elements can be resized using Windows Settings https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/74923-changing-affinity-photo-user-interface-font-size-in-windows-10/&do=findComment&comment=430003 As you will see from links provided in my older posts, the APhoto UI became significantly worse in Affinity 2 applications. Given that history, there seems little hope for improvement given that Affinity does not consider readability to be a problem. Either that or it lacks the technical expertise and user experience specialists who could do anything about it.