AndyQ

That came up in a previous post of mine; I thought it was a bizarre design decision, but the "bug" then becomes that the duplicated version won't lock either (even if renamed from "Background")

There's some handy info here, but the basic question was "is there a mode for Photo whereby selection with the move tool can be disabled - i.e. only allow selection of layers via the layer palette?" - i.e. similar behaviour to PShop, so when you've selected a layer there's no way you can accidentally select something else when working on the image. I'm presuming there's not from what I've seen - I've been through the preferences system quite a few times.

I guess so, but not as something you'd do on batch-basis, although that could be handy sometimes. I'm more likely to have 20-40 images open at once, some being presentation slides, some being resources to put on those slides. I might make a change on one slide and need it reflected in say half a dozen of the others, but not all. In PShop i just copy the new (or modified) layer to the target slides (although I can only do this one-by-one in pshop, and it would be handy to send it to a selection of open documents)

Ah.... thanks muchly, that's handy, in fact handier as it allow for non-contiguous selection; although from a UI perspective I'd still add the visible toggle and swiping behaviour.

Not quite sure what you mean but I'll look into it. I thought one could only lock a single layer at a time but I'll check it out. Thanks

Hello again peeps, another Q: is there a mode for Photo whereby selection with the move tool can be disabled - i.e. only allow selection of layers via the layer palette? This would be akin to the Photoshop default (in pShop you have to enable "auto select" in order to change selection interactively in the image area). The selection mode as it stands is dandy, but I'd like to be able to do things both way (and probably more often in the Photoshop default manner). When I'm trying to move/transform tiny objects I keep selecting and moving other layers. As an alternative some quick toggle to "lock" the layer selection would be handy, and I don't meant the "ALT-Click" isolation mode, which hides everything else as I need to retain the visual context. I also note there's still some bug with "locked" layers whereby a pixel layer that was a background is still selectable even when locked or invisible or both. Finally: UI suggestion: please allow toggling of locked state on the layer itself rather than having to select the layer then go up to the layer header to click the "lock" icon (i.e. do this the same as per the visibility checkbox). Not only that, but allow both the visibility and lock states to be toggled by a swipe down through the layers in those columns, so you can toggle visibility/lock for a range of contiguous layers without having to do a crazy amount of clicking (trying to swipe at the mo' just picks up the first layer and moves it).

Magic, thanks. I need to keep my eyes open and stop expecting everything layer-related to be in the layers palette.

It is pretty good with this; you'd expect good stroke control in Designers but Photo has the goodies too. Photo compares well in this regard to Photoshop, which has no stroke controls for text and you have to use the layer-effects to do such things, which are limited in their capabilities. Here you can have the stroke behind or in front, aligned with different corner types etc., plus the control over individual characters. It's arguable where these functions should be found and perhaps "stroke" could be considered something justifying it's own palette that would be common to both text and other vector objects, but the capabilities are there.

Hello Experts. Is there any easy way to transform a masked layer in Photo without transforming the associated mask? I've had to detach the mask (if that's the right term), make the transformations then re-mask the layer. . Locking the mask doesn't seem to help.

Hi All. Is there some way to copy a layer from one .afphoto file to another (or many others) in-situ? - e.g. if I have 10 images of the same dimensions, say they're all presentation slide layouts, and I add a logo layer to one, how can I easily copy this layer to all the other images so it appears at the same coordinates? (in Photoshop you can do this one image at a time by specifying a target image to copy the layer to)? - cheers, AQ.

Forget arrows and crap, there should be any need to go back and forward through preferences, or "drill down", there's only one level of categories. These aren't necessarily things you'll set once and leave forever, and you may be setting a bunch of preferences across categories frequently. I think my original suggestion, also made by others, stands - a list of categories on the left and the the detail settings on the right. Simple. Click through 'em and see what's in 'em - not go forward ('oops, wrong one"), back, forward, back...ad infinitum. It's a common enough paradigm. Keep a search field for finding specifics and you're done. Put a button for it on the toolbar or top menu or whatever it's called. Lovely. Sweet. Juicy sweet.

I've noticed that you can select multiple layers , including non-contiguous selections, and toggle the visibility of them, which is a good thing. It'd also be nice if the visibility switches were a separate selection zone to the layers so that you could swipe down them and toggle visibility (as per Photoshop), as this allows you to retain a selection of layers whilst toggling the visibility of a bunch of others.

Hi Dan C. That makes a selection that's soft edged correct? that you could then turn into a mask? I'm looking for a parametric feathering - e.g. using either a vector mask or bitmap mask, having a "mask setting" for feathering/soft edge selection that can be changed. If this doesn't exist I reckon it's a pretty important feature request (and pretty commonly available elsewhere).

There's no reason not to allow an inverted vector mask, this is common in the world of video/FX editing and saves a lot of time f-ing around. It's much easier to draw around the shape you want to mask then track that vector shape with the image or footage. Even in a still-image program like Photo you may want to crop an object so it's partly off-screen, maybe for just one variant in a number of images - in which case move the vector mask with the image and it's cropped too without having to worry about creating a boundary for inversion that could end up not being big enough when you move things around. A simple "invert mask" checkbox would be handy. And whilst I'm at it...how do you "feather" a mask (i.e. give it a soft boundary?)

Corel has a lot of good features (they way curves retain their shape after deleting nodes is still the best solution in the industry) but they're becoming an A-Hole company. Corel also don't make it easy for Adobe users to transition or co-use their software; it's fine having unique or better tools but you've got to try and make general navigation (panning, zooming etc.) easily compatible, which is where Affinity have made the right decision as I can swap between programs and retain all of those "muscle-memory" operations. Improved guidelines is certainly an area Affinity could look at for first matching then beating Adobe/Corel. Illustrator has a much better guidelines system than Photoshop, but I'd like to have a setting for guides to be added only to a specified "guides layer" as I'm always accidently adding guides to the current working layer when I don't intend to. Guides on layers is a good thing, but it'd be nice to have some options (e.g. a pull down menu to select either a constant target layer or "currently selected layer"). Cheers!

I can't avoid having a CC subscription as I get client files in Adobe formats (I also haven't found a good enough substitute for After Effects), however I'm militantly anti-rental so I'm trying to move to non-rental solutions for all my in-house design/3D stuff. I don't want to lose access to my files if I can't afford to pay a rental bill, nor do I want lazy-arse companies losing any impetus to improve because they have a monopoly and guaranteed income stream. 3DS MAX upgrades from Autodesk have been a giant yawn for a decade or more since they started "maintenance" plans then rental subscriptions - they haven't even fixed decades old bugs as they have their customers locked in regardless.

It's a matter of ergonomics, it's much more convenient to have a preview toggle in the dialog itself, and since the functionality exist it's just a matter of adding a checkbox to each. My Wacom arm doesn't need any more exercise; a tiny wrist move to toggle previews will postpone my RSI issues and save minutes of time each day....minutes of delicious profit....

Without a snapping to a grid system that matches the ruler measurements you're not going to be able to place guides accurately just by looking at the rulers, so it seems a bit pointless (unless you're the kind of person who's happy with "almost perfect"). I'm doing UI layouts so I'm drilling down to tiny details and elements need to be exactly the same dimensions, so I use a fine grid then put LOTS of guides around the place to make larger divisions. As yet I've only tested with Affinity and am still using Adobe products for commercial work. As you've already noted, not being able to select multiple guides and manipulate them at once is a BIG omission. To be fair to the loathed Adobe, they've done a pretty good job in designing their guidelines system. You should be able to have guides "off-page", they should behave as per other objects and have their positions reported and editable via the transform palette. You should be able to perform relative movements of guides numerically (e.g. select a group of guides and nudge them 10mm to the left). You should be able to select guides with objects and move them together. At the very least I'd like to see a button that could be added to the toolbar to open the guides manager, and for multiple selections/deletions/moves be catered for there. Grids and guides are more important to me than any fancy brush tools, special effects or pretty pattern fills... cheers!

I had to look that up, not because I'm the wrong generation, I'm the wrong country (there are 194 countries other than the United States, which have about 95% of the world population). Anyway...I've learned something today, so thanks. I'll forget it tomorrow as I'm getting old and the brain cells are dying..

I'd like to get the guides display out of the rulers....I've got so many guidelines I can't see the goddamn ruler markings. At least make it an option if other people find that useful.

Thanks for your revolution mate. We enjoy metric down-under as well and it shitz me no end having to deal with American software that bases everything on inches then translates to metric with precision limits that result in nasty errors (I'm thinking 3D Studio MAX here, but also Illustrator and other graphics software). How people deal with the seemingly random measurement systems of yesteryear is simple mindboggling, I can't fathom it (and yes, that pun was intended).

Some positive feedback for Affinity rather than griping about features or UI issues - I've been working on some UI mock-ups in Photoshop CC and have many hundreds of layers and groups and Photoshop has slowed to a crawl when I switch layer visibility or navigate through lots of nested layers. The same PSD loaded in Affinity Photo is much faster with all of this stuff. Good work peeps! .....however I do need some kind of parallel to "Layer comps" to actually make use of this, searching for such functionality now but if any one has any suggestions please let me know...(!). Cheers!

Fair enough, this isn't really a problem at all, I just brought it up out of interest and am surprised at how much discussion it's gotten. I certainly wouldn't call it any sort of priority! - as I mentioned in an earlier post, I checked a bunch of applications and they're all over the place in regards to how they deal with rotation. Cheers!

Nothing takes one or two hours if it's done properly. I've just spent all night working on a tiny form interface, and that's not even starting coding. Switching the workspace data is gonna be easy as they already have it saved in a separate file by the sound of it, but you then have to refresh the display to change to the new layout and reorganise any open documents, deciding how to treat floating windows to fit any change in available space, whether to zoom or crop tabbed documents etc. You also have to decide on a palette-by-palette basis whether to preserve any working changes, such as the currently loaded colour palettes or brush files, or to revert to specific sets as saved with the workspace definitions. It's not a massive task, I agree, but everything takes time - and you need to spend more time testing it than you do coding it.

I certainly don't want designer to be like Illustrator, at least not at the basic vector editing capabilities. I've always liked Corel's vector editing (and selection techniques) a lot better than AI's, but can't stand other elements of the interface. Both camps seem stubborn in their approach to not learn from either each other or others. I do think Designer can learn from some of Adobes interface management system - like saving workspaces, being able to dock tools etc. Since I have no choice but to use Adobe apps it does make it easier that Affinity uses many similar conventions, the panning/zooming shortcut compatibility makes it easy to move between the two camps, whereas if I pick up Corel after not using it for six months I have a mental breakdown trying to remember the basics. Designer isn't far off being able to do all I need, but all three of the applications I've mentioned have their strengths and weaknesses. Certainly Affinity wins hands-down for value and even if I'm not going to use the products a lot I'll be buying any upgrades and continuing to learn more about 'em.