[[Poll] Do you need a DAM? And what should it be like?]

Actually, Rick, there is a product out there that is NOT subscription based that meets most if not all of your criteria.

Adobe Photoshop Elements comes with Adobe Organizer, which might be the DAM you’re looking for. I’ve been using it for years and have almost 100,000 pictures in it. I don’t use all of the fancy features you want, but it has them. I turn them off and define a keyword hierarchy for locations and people as well as events, but it certainly will identify people and automatically include geographical info if it’s available in the metadata.

Photoshop Elements is regularly released every ear but organizer rarely changes much. I usually only buy it again every other year just to be sure I’m relatively current. That get’s me a DAM for less than $100 (usually more like $50) every two years.

[Problems syncing with iCloud on PC]

Update: I decided to make a different folder on iCloud for my Affinity Designer files.

The new directory is called Affinity Designer SRB, and I copied the same four subdirectories and their contents into the new directory.

Then I checked my iPhone and iPad - all files immediately showed up in both directories.

But not on the PC.

There were two of the for subdirectories showing in the original Affinity Designer folder as before, and there are two in the new directory. One is the same and has the same two files in it - but the other is different - its one of the two that were missing from the Affinity Designer folder. The Udemy folder showed up - and now has 58 of the 75 files in it that it should.  iCloud is again saying it has files to download (13 right this second) - but that still wouldn't be all of the 75 files that should be in the Udemy subdirectory.

No idea what's going on - but it certainly doesn't look like an Affinity problem.

[Add combine tool Hard crash to desktop]

I duplicated a complex set of shapes (a house) and attempted to use the add function on the duplicate. Designer immediately crashed and disappeared. Version 1.8.0 on the first iPad Pro 12.9”.

I closed all other apps and the crash still occurs.

 

update: 1.8.2 still crashes. Screen recording attached. Hit the “add” button; boom.

[Problems syncing with iCloud on PC]

4 hours ago, DWright said:

I have tested this on my PC and it is working correctly for me can you please going to your iCloud settings on your PC and turn off the Photos and Bookmarks options and see if that shows the folders on the drive as it will now not try and synchronise all of your photos.

i disabled Photos and bookmarks and stopped all of the iCloud processes, then restarted iCloud.  That didn't help.

Then I rebooted my PC and made sure Photos and bookmarks were still disabled. No change.

The only thing I notice is that iCloud Drive seems stuck on downloading 13 files.  It went from 83 to 13 quickly, but hasn't changed in a couple of hours.

The Udemy directory that I'm missing has 75 files in it, and I can manually download them because the Udemy directory does show up on the iCloud Drive page if I open it in Chrome, so I don't think there's anything wrong with those files. No idea what the 13 files it can'y download are.

[Problems syncing with iCloud on PC]

I'm having an odd problem - I'm not sure if it's iCloud itself or something related to Designer.

Here's the issue:

I took a Udemy class on my iPad.  I created a subfolder under the iCloud Drive\Affinity Designer called Udemy [so iCloud Drive\Affinity Designer\Udemy] and stored all of my files in there.

That worked fine on my iPad, and I could see and work with the files on my Mac just fine.

On my PC, however, the iCloud Drive\Affinity Designer folder is there, with a couple of other subdirectories that I created from my PC (those also appear on my iPad and my Mac), but the 

iCloud Drive\Affinity Designer\Udemy folder has never shown up on my PC, even after a couple of days. I stopped all of my iCloud processes and then started up iCloud on the PC again, and it appears to

be downloading files (the Apple Photo process is very busy), but the folder stall hasn't shown up.

But here's the odd thing - if I go in and add a new directory from the PC called Udemy under Affinity Designer, the name magically and immediately changes to Udemy 2.

To me, that says the PC knows that the Udemy subdirectory exists, it just refuses to show it in file explorer.

If I open Designer on my PC and look at the iCloud Drive/Affinity Designer directory, it doesn't see the Udemy subdirectory either.

Anybody have any ideas about what's going on?

 

[Add combine tool Hard crash to desktop]

I duplicated a complex set of shapes (a house) and attempted to use the add function on the duplicate. Designer immediately crashed and disappeared. Version 1.8.0 on the first iPad Pro 12.9”.

I closed all other apps and the crash still occurs.75 GB free.

[Affinity Photo-Apple Photos]

3 hours ago, Cecil said:

I see zero chatter in Beta suggesting that Serif is working on a fix or fixed the problem.  Funny I saw post from moderator before release of 1.8 suggesting or expecting a fix.  As iCloud is my main storage of choice, iMac/iPad Pro/iPhone XS, I painted myself in a corner, no way out.  I take all video and photos with my XS.  

So you don't see any difference between 1.8 and 1.7.3?

[Affinity Photo-Apple Photos]

On 3/3/2020 at 8:50 PM, rhmb said:

My understanding of flattening is that it condenses all of the layers into one. Which is fine as long as you are satisfied that your edits are final. But it does mean that you cannot re-open the image and change any of the layers, you have to edit the whole image. In truly non-destructive editing, you would be able to go back into the image using the same software (assuming no intermediate steps with other software) and pick up where you left off, making changes to layers from the previous session. 

AP does not seem to let us do this at present. If I have saved changes from either "Edit in" or "Edit with AP" I have two choices if I want to re-do some edits. In "Edit with", I can either start over (revert to original) or work from the baked in edited image that was saved to Apple.

. 

Since Apple Photos doesn’t support layers, I would be shocked if it worked otherwise.

of course, you have the alternative of using the Share command to save a new jpg back to Apple Photos and the Save command to save the Affinity layers file to, for example, iCloud.

[Affinity Photo has stopped saving directly back into Mac OS Photos!!]

2 hours ago, rhmb said:

Even though this is a pre-1.8 thread, I hope these two extensions are still being worked on by the developers and that the AP team has not assumed that all is well with Apple Photos and APl.

I’m pretty sure Affinity does continue to work on their interface to Apple Photos, as they did not claim to have fixed in in their release notes for version 1.8.1.  Serif has also stated that Apple is not being overly helpful by not documenting changes that they made in Version 13. Although I haven’t tested them yet, they’ve also released at least a couple of beta versions of version 8.2.

[Affinity Photo-Apple Photos]

2 hours ago, rhmb said:

This may already be on the books for eventual fix, as it in the pre-1.8 bug forum, but in addition to the problematic Edit in AP extension, I am unable to develop RAW photos in Affinity Develop (AP 1.8.1, Catalina). Screen shot of error message attached.

I can develop RAW in Edit in AP, but as with jpgs, when I re-open the image in Edit in, the image reverts to the original unless I do a pre-emptive edit in Apple to bake in the edit. 

Just out of curiosity, did you check and see whether Affinity stored one or more files on your Mac, as you described in an earlier post?

[Affinity Photo-Apple Photos]

On 3/2/2020 at 11:06 AM, rhmb said:

Over and above the challenges with Edit in AP, I have also been unable to save changes in "Edit with". AP does not save back to Apple Photos when using "Edit with ..." No error message, no beach ball, quite simply after finishing the edit and saving .... nothing happens and one is left with the original photo in Apple Photo, no AP edits. I do see that this has previously been noted in the pre- 1.8 bugs. 

This is NOT what I’m getting. If I right click on an image in Apple Photos and click on Edit With Affinity Photo, I can make complex changes in Affinity. If I click File->Save without having flattened the document, Affinity prompts my to Save as Flattened. If I do, and then quit Affinity, the edited picture shows up in Apple Photos.  If I try to edit it there, I still have the option to Revert to Original.

in summary, the Edit in extension works if you first flatten the image, then save it, then quit Affinity.

The edit with method works and prompts you to save as flattened before you quit.

the File->Share->Add to photos adds a new image to Apple Photos, just as it always did.

if there’s a disadvantage to having to flatten your image before you save it back to Apple Photos, I don’t see what it is.

[Affinity Photo-Apple Photos]

On 2/28/2020 at 6:32 AM, Denty said:

Hi Cecil,

Workflow was;

select photo in Photos app,

select edit,

select edit in affinity photo from the extensions list

photo opened in AP,

did edits,

Select file:close:save in AP

switch to Apple Photos,

select save changes

Then back in the edit function of Apple Photos.   Revert to original option was available so was able to toggle between original and modified (ctr+z).

select done to go back to thumbnails.

revert to original remained available when I went back into edit in Apple Photos.

This is exactly as it was before Catalina for me.

 

 

 

 

Same exactly for me

[Affinity Photo-Apple Photos]

On 2/27/2020 at 9:19 AM, rhmb said:

Having similar problems as others have reported in past with the "Edit in Affinity" extension in Apple Photos (Catalina 10.15.3, Affinity 1.8.1). If I flatten before saving, Apple Photos lets me saves the changes as expected. If I do not flatten the photo before saving, Apple Photos will not let me save the changes and shows the message "Unable to edit with 'Edit in Affinity Photos,' An unexpected error occurred." Even though Apple Photo would not let me save the changes for the unflattened edit attempt, the edited photo can be found via the AP recents in the document and using Reveal in finder I can see that the edited photo has been saved in the intermediaries folder in the Group Container folder, in both afpohoto and jpg format. This issue seems unique to Affinity. I had no difficulty whatsoever in attempting to do a similar edit using the ON1 extension in Apple Photos.

I can confirm that this is exactly what happens on my MacBook Air.  Except for the ON1 part; I don’t have that.

[Radial filter equivalent to LR's]

On 6/5/2019 at 9:41 AM, John Rostron said:

I have just looked at what the Lightroom Radial filter does. It would appear to be similar to a radial gradient used as a mask.

John

I agree with John; here’s my more wordy version:

I don’t have Lightroom, but I’ve seen LR’s radial filter used in a Simon Foster class on the Nik Collection on Udemy.

The radial filter appeared to be an elliptical shape on top of a layer that one could use to control aspects of the layer such as exposure, etc.

In Affinity, one could simply create an ellipse of the desired size with no stroke and a white-black gradient fill. Then rasterize the ellipse into a mask, and apply yer mask to any adjustment layer or group of layers that you desire.

if you want to use the ellipse to affect color, then no need to convert it to a mask - just use a fill of the desired gradient and adjust the blend mode and opacity as desired.  Olivio Sariikas recently released a YouTube video titled “Free Glorious Light Pack” that demonstrates that technique.

 

[Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.8.0.163)]

2 hours ago, ellj said:

I just feel like that Affinity has ignored me and chooses not to fix this for me. 

Wow, that's some sense of entitlement there.

But you're probably right - they had a fix, but then somebody said "wait, hold up - Ellj. reported that, we don't want to fix things for him!"!

Makes perfect sense to me.

[[Poll] Do you need a DAM? And what should it be like?]

I’ve given this subject some thought, and I’m in the DAM-only (option 2) camp.  These are my basic requirements for a DAM:

It should support hierarchical user-defined keyword tags.

I do NOT require that the software automatically recognizes people. I would rather define my own people tags In my own hierarchy - it can be family based or place/experience based (I.e. “friends from college”, etc.)  I find it easier to just define my own people tags and tag people myself, instead of filling in just the ones that the program doesn’t recognize or gets wrong.  It would be cool if a person could be a member of multiple groups, but that’s not a deal breaker.

I also do NOT require that location tags be tied to a map.  Right now I am using Adobe’s Photoshop Elements Organizer that comes with Photoshop Elements.  Right now I am using Adobe’s Photoshop Elements Organizer that comes with Photoshop Elements. At one point, Adobe switched from Google maps that created a Country/state/town/location tag system to a different mapping system. The new system started over and created its own Country/state/town/location tag system.  Thereafter, there were two separate tags for locations such as USA/New York/New York/Madison Square Garden.  I would just as soon create my own Country/state/town/location tag hierarchy. 

Keyword tags should be stored with the photo in EXIF data.

The use of a database should not be required. However, if there’s just no getting around it for whatever reason (speed of searches, etc.), then perhaps the DAM could recreate it knowing only the root directory where all photos are stored.  Of course, this might take awhile.

The user should be able to define his own file structure independent of the tag hierarchy .  That file structure should be visible to Windows Explorer or the MacOS file viewer.  One should be able to move files from within the DAM, and should be able to create, rename, and delete folders. 

Complex search functions using tags, dates, and other EXIF data should be supported.  One should be able to save complex searches.

The ability to identify byte for byte identical photos would be nice.

It should be fast to display thumbnails arranged by date, file hierarchy, or tag hierarchy, and one should be able to open Affinity or other image editing programs directly from the DAM.

I’ve read through all 8 pages of comments on this topic, and one thing I haven’t seen addressed much is the question of what you would be willing to pay for your preferred alternative.  It certainly could be that Adobe was forced to go to the subscription model because it just couldn’t charge enough for perpetual licenses to cover the cost of ongoing development and support. So if you want Affinity to make a Lightroom clone, are you willing to pay what it would cost? Plus, many of the other products mentioned here are free. They’re developed by a core team of highly talented highly motivated and highly committed people - but at some point, it seems to me that everybody has to make money somehow.  In any event, if one of the free products meets your needs, how much are you willing to pay Affinity to provide the same product?

As for myself, I already feel for the difficult situation Affinity is already in, trying to maintain and develop three major software platforms on three ever-changing operation systems (iOS, MacOS, and Windows) to support ever-changing raw formats on who knows how many cameras. I can’t imagine they’re going to add a fourth product on the spur of the moment, especially if the market leader is subscription based for $$$, and if it has competitors that offer similar functionality for $0. The second option seems like the only practical possibility in the near them - that is, the next couple of years.

Allow me one other observation. There are some on these forums who seem upset that Affinity is not yet developed to the point that you feel you can ditch your CC subscription.  You’re talking about a piece of software with a one time price of $50, vs hundreds of dollars a year. I think the fact that you’re upset at Serif is absurd.

Thanks for the opportunity to consider this... 

[DNG files crashing Windows Explorer]

SO stranger and stranger....

1. Apple DNG files work fine.

2. The DNG files I'm having trouble with came from a class on the NIK Collection on Udemy.  I don't know what kind of camera created them. But if you open a directory with any of those files in it, the Windows 10 file Explorer crashes.

     a.  If you try to restart the file explorer, it's still pointing at the same directory, so it crashes again.

     b.  I can start the file explorer with a command line command "explorer.exe /". The "/" moves the directory up a level, so the file explorer will remain up (unless you point it back at a directory that contains a "bad" DNG file.

     c.  However, it I try to run explorer from the normal icon after step (b) above, it still crashes.

     d.  If I try to open one of the DNG files with Affinity (production version 1.7.3), the Open dialog box will show the directory with the files, but if I select one of the DNG files, Affinity crashes.

     e.  If I try to open one of the DNG files with Photoshop Elements 2019, the Open dialog box will show the directory with the files, but if I select one of the DNG files, Photoshop Elements crashes.

     f.  To fix the problem with the file explorer, I had to resort to DOS commands to move the DNG files to a different directory (Boy, that was a memory exercise).

     g.  I tried the suggestion above to convert the files using the Adobe DNG file converter (version 12.1).  The converter said it completed all files, but all error symptoms remained.

Since my iPhone is the only camera that makes DNG files that I will commonly deal with, I'm just going to delete the DNG files from my Windows 10 machine and deal with them on my Mac, where they work correctly.

However, there is clearly a problem with Windows 10 and some DNG files.

[DNG files crashing Windows Explorer]

On 1/20/2020 at 4:53 AM, IanSG said:

More a workround than a fix - try using the Adobe DNG converter to produce "safe" versions of the iPhone files.  

I've seen posts that suggest the problem is associated with viewing thumbnails - maybe installing a different DNG codec would help?

Good suggestion - since you suggested that it is  associated with viewing thumbnails, I turned off the preview panel in Explorer. Voila! no more crashing.

Affinity opens the DNG files without any problems, so I may not need to use the converter.

[DNG files crashing Windows Explorer]

This isn’t strictly an Affinity question, but I’ve recently started importing DNG files from my IPhone and developing them in Affinity on my Windows 10 machine.

Affinity opens the files fine, but if I use Windows Explorer to look at a directory that contains DNG files, Windows Explorer crashes.

Moreover, it tries to restart, but since it tries to open the same directory, it crashes again and again and again.

I accidentally found a way to get it to stop (use the command line command “explorer.exe /?” - the /? Has the effect of moving Explorer up one level, and that level doesn’t contain any DNG files, so Explorer stays up).

I’ve seen evidence on Google that this problem has been around for several years, but no suggestions of how to fix it.

anybody know a fix?

[Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.8.0.163)]

Thanks!

[Affinity Photo has stopped saving directly back into Mac OS Photos!!]

12 minutes ago, AndyA said:

I agree, Develop is not working for RAW, which presumably is its main purpose

I also agree; getting the same error message.

What is supposed to happen? Should the RAW file get replaced with a new Raw file? Or should it replace the Raw file with a JPEG with the changes made? I'm confused now.

 

[Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.8.0.163)]

Quick question: Should I leave the beta version in my Download folder or move it to the Applications folder? It seems to run from the download folder just fine.

 

[Affinity Photo has stopped saving directly back into Mac OS Photos!!]

1 hour ago, MacGB said:

After installing the 1.8.0.163 beta I can report following:

Extension "Develop" works for jpeg, but not for RAW to  save changes to Apple Photos

Extension "Edit in Affinity Photo" works for RAW but not for jpeg to save changes back to Apple Photo's.

I didn't test the other extensions as they where fine in version 1.7.3. (Will try those perhaps another time). 

Cheers

Try Document/Flatten after using the “Edit in Affinity Photo” extension before saving; that works for me.

[Affinity Photo has stopped saving directly back into Mac OS Photos!!]

Cecil - since the Beta installs along side the production version, I assumed you could keep both sets of extensions, and I have, at least so far. I've been able to switch back and forth, although admittedly, I've only done it a few times.

 

[Affinity Photo has stopped saving directly back into Mac OS Photos!!]

17 minutes ago, AndyA said:

Hi, using the latest beta, I've disabled the extensions for the retail version and restarted.  The Edit in Affinity option works as a round trip (after clicking Develop, saving the changes and closing the file) albeit it gives me a warning about exceeding file size and flattening the file.  However the Affinity Develop option still gives the familar "Unable to edit with Affinity Develop" "An unexpected error occurred" error.  I haven't tried other extensions yet.  This is on a MacBook Pro and iMac.  Is the Affinity Develop roundtrip working for others?

 

PS the right click on thumbnail "edit with" is also not working for me

Andy - try Document/Flatten before you a save and Quit in the Extension approach (“the Affinity Develop option). If I don’t do that, it gives me the error message; if I flatten it first, it works.