jepho

Yes, all too true. We can live in hope though. I am still upset that they killed Freehand. 😄

Thank you all. I have now been refunded for my images and I have asked the company to identify the proprietary .eps files on the webpages if they can ONLY be opened by Adobe applications. I also asked for them to request generic .svg files as well as .ai and .eps from their artists submitting vector files. My final request was that each image file is actually grouped on its own, where it is on a page of several images, so that it is not confused when selecting the image. It would require quite a change in policy but I really do not want to spend so much time on a file and then end up with my client taking their work elsewhere, where a time dependent job was requested and I had agreed that it would be completed inside the deadline.

Thanks folks. This issue was solved by me using a free online eps to svg file converter. FREE .eps to .svg file converter. The one I used had accepted 20 files at a time and converted them all correctly. My laser software accepted and processed the files correctly. Regardless of the file format, a grouped file or a series of curve components in the same image file should not, in my view, be picking up other items on the page (even when selected in the layers palette as curves). These files from istock were ungrouped and appear to be thoroughly mixed up so that selecting a single file from the page of files was a nightmare. The image is instructive.

Thanks Bruce. Yes, not a solution but a great idea. I wont be wasting anymore time or money on istock. It is their organisation which needs to get with the program. i have submitted work to image libraries previously and they specify the formats which they require and accept. If istock believe that only Adobe has software which handles images in the vector space, then they are the sort of dinosaur that deserves to rapidly become extinct. Very poor service indeed. I cannot waste any time on answering their rude communication to me, a paying customer. I am delighted that Serif produced the Affinity suite of software when they did. It freed me from the money grabbing grasp of Adobe. I even manage with Acrobat these days.

Thanks for this. I have been using .eps files for longer than I care to remember and this was my first (and last) use of iStock. I abandoned Adobe once they moved from single applications to creative suite and then on to creative cloud. I much preferred Freehand to Illustrator anyway. iStock's response to my question did not seem to be helpful and I have no wish to tie myself into anything that Adobe produce. I will find some work around and refuse to use libraries that think it is my fault. I will copy the files into Affinity Photo as bitmaps and then produce .svg files from them. I need the vector for my application which is using a laser to cut the shape. Bitmaps do work but they require hours to cut while vectors can be cut individually rather than as a single raster file so they do not require very much time. I am using Lightburn for my laser work and that can trace a bitmap to obtain the vector.

I too having been having difficulty with .eps files from iStock. They tell me that these files do open properly in Adobe Illustrator (which is not helpful to me because I use Affinity Designer). The issue appears to be that with complex designs some of the file is left behind when selecting the image. Note the .eps file (multiple images on a single page) from istock. Also note the beech selection where the supposedly grouped image leaves behind a number of components. Any suggestions as to what I may do to resolve this issue will be be gratefully received. Thank you.

Thank you for these responses. Sadly, the promised help from support at Shutterstock was not forthcoming and I cancelled my subscription. I had not realised that .eps files would be troublesome. I have managed to open many of them in Affinity Designer without difficulty. Oh well... back to the drawing board.

Hello, I have been using all of the Affinity applications since they were first released. The version of Affinity Designer I am using is 1.9.1. and it is running in macOS Catalina 10.15.7 on a MacBook Pro. I recently joined a picture library (Shutterstock) and started with a trial download of 10 images. I had downloaded 10 .eps files and was surprised to find that they were all bitmapped. I have attached images of how the file looked on screen at Shutterstock, before it was downloaded (an enlarged screen shot) and how it looked in Affinity Designer. My question is this; Has anyone else experienced this issue while trying to load a vector filetype into Affinity Designer and if so, what was the solution. All answers are very much appreciated. Thank you for your help.

.CR3 files on a Mac can be opened by Apple's Photos, Pixelmator, Iridient Developer and Creative Kit. 6000 x 4000 pixels file opens to 72Mb in Photos (8bit file) 187.5Mb in Pixelmator (16bit file) 144Mb file in Iridient developer (16bit file) 187.6Mb Creative Kit (16bit file)

From my viewpoint, the OS of your computer already has the ability to file, sort, open, close and write to digital files and it can also retrieve them. This is DAM by any other name. My RAW processor is only as good as it is because it was developed and has gone through iterations over 14 years. DxO also include their own database of lenses and all of the corrections required to reduce or remove chromatic aberrations and barrel and pincushion distortions. It is unlikely that Serif will be able to replicate that database of information without the relevant scientific testing and creating the means in the software to apply the numbers thereby derived. Serif know a lot more about layout and publishing. Nevertheless, the pre-press requirements of designers are very specific and well known. Notwithstanding that information, Affinity Publisher took a long time to bring to its beta state and yet, it inexplicably still has many vital omissions. RAW file processing is understood and DAM is also understood. High quality output files are not that often seen, despite the welter of available applications. I suspect that Serif will find that they do not have the resources to bring such a program to the market early. ON1 has a reasonable reputation. I have not used it but I have seen many resulting images and in a pinch, I would use it. If you are considering commercial software, have a look at DxO Optics Pro. It will surprise you with just how complete and easy it is to use. I am, of course, biased but then I use it every day for my commercial needs and it has not fallen over or let me down. GIMP is a 20 year old software with 20 year old thinking. I could not recommend it for any serious image editing. Partnering with DxO to gain access to the lens correction database may make sense. I suspect that the royalty cost would then push the software cost too high for Serif's company philosophy.

DxO is more than adequate for my needs. You are correct. I capture the images I need for my clients and I rarely need more than a bit of cropping and some pre printing sharpening. The colour balance and exposure are handled in DxO. Compositing is rarely required because film photographers had to make most of their decisions before using the camera. I am fairly much tool agnostic and will use what I find works. Adobe lost the plot many years earlier than now, when annual 'upgrades' never really addressed the stultifying slow Photoshop. Illustrator exhibited anomalies for donkeys years. The CS Suite was a wheeze to extract more money while refusing to fix the glaring holes in the software. ACR reached a plateau that implied developmental stasis and it was no longer a given that one vendor had all of the answers. I can recall paying £500 for Apple's Aperture software. It looked like a real breakthrough but it was abandoned by Apple and I am delighted that I was never locked into any single approach. I find it more economical to have a separate DAM/RAW processing engine. I keep my vector and image processing software separated from it. To my mind, multi-tools are usually disappointing because they don't do anything well. The worst of all possible worlds if you will. Single use tools are fit for purpose and what appears to be costly and difficult to integrate into the workflow, usually proves to be the best method of working, where outstanding quality is the intended endpoint. YMMV

Sorry for any confusion. It appeared to me that people were wanting Serif to include the DAM and the RAW processor within Affinity Photo. I am happy to have separate applications and having used many different RAW processing softwares, often with pre, inter and post sharpening provided as separate applications, I am not in need of a DAM. You will have noted that DxO provide adequate filing, sorting and batch processing. It turns out that they also provide outstanding RAW file processing and include all of the lens correction files necessary. I will not be using another RAW file processor anytime soon because I am more than happy with the one I do use. I already use the storage and filing provided extensively; with DxO Optics Pro. The interesting question for me is do I think that Serif would find making a RAW processor that matches my expectations too complex a task. I have been processing RAW image files as a professional digital photographer since 2001. I processed and printed all of my own monochrome and colour film as a professional film photographer for all formats from 8 x 10 inches down to subminiature since about 1970. RAW image processing was very variable in the early days and the standout applications were Adobe's ACR, Apple's Aperture and Phase One. I have tried many others including Pixelmator, Acorn, Iridient and some software which was just a RAW file processor. ACR was not always the best converter and Aperture had a great (almost filmic) way of file processing. Phase one had great software to go with their outstanding digital backs. Iridient was very capable but difficult to drive well or effectively. Eventually I settled on DxO and found it suits my workflow while making my task easy and well organised. The level of quality in the ease of use and the converted file quality, makes me think that serif would be chasing a fast moving target. DxO Optics Pro started out around the last quarter of 2004 with version 1.1. That development cycle of fourteen years has refined the software to its present state. Effectively that is a fourteen year head start on anything that Serif would bring to the table and if we assume that Serif can shorten the development cycle for a RAW image processor to say 4 years to bring out something as highly polished as DxO Optics Pro, they would still be behind the development and refinement curve by eighteen years. I believe that the task is too complex for Serif and that they will be unable to meet my expectations with a RAW image file processor within the next five years. Reinventing the wheel is usually not a profitable line of enquiry. The reason that Serif have gained traction with Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo is that the marketplace was smarting from Adobe's rental scheme and the legacy bloat and failure to update old code left Adobe vulnerable. Affinity Publisher is a different animal and providing Serif address several inexplicable omissions, it will gain traction too. Every camera manufacturer and his brother provides a RAW file converter for their own proprietary image formats.All other generic providers have to update the RAW filetype database regularly to make their image processor work with files that a manufacturer would rather keep proprietary. File handling to extract the maximum detail is more than a set of numbers and parameters and the programming has to be very high quality if it intends to make any inroads in the professional RAW file processing markets. I process Dicomed medical image files occasionally. Will a mainstream software house like Serif wish to service the minority medical image market which needs to process Nifti, Dicom, Analyze and Minc images?

Oops! Double post

I voted No. My use for yet another file handling application is unlikely to be realistic. I process all of my RAW files in DxO Optics Pro. It handles the filing, the batch processing, the examination of images quickly and the conversions are outstanding. I then round trip the 16bit .tif files into Affinity Photo if they need further post processing. I need the RAW file settings saved with the RAW file so that I have a good starting point when I am called upon to revisit the file. DxO Optics Pro saves a sidecar file (.dop) with every processed RAW file. The DxO interface is slick, understandable, configurable and can be constructed to serve any unique purpose. I think it would be a mistake to expect Serif to reach this level of functionality in a program that developed over many iterations and serves its purpose well. Professional photographers are used to incorporating necessary steps in their workflows. Making one tool serve every purpose is what is wrong with so many multi-tools and legacy tool and software bloat are just one of the results. No tool will serve every need and purpose. I am happy to use Serif software for what it does well. The software is not Photoshop or Illustrator (thank the software deities who oversee such things) and it does not need to be. I have attached a couple of images that demonstrate a few aspects of DxO Optics Pro interface. Screenshot 2019-01-07 22.33.35.pdf Screenshot 2019-01-07 22.32.43.pdf

Yes, of course. Unfortunately, my experience has been that many printing house now want and request images in PSD form (a bit like asking for text in the .doc format) and because Adobe own the format and the current weight of professional use appears to be Photoshop or nothing; the .PSD image format appears to have become a default. Adobe also own PDF format but it is incredibly versatile and useful as well as being rather well developed so it has become a great default file type. Adobe attempted to do the same with images when they supported the .dng file format. I think this has been much less successful because concurrently, many manufacturers had their own well developed RAW file formats. The inception of the PDF file format was when the interrelatedness of all digital processing was not quite as apparent. Just look at how many vendors of UNIX and its unices variants there were. The cost of each manufacturer's baby was frequently outrageous. IRIX anyone? Motif? X-Windows? I agree with your point Walt. I handle a lot of images and PSD has almost become a de facto standard.