[Access to other layers from procedural filter]

So we could make a dynamically calculating masks for example  in simple manner  like  something like (layer1 R max layer2R - group3)  of anything bellow  that procedural filter .

[AI in Affinity]

19 hours ago, wonderings said:

AI has become a great and powerful tool in Photoshop. Not sure what you do, but the ability to add to photos to give me space to the centre focused object is amazing and so easy. Removing elements just as easy, circle and tell AI to remove, it is gone and replaced with what AI thinks would be seen behind the removed piece. Not always perfect but from my experience I would say 9/10 it is usable and no one can tell there was something there before. I rarely ask for something to be inserted in a picture, generally I need to get more image added, like if a client supplied a picture in portrait but I need it in landscape. AI does an amazing job with landscapes and nature. The image below was almost entirely done with AI in photoshop. The magenta rectangle is the real and original image, everything else was just extending and letting AI do what it does. It has been a regular used tool for me.

 

 

I do wish AI could be used to trace objects better in Illustrator. Corel has long been the champion for tracing. If AI could be harnessed to trace objects it would be a great asset. 

 

The problem is it works  ok  maybe  with such generic subjects  . A landscape    . But I never do anything like that. I always work with very specific  subjects .   Like a sky  to be  bend into spherical projection for 3d scene  .AI does repeating wrongly illuminated details . In you picture it's ok because it's just not a complete sky  .  Not specifically the sky.   

For me whenever I try to use it ,   it's something like  left bottom corner of your landscape , not consistent shadows and light,  arbitrary placed "patches" etc.   And always slightly blurry.    

Maybe not completely useless  but still not up to quality standard  to be competitive. 

[AI in Affinity]

I yet have  to see something AI  in Photoshop that would  help me  to do something  meaningful  related to my actual job.       Not even AI selection  that's sucks really, rather annoying and not improving.   Their new "generative" tool  is totally useless toy doing blurry  and mismatching picture  insertions.   A dice  throwing , a roulette  that never  really do what you ask.      

Never tried sky replacement since usually  I need to  replace everything BUT the sky  and it even can't do clean masking along a skyline.

I wish Adobe would focus on actual tools. Make something like Substance Designer working as filter creator  without destructive rasterization.  The filters are outdated like dinosaurs.    Procedural  masks,  content aware move  that would allow to puppet wrap image to match  neighboring details    and so on and on.    

Instead they stopped to develop the soft  and decided  to focus on glorious  task of killing their own user base  by replacing all them by robots.

The only AI in Photoshop that I use is chatGPT .  it writes  simple   jsx  scripts.   Takes it hours   although before you get something really working  because its also dice throwing  and you have to explain it  every step thoroughly. No chance it makes it on its own out of a blue. 

 

[I'd wish procedural filter get some update.]

Some  node based noise  and patterns  generator. Something like Subtsnace Designer. I am so tired of Adobe Substance Designer  and wish there would be an alternative.  

Couldn't care less   if it makes tillable patterns or not   , just a nice  noise mixer   +  controlled 2d displacement  aka "slope blur"  which have nothing to do with blurs actually and just a loop of 32  displacements set by grayscale down slope direction.      

Too bad Affinity couldn't do even such displacement properly .  Please Serif  , just make  procedural filter read a normal map from another layer or channel  as a displacement direction  for pixels   and let us  make  a sequence of such  displacements . Like RG as a vector  and B as a distance for  pixel shifting for another layer.    In a word let procedural filter allow other layers  inputs.  

I believe  Affinity would work more efficient with pixels .  Substance Designer quickly gets slow as hell.    Would love   node based interface  for CG  compositing too.

Layers are so inconvenient  because  soon, after dozens of them  you stop to understand a thing in your own mess.    Make us nodes as an alternative .

 

 

[Vector brush scattering objects and bitmaps along a vector path]

4 hours ago, 2ddpainter said:

@kirk23

in the meantime, it could be that you would be happy
with "VectorStyler". Which offers vector Pattern Brush,
Scatter Brush, Brush construct of grouped vector Objects.
Brush creation even with Blend of two ore more Objects
if you group the Blend Result.

Thank you very much.  I tried  Vector styler briefly  specifically to figure out if it can do it and haven't found any of this.   Now my trial is off.  So would be appreciated if you answer a few questions:

1.Can scattered objects be  easily replaced?  For example bitmap representing color  to ones representing normal map ? All the same at once staying in same scale?  

2.Does it work in 16 bit per channel?  For bitmaps or vectors  representing  height?   Like  Affinity  Designer/photo?

3. Xara was super speedy and quick with lots of bitmap content.   Does Styler feels comfortable with bitmaps?    Pity Xara 5  I have  ( the best one I think) is crashy as hell on win10 now while still  very speedy and responsive. Not supporting 16 bit height unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

[Vector brush scattering objects and bitmaps along a vector path]

Something like  Expression had  decades ago or Xara  .     A brush  constructed from selected  group of objects  with option  to deform them along the brush vector and  alternate , or just scatter  with random offset.       That text along a path option is so much of a pain.  

 

 

[Content aware layer blending, alpha channel included.]

Like patch tool just working like live effect  on  layers   and working with layer alpha same way it does with RGB   (as an option)

So we could put a layer  over something  and it would blend in automatically  and do same with Alpha too .    Just adapting  each of RGBA  to what's beneath putting channels  in same tonal range.  More around edges.     Doing in-painting outside edges to connect  things when  necessary as an option.

So we could  put several pieces together and they all  adapt to each other on their own. 

         No AI necessary.     Could be done pretty easily  in evry thing supporting  blur and nodes.        I just want it as a simple layer  live filter with a few sliders. 

I am so frustrated with Photoshop.  New beta just added  one more useless fancy AI toy.    Please Serif  lets make Affinity ahead of Photoshop  in  usability and convenience.  So we we would do what we actually want instead of what  that stupid AI tries to do. 

 

 

 

 

[Cryptomatte support in Photo v2]

Just find crypto-matte source code  of Blender compositing nodes in archives they regularly publish    and do the same.  

  But rather  like a procedural  mask filter  where you could pick  something  from multilayered exr is split screen preview  and get a mask for any  layer on top of it .     Don't do it EXR-IO style please . Its pretty inconvenient there.  We don't need gazillions of layers  in our layer stacks. 

[Layer effects - add border effect]

9 minutes ago, Aammppaa said:

@kirk23 perhaps I don't understand your comment... but strokes can have the Erase blend mode, which does allow for easy creation of ragged borders.

Can you show an image of what you are trying to create?

Can you upload an example please.   I meant  not general brush strokes  but rather  vector strokes around shapes  in Designer or  outline/ inner glow FX.   I see no erase blending mode there.   

I can do it in a separate layer and then group together    but it's a tremendous extra pain in my ...  and never saveable as a style

[Layer effects - add border effect]

4 minutes ago, pfi said:

Following is a capture of the Border Effects tool in FastStone Image Viewer and an image that shows the effect.  I use Frame 1 (20,white) and Frame 2 (1,black) on 25% reduced images all the time, as it nicely frames the image (for email attachments). FastStone uses pixels for width settings.

I think that Layer effects are well suited for borders, because the effects can be copied and applied to other images, e.g.  in a collage with placed images to apply consistent frames to all the images.

Those you already can do. 

[Layer effects - add border effect]

I loved how I could make a  randomly feathered  border with "erase"  stroke blending mode and random  stroke width at the same time In Creative House Expression   couple decades ago .    Designer is still so much behind .  Why not  have the  "erase" blending mode in here too if the soft  is already supportin it   for layers.

[Developing the ripple filter]

It's impossible to do physically accurate as GarryP  said   but you can use displace live effect  to fake it .   It's not especially "live"  and still looks like ortho view  although.

[Parametric/ procedural vector design using modifiers (like Blender & 3ds Max)]

6 hours ago, Ezbaze said:

There is actually a new node-based 2D editor being made (Opensource), called Graphite which is planning to be node-based like Blender

too bad it looks like  web based only

[Parametric/ procedural vector design using modifiers (like Blender & 3ds Max)]

Totally agree with OP.     Why not array on curves at least?   Current usage of symbols with text on path is so  much pain in your ....     but it says it's totally possible and need just an interface as a "tool"   or as a "modifier".        The image brush in Designer  could have  been not just start/end and body segments  but up to 10alternating segments  like in old  " Creative house Expression"  

Ironically all this is perfectly possible in Blender in real time  and it's gradually  replacing  all the 2d  image tools for me.

 

[Scatter small vectors and bitmap pictures along a spline in designer in chosen order and offset .]

Now that Substance Designer get it    I have lesser and lesser need of Affinity Designer . I would still prefer Affinity one . It's so much more artist friendly in general . Why not just have it here.  It's  a pain in your a..  in Adobe products.

[Curve deform as another mesh deform option.]

Where we could  put a spline over an image  and make it deform  underlying image . Its just a  few clicks in Blender for example . Simple like 2x2 . Why not do it  here . It doesn't require 3d axis really .   Like projecting image on Spline generated UV/mesh   and deform  it in sync of spline  editing  gradually within set distance. 

Would be better that Photoshops puppet wrap  which always been a toy  not a tool really .   

[loop live filter that could repeat a previouce one with small steps number of times]

Like displace in couple pixels distance repeated along  underlying  vector/flow  map  number of time  gradually fading out or not .

aka "Slope blur"

[16 bit cmyk please]

Photoshop does it so right . why not here. 

[rotate , mirror and scale options for inpainting]

Since Photoshop introduced it I can't do it in Affinity anymore. Those options  even when look weird provide so much less repeating, copy/paste from neighboring place look.

[Mesh deform the patch option before applying the patch tool]

and ability to make it work in layers alpha too same as with rgb as an option .    Better color adaptation of edges with a sliders .  Meaning how much blur  it applies to channels intensity from original layer  and in what distance from edges.      

Could be so much better that Photoshop both patch and content aware move . No need  to fill the previous place with blurry something .   

[We need to talk about artificial intelligence.]

I tried that Generative fill and it always does something low res  and never what you actually asked it to do . Still feels like a toy mostly . For cool instagram pictures.

I would be more interested in more clever content aware fill  better recognizing patterns  and less repeating  but it's all the same as before .    Ai selection is still same annoying   selecting  random things around that you need  manually clean after anyway. 

 

[5 channels mode or just 16 bit CMYK support]

I miss this so much  after Photoshop.  The only reason I still pay  their subscription.   This and pattern preview  which is much more convenient than pattern layers here.   And perhaps scripting.     As of  every other thing  I prefer  Affinity Photo.  

Tried  their recent "generative fill" in photoshop betta.  What a  useless thing.  As well as AI selection  that  selects nothing you actually  need .

[inpainting with roration and flip support]

I love those options in Photoshop.   It eliminates  those repeating patterns in inpained areas I often see in APhoto  inpainted areas.

[Focus more on fixing bugs instead of pushing new features]

I disagree.   Both Designer and Photo are still seriously lacking in features.  I only happy they are not pursuing AI path.   Still struggle to find anything useful AI  I could use for my actual  job.

 

[Feature reqest: color image to grayscale one with gradient map]

With a set amount of colors /gradient stops.   So as input we have just RGB image then the filter turns it into grayscale one  + gradient map filter .    Thus we would  have color info stored in one channel  and a gradient.      Working like sort of indexed colors.  So we say  the gradient should have 100 stops  for example  and it makes 100 gradation of gray with corresponding stops in the gradient.