kirk23

Those spare channels are not usable in the way I suggested. You have to propagate them into layers to do meaningful calculations or linking. They are just a heritage of old style destructive and manual image editing. Something to store extra pixel info, not to work with it.

For alpha or per-channel view you need to click "composite alpha" or "composite Red" in channels panel . That way you will always see grayscale opaque picture on your screen of selected channel and continue to edit your doc, paint add layers, add curves or levels etc I often have to do subtle tweaks for a game packed RGBA textures and so much prefer APhoto way for non-destructive approach in alphas . So annoyed by Photoshop copy/pasting routine you have to do every time you save a tga. The only APhoto drawback is you can't tweak exported tgas itself since it opens them back with black holes multiplied on other channels too . But I never do so anyway, always edit .aphoto originals.

I'd like an option to select layers in locked groups. So we couldn't select a group or symbol container but still could select inside with some alt click or something. I recall Xara had it for example

I'd rather prefer they focus on PHoto and Designer. There are so much missed yet. Anyway I don't believe they have resources for anything big. They didn't introduced anything new since link panel. Perhaps we wouldn't see anything but bug fixes at all in foreseeing future. No hits of any new feature in development. Perhaps the whole Affinity project wasn't such a financial success due to low prices and not enough revenue. Perhaps they fired all the staff and wait a nice Adobe offer now . Just a guess. I know nothing.

Think of it not as a printing target but rather as an extra channel you can keep pixel values in and always perfectly synced. In Photoshop I use it rather like RGB+K . Same as in Corel Painter that has an extra invisible floating point channel in every layer but you can't use it for anything but impasto. Not even export it. Only by some obscure Blender addon worked in some ancient Blender version. In Photoshop you can use black channel for anything you like . Together with special custom profile that doesn't restrict you by typical cmyk color space and special LUT transform I did in APhoto actually. At least 16 bit CMYK would be helpful. For my purposes I'd love it to be regular RGB + one more spare channel but 16 bit CMYK would also work just fine. I suppose it's a lesser code tweak.

Whatever they did could be cool for something. I don't know. But why not just make it a usual standard way? Making it work same as in Photoshop or Substance Designer . Plus sampling an image bellow having R-for shift/displace distance and GB - for direction of shifting . Or calculating direction on the fly from height slope(converting grayscale height slope into vector) or just in a single set angle by a choice. And another option for fading sequence of such displaces like "slope blur" in Substance Designer. Preferably with more than 32 steps it does. Just options in Displace live filter

it's always necessary to manually shift things around slightly to let them snap back to pixel grid when you do "center" stile of alignment. I actually lose that pixel grid snapping when just move a layer around too quickly sometimes . So it's always a concern to not blur things accidentally. While it can be avoided when you know it happens and can be fixed usually it's indeed an extra source of annoyance vs Photoshop. For some weird reason in Designer that "center " alignment works just fine most of a time , as well as pixel grid snap itself

I love Photoshop pattern preview . A best and only useful improvement they did for years. it works totally non-destructive on smart objects. I'd love something similar here. So we could apply such a live filter on an embedded doc and it would "affine" non-destructivly without necessity to rasterize it . No need to do it for evry layer in a doc btw like Photoshop does, only for chosen ones.

Displace is a very basic pixel editing operation . In every soft it works same and just like you expect it: pixels shift in certain direction you set and to certain distance you get from grayscale values of another image. in APhoto I can't even understand what it does. Ideally Displace should sample 2 images : one grayscale one for distance of pixel shifting and another normal map image for getting a vector (direction) of shifting . And another improvement would be a loop, a series of pixel shifting to small distance when every next iteration does it with some fading . A series of 100 one pixel distance displaces when every next one does it with 1% opacity drop . We could do a nice multi-directional motion blur that way . Very interesting effects . Some weathering effects , paint drips , water flows , Erosion effects . The options would be unlimited . Just let us a tool we could work with instead of current useless "Displace" Or just make a node based live filter editor so we could construct it on our own.

Plus a special color profile not restricted by CMYK space. It's a weird omission in the soft. Photoshop support that and let you do a great number of tricks unavailable here. Aphoto could rival Corel PAinter impasto painting for example if only it allows it.

RGBAtemplate.afmacro Here I did a macro example that can turn any image into RGBA packing layer structure . You get R,G,B and A groups and whatever you put or paint there would only influence corresponding channel.

Would be so much helpful as well as normal map to curvature , and what Substance Designer calls "slope blur" : a series of displaced and fading pixels in direction set by normal map vector . Basically same as current displace live flter but done as a series of fading steps

Yeah, I forgot to mention it but there is a simple workaround. You can add a super transparent "fill" layer in the Alpha group of the example I posted . Only perfectly zero alpha pixels are multiplying over other channels . If you make it like 0.0001 alpha value in procedural filter APhoto will not multiply it over and it will still be zero alpha in exported 8 bit tga since 0.0001 is beyond 255 shades of gray in 8 bit image. channel packing.afphoto

You can also put a new alpha as a new layer , make white pixels transparent in Blend ranges (gear button) and give the layer "erase" blending mode. It would totally replace composite alpha with what you have in "erase" layer . ps. well. not replace actually, rather add. to replace you have to "cancel" original alpha first with fill layer on the very bottom

Click "composite alpha" and you can see it same as in PSh , then Ctr+L or ctrl+M , select "Alpha" in drop down instead of "master" and you cant tweak it. Not much different to PSh really except it still stays non-destructive.

in Photoshop you can select layerA in one group and another layerB inside another totally unrelated group , chain-link them together and they are now sharing same transforms. You can move them in sync , scale in sync etc. in Affinity photo it's only possible through symbols you can bring from Designer . You lock the symbol container with layer A inside and do the symbol copy , then link "pixel content" of layer A in that symbol clone to LayerB . Now you have two same symbols but the clone is showing you layerB instead and layers A and B inside symbol containers are sharing same transforms . It's a possible workaround but still inconvenient as hell and you can't link that way non-rasterized content . Simple transform link in link panel would be so much more useful . chain_link.afphoto

Photoshop let you preview a channel but you can't continue to work with a document, add layers or do anything meaningful . Photoshop switches back to RGB preview . You can't make a stack of layers while previewing only alpha channel . You can do perfectly same . Open your tga and put levels adjustment layer ( it has a drop down menu to what channel it works for) or add a pixel layer with procedural filter I showed to paint something that would go to only and exactly channel you need.

No , I just made it without the group at all at first. It's irrelevant . Just wanted to show it could be a whole grroup of layers for any of RGBA

So we could have a clone of of some group or outside file in different math calculation /different groups . Have a non-destructive pattern preview and so on and on.

Using Symbols for same purpose is kind of annoying and too complex. I mean a feature similar to Photoshop chain-links . You can do it with symbols containers from Designer and replacing actual pixel content inside symbols by "pixel content" linking but it complicates the layer stack a lot and you have to do lots of redundant clicks. A simple transform link in link panel would be so much easier

Some "isolate layer" alternative . maybe ALT+ something showing and exporting only layers of same color tag . Inside embedded docs too hopefully .

Copy /pasting in channels is annoying and redundant manual operation. Both Photoshop and Affinity Photo have ways to make "packing" automatically though regular layer stack. Aphoto has actually a small advantage of previewing only channel you need not switching back to RGB. In example I attached you can see you don't need to copy/paste anything at all and at the same time can edit each channel separately , make a special group for every Chanel and create whatever stack of layers you need inputting to that channel only, including alpha. Use link panel to make layer clones in different channels or use symbols containers( from Designer) to link transforms of layers residing in different channel groups etc. You can also create such a layer structure by macro with a single click . As well as in Photoshop too. Then a single thing you do is export to tga My guess it's why Serif doesn't react to copy/paste in channels requests . Why force some ancient feature when there is more simple and easy way, totally non-destructive. channel packing.afphoto

I recall this variable width stroke was a feature in now defunct Creative House Expression. Like 20 years ago maybe. As well as gazilion of other cool features unavailable in Illustrator or elsewhere . Sometimes it seems vector soft in general makes a backward progression. I am still usinging Xara from beginning of 2000. The current one is actually worse with some cool features disappeared. It makes any booleans perfectly contrary to Affinity Designer. It's kind of sad state vector soft are in currently . Looks like Blender soon would be more appropriate choice.

it's only batch job I ever needed so it's very much missed.

1. Dropped piece of bitmap turns into kind of bitmap patten fill with vector shape border/mask you could instantly edit , scale the bitmap inside etc. In a word old the same you can do with vector shape mask but working instantly without all that annoying routine of creating masks and manage super complicated layer structure. 2. Erase mode for inner glow without same annoying extra job of creating masks and complicating already complex layer structure. 4. Scatter selected objects randomly along a curve tool by a special brush instead of that super complicated and tedious text along the path and then copy /paste way. 6. Alternating parts for textured image brush. like it was in old Serif soft.