James Ritson

Off the back of 1.5's official release, I've added two new example editing videos to the first post. It seems only two videos can be loaded within one post, so I'll investigate another way of presenting previews/thumbnails for the videos next week... Enjoy!

Hey Kingpawn, the help is exactly the same (as in literally - they're the same files). Can you let me know what you're finding different that's causing a problem?

Hey Rob, there are currently three OpenEXR import options on the Preferences>Colour dialog which allow you to control alpha premultiplication, post-division and zero-alpha handling - have you checked the video tutorials? OpenEXR Import Options covers them. It sounds like alpha association (premultiplies alpha into the RGB layer) is halfway to what you're after? From what you've written I gather the option to have alpha as a separate layer but also premultiplied on the RGB layer would be useful? Bear in mind that there will be further work done on OpenEXR import/export in the future, especially to cover idiosyncrasies with layer naming conventions that differ from the OpenEXR spec. (Cinema4D seems to be one such example here) Hope that helps!

Hey Warren, you should just be able to run the App Store app and move to the Updates tab - Affinity Photo will be listed as having an available update. Hope that works for you!

Wow, something went horribly wrong when copying and pasting those links, I've gone through and checked them all now, thanks again.

Oops, thanks for pointing that out, it's now fixed!

Hello, yes, a workbook for Photo is in progress (I think I'm allowed to say that ;)) and should be available next year, not sure exactly when yet. In the meantime, don't forget to use the in-app help to look up tools and other functionality!

Hello all, we're pleased to announce that Photo 1.5 is now available for both macOS and Windows! There's an absolute truckload of new functionality, which has resulted in 36 new tutorial videos for launch. I've updated the first post to include all the new videos - if you'd like to see them separately, I've temporarily pinned a new thread here: Affinity Photo 1.5: 36 new video tutorials Hope you find them useful, and if you have any questions, please ask! All the best, James

Good day everybody! To support the huge release of Affinity Photo 1.5 on both macOS and Windows, we have 36 new video tutorials for you that cover most of the new features in great detail. In addition to that, 4 older videos have been revised and updated to match 1.5's new functionality. We hope you enjoy the 1.5 update, it's a beefy one! Here are the videos you need to get started with its new functionality: HDR HDR: Merging & Tone Mapping HDR: Tone Map Presets HDR: Panoramas HDR: Preprocessing HDR: Advanced Editing HDR: Ghosts Removal HDR: 32-bit Editing Tone Mapping Regular Tone Mapping Focus Merging Focus Merging Focus Merge Retouching Focus Merging Bracketed Images Live Projections (360 editing, perspective projection) 360 Live Editing 360 Advanced Editing 360 Retouching 360 Multiple Views Live Perspective Projection OpenEXR support OpenEXR Multichannel Import/Export OpenEXR Import Options OpenColorIO OpenColorIO Setup OpenColorIO Adjustment Macros Macros Macros: Equations Batch Processing Batch Processing Clone Sources Panel Clone Sources Clone Sources: Texture Creation Raw Development Improvements 32-bit Raw Development Raw Colour Quality Automatic Lens Corrections Apply Image Apply Image Apply Image: Equations Equations Filter Equations Filter Dust & Scratches Filter Dust & Scratches Filter Halftone Filter Halftone Scanlines Effect Pixel Art Resizing Pixel Art Resize PSD round-tripping Direct PSD write-back (round tripping) Freehand Selections Freehand Selection Tool Updated Older Videos Discover Raw Development Quality Custom Tone Curve Exporting I hope these all prove useful to you in getting to grips with the new update - if you have any questions please ask.

That too - macros are ideal for this type of thing :)

Hi Ronny, yep, I can reproduce this, it must have crept in recently - will log it for the developers. Thank you for letting us know.

Hi Nana, sorry, I meant to say Filters>Blur>Median, I've corrected the post above now. Thanks!

Hi Laurentia, no need to worry, many of the Develop operations are done in an unbounded colour space. As of the RC5 beta, the few operations that weren't are now using a much wider gamut. I've seen the difference myself, especially with challenging imagery like low light shots with multiple coloured light sources, and the results are much improved. Colours can be much more intense without clipping to white. The only factor at this stage you need to consider is the final output profile that the image is converted to when you click the Develop button (this is set either in preferences or using the Colour Profile option on the right hand panel). The colour profile listed in the Develop persona toolbar at the top is no longer relevant and has been removed. Hope that helps!

Hi wumpabill, if your goal is to reduce the resolution of your image then just use Resize Document and enter a new resolution into the Size box. Resize Canvas is for resizing the "work area" of your document and you needn't worry about it in this case. Hope that helps. The image/canvas resize video is perhaps a bit too involved and could benefit from scaling back the detail a little, I'll put it on the list!

Hey Nicolas, yes, you can - you can soft proof your document by adding a Soft Proof adjustment to the top of your layer stack (under Layer>New Adjustment Layer) and selecting the custom profile. When you actually go to print, don't forget to uncheck this Soft Proof adjustment layer, then on the print dialog, under Colour Matching, check ColorSync and choose the profile from the dropdown (you may have to add it using Other Profiles). Hope that helps!

Hi Morne, 1) Easiest if you have both files together in one document - so select the pixel layer in one document, copy and paste it into the other document. Then on the Channels panel, right click the layer's alpha channel (it will be named after the layer, eg "Background Alpha") and choose Create Spare Channel. Now select the layer you want to apply the alpha mask to, right click the new Spare Channel and choose "Load to {Name} Alpha" (where {Name} is the layer's name). Sounds more complicated than it is, but it boils down to: create spare channel from source alpha mask, select layer you want to apply it to, right click spare channel and load it to that layer's alpha channel. 2) Select the black and white pixel layer, then go to Layer>Rasterise to Mask from the top menu. Hope that helps!

Hi Jazzy, that procedure is.. pretty much the same! :) 1) Duplicate (Cmd+J or Layer>Duplicate) your Background pixel layer. 2) Go to Filters>Blur>Median, use a radius of 3-5px and click Apply. 3) On the blend mode dropdown (just above the layers) select Pin Light. Hope that helps. If you want to take it a bit further, you can do the procedure non-destructively without duplicating the pixel layer. So instead: 1) Go to Layer>New Live Filter Layer>Median Blur 2) On the dialog box, set a radius of 3-5px. Now, on the same dropdown, change the blend mode from Normal to Pin Light.

Hey Nikos, the reason you're seeing a slightly larger pixel count is because the SerifLabs engine doesn't discard edge pixels - instead, it interpolates them. In-camera processing (e.g. for in-camera JPEGs) tends to discard edge pixels - usually because edge interpolation is trickier and slower. Most RAW conversion software will also crop or discard this information. So just to reassure you, there is no reason to be concerned over the slightly higher pixel count. If it poses a problem, you can always switch to the Apple Core Image RAW decoder through the Develop Assistant (see the tuxedo icon on the top toolbar). Apple's engine automatically crops off the edge pixels. Hope that helps!

Resampling (in the context of imagery) is scaling the image (as in its actual resolution/number of pixels) and there are numerous methods of doing so (nearest neighbour, bilinear, bicubic etc). Given your workflow, however, you really don't have to worry about this. If you do your cropping as normal, rather than export, you can then use either Rasterise or Flatten from the Document menu - or right click the layer and choose Rasterise. You shouldn't see any quality loss and you can then carry on editing the original document rather than working from an exported copy.

No I don't, but I'm not sure how that's relevant? You're simply rasterising the content on the canvas (thereby removing the information outside of the chosen crop), there's no resampling of the resolution involved... I'm simply taking LilleG's request at face value - it seems that she doesn't want a destructive crop, presumably because she is cropping then wanting to resize the canvas larger to obtain a border (or multiple borders)? Rather than exporting and opening a new bitmap file as a way of throwing away the crop information, she can simply (re)rasterise the pixel layer...

Hi Lille, rather than saving and re-opening, if you want to discard the parts hidden by the crop you could just right click the pixel layer (usually Background) and choose Rasterise. If you haven't done any Layer work you could also use Document>Flatten. Both methods should make the crop destructive though. Hope that helps!

Markus, although that issue would need to be looked at, it looks like you are trying to remove the effect of an adjustment layer using the undo brush - is that correct? If so, I don't believe the undo brush was really meant for that - it's more for removing destructive operations like filter effects, layer merges, rasterised effects etc. If you want to mask the adjustment's effect you can simply grab the Paint Brush Tool and paint onto the adjustment layer with a pure black (or various shades of grey to control the strength). One example of using the undo brush is after something like the dust & scratches filter - you can go back and restore detail to areas blurred by the filter. Hope that helps!

Ah, in that case then no, it's not the same. Unfortunately there isn't a one-step process for exporting your height map into the format you need for Unity at the moment. I've had a quick look at the documentation and it doesn't look like Unity supports any other formats for height map import? I usually export out of Photo as 16-bit greyscale PNG but it looks like that's not an option. The only alternative I can dig up for now is a community script (HeightmapFromTexture) that will allow you to bypass the need to import a height map as a Photoshop RAW file and use a regular texture instead: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=HeightmapFromTexture- the disadvantage being you're limited to 8-bit depth... Sorry about the limitation, hopefully it's something we can look into for future development.

Hi David, sounds like you're wanting to export in greyscale RAW16, which Photo doesn't currently support. It can do greyscale 16-bit PNG, does your game engine accept that? (Which game engine by the way? Unreal engine? Unity? :) )

Hey all, I have stealth-edited ( :ph34r:) Andy's initial post to include links to 32 video tutorials covering the new features. These videos are currently unlisted, and will become public when 1.5 is officially released. For now, though, I hope they help with understanding some of 1.5's new functionality, and I will of course continue to add more after 1.5's launch. Enjoy!