Steps

Also take a look at the mighty FilterForge, it's the King of Filters.
One Plugin to rule them all, One plugin to change them,
One plugin to filter them all, and in Affinity forge them. 

Hi Steps,
If I'm being honest I think you will struggle to get results better than the ones shown in the example threads you have provided due to the lack of artistic filters in Affinity Photo. This is something we would like to add in the future however.
Thanks
C

maybe I'm missing it, but is there an option to open a JPEG, or bitmap image
and trace,or convert it to a vector file for further editing? If not there should be one, it would be a great option. even if it had only a few modes like black and white, and 5 color
it would make me convince me to convert from adobe illustrator

Hi Folks!
 
Would it be possible to get a divide blending mode? It gets used a tonne in vfx compositing where we want to separate different parts of an image so we can tweak things individually!
 
Thanks!
 
John

Here's a quick and simple way I used to create a cartoon efffect.
Duplicate background layer. High-pass adjustment layer (as child of duplicate), radius about 10 (don't use any blend mode). Threshold layer (as child of duplicate), adjust to see outlines (up to 49%). Blend mode of duplicate: Overlay. Fiddle with adjustments to your heart's content. Ole.
Sample below and .afphoto attached.

cartoon.afphoto

I haven't seen this before, so I figured I would share. This is a simple cartoon like effect. This is similar to the pseudo cell shading tutorial by Affinity, but that's because they used the edge detect tool too. So for what it's worth here we go.
First copy your background layer, CMD-J
Go to Filter, Detect, Detect Edges. Set the blend mode to subtract.
Add the adjustment layer, posterize. Adjust the levels for taste. My example uses 4.
That's it. Now you have a basic cartoon stylized picture. You can use all sorts of additional methods from here. But this seems a good starting point. Hope you find something useful in this. Cheers.

Photo has toolbar buttons for Auto levels, contrast, color and white balance. These seem to be destructive. I suggest that where applicable you put an auto button, with possible options, into the adjust/live layer control panel to setup the auto setting on the existing controls. This is non destructive and also provides the user ability to tweak the auto settings. For example, Photoshop has an auto button in levels adjustments with many types of auto adjustments one can choose from.
 
It would seem to me that if it is useful to have a toolbar button for such adjustments then it could be even more useful to have those adjustments be available in non destructive layer(s) that are user tweakable. Some of those four items should fit into currently available adjust/live layers.

It is not hopeless unless you insist on doing everything in one app. If not, as has been mentioned many times in these discussions there are quite a few good alternatives, including several free ones, that can be used with Affinity Designer (& Photo) to provide that function.

Hi Jan Gaare,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
We do have plans to add a tracing tool assuming we are able to get the output quality we are aiming for. Meanwhile there's quite a few utilities you can use (some of them quite good) to trace images. You can then open the result file in Affinity and work from there.

Then you should not trust paid software like Affinity or many others either, because they include open source "backend" software code that is distributed under a variety of no-cost licenses. Inkscape is one of the many apps that uses the Potrace algorithm for auto-tracing -- if you would find that algorithm more worthy of your trust if you had to pay to use it, there are several paid apps that use it for that.

> Still no sticky settings?

Three years and counting.
 

I really  don't  unterstand why they don´t fix this,  everybody working on more than one image runs into this problems. after the initial release the promised to improve usability with 1.6 they made same small progress but now it seems they simply don't care nothing changed.  I have clicked  - clone tool - use all layers a couple hundred times today  this is so ridiculous..... makes me wonder who they see as their target audience  for sure not user which do professional retouching. 

it is interesting to see how you ignore a fundamental flaw version after version of your otherwise great software -  sticky tools and setting incl raw development adjustments.  do you really think this is what your user want ?  keep on clicking the same buttons over and over again because it is such fun ?  right now im retouching more than 100 interior shots  and I have to say I´m totally pissed because your repair tool works better in some instances than adobe but I very much  hate that I have to work with affinity in such an idiotic way. 

Hello, 
why there is no way of making easy default or sticky settings in Affinity Photo? Choosing the same options over and over again is so boring and time eating and unnecessary, for example crop ratio ........  each photo choosing again, or image size, bicubic .......  again and again. Sorry guys, but there is so often the comparison to Photoshop, and how professional Affinity Photo is working, but I am not satisfied with these points, and there is more of such important options, that are stealing time. Getting more gimmicks on new updates, funny things, yes, but why not fixing these important things first, that make an app work proper and fast. These settings, as the ratio and the image size rendering (just as examples that got used very often, permanently  by most users) , they don´t even stay while working on the same photo. That is really disappointing, cause this is basics for a good working app! And the app is not brandnew anymore!

Hi,
I've been using Affinity Photo (1.6.5) on Windows for a few weeks now and mostly finding it a great tool to use. I wanted to know if there is a way to change the default settings on the tools. In particular when I use the Inpainting brush, I almost always use it on a new pixel layer and change it to Current Layer & Below for non-destructive use. It would be easier if I could change the default to be that setting as I forget to change it often and waste time painting the empty layer! The same is true for the clone brush, and probably others too. 
Thanks,
Mark
 

I see. I knew that PDF/X-3:2002 had been superseded by PDF/X-3:2003, but I wasn’t aware that there were two versions of PDF/X-1a. On looking into this further, I’ve learned that PDF/X-1a:2001 is PDF 1.3 and PDF/X-1a:2003 is PDF 1.4, but PDFlib only covers PDF 1.4 — PDF 1.7.

Hello, how can i create X3 pdf in Affinity Designer (1.5.5)?
When I've choosen the option X3 the result was an 1.4 version PDF.
What do you suggest?
Thanks, Robert

Hi!
 
Please, i need to export my works in PDF version 1.3 (Acrobat 4). This is the only reason I still use Photoshop instead Affinity Photo.
Unfortunately local italian printers require this PDF format.
 
Can You integrate this PDF format?
 
Thanks!

hello,
the real problem is that i need a PDF file version 1.3 (Acrobat 4) to send it to the printer system.
 
I read on the web:
 
 
 
 
So, i think i need PDF/X-1a:2001 setting to save PDF file 1.3, but Affinity Photo doesn't have this feature.
 
I will continue to use Photoshop…

Hi,
With Affinity you can create PDF 1.3 (acrobat 4) files with options PDF/X-1a-2003 or PDF/X-3-2003, files that won't allow transparency and avoid problems.
Those are similar to inDesign parameters, and I expect your printer to allow files made with this application (cf. screenshots).
 
I suspect some other problems with your file than as listed in the screenshot you did. Is the profile in the link provided a profile you can download and install for exporting PDF?
 
Now, if you want to try to convert your file to PSD and convert this PSD to PDF, be carefull and give it at least 600 ppp resolution (I'm not sure texts and graphics will stay as vectors doing those conversions), so the printed result — especially fine text — stay crisp.
Doing this for images containing text/details will give a better result and less blur.
 
About PDFX-1a:2003 :
BobLevine 14 juin 2011 08:38
“ Apparently X/1-a 2003 does support 1.4 BUT and this is a very big BUT, the file may not contain any transparency. ”
Dov Isaacs 14 juin 2011 10:02
“As chairperson of the ISO PDF/X Commitee, I'll confirm Bob's response.
Officially, PDF/X-1a:2003 (as opposed to PDF/X-1a:2001) is based on PDF 1.4 with the restriction that live transparency cannot be used. Note that the specification doesn't prohibit use of PDF 1.3 or earlier for such a file! In order to technologically fit into how InDesign and other CS applications “work,” PDF/X-1a:2003 export is done using the PDF 1.3 standard such that live transparency does not appear in the resultant PDF/X-1a:2003 file.
Ironically, PDF/X-1a:2003 never really caught on with the print industry. Most print service providers that request or support PDF/X-1a, specify or imply support for PDF/X-1a:2001.
Note that in reality, PDF/X-1a and PDF/X-3 really represent the best of 20th century print publishing workflows, not workflows that need to deal with very graphically-rich content with transparency. Adobe most strongly recommends PDF/X-4 direct export from InDesign (and save as PDF/X-4 from Illustrator and Photoshop).
          - Dov”

sorry,
but if I export a file with that setting, in the file information it said in PDF version 1.4 and the printing software does not accept it
 
in attachment setup for printer system
 
 

I liked your style to prove that quoted statement wrong just with one screenshot. 

Why? - Appropriate tools and the OS can make use of the Affinity Quickview implementation in order to show up thumbs or the embedded JPG preview from their aphoto etc. file format. Other than that third party tools just need to associate the file extensions then with the coresponding Affinity apps or offer an open with external program.
Further I doubt that Affinity would be able to make a better cross platform tool than Lightroom, CaptureOne or (Aperture) already are/(were).
GC under OSX:

So as I wrote, in version 3 or 4, for 5 or 10 years.