Dennis Nisbet

Thanks for the comeback Frozen Death Knight, By comparison to PS the process in AP is clunky, slow and imprecise. It isn't close to what I am trying to achieve.

Firstdefence, I love your Quote "Affinity is the tug boat to Adobes cruise liner. lol!" I was part of a management team in the photographic industry most of my career. During that time, I saw many companies come and go. All of them were convinced they knew exactly what they were doing! Kodak and Konica are two great examples. Why I even remember an incident where Konica paper was producing a photographic paper that had an off-color red. This was not acceptable in the US and much of the world. I over-heard a Konica engineer say that: "We will change the red but our red is right." As a business, there is one person that can "FIRE YOU" in an instant! He/She is called the customer. I too use Adobe for several situations where there isn't anything better. However, in my segment of the world, composite creation is almost a way of life. So is being able to do it the same way day in and day out. When you mess up the routine, you mess up the producer. As I mentioned in another post, my Daughter is an Art Director for a mid-size printing company. The latest Photoshop update was so disruptive to work flow that she had IT go back to 2018. Again, for composite creation, Affinity has a faster and much better selection tool.

As I see it, Adobe has years of experience perfecting Photoshop which included not only product functionality but the ability to handle many third-party products and provide a path for Scripts development. On the surface, Photoshop might be seen as a over-kill product. Not so! When you look at the size of their customer database, you quickly realize that they have developed something for everyone. With their last release, they (Adobe) has really stubbed their toe. It will be interesting to see of Affinity Photo can capitalize on Adobe's miss-guided direction. I recently heard a business analyst comment on a couple of large, failed companies, (Sears and Eastman Kodak). He said that when a company loses it's way, it doesn't even know it happened. Has Adobe joined-in on the "Lost their way path"? Will Affinity be able to take up the slack?

Please, my suggestions below are based on my limited experience thus far. I’ve spent about 30 hours looking for ways to reproduce those things which worked well for me in PS. If I mention anything that is already possible, it is only because I haven’t found it in the tutorials and I would really appreciate it if someone can tell me how. I’ve been a Photoshop user since PS2. 1. When you open an image, the frame for that image is docked. If you pull it away from the docked position, the frame remains the same. I would like to see the frame collapse to the image when it is pulled away from the docked position. 2. When creating composites, (multiple images on a background), I would like to be able to drag the opened images to be placed and drop instead of copy and paste. Using the PLACE feature looks like a lot of additional work. 3. I’ve mentioned this before. I work in inches not Pixels as do many designers and Photographers. I really like the ability to make what ever measurement value you like becomes the default. 4. I’ve written about this before and I think I sent a video. The best way I found to create a shadow for objects (layers in a composite) is to add a second (Duplicate) layer then add a gradient to it and CLIP the Gradient. Photoshop makes it easy. I created an Action, had it made into a Script but you can’t adjust the Gradient. Affinity is a bit more clunky, but you have some control over the gradient until it is clipped. There should be a faster, better way.

The ability to FREE TRANSFORM a layer and also change it from an image to a gradient like you can in Photoshop is a deal breaker for me. I developed a way to quickly make a gradient shadow and FREE TRANSFORM it in PS thus creating a realistic shadow that could be applied to any object that was part of a composite image. It really speeds the development of a composite image. I was especially intrigued by the possibility of changing the gradient but the lack of easy free transformation is a real bummer. Like so many, getting away from the MONTHLY FEE and CAPTIVE nature of Adobe Creative Cloud but I just can't do it at the expense of lost features and the additional work.

Yes, I've watched this several times. In production, time is money! I spent a lot of time trying to find the best possible combination of settings in the Refine Edge feature available with Photoshop. Today's version of Refine Edge is both fast and easy. I am doing the same thing now with Affinity Photo. Affinity Photo has yet to address some issues related to compositing such as adjustable shadows. While I'm waiting for this, I continue to work on other features that already exist.

Cutouts are a big part of what I do. I'm spending a lot of time learning how to do them well in Affinity Photo. Initially, I wrote that they might not be as good as Photoshop. Now, I think they might be as good or better. I'm still trying to figure out how to best make the REFINE feature work. I have learned that in both PS and AF, size matters and, within reason, bigger images, at least 40MB, are best and I like to work in the 70MB to 100MB range. I have learned that while the Selection Brush Tool coupled with Quick Mask do well, they look bad until you run the REFINE command.

It is not quite the same nor effective. In Photoshop, if you are doing a selection with the selection tool and switch to Quick Mask, you are now working with a brush and have control over the edge softness. This may be possible in AP and I just haven't found out how.

In both the photographic industry and the printing industry, "Inches" is the most common way to express measurements. Since there are about 14 million Photoshop users and 80 percent of them are photographers, it might make some business sense to have inches set as the default for everything of you wish. Yo can do this in Photoshop.

Please see the attach MP4 video. Shadow Creation.mp4

I’ve been a PS user since version 2. I have their Creative Cloud Suite with access to all the programs. I really resent the monthly bill! I resent even more their lack of response to obvious problems. Here are some suggestions. 1. Ability to change rulers to inches etc. and have the change become the default. 2. Too many steps to display two images (or more) on the screen. Look at How Adobe does this! 3. Drag and Drop from one image to another. Look at how Adobe does this. Copy and Paste isn’t the best way. Consider this; when the image is moved from its docked position, the box closes to the image bounds. 4. VERY IMPORTANT – Photoshop has a tool called QUICK MASK. (For old guys like me it is a digital Rubylith.) While the Selection Brush Tool works very, it is sometimes faster and more efficient to quickly switch back and forth using the Quick Mask when doing cutouts. 5. When using Refine Selection, there should be a selection button where you can SAVE the adjustments until you decide to change/quit saving. 6. If I have a CUTOUT image and want to place the CUTOUT in another image there isn’t a way to just drag it into the image is there? Also, here is something I just posted on the Adobe Family site. The continuing battle and the SILENCE on the part of Adobe may be a great indication of where they are putting their emphasis. (it may also tell you where their head is!) A better approach might be to purchase Affinity Photo, $50.00, and provide Affinity with input on what you want and don't want. Just like Eastman Kodak did before they went bankrupt, Adobe knows EXACTLY what they are doing!