Don - NZ

Hi Walt OK and thanks Walt. Blocking duplicates would explain it. I was trying to recreate my Photoshop Bevels style sets and hadn't noticed that the rejected styles were duplicates except for the Photoshop "Technique" options (of Smooth, Chisel Hard & Chisel Soft) that Affinity doesn't offer.

1) Currently appears to be limited to five user styles per category. Suggest removing the limit. 2) Also suggest allowing Style Categories to be listed in an expanding/collapsing tree structure. Allow dragging categories into a folder tree structure (PS Example) Eg: Don's Styles Bevels Drop Shadows Rather than being all mixed up on the same level with whatever defaults Affinity offers (Affinity Sample) Eg: Bevels Default (Offered as standard by Affinity) Don's Styles Drop Shadows.

Very impressed with demo videos on Luminar4 especially the new features like AI Skin Enhancer, AI Portrait Enhancer, AI Sky replacement and AI Structure. I live in hope that Affinity V2 will include similar interfaces, especially the AI Skin Enhancer and AI Portrait Enhancer. Keep up the good work guys. https://skylum.com/luminar-l4?utm_expid=.rdtPQvZ1R1SU5G6kNcdS-A.0&utm_referrer=

Hi Sean Sorry for the delay, but the computer room suffered a water leak in the ceiling yesterday. I have played around with this some more and it seems to me that it arises when a program has to decide how to map an image pixels to that of the screen dpi. If you push the magnification high enough, then all three programs start to introduce a gray line of pixels somewhere on a stroke or outline - usually on the inside of the stroke/outline (but not always) as they make a decision about how to handle an image pixel to screen dpi relationship (that is not an exact match). Even PS starts to show this around the 1400% magnification. Just when and where this appears, appears to depend partly on the screen resolution (mine is 2560x1400), the on-screen magnification and someone's decision on how to map image pixels to screen dpi. I doubt we will ever get to the bottom of this, it is just unfortunate that whilst Ver1.6 doesn't exhibit it at my combination of settings and normal viewing levels, Beta 1.7 does. I guess the real answer is to simply create any stroking or outlining again in the final program and just be thankful that Affinity has done such a good job otherwise in opening psds. Please consider it closed and we will see what the final release does. (PS How did you get the yellow and magenta chequering up)?

Hello Chris Embarrassed - I can't repeat it today - everything is now behaving as it does in Ver1.6 (being able to nominate the layer required), yet the other day, I was getting blocked every time I tried to record a macro and select the top layer and the one below it. They are the same two images, so there must have been something unusual that occurred to trigger the behaviour but so far I can't think what. Please consider the issue closed until I come across it again.

The attached psd file opens correctly in Affinity Ver 1.6, but in Beta V1.7, the second layer (black stroked) is shifted one pixel to the right and one pixel down. (None of the other layers in the original were visibly affected). Interestingly, if even just this one layer is consolidated (Shift,Ctrl,Alt & E) into a new top layer in Photoshop, then Affinity Beta V1.7 displays it correctly aligned. I have attached the Birthday Card consolidated.psd file. If you open this in Ver1.7 and switch the top (consolidated) layer on and off, you will see the affect of the incorrect shift in the stroked layer. If Ver 1.6 can handle this correctly, then so should Ver 1.7. Birthday Card consolidated.psd

Hi Steday The problem with a batch job is that it only exports, it does not work the photos over as well. PS allows me to write a macro that: Put a new layer at the top Compress everything into it (Shift, Ctrl, Alt & E) Stroke it with a red border Expand the background slightly (to stop Apple from over-zooming image on iPad) Nominate the expansion background colour Save the file to a specific folder, nominating jpg & quality Close the original psd without saving the changes I then run the macro as a batch job in Adobe Bridge and only have to load the photos once. Affinity 1.6 does 1,2,3,4 &7. It does allow me to add an extra layer immediately below the compressed layer and fill that with black (as a workaround to point 5). Affinity 1.7 Beta appears to no longer allows me to do even point 1, nor the Ver 1.6 workaround to point 5. Completely stymied at this stage, unless I have missed something. In Affinity1.6, at best, I would have to load the images twice, once for tweaking the appearance and size (1,2,3,4,5 &7) with a macro and once more as a batch to export them. You can do anything when there are only a few pictures, but with a thousand to do.... I should perhaps add that the photos have to be selected, not every photo in a folder qualifies for the same macro. I do in fact have several macros, a landscape orientated picture, a portrait orientated picture, a no stroking required option and one where no resizing is required as they fall into Apple's recognised photo ratios and are not over-zoomed.

In Ver1.6, I could select the top layer and Affinity would seek confirmation that I wanted to "Select layer 1from top" [1st jpg]. I could then add a pixel layer above that, consolidate all the layers, then outline it by 5 pixels and fill that inwards (creating a red stroked edge). I could then expand the canvas (which unfortunately left a white expansion instead of the required black - another required enhancement). However I could get around that by then adding a new pixel layer directly below the top (consolidated and stroked) layer using "Select layer 1 below current" [2nd jpg] and fill that with black. In Ver1.7 , I am blocked from accessing the top layer [3rd jpg]. After clicking on the various layers, the best I can finally find is an option that allows me to select the parent layer - but that doesn't seem to allow me to achieve what I could above. Not sure what you are trying to achieve, but you have completely blocked my requirements and what is currently working just fine for me in Ver 1.6.

Please allow us to set the canvas extension colour - with defaults for black, white, foreground, background and custom colours. I was able to work around this even in a macro, but it would have been so much simpler just to be able to tick, say, black in a dialogue box.

Hi Chris - I also ran up against this and downloaded 1.7 to no avail, in case more work had been done. Your Macros did what I needed until I came up against the fact that they can't record an export. With a thousand pictures to run through the macro and out to export/save as, I was forced to revert to using that other program. Please extend macros to include export/save/save as functionality.

Hello Walt I have had a play with the snapping manager and the arrange button and neither comes even close to what PS is doing. The snap manager is the equivalent tool but I couldn't get any combination to do anything even close to what PS 2019 is doing by default. I guess you really need to see PS smart guides in action - it is almost uncanny how they got it exactly right (for me anyway). Snap manager simply needs to be reworked - (it is like version 1.6 versus version 20) - which is surprising as when Affinity Photo include functionality, they invariably seem to do things better. ------------------------------- Hello Walt - bit of an update... I now realise that these are called Dynamic guides in Affinity and whilst they are quite crude in Ver 1.6, after playing around with Ver 1.7, I have found that they have already been extensively reworked in the beta and are now the equivalent of what is in PS 2019. My only suggestion now would be that the green and red lines (indicating alignment with something on either the x or the Y axis) can be somewhat hard to see. PS uses a very easily seen colour and I would like to be able to define the colour in Affinity, perhaps to something like R255,G0,B255 - which does not normally exist in one's photos!

Just came across these in PS CC2019 and they are particularly brilliant for aligning text labels on several photos within a canvas (and, indeed, even tweaking the alignment of various sub-pictures and shapes). Yes, I drag out guidelines to align several pictures on a canvas, but these take it a (big) step further and appear only when required.

Yes, I see that and thanks, but I wanted something that used, and, if necessary, created thumbnails as soon as you introduced it to a folder, not after opening and saving each photo. All sorted now.

Thanks for that and I have bookmarked it. However SageThumbs has settled down after a reinstall.

Hi Walt Unfortunately, I couldn't find any other up to date codecs. Microsoft appears to have last updated (my) rw2 type in 2014 and no longer updates them. I tried some, like XnView shell extensions to no avail and took them off again. However, even better, after all my testing this morning I reinstated SageThumbs and for some strange reason, the portrait orientated jpgs now have the correct ratio and all these programs that make use of SageThumbs efforts now also display them correctly. I am now a very happy camper!