jeremyrh

I’v e been away from home for the last week on a landscape photo workshop, and by way of experiment I’ve been using exclusively AP, instead of my usual combination with CaptureOne. The main problem I’ve encountered has been in shadow recovery. Whichever tool I use, whether it be the Adjustment or the Filter, and testing out a wide variety of parameters, I end up with a grey washed out soup, with no detail or contrast preserved. The only workaround I have found is to use the Tone Mapping persona, dial back the tone compression and use very modest local contrast enhancement. Typically I do this on a separate layer and experiment with the opacity to avoid the horrible “crunchy HDR” look. My question is - am I doing something really wrong, or is shadow recovery as bad as it seems? It’s easily a disappointment as otherwise I love the freedom that AP gives me to make detailed edits of my images. Comments gratefully received!!

I just imported an image, developed it, applied some adjustments and finally cropped it. Then I wanted to resize the canvas (intending to add a white frame). But!! After resizing the canvas the image appeared un-cropped. The other adjustments had been preserved. Confused!! What did I do wrong?

I posted this question in the desktop forum For posting on Instagram I make a jpg with short side 1080px and quality 75%. I don't see a way to make an export preset to do this, either in the usual Export dialog or in the Export persona. It seems like either a) I'm being dumb and the solution is right before my eyes, or b) AP is a bit deficient in this area. Experience suggests that the more likely answer is (a), so can anyone help me out and point out what I missed? and the answer was indeed (a) but I can’t see how to do similar on the iPad Can some kind soul please help me out? Thank you !!! .'

So - option (a) was the correct answer 🙂 In my defence, it never occurred to me that you can type your own stuff in the drop-down menu (bottom red circle) Thanks!!!

For posting on Instagram I make a jpg with short side 1080px and quality 75%. I don't see a way to make an export preset to do this, either in the usual Export dialog or in the Export persona. It seems like either a) I'm being dumb and the solution is right before my eyes, or b) AP is a bit deficient in this area. Experience suggests that the more likely answer is (a), so can anyone help me out and point out what I missed? Thanks!!!!!

Slightly related - apparently there is a difference between the App store version and the Affinity store version(*). Why is that? Would it be preferable to buy from Affinity and not the App store? (*) see this page from Topaz support: https://help.topazlabs.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001129351-Serif-Affinity-Photo-Using-Your-Topaz-Labs-Plug-ins

Thanks all - yes that keyboard modifier would be a game-changer 🙂

Talking to myself some more - it seems that the Blemish Removal tool works with the Pencil, so may be a good alternative to Clone Brush or Healing Brush.

Reading some more posts on this topic, I see that the "long press" is an Apple thing and can't be mimicked using the pencil. I wondered if maybe "opt-tap" with a BT keyboard would work, but apparently it does not. From my inexpert attempts to use this tool on iPad it feels more or less useless for skin retouching, which is a disappointment as I'd planned to use it on my iPad a fair bit with the arrival of the new M1 iPad Pro.

It seems that to select a source for cloning you have to use your fat finger, along with a loupe. Then you can use the pencil to define the destination. If you're retouching a portrait, for example, that means you have to switch from finger to pencil a hundred or so times, which is not exactly optimal. I'm wondering what is the thinking behind this choice of UI design? Are there any circumstances where it actually helps? It is quite discouraging, and pushes the user towards, e.g. the inpainting brush, which does not so such a good job in many circumstances. Any thoughts?

i have a large number of .icc profiles in my user/Color Sync/Profiles folder and AP does not recognise them - any idea why not? Maybe it only looks in the system-wide Color Sync ?? I can import the profiles as described above, so the profie files themselves are fine.

No luck - I'm not able to select any folders at all. Suspecting it's something to do with application permissions.

Thanks for your suggestions but whatever folder I select, it isn't added to the Search folder list. Maybe there's some subtle issue with permissions or something. I don't know 😞

They are installed in Applications. I am using Nik 3, latest version. I select the DxO folder but nothing gets listed in the blue box you show in your screenshot. I am using a 16" MBP so no issue with M1 🙂 ( Just checked and I can also use PL4 with no issues. Also use CaptureOne which also works fine with Nik plugins)

Trying to enable Nik plugins, but I think that is not the problem Using MacOS Big Sur and Affinity 1.8.6 From Preferences > Photoshop Plugins Click on Plugin Search Folders - Add Finder window opens, I select my DxO plugins folder, click OK Nothing changes in the Preferences window - no selected folder appears in a list. (see screenshot) What has gone wrong? Any ideas?