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Introduction I started another similar post titled "Using Affinity Publisher, Designer, Photo V2.40 as a Swiss Army knife program", but in this post I ask the question differently, could other programs use this same file format? And would Canva ever allow that? Canva could develop these other programs also. The afpub file can handle text, vector, and raster and so could be used in all kinds of programs There would be a big advantage in the world if the afpub file format would become the document standard in the world. It is proprietary but other proprietary file formats have become very standard like .doc, cdr, and indd. Imagine if the afpub format replaced both the docx and pdf format. The afpub file is no bigger than the pdf but the file is completely editable. This means that the same file can be used for editing and viewing just like the docx format. But the afpub file handles text, vector, and raster formats much better than docx. Also the frame based desktop publishing format results in much easier complex formatting than the word processing format. If an IFilter was created so that on the fly thumbnails and previews were created in Windows Explorer or The Finder for Apple computers, this would allow fast viewing of multiple files and multiple file text searching would be possible. Why should afpub become the document standard in the world? The best file format is the one that could become the most popular. The afpub files are small in size. They handle text, vector, and raster formats very well. The files are very fast to load. The programs needed to open them are reasonably lightweight. Some people think that only open source and free to use file formats should become standards but it takes teams of many people to do this job properly and create a reliable relatively bug free program or file format. All kinds of programs would be possible with afpub file format Some people think that Affinity Publisher is too complicated for average office workers to master. Canva or other software companies could develop simpler "light" programs for text, vector, and raster creation that had the same file format but were less complicated. All kinds of plugins could also be created also. Note taking programs similar to Obsidian could be created using the afpub format that would handle text, vector, and raster formats in one file, so no links or attachments would be needed, every note would be a single file. Everything done in a normal office would use afpub, notes, letters, reports, user manuals, papers, and books could be done in the format. Why do I care? I'm a futurist partly and like to both predict and promote things that makes sense for people to do in the world. Plus many other people are asking the same question, because they don't want to learn a program or create files if clients aren't going to want that. Popularity breeds more popularity. Presently we have Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and Adobe Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop that are standards in the world. Microsoft Word handles anything more complicated that plain text paragraphs poorly. Adobe Acrobat has line returns in text and so can't be used as the editing file format. Adobe Indesign, Illustrator, Photo files are far bigger in size than is necessary. The world would be a more efficient and productive place if the afpub file format replaced all these. The more people that use the afpub file format, the more likely that extras would be created and the more likely that this file format would become more popular and the more likely this file format would be around for many years to come. P.S. I did buy the Affinity Suite about 3 weeks ago and already recommended it to my brother who is working on another book, and to two people at a funeral I was at yesterday, one who is also writing a book, and another who has just started a graphic design business.

Fair point. I am looking also at their Photo Reactor program which allows the user to create plugins which can be used to bridge to Photoshop. I'm hoping that it could provide a way to allow more Affinity Photo plugins to blossom into existence. The problem might be that there is no directly supported Macintosh version which obviously would limit their application. However, this is perhaps a discussion for a different thread.

Not even in 2D, be it web, print/corporate image, game graphic work, film, etc. Despite having lots of indy studios working with other software (Affinity and many more), the very high end, large firms, etc, it's pretty much Adobe (like Autodesk, Houdini, custom solutions in 3D/animation) territory. Despite being a fact that you can do a lot of high end work with Affinity (as you can with Blender in 3D, but until film companies start doing large productions using Blender, that area of the field is exclusive of certain tools. The technical capability of the tool is only part of the equation). I think Canva is well aware of the current market for Affinity. And IMO, they might want to add new niches or increase/evolve some. As for knowing about Canva (I'm talking about several comments, not just this quoted text) I very well knew about its existence since very long ago. When working with small business owners, and not only having them as clients, also watching and reading material related to marketing, business matters, etc, Canva is everywhere. Tons of times I have handled stuff for some step needed in these users and companies' Canva based workflows, or added/fixed stuff which they started there. It quite makes sense the addition, to empower and help it grow (so, the opposite future of what some predict), from what I have been seeing for a long time with Canva's users. I think they want to expand to a bit higher niche than their current, and compete there, or that their current users are increasingly needing more functionality. Or maybe both. Whether more or less integrated in Canva itself, that would be hard to know, right now. But that they really want that level of functionality and nuanced work, for me that's plain clear. About competing with Adobe... I said it earlier. I doubt any of the alternatives (including Affinity) is realistically hoping to dethrone any time soon the king of the industry (industries) in decades-long pipelines and ways of working which got established through decades in companies of all sizes, custom plugins, familiarity of high end firms and clients, etc. It is a huge ecosystem that, even if it wouldn't upgrade (but it upgrades, a lot, and very fast, I keep up to date with that, even if just a bit, enough to realize it), it would be extremely hard (or impossible) to be really threatened in the high and mid-high end (but... companies. Some freelancers are in my book very "high end", and I know a few that already moved fully or partially to Affinity). At least for some time. Honestly, though, Corel Draw and Xara have been strong competitors in certain areas many years before Affinity appeared, and are still alive, though slightly niche, not a serious worry for Adobe. But they have quite a chunk of users over the world. The same happens with specific apps for certain functionality, which are even better suited than Adobe's for certain activities, (specialized tools, I call them) but this did not put Adobe in danger, either, as a whole. Monopolistic players (monopolies are always bad for us) usually only have themselves as a threat, or regulation/governments, if anything. But Adobe is doing pretty well. Long plans can be ambitious, though (till some point, being realistic), the free for schools and non profits thing is really smart. If it is a strategy. If it is not, kudos for the gesture, anyway... that is similar to how Adobe and Autodesk made most of their huge user base. Not them directly, but it was already so common in many graphic workers' machines (in "that type of license", I don't condone it), even at companies, and I have seen huge industry standard apps and companies fall before (often due to their "way of the dodo" behavior more than by competitors' actions...ie, Mirai disappeared by its own). Like I never saw coming XSI would stop being the leader or a very key tool for the film industry, and it happened. Autodesk ended up "acquiring to eliminate" it, and so it happened (there was a serious overlap!! Maya and XSI, and 3D Studio till some extent), but people feared the same with Maya when this happened, as it was also acquired by Autodesk, too, while the same company acted very differently with Maya. This software had a huge users/companies base, was much a better tool for character animation than 3D Studio (although, 3DS was good for that with certain addons), had a solid foot in plugins, scripts, pipelines in animation (games and film) based companies, heavily production tested... and so, all this made no sense to kill it after acquired, so it kept strong and updated, despite all the dark predictions. There were also bad predictions with the buyout of Youtube by Google, back in the day (2006, if I remember well... 18 years ago....). More even the case as Youtube was losing money (btw, Twitch was acquired by Amazon, and it was also losing money. Did not kill it and still is the main game streaming platform), due to Youtube's servers costs in video and stuff, it was a non profitable company!. And that seems to have worked out darn well (in terms of numbers, or in convenience for Google), currently is the second search engine in the world, and many marketers think of it as the the best tool for promotion. Some of us had thought it would just close their offices, be done and that services similar to Vimeo would take over, as Youtube costs are immense. 18 years ago, though.... So, it's a mixed bag, not always in one direction. I dunno, people is free to think whatever, but I always think about if the buying company has an actual something that is really competing with the acquired product/service (and so, 'acquires to annihilate' ), or if, quite the opposite, needs badly what the acquired company has. Google knew that the future of content and promotion was in video, and Autodesk had no interest in killing the best (some would say that this was indeed XSI, though... I had the Foundation version. At least way less intuitive than Maya, in the UI, for new users) character animation tool available and so, lose all that business. But higher end is super hard to compete with, IMO. The way I see it though, many bosses that I had, small business clients, marketing departments, etc, have a very hard time trying to navigate through Illustrator and Photoshop UIs, while for them Canva is intuitive from the start (one of the main advantages of Affinity is also good UI), and they keep using it. That very low end (but massive! BTW, wasn't the number mentioned 175 million, not 100, neither 75?) market is where they have an enormous chunk of users, and I guess Adobe is not particularly happy about it. I am not saying that's a good or bad thing, but it is a fact, to me. [ About the "professional" thingy, well, at least in art, I have a Fine Arts degree, and besides I really learned painting much before going to college (almost free in my country), and a lot of people finishing those studies can't really draw or paint (sad, but it's that way), as it depends on certain level of personal effort and compromise, mostly, than in any academic studies (you can learn the same on your own! even if harder) and in a way you could say comparable to a master in the US, the fact is that I never considered that this made me a professional in any way. I think a professional is a person able to both solve the problems and do the activity required for an specific profile at a company or to cover a market niche successfully (if working by your own as a business owner or freelancer, etc). Also, a person that has the skills and training (by your own, with courses, or college) needed for what the job profile requires, and who has a background (knowledge and technical capabilities) good enough to adapt to any situation in that field. These skills are most likely coming from a mix of personal study and practice, and the actual professional experience. Still, in many jobs in programming, academic titles are required to even get to the interview, but IMO there's always a place for the individuals who are serious about their job, and good at it, with or without college studies. If not in one company, it's in another] About the main issue, I think a) there are other alternatives, but in terms of export for professional work, stability (yep, some of the competitors, which are very few in doing all what A. does, are a bit of a fest of bugs and lacking key features) and feature set, many of them are still behind what Affinity has. A very small few are in very good shape, though, but for a lot of the Affinity user base, price counts quite. I have paid even 2.5k for a software license decades ago, but these days people even doubt it when it is 300 - 800 $. The other alternatives and FOSS could be used, though, if Affinity ceased to exist (I mean, I certainly would use them). b) the possibility of Canva wanting Affinity to get a medium user ground is very likely, hence not much sense in putting all that money to not use what you just bought. They have absolutely nothing to have that functionality. And yep, I agree with those that think they will make it (even as an standalone suite of apps) highly connected with the cloud. I do not think they will trash the permanent buy possibility, as neither did Celsys, which keeps releasing a very nice ClipStudio full version once a year, for those willing to update it (I did, while I really did not need it, but it's affordable. Still, I like to have the freedom to decide not doing it). Affinity's presence now as an "alternative" on internet articles, forums, reddit, etc, is huge (as Canva's. IMO, some people here did not know about Canva because we are immersed in our bubble of usage, and rarely need to go outside that, it is happening also a bit with social media) and mainly the whole user base is about the permanent purchase option. So, I don't see Canva going against that, it would not be wise from a business perspective, if it would mean losing 2.5 (random number) of the 3 millions users, and surely all the marketing that made Affinity big, once they'd make such thing. So, nah, I don't think they will.

@William Overington William, if I may be so bold, I suggest you contact Serif/Canva regarding your idea and see if they would be interested in it. Or, if your idea truly has merit, you could write a plugin for Adobe Photoshop and sell it on any marketplace online. I believe Photoshop plugins can be used in Serif software but do not know anything about creating them or any limitations. Here is a link to more information. You could also suggest to Serif/Canva that they develop a plugin program for their products that would enable interested parties to develop and sell plugins that specifically take advantage of Serif/Canva products and their unique functionality. Best regards, henryanthony

When buying the whole suite, the Studio Link feature in Publisher is SUPER powerful. It would make things even greater if this functionality would encompass 100% of the separate other two apps, now it is only 95%. Such as slices in AD, and Photoshop plugins in AP, and perhaps one or two other features. Its almoost there, it would be great if in the future Affinity would be able to be just 1 super flexible super app thats all that is needed ..Why have 3 apps when most people buy all and could use practically all features in the super app Publisher (maybe better called 'Affinity Suite/Collection' or so.. It is currently not the most logical implementation, that Publisher has Photo and Designer, but Designer does not have Publisher, but does have Photo.. Then one could buy the seperate apps and have only that app in the left top corner, if one buys all, one simply has 3 icons in the top left with full features. Or if one buys two one has two icons.. Would be much more clean & intuitive

I have sent the developers of Font Explorer X a request to develop plugins for Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher but I need your help if we want to see this happen. Font Explorer is an application that auto-activates fonts for applications, and is a must have for designers who use hundreds of fonts. Please contact Font Explorer and let them know you are interested in there being a plugin for Affinity products. They have developed plugins for Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop and they work really well. However, they will not develop a plugin for Affinity unless we show there is a demand for plugins. The developers of Font Explorer X can be reached here: twitter @FontExplorerX web http://www.fontexplorerx.com/contact email: info@fontexplorerx.com Thanks everyone!

Running 2.3 on Asus VivoBook 15 AMD Ryzen 7 with 20gb ram. My photoshop plugins run in Photoshop, and used to run in earlier versions of V2, but now they ldon't even appear in the filters>plugins menu. When I go to the menu the filters drop down window just closes. I have tried deleting the old path to the plugins and instead going straight to the PS 24 plugin folder, but that hasn't worked. I think I may have asked this question before, if so I apologise. Anyone have any idea about why this is happening (or rather not happening) and how it can be fixed? Thanks

It's a Photoshop plugin. Affinity claims to be able to load Photoshop plugins. Shouldn't this one work too?

I have a load of Photoshop shape files I've collected over the years and it always bugged me that there wasn't an easy way to import each .csh file into Affinity, especially now I have got rid of Photoshop all together. Fortunatley I saved all my PS plugins and shape files before uninstalling. I have just found a website which lets you upload the .csh files and then you can download each shape as a .svg vector image. It is then a slightly laborious process of open each vector svg file in Affinity and adding them to your Assets. Here's where you can upload your PS shape files: https://www.photoshopsupply.com/vector/csh-to-svg

Like its predecessor Serif PhotoPlus, Affinity Photo only supports Filter plugins (i.e. not Automation, File Format, or any of the other plugin types supported by Adobe Photoshop).

Hi, I made an account specifically to request this as it's a very important feature to me, and currently the only thing tying me to Adobe. I work with 3d models and textures a lot. As such, I spend a lot of time creating and editing files in the .dds file format. Too much time to go out and externally convert the files each time I want to make a change. Photoshop doesn't have native support for this file format either but there are a couple of plugins that allow the usage of it. Namely the one from intel and two from nvidia. I know affinity photo does have photoshop plugin support but everything that I've seen points to Affinity Photo not supporting these specific plugins so I was wondering. Would it be at all possible for .dds support to be added at some point, and if not natively. Would it be possible to get any of these plugins to work. Ultimately I like the look of Affinity photo but I just cant use it without this file format being available unfortunately.

Hi I have an iMac desktop. I have just bought and upgraded to Affinity Photo 2.4.0 and also bought Topaz photo AI 2.4.0. I want to use Topaz as a plug in to Affinity. Topaz has simple instructions on how to do this (edit-preferences-photoshop plugins- allow unknown plugins…..) Unfortunately this doesn’t work on the Mac with the most recent Affinity version. I have found Affinity2- settings-photoshop plugins - but then I get this (see picture) what do I do next?? I should say I describe myself as a computer user. I am not terribly proficient so need clear instructions. Thanks Sue

Serif have never claimed that all Photoshop plugins work in Affinity Photo, some do, some don't!

I think PUBLISHER's internal Photoshop mode already has all the functions except for plugins, exports, and development roles. Most of the time, there is no need to open Affinity Photo separately. I think this should also be the correct usage of Affinity's three in one workflow.

Thank you for the pledge - we are big "Grain of Salt" here due to the real world effects of Maxxon taking Zbrush, that CEO of Unity, etc. And this is for real products not franchises and hobbies - better not get started there. Most of the time - IRL - when a corporate entity comes in the product is DESTROYED or downgraded and sucked DRY. Even if they seem to want to chase their customers away. Reason? Short-selling stock. Apparently they can "Bet against the team" even if they set it to RUIN and not get jailed for criminal fraud. Source - Gamestop early 2021 where it got in the news because some Redditors countered their plot - though the stock brokers bailed them out. Or my own eyes having managed a store during the recession and being one in fifty that made a profit had some vicious middle manager sent in to wreck it. We could at the very least do a mass letter and call/email to our officials and hamstring the bailouts, tax breaks. In the USA lobbyists give $70K for every $1 in bribes, but when they do get attention they demand lots of money to do nothing. And there is competition and even if not well if you turn it into a pricey subscription model, might as well go back to Adobe... I'd rather go forwards - As long as 1 and 2 are followed I'm with you tenatively. My big issue again - Auto trace - want it back and better. Just tell them to dust off the old files, old source code, etc. More innovations and yes I'd PAY for them in the upgrade: A - Photoshop brushes, filters, plugins - Work on getting them to work. DAZ really butchered Poser doing this. B - (should be easy) LUT browser and preview C - Ai - NOT for Art (shut up luddites) but for training and feedback D - hyper privacy so they can work with data but no way of detecting individual users or spying on them even if wanted to - 100% waring "You are not in privacy mode, in training mode" on screen in case of any necessary research. This gets to where #4 interests me: I'm taking some AI classes and refreshing myself on programming. Not high skill but these tools are incredible and I'm seeing tons of usage for them already. Now we don't need to put innocent little sprites through harrowing mazes but what IF we used a learning module and gave it access to features of the software and then gave it feedback...? This also means improving the sliders and options. Then the thing's brain is trained by positive/negative feedback and fueled by keywords. I don't mean a machine that is true AI/AGI but can break down the colors and shapes and user added tags - then process requests at first crudely then take feedback and keep feeding the system. Then the learning modules are created work and useful in the main software and could be as easy as "I want to turn this into a comic book illustration" and it'd even partially flatten and stretch/modify. Or "I want this to look like a 70s Grindhouse movie", "I have 3DCG people, make it look like a real photograph" This is stuff I do WITH my human non artificial intelligence but it could be codified using modern AI modules without needing a supercomputer -rather, by Xer standards we all have a Cray Supercomputer or better on our desks now! End users would then work with their own systems and have their custom AI modules saved (back it up offline, people) so if a crash/new computer/lockdown virus you pop it back in. These personal modules would be based on their own feedback and training. And yes they'd help the module but reasonable paranoia make it so general data is still optional AND its anonymized in a way you couldn't peek if you wanted to. Working with us - the users - we could improve this into something really next level. We could also turn this into a custom "Ai Upscaler" competing with the few working good but pricey modules on the market now. No "Dis" to them they are good but the ones that work pretty pricey. And users that put in a lot of work for modules get credit and free upgrades or shares? Anyways we are very cautious here - but we'd like this to be good and improve going forward. Most of the anti-Ai people are the "AiArt turk mur jurrb!" scardeys - and we don't really need an "AiArt module" already easy and fun to use affinity photo to correct bad fingers and such. But machine learning can make its ability to modify photos and objects and setup documents go next level and the purpose of this type of software is to do just that.

If you buy from Apple (i.e. through the Mac App Store) their sandboxing means that some functionality may be unavailable to you. Off the top of my head I’m only aware of problems with Photoshop-compatible plugins in Affinity Photo, so it’s possible that Publisher is unaffected by such things. Having said that, neither the MAS nor the Affinity Store is able to continue to sell version 1 of Affinity Publisher.

Hello, I would like to test the plugins from Retouch4me (retouch4.me). The plugins are designed for Photoshop. I have installed the software but not sure how I can active the plugin in Affinity Photo. Any idea ? Thanks Philippe

Not far ago I bought Affinity Photo and received not only great software but good old feelings about working with it. I mean those feelings when you opened a Christmas present in childhood and received a toy which you play all day long and forget about time. But now I'm an adult and rarely get this feeling, especially with modern software which has become almost all subscription based and rent oriented. And I don't want to even mention the ridiculous model “pay for time when you use it on a day by day basis”. As an adobe subscriber for more than 5 years it's such a relief not to have Damocles' sword in a form of year (or month) withdrawal just for using basic functions which were introduced in 2010 and haven't changed much after. As a CG artist I can surely say that Affinity Photo has all I need and more than that. But when I discovered non-destructive adjustment layers (oh hold me tighter!) I was so impressed that the smile of excitement didn't leave my face for a couple of hours. What a wonderful ability! Photoshop always gots me mad that I can't step down and make corrections without breaking the layer stack and guessing every time new settings (highpass, blur, denoise and much more). And when it was wrong you must repeat this harmful process again. Then I try to do the same thing in Affinity. Same texture refinement process as I did it before hundred of times (with bunch of denoise, blur, highpass and a lot of colour correction with blending), but in a non-destructive way. My amazement came when I picked Inpainting Brush, returned to the main pixel layer and cleaned some dirty spots. And all this happened with real time update to every layer which was added to this stack. I swear, I`ve seen real magic! Of course this operation was a little bit laggy, which is more than acceptable for a 16 megapixel texture map. But it all happened in real time! And more than this, I could easily return to any layer and just tune the sliders and see every change on a final image. Wow! And masks… What a miracle Live Masks is! With the ability to combine them with every mask I want in a non-destructive way. No 3-rd party plugins needed, no unrecoverable files, no constant crashes. Just charming. Now I am at the beginning of my discoveries, but even now I am so happy that I finally use this powerful software. Affinity Team, you're amazing!

I just updated to 2.3.1 and all plugins are greyed out. I had the .msix installer, tried the .exe installer. Removed every plugin I don't use (although every plugin worked fine before updating). I verified settings -> Photoshop Plugins -> Allow "Unknown plugins to be used was enabled. I tried removing any possible duplicate listings. Win 11 Ver. 23H2 Build 22631.3007

I'd like 3rd party plugins in studio link instead of having to use edit in Photo. Thanks

My work is trying to cut down on costs and it looks like we might be able to use affinity going forward, but we will need two plugins specifically to work: Topaz Photo AI Canon touchstone engine - this one is a legacy extension installer you can find on canon's graphiplaza website Im unable to get either to work so far, i can get the topaz plug in to show up, but it remains greyed out no matter what the color space is. The canon touchstone engine is some kind of installer that shows up I am using an apple silicon mac, if that effects anything. It would be amazing if we could get these two plug ins running because this program does everything else we need, and we just need that last little push to get going.

@Mouste63 Affinity Photo n'offre qu'une prise en charge limitée des plugins Photoshop. Cela n'est pas dû à Serif, mais au fait que les plugins accèdent à des fonctions de Photoshop qui n'existent pas dans Affinity Photo. Les développeurs de plugins devraient mettre à disposition des plugins compatibles avec Affinity Photo.

Affinity Photo isn't a clone of Photoshop, it doesn't have a lot of the filters Photoshop has, so you have the only version, there is no derivative, what you see is what you get. You can use the procedural texture filter and you can also check out the resource section of this website for texture brushes: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/11-resources/ @StuartRc is a prolific creator of texture brushes and is very generous in sharing them in the resource section. There are plugins out there that you can add to Affinity that will create texture, like FilterForge, Exposure Softwares Eye Candy - although dwarfed by FilterForges range of filters.

Hi @Jacqueline, The current installation method for Photo V2 (.EXE or MSIX) shouldn't have any impact on whether or not you can link 3rd party plugins with Photo 2, this only matters vice versa (E.G Linking a 3rd party program like Capture One to launch Photo 2). In the case of the Nik Collection plugins, this can be linked via the Preferences > Photoshop Plugins interface you referenced earlier, make sure 'Allow unknown plugins to be used' is ticked and then press 'Add'. This will launch a windows explorer interface where you can navigate to the directory where you installed the Nik Collection Plugins, typically the default location is C:\Program Files\DxO\Nik Collection. Once you've linked the installation directory close the interface and restart the app, upon restart Photo should have detected the plugins available in this folder for use. However due to the varying standards of 3rd party plugins it's not guaranteed that every Photoshop plugin will work with Photo, in the case of the Nik Collection 1/2018 according to DxO's official compatibility page the Nik Collection 1 is not compatible with Photo 2, it's only the Nik collection 5 and above are compatible. You may find that as a result of this even if the plugins are detected, they're not guaranteed to work unfortunately. See the bottom of DxO's support page for the full compatibility table linked here: https://support.dxo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4409304781201-Nik-Collection-compatibility-with-OSes-third-party-software Plugins help: https://affinity.help/photo2/English.lproj/pages/Filters/plugins.html

My old path names for Photoshop Plugins were very long. I have successfully installed them from new shorter paths BUT I am now unable to remove the old long path names from the search paths in Settings as the Delete button is scrolled off the screen due to the long path name.