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Hello For real estate work, I need to open several images as layers and blend them together for the final image. My workflow is mostly in Lightroom but I'd like to use Affinity Photo for the blending of different layers. The "classic" way is to select the images in Lightroom and use the function "Open as layers in Photoshop...". Is there a efficient workflow to do that with Affinity Photo as well? As a workaround, I currently select multiple images in Lightroom and open them as single images in Affinity Photo. Then I manually copy and paste all layers into one image. It works but is quite time consuming. Thank you very much for your support!

From the first day AP was released for Windows (even the beta) I was desperately trying to make AP work for me .... I wanted AP to be the THE (first real) alternative for PS (considering I couldn't find enough swear words for Adobe and their cloud policy). I was accepting and reporting all bugs you obviously had to expect from a sw that complex. I was trying to make the product better as quick as possible by generating test cases, videos to show bugs and even offering Serif my support in development and localisation. And seeing the sw that had great features, good customer support, a big crowd of (active) fans and users - what could go wrong to make AP the new PS in a long term? As you can see I'd do everything to make this baby mine. One can hardly approach a product more positively than I did with AP ... After all that time I see myself closing PS6 tonight working on a customer project and I'm asking myself: why do I still not(!) use AP? AP actually hast most (>95%) of the functions I frequently use in my daily work as a photographer. Even the plugins work in AP. Some functions are even more powerful than in PS6. Still I don't even think of AP when it comes to productive work for customers. And it's not because I'm used to PS ... not because it's a habit - there are very real reasons for it. Some of them I often mentioned before but serif keeps ignoring them up to the stage of not even bother to make any kind of comment. So I though I'd open this topic and bring my issues (again) to the attention of serif staff and other users ... maybe I'm not the only one. To find some good examples for my problems I decided to take a current project that requires stacking (where I feel AP is a lot easier with than PS). 7 RAW pictures that require alignment and focus stacking to adapt different areas of the picture. And what I'm describing now is not an exception ... things I describe are not necessarily reproduceable ... but it does not happen with ANY OTHER PROGRAM I use on my machine (just for those who already start blaming the state of my system as a scapegoat!). And whenever I start AP known and new things like that happen. I'm using lots of memory and disk space ... a still reasonably quick graphics card and processor on Win 7! After taking some time for reading the 7 big RAW files, aligning them and doing the focus stacking I get the processed picture. As well as a source list including all of my stacked single pics and the resulting pic. I add a levels filter and a curve filter to the file. Already after adding the curve filter the histogram is not displayed any more. I know this bug. It has been reported quite a while ago by me (and maybe other people) - apparently wasn't looked after. This does not always happen ... and is not clearly reproduceable, but since levels and curve setting are pretty useless unless you can see the histogram (except for those who do not know what they are doing) it is a bit of a bummer. Certainly knowing that it can only be solved by saving the picture and restarting AP. So I skipped this step and clicked on the first single stacked picture in the displayed list. First of all not even the focus did change to the newly selected picture I clicked on. 5 Seconds later AP completely disappeared and Lightroom was the active application (first I thought AP did crash, but it did not ... it just completely lost it's focus) ... so by clicking the task list I could get it back ... the behaviour interestingly was reproduceable. Now going to the develop persona and coming back to the photo persona the "source list" was reduced to one file called "untitled". Where did all the 8 files disappear to? OK, better don't ask. Now I want to compare the newly stacked picture with another similar picture I took. So I decide to undock the current window. Really a bad idea ... the new window does not resize but moves somewhere mostly outside the current working area. (Just as ONE example: when I do this in PS the new window resize to the layer size and displays with a certain distance at the top left corner of the workspace. PS comes with ready made presets for windows alignment. PS allowns a window to adapt to the picture size all the time. With AP it takes me ages to adjust this new window to the working area I'd like to have. And believe me I really tried hard to get it working or to adapt to this ridiculous user-hostile attitude - no chance. For those who did not get it yet: There is a good reason why the PS Window Menu has more than 25 additional commands for window adjustments - it's not because they had nothing else to do!) But many other things really set me up .... it's this lack of responsiveness of the UI (sometimes) ... you sometimes can drag sliders and they will not move ... or maybe with significant delay (seconds later). Sudden changes of focussed windows for reasons I don't understand (so you have to click in the window again you want to work in). Trying to confirm an action e.g. in a Windows UI manner (pressing Enter if you want to confirm a setting) and nothing will happen. Lacking "OK" and "Cancel" buttons so dialogs will remain open unless you find this tiny cross at the top. Settings I can't save (standard values in dialogs), paths AP will not remember (saving a picture where I loaded the original from). The export persona tries successfully to hide my user setting for standardised output format (bi-cubic,sRGB, JPG) as the last(!) entry in an extensive long list of useless "Standard" setting ... and it makes me search my standard setting for EACH picture I do export ... it seems to me like Serif is challenging my stamina and endurance in so many ways. I could go on and on on theses topics... my conclusion and answer to the question "why there's still no love" would be the following: Serif build an high performance Aston Martin Sports car ... but when you want to open the door you break your finger nails, the steering wheel is covered with nettles and the safety belt will come loose while driving. The gas pump nozzle is mounted in the middle of the roof, the bonnet occasionally opens while driving and it takes 15 switches 3 hooks and an armoured metal plate to get to the opener for the boot as well as many other obstructions. In a race against the Adobe Maserati it can easily keep up, is quicker in some curves sometimes even drives offroad ... But what car do you like to drive and will you choose to drive to work? Sadly Serif does not realise, understand nor care for these essentials at all! They can't stop celebrating AP won races (now on an iPad) ... and seem to forget that there a people around need to use the car on a daily base ... I'm not waiting for Affinity Publisher ... I'm waiting for AP to get a daily working horse! Cheers, Timo All descriptions refer to the latest final Version 1.5.2.69

Hey Affinity team, First and foremost, congrats on the great gig at the WWDC17!! Now, I have searched for this feature... ok only for like 20 min. however I couldn't find anything that would indicate that this already exists or is planed to be introduced. If it does, a hint would be great and I'll go back to my box ;-). I can also imagine that it will be all the way on the bottom of your list but here it goes, my first request or better wish :-). I would really like to be able to zoom to where the mouse is. This is available through ought the entire macOS workflow that you can, at least with the Magic Mouse, just double tap on an item and you zoom mouse centred. This is a fantastic feature when you zoom out to be going over your work and find something here and there you would like to adjust. So: Working close on a detail -> double tap -> zoomed out to some previous % -> go with the mouse on an item you identified to be edited further -> double tap -> zoomed in again. I understand that the zoom level might be to high or low but at least you are within the vicinity of where you want to go as of currently you just zoom in to the last selected spot or some random place of the canvas. This is at least my experience. Again if this exists in some way I am happy to learn :-). Cheers, JMS

Actions are an option. Is there a way to set a default stroke size?...it is 0.2 pts, but I am using primarily 1 pt. Any other tips will be helpful.

I'm making a concerted effort to shift from LR/Photoshop CC to Affinity. Not only do I have the Affinity Photo desktop but now the iPad version too. One issue remains: how to handle my 80,000 images that are catalogued in LR? Once I cancel my Adobe CC subscription, I'll have 80,000 stray images? The Lyn app is okay, but not enough. Very much would appreciate other ideas. Thank you.

Now that Affinity Photo for iPad is out, and since Apple's iCloud, Photos, photo libraries, camera roll, etc., etc., confuse me a bit, (what's going where, and when?!?!) any chance that you might do a video on the interactions of AP for Mac and iPad and all those Apple functions? How can they be brought together into a nice workflow? If you've already posted such a tutorial, sorry. Thanks.

Hello, A functionality like InDesign's quick apply or Slack's channel switcher would be a great addition. Some things I imagine it could incorporate: swap between persona's access menu-items insert named assets and symbols apply object-, text- and paragraph-styles apply macro's apply layer effects select layers by typing its name jump to an artboard by typing its name apply a swatch by typing its name I'm looking forward to your feedback! Best regards, Bauke

Hey Guys, I would love some advice about workflow RE doing a Batch process in Affinity and then being able to fine tune each photo afterwards - to individually tweak the settings applied in the batch process. Any ideas? Thanks!

I wonder if there's any logical reason why very simple but essential settings in AP and AD can't be saved and made available again? When I call filters, functions and file pathes I want my last settings to be availbale next time again. This is even more ridiculous since many filters always start with completely useless settings (e.g. "Unsharp Mask" or "Gaussian Blur" with a radius setting of 0) and get resetted to these values again and again! I want MY settings available - not only in the same document but in the same session and even next time I open the programs. This is not hard to impelment but essential for even a basic workflow of someone who wants to use the program as a working horse on a daily and professional base. I wonder why so elementary topics are constantly ignored by the development?? Is the project only driven by feature nerds instead of serious users? Getting really upset and finding myself for my daily work still using PS CS6 because these kind of essential workflow topics (USABILITY!) are simply lacking or not working anyway near seamless.Just be sure, there is a reason why adobe does it this way! You are in the lucky situation to come up with new and different approaches than existing dinosaurs in the market - but be sensible enough to copy those properties that are the result of decades of handling and customer workflow experience! getting slightly grumpy over the time, Timo

Hi Affinity team. During the last days I tested the Windows version of Affinity Photo 1.5.1 and checked out those parts most important to me: RAW processing, HDR/Tone mapping and stitching Panoramas. (The video tutorials are great for newbies concerning your software.) I am happy to see all these features under a common hood and working reasonably well (although there are issues like the wrong histogram displayed in Develop persona which will refrain me from using Photo as default RAW software for now.) What I want to achieve: For years now I'm accustomed to create HDR images from a single RAW file instead a series of JPG or RAW files. The benefit is that there are no problems with motion (and thus ghosting) in the image, and no softness as a potential side-effect of the automatic alignment of handheld shots. Today's DSLR cameras create RAW images which can easily compensate 3 EV steps. (Depending on sensor size and ISO, the downside can be higher noise in dark areas, but that's acceptable for me.) My conventional approach is to develop 3-5 differently exposed JPG images (usually with different noise reduction settings) and then creating the HDR from these. This approach is very cumbersome with Affinity Photo, which does not even remember the RAW conversion settings I last used by default. Once a RAW file is developed, the Develop persona is closed and I have to start over for the next exposure. (In contrast to a dedicated raw converter like Canon's DPP or Nikon's NX-D where this is a no-brainer and easily done.) But maybe Affinity has a better approach? What if you could develop the raw file and apply a tone mapping without JPGs inbetween? Lets see, Photo Persona works in 32 bit, and RAW files can be developed to 32 bit HDR. Sounds promising. 1. I import the RAW file, disable applying the tone curve and leave the exposure-related settings untouched. 2. Then I put the developed 32 bit image into the Tone mapping persona -> Voilá, a developed HDR image. And what if I have a panorama of single RAW images which needs HDR processing? 1. You can start a "New batch job", select the RAW files to process and choose EXR as output format. 2. Then you can continue creating the panorama with "New panorama" and select the EXR files as shown in the HDR panorama video tutorial. 3. After the panorama has been stitched, it can be tone mapped in the Tone Mapping persona. Cool - this is a real time saver and more flexible regarding adjustments compared to my previous workflows which would mean first tone mapping every HDR image and then stitching the (hopefully equally exposed) JPGs together. Matthias.

With the amount of awesome brushes being created for the community, it is becoming clear that the need to organize and separate out favourite brushes is the logical next step. Not sure how best to do this, and maybe just concentrating on the brushes panel for now, as opposed to an "app wide" solution might be the way to go. A simple "save as favourite" system would be a good start, eventually with the ability to move, group and reorganize in one panel or even multiple panels or panel sub structure for various workflows - texturing, blocking, detailing, dots etc....?

It'd be great if the OCIO node would support the OCIO family attribute to organise spaces where they belong. That way we wouldn't have to scroll through the contract of San Venganza every time but could quickly pick the category and see all relevant spaces at a glance. Similar to how you support FontBook categories. Big plus would be to recognise the roles attribute as well.

Hello! I can't seem to find information on moving symbols from one project to another. I recently reached a wall in designing multiple UX screens for an app. I had so many artboards and objects in my project that it was slowing the application down to a crawl. I took half the artboards and moved them to a new project and the app ran beautifully again. I would like to copy the symbols I created to the new project. Is there a way to do this?

Hello, We're a startup and we currently use Sketch. Our processes look like this. Sketch > Upload to Zeplin > Add Zeplin notes > Developers. I'm a non-designer, but I participate in all phases, but I do not work on a Mac. So it's a hassle to change Sketch texts, titles, or copy, and I think it would be better going forward to if we worked on a system that was compatible with Windows. I'm wondering if anyone can describe to me some great Affinity workflows for developing applications, as well as the tools you use to share/store/deliver/comment the designs? Thanks everyone! Robert

Hello. I’m considering Affinity Designer as replacement for my current Illustrator / Photoshop + Sketch ui design setup but could Affinity beat Sketch, actually, especially considering upcoming Sketch v43 with a new file format: https://medium.com/sketch-app-sources/sketch-43-is-coming-to-town-with-a-new-game-an-open-file-format-ae62e7e7c223#.581t0fpg5 ? Correct me if I’m wrong (haven’t practically tried AD yet, so don’t throw stones, please :) ) but I see Affinity mainly as “advanced” Sketch currently, something as transition between Sketch to Illustrator with web designing mode of Photoshop, so switching to AD partly depends on what could offer Sketch and what could answer Affinity and partly on advantages over Adobe CC. Speaking about about Adobe CC, main advantage is pricing, of course, but how does AD practically compare to Adobe CC + Sketch workflow in terms of efficiency, including integration with other tools, from your personal experience? Thank you.

Hello everyone! I'm new to the Affinity scene and love it so far. I've been a Lightroom user for years and decided that it's time to put the presets and sliders aside for a while and really take control of my editing. Enter Affinity. The purpose of this thread is to discuss workflows used when editing multiple photos from a photoshoot. I can't seem to figure out a truly effective way to edit 50+ photos without creating a mess. Any pointers, videos, web articles, or books are welcome. Thank you all for the support and I look forward to reading your responses.

I'm really enjoying Affinity Photo, but I'm struggling to manage my workflow, going back and forth between AP and other tools. This has me wondering: Do I lose anything if I go from one tool to another working with a layered PSD and never use the AP proprietary format? And if so, is what I lose minor enough to be worth the sacrifice? Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

I have just received news of the latest Adobe CC price hike, and I do not like it - it's a price rise too far. I have Affinity and played with it a bit and I like it a lot, but there are issues with it and my current workflow that have prevented me from taking it up as a mainstream editor. My current workflow is in Lightroom/Photoshop with plug-ins from Topaz and other independent providers. I use Lightroom to import and organise my work into virtual folders using keywords and presets. I use an iMac. My issues with Affinity are with photo organisation and plug-ins. Is there an independent, cheap or free photo organiser similar to Lightroom that uses keywords similarly to assemble virtual folders and import and organise workflow, and is compatible with Affinity? Why does Affinity not support all plug-ins from Topaz and when will it? I'd love to hear what users here use to get around these shortfalls?

I spend weeks without opening Photoshop, it's amazing! There are very, very few things I miss. I found most of them on the forum already, but nothing about how PS handles keyboard shortcuts, which is in my opinion better. Pressing a shortcut, say G, selects the Paint Bucket. If you want to select the Gradient, you have to go Shit+G, and now the shortcut cycles between Paint Bucket, Gradient... But G will always select the last tool used in that family. I have a feeling not everyone will agree, so please give us this as an option (use Shift to cycle tools of the same family) in Photo and Designer. ​Countless times I pressed B to make sure I had the Brush, and because of that switched tool! ​Thank you!

Hi everyone! I recently posted about my lack of knowledge concerning workflow but the kind guys who left a post there assumed that I DID have some sort of knowhow, and- the sad thing is that I (and I presume also many many others who had their socks blown off by this beautiful piece of software) have no idea whatsoever how to wade in... I have been taking photos for many years and have a big collection of raws, but up to now, have mainly limited myself to Picasa for JPEGs, and Lightzone and Adobes Lightroom for the past few months. And now- gorgeous Affinity... Where do I start? Yep- I know that there are great videos and I have gone through quite a few but they go over a specific setup, and I need even more basic than that- e.g: Do I play with white/black point before or after exposure? Why are there color controls in a b&w mix? Do I have to use all the controls? what is a live layer and do I have to use it? etc. etc. etc..... In other words- A course called "basic photo editing 101" Any ideas? Maybe there are a few videos out there for guys like me with low confidence issues? And if we're talking about videos (the guy who talks you through them is a real pro- kudos!) why arent they numbered in order of complexity?

Here's a tiny list of topics within Affinity Photo for Windows I'd like to address as important improvements that need implementation from a professional photographers point of view (Based on version 1.5.1.54 Final). I'm aware that some points have been mentioned by other useres already. It would be great to get some kind of feedback from serif staff with regards to the likelyhood of implementation. I'll try to extend this list when new topics come up. Please do not see most of these points as "nice to have" additions or "customer dreaming", but essential improvements required(!) for any kind of professional workflow. The list does not cover obvious minor or major bugs as they get tracked by serif staff anyhow I suppose. As well I'm aware that some of my suggestions have already internally been rejected and implemented differently as "By Design" - maybe there's a chance to reconsider this decisions. A suggestion could be to start a discussion in the forum with your customers to see what's their preferred way to handle the implementation. Basic workflow/Window handling: - When undocking a document window from the workspace it should automatically adapt document window to document size (or maximum window size with scrollbars if document is larger) - maybe selectable in the preferences - When zooming in or out a document window size should automatically adapt to document size (or maximum window size with scrollbars if document is larger) - maybe as a setting selectable in the preferences - After resizing an undocked window the document shoud automatically be centered within the new window dimensions - One should be able to drag and drop a layer from one document into another document (not just with CTRL+c CTRL+v) - The area where one can grab the frame of a window for resizing shoud be enlarged - Pressing ENTER or ESC should confirm or cancel a dialog - as defined in windows UI standards (e.g. in crop mode none of the keys work) Macros: - (multiple) layer selection should be recordable - colour assignment to objects should be recordable - for macros it would be good if resizing of a document could be based on a maximum side lenght regardles if the document is landscape or portrait - Make conditional decisions available (e.g.: IF (DocHight > DocWidth) THAN ... ELSE ...) Alternatively include some kind of JavaScript language. - Include "Export" functionality with parameters as part of Macro recording - Add customizable keyboard shortcuts to dedicated macros Other: - it would be important to be able to make a selection based on a colour(range) (including tolerance, adding and subtracting from a previously chosen colour range) - not only based on the 3 base colour as currently implemented. - if unproportional cropping is selected it would be good to temporarily switch to "original proportion" cropping or fixing the current proportion by pressing the Alt or Ctrl key - optional parameter adaption for certain filters (e.g. gaussian blur) when resizing a document to fit the new dimensions. Currently unadapted parameters of these filters wreck every document after resizing. - icon size in the layer panel should be definable (similar to PS where 3 sizes are available) - I'd prefere to have one common command (keyboard shortcut) for the brush size and not a seperate one for each tool. - Saving setting and content for parameter fileds and pathes would save much time. Just some exaples: 1) Export preferences (They are continuously back to stupid *.png instead my predefinde personal settings ...) 2) Parameter for live filters (e.g. gaussian blur or unsharp mask) 3) Parameter for fx settings 4) Cropping Mode (setting keeps switching back to useless "unconditioned") 5) Resize method (e.g. bilinear/bicubic) - at least the standard setting should be something usable instead of bilinear! - Assistant settings should be global and part of the preferences (e.g. adding new layers on same levels as selected layer or as a child) - Make all variables available in fields that allow calculations (e.g. transforming) - Make the frequency layer seperation parameters editable like in live filters - Increase maximum size of liquify brush - Increase parameter range of many FX settings - Would like to save a list of export settings (Slices) as one preference in the Export persona - a proper "flatten image" and "flatten group" command would be nice (combining layer in AP is not intuitive and effortless at all! Just take a look how PS does it ...) - auto-adapt parameters of filters when scaling objects (e.g. gaussian blur, fx-settings) - in low resoloution the fx parameters are by far not precise enough (e.g. a picture with 800x600px can't deal wit a shadow in a watermark between 0.1 and 0.0 px-precision) - make live adjustments/filters masks directly visible as an overlay. - When a graphic in the OS (e.g. Windows) is copied via CTRL-C it would be great when clicking on "new document" within AP the dimensions of the clipboard picture would be automatically copied as a preset for this new document - assistant should add new layer even when flood fill tool is used - Numerical scaling through the transformation dialog should optionally allow scling of textsize in related objects as well. - Would be nice to display Colour Mode and bit depth behind the filename in the document window (as PS does it) - Help files often does not open (wrong focus, dialog open that does not recognise help key) - include "AutoClip" option in filters that change document or layer dimensions (e.g. most of the distortion filters) - A new document should automatically have a pixel layer as the background layer (alternatively all tools that require a pixel layer should automatically add this layer - maybe an extension of the assistant) - Metadata Editor (This is a high priority for everyone supplying stock content) - Flood Fill with bitmap pattern - Include a small button next to the fg/bg colour circle to reset it to black/white - Global definition of standard grid setting - Definition of standard output profile from the develop persona - Provide picture thumbnails in Windows File Explorer - Spiral Tool - Improved Transform panel functionality (e.g. radius for circles) Performance: - Serious improvement of InPainting tool performance! - Multiple layer performance Cheers, Timo

Congratulations to the team who convinced so many users to give AP a try. Purchased immediately my own copy for windows after first viewing all the demo videos. What I like is the bunch of ideas which improve workflow so much compared to the most referenced PS product. Especially the multiple "merge file" operations are convincing (HDR,stacking, etc.). As there are tons of database and picture file administration tools it would be a nice "roundup" when the workflow: File viewer-->AP-->Merge to HDR or other would be supported by a functionality like "collect all open files to a merge list" and select from there. But in general I think it is a good procedure to not try to copy too much functionality from existing software products because the good ideas will get lost.

Hi Folks! Just got my copy of photo for windows, it's all very exciting and non adobe-ish :D! I work mainly in 3d so I do a lot of multi pass editing where I'll take all of the component passes of a render and rebuild them in 3d to give me the option of re-balancing, tweaking and colour correcting along the way. One thing that comes up quite often is that there's mask output from 3d to blend between different parts of the final image. These masks are often used in more than one place and should be the exact same data at all time, save for one being the inverse of the other. The idea in 3d with some things is to keep things realistic, adding more to one part of the output should automatically take away from something else. Inside of nuke it's really easy to do this as you can have a "clone" of a layer and you can also link settings. Would it be possible in Affinity to have something like a "linked layer" so that we could have one source of data as a layer (our original 3d pass) and then duplicate it but with a link back to the original layer so that any changes made to the original automatically happen in the duplicate? What we'd be able to do is have a master layer that we can paint on or colour correct as we wish and then on the duplicate layer just pop on a smart filter to invert it. Any of the changes we make to the master mask would be reflected in the other layer automatically. Possible? Cheers! John

I tried the beta a little and as a landscape photographer the first thing I was looking at was how I could mimic photoshop "luminosty mask" workflow. And as far as I understood it was that you do not need to do it, you have a seperate curve controller for that in your adjustments but I must say I lake some sort of preview for that, perhaps there is but then it needs to be made more visible. But on a whole I would love if there was some real though and awesome experience working with luminosity masks in Affinity Photo, because the current workflow with the extra controller in adjustments feels more like a after thought than designed to perfection.

The ability to filter layers by name, visibility, lock state, maybe even tags etc. Search and replace text tool for layer names Tool to rename a selection of layers all at once. As an example if I had 3 layers selected I could type "My Custom Layer ##" and all 3 layers would be renamed like so: ​My Custom Layer 01 ​My Custom Layer 02 ​My Custom Layer 03