Export/import adjustments

[afdojo]

How do I export and import adjustments? For example, I've created a 'curves adjustment' in Photo for Ziatype printing and would like to share it with other others. I use Photo, Designer and Publisher and would like to share adjustments for all three.

Thanks,

Doug

[GarryP]

One basic way would be to create a document containing your adjustment and share that with whoever needs the adjustment.
Then people who need that adjustment can open the document when they need to make the adjustment.
They can then copy the adjustment (right-click → Copy in the Layers Panel) from the ‘donor’ document and paste it (right-click → Paste on the object needing the adjustment) into the ‘recipient’ document.
It’s not fancy but it should work with the Affinity triumvirate.

[R C-R]

AFAIK, there is no way to export or import adjustments in any Affinity app. But as a workaround, as @GarryP suggested you could create a 'donor' document in Affinity Photo, add some Curves or whatever adjustment layers to it, & save that file in some convenient location. Then, you could open that file in any Affinity app, copy the desired adjustment layer to the clipboard & paste it into a Designer or Publisher document. To make it easier to manage, you could name each adjustment layer in your AP 'donor' file(s), for example with the preset name you assigned to it in the AP Adjustment Studio panel.

Unfortunately, Designer does not include an Adjustment panel at all & while Publisher's Photo Persona has one, there seems to be no way to add any presets to it. However, for Publisher only I have been experimenting with an unsupported, try at your own risk, hack that (so far) works & populates its Photo Persona Adjustment panel with the same ones as in the Affinity Photo Adjustment panel. If you want to try it, follow the steps below:

1. Locate the Affinity Photo adjustments.propcol file & copy it to the desktop. An easy way to do this is to drag the file out of its enclosing folder while holding down the Alt/Option key. (The pointer should change to a green plus symbol to let you know you are drag-copying the file.)
2. Next, while Affinity Publisher in not running (important!) locate its adjustments.propcol file & rename it, adding ".old" or ".BU" or the like to it so its name becomes "adjustments.propcol.old" or whatever. (The OS will ask if you really want to do this.) By adding the extra extension, Publisher will ignore it but if something goes wrong in the next step, you can rename it again, removing the extra extension, so (hopefully) you can get back to the pre-hack state without having to reset anything.
3. Finally, drag the Affinity Photo adjustments.propcol file from the desktop into the same folder where the now renamed Affinity Publisher is located, launch Affinity Publisher, & your Affinity Photo presets should appear in Publisher's Photo Persona Adjustments panel.

The location of the two adjustments.propcol files varies depending on which store (Apple's MAS or Affinity's) you bought each app from. For MAS purchases, the path will be one of these:

• /Users/<your user name>/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/adjustments.propcol
• /Users/<your user name>/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitypublisher/Data/Library/Application Support/user/adjustments.propcol

For Affinity store purchases, the path will be one of these:

• /Users/<your user name>/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher/user/adjustments.propcol
• /Users/<your user name>/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/user/adjustments.propcol

PLEASE remember that this an unsupported try at your own risk hack! It is working for me but I am not responsible if it does not work for you or causes any issues.

[dutchshader]

18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

 

Unfortunately, Designer does not include an Adjustment panel at all & while Publisher's Photo Persona has one, there seems to be no way to add any presets to it. 

but if you safe a afphoto file with adjustments you can edit these adjustments in designer and publisher.

[walt.farrell]

On 10/20/2019 at 8:28 AM, R C-R said:

AFAIK, there is no way to export or import adjustments in any Affinity app.

The intended way of exporting adjustments, from the Help, is by exporting a LUT.

[R C-R]

13 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

The intended way of exporting adjustments, from the Help, is by exporting a LUT.

Thanks for that, but I confess I am not up to speed on using LUTs in Affinity apps. For example, which LUT filetype would be best for this, or does it matter?

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, R C-R said:

Thanks for that, but I confess I am not up to speed on using LUTs in Affinity apps. For example, which LUT filetype would be best for this, or does it matter?

I'm not sure it matters, but the basic technique looks simple, and was demonstrated in an old Affinity Photo tutorial, which MEB has thoughtfully archived for us here. It's only 2 minutes 11 seconds, and worth watching in my opinion

[GarryP]

That’s an interesting video Walt. Thanks for the link.
However, it might be useful – as R C-R asks above – to know what the difference is between the four LUT file types and what we get/lose with each (nothing in the Help as far as I can see).

P.S. In the video, “File → Export 3D LUT...” is now (1.7.3) “File → Export LUT...” and “Layer → New Adjustment Layer → 3D LUT Adjustment...” is now “Layer → New Adjustment Layer → LUT...” (the “3D” part of the name has gone).

[R C-R]

21 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm not sure it matters, but the basic technique looks simple ...

Even if the LUT type does not matter it does not seem to be a very practical way of exporting, importing, or sharing individual adjustment category presets in the Adjustments panels of Photo or Publisher.

It would be nice if all 3 apps had an Adjustments panel with import/export options (like we have for brushes), & the adjustment windows in Designer & Publisher had a Preset button like Photo does.

EDIT: In particular, the inability to add Adjustment presets to the Adjustment studio panel of the Photo Persona of Affinity Publisher makes that panel nearly useless, particularly so for the 7 adjustment categories that have only a default  'no adjustment' preset (Curves, Channel Mixer, Selective Color, Color Balance, Lens Filter, Split Toning, & OCIO).