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5 hours ago, lastfuture said:

It would be amazing if I could just use continuous BMP export of my game / app assets directly from Affinity Designer without needing to take extra steps of encoding and having to remember to do it every time for every asset I have changed.

That's what task runners are for. Set up a grunt or npm task to watch a folder where you save your images, and have the task runner automatically convert the images to bmp with the use of ImageMagick and save those to the game assets folder. All automated, and no need for manual intervention.

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  • 3 months later...

Windows installers sometimes require bmp file format for headers on the dialogs.  While it seems to be the done thing to throw shade at it as a file format the fact is that it's not going away no matter how many better alternatives there are.

It would be nice to just have the option to export it directly without jumping through hoops and using other applications.

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I believe the BMP format is pretty obsolete for many years now so I understand if Serif chooses not to implement an export filter. I use Inno Setup too, but it's the only dev tool I use that still does not accept PNGs AFAIK. The task runner / ImageMagick idea is the best idea for continuous export, but for sporadic use the venerable IrfanView is great. It is super fast, can import / export hundreds of bitmap formats, has a command-line interface and batch options and is completely free (Windows only, sorry).

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33 minutes ago, rubs said:

... for sporadic use the venerable IrfanView is great. It is super fast, can import / export hundreds of bitmap formats, has a command-line interface and batch options and is completely free (Windows only, sorry).

IrfanView is indeed great, but it’s only free for non-commercial use. Having said that, a commercial licence is just ten euros.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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On 7/30/2018 at 9:37 AM, Saurbaum said:

Windows installers sometimes require bmp file format for headers on the dialogs.  While it seems to be the done thing to throw shade at it as a file format the fact is that it's not going away no matter how many better alternatives there are.

It would be nice to just have the option to export it directly without jumping through hoops and using other applications.

Exactly, this.  I'm creating an installer for a 2D game and it requires .bmp.  It's all challenging enough without having to stop what I'm doing because some old standard [obviously still being used] isn't supported by Affinity.

Considering how unreliable/unsafe free software can be, I don't want to have to worry about some random software with the potential for malware and corruption because Affinity isn't interested in doing something simple enough that "plenty of free tools" are giving it away at no cost.  Especially when a well known competitor on the market is capable of doing it.

I suppose saying it's not a priority irritates the $&@% out of me because, it's sort of obvious the feature you haven't included isn't a priority.  Also, the point of requesting a feature is to suggest that it's priority level should maybe trend in an upward direction.

BTW, I already owned Sketchbook Pro which is capable of exporting to bmp, and Krita (free) is also capable of exporting to bmp.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am working on an installer and it makes use of bitmap images in .bmp format. This format is required not only in creating splash screens but also in Areas of Pages in an Installer.  I think Serif should implement this feature in Both Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo,as it is still used in certain areas. Going to a third party application and then exporting it to .bmp has so far been a very bad experience  for me as the results are not that good.

Here is the result of exporting a 32x32 image created in Affinity Designer and then importing to another for image and then exporting,which is not very clear and its looking bad at the top of the Installer Title bar area.

image.png.24f5e9668c3554d699c1bb737db1aa66.png

 

Best Regards,

Fahad

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On 10/28/2016 at 7:30 PM, einhugur said:

 

Yes, i am also making use of NSIS(Null Soft Installer System) which makes use of .bmp format only,not .gif's or .png's

____

Inno setup, is one of them they can only take BMP (since that is the native Picture format on Windows). I am software developer and use the Affinity Photo to make the Inno setup page screens. (among other things). (Though PNG is getting to be the standard in most development but not all)

 

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2 hours ago, Fahad Javed said:

Going to a third party application and then exporting it to .bmp has so far been a very bad experience  for me as the results are not that good.

Any conversion from PNG to BMP and vice-versa should be pixel-perfect since both formats are lossless. Bad results are often due to use of JPEG images or scaling. It would be best for you to upload both images here so we can see what's going on. Cheers!

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Hi rubs. I had exported a .png file from Affinity Designer and then converted it to an .ico and .bmp files in krita and i have not used the .jpg file as an interchange format but .png. The issue is not about which software we use or which converter we use in order to produce the required format as this would lead to a discussion which would loop around forever and we won't be able to come to a conclusion,the issue is that an Application created for the windows platform should provide support for its native image file format(s),built in and not as an after thought. I think Serif should conduct a poll on this. You have mentioned that you use inno setup,which is also another installer based system for windows,i use NSIS which also has similar functionality and both support .bmp format with no alternate image file format supported. There are a lot of people out there who are developing games or apps for the windows platform,who cannot afford costly commercial installer solutions like Install shield,and that is why they use Inno setup and NSIS. Thanks a lot for being part of this discussion :). Cheers!

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On 10/28/2016 at 10:30 AM, einhugur said:

 

 

Inno setup, is one of them they can only take BMP (since that is the native Picture format on Windows). I am software developer and use the Affinity Photo to make the Inno setup page screens. (among other things). (Though PNG is getting to be the standard in most development but not all)

Have you tried WiX (Windows Installer XML Toolset)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, I´m also in need of a export for BMP, since automation softwares from Schneider Electric "PSO, PME" and others minor softwares we use here only accept BMP, although some of them also use .jpg, or .png, there are some stupid drawbacks, like the picture being imported without the correct size, or it won´t be compatible with some features. 

It´s something that seems to be so simple, the devs could consider the bunch of posts before mine and give some love to this.

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39 minutes ago, M911 said:

Affinity can only be made better by giving up a few extra formats

Supporting a few extra formats rather than giving some up, surely? o.O

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4 (iPad 7th gen)

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Another +1 for BMP/raw formats.

In terms of implementation difficulty, BMP is very simple compared to PNG, so if you can save out PNGs (or work with something extremely complicated like PSDs), you should have very few issues supporting BMP. Essentially, just write the image stored in memory into a file, bypassing any encoders and compressors, with a simple header attached on the top.

The simplicity of the format is mainly the reason why the BMP still exists to this day. It is easy to support on systems with limited resources because the file can be loaded (more or less) directly into memory for a display routine without any decoding (assuming RLE is not used).

Compressed formats make a tradeoff between size and complexity/speed, and some use cases value reducing the complexity more than reducing the size. For example, installers and other simple programs applications don't want to add a lot of complexity to display a single small image. More advanced programs also target simple file formats if they are swapping around many images under strict time requirements. Many high-performance, real-time graphics applications are critically dependent on speed, which would be the case game engines and other real-time tools.

It was a surprise to find that Affinity does not support such a simple format. To make a parallel with other applications, this would be like an audio player/editor that can play/export MP3s and OGGs, but not WAVs. Or a text editor that can save and load RTFs and DOCs, but not TXTs. Or a spreadsheet program that can work with XLSs, but not CSVs.

One would expect any professional-grade application to support common file formats, both simple and complex.

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How long do we need to wait for something as BASIC and as COMMON as BMP export support? This topic creator has waited since 2015, myself since beginning 2017. The very fact that the product supports reading the format and yet not exporting the format is a deliberate decision and a mind boggling one at that.

Despite purchasing this product some time ago in good faith that it would get the ability to export to this format because it supports reading the format, I still have no use for it and continue to use Photoshop as I am not interested in adding more steps to my workflow to get around such a basic thing missing from the software.

Microsoft Paint can export it! yet not this so called "professional" software. Disappointing.

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I think the most disappointing part of all this is the lack of a definitive response from Serif. I asked this question also in 2016. Since then I use a quick workaround (I use a Mac with Mojave) Using Automator I have created a "Quick Action". Once done I right click on a file, select Quick Action and then convert to (from jpg) BMP. I originally set this up as another Quick Action to convert HEIC files (produced from my iPhone) to jpg. Here is the How To link.

George

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