Tiff export layers opened in Photoshop gets flattened?

[George3]

I looked for some discussion on this --- here's my question. This is for Affinity Photo 1.7 on a Mac (could be for beta too)

Affinity Photo, what are you doing to exported .tiff layered files? Whatever it is please give me an option not to do it. When I open the layered (Affinity) .tiff file in Photoshop it's made flat. I need it to remain layered.

I still live in the Adobe world and would like to be able to use a .tiff format as a file transfer format for images.

1. I prefer the Tiff option over the PSD format because Affinity doesn't ask me to do a "save as" after I work on it. I can just save the file in the format I opened it from.

2. I can create a layered .tiff in Photoshop and open that file in Affinity and see all the pixel and vector layers.

     Why is the .tiff file from Affinity flattened in Photoshop - It's the same format or seems it should be the same format?

Can't we all just get along.  

[walt.farrell]

The TIFF format does not really support layers. However, it allows an application to provide additional, application-specific proprietary data that other applications will ignore.

If you choose to export a TIFF file with "Affinity Layers" that's what you get. A normal TIFF with everything flattened, plus the Affinity-specific data that only Affinity can understand. It's not quite, but almost like, having a TIFF file with a .afphoto file embedded in it.

That's exactly what Photoshop does to create a layered TIFF. It's a standard TIFF with (approximately) a PSD file in it. And because Affinity knows how to import PSD files it can provide access to the special Photoshop data.

Only Affinity can read .afphoto files, so Photoshop only sees the flattened image if you ask it to read a TIFF that contains Affinity Layers.

 

[George3]

One word. Workflow.

Affinity is killing it and not in the hip positive sense.

I'm trying to stay with Affinity.

I'm sure no one will shed a tear but I don't see upgrading.

[MikeW]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

The TIFF format does not really support layers. However, it allows an application to provide additional, application-specific proprietary data that other applications will ignore.

If you choose to export a TIFF file with "Affinity Layers" that's what you get. A normal TIFF with everything flattened, plus the Affinity-specific data that only Affinity can understand. It's not quite, but almost like, having a TIFF file with a .afphoto file embedded in it.

That's exactly what Photoshop does to create a layered TIFF. It's a standard TIFF with (approximately) a PSD file in it. And because Affinity knows how to import PSD files it can provide access to the special Photoshop data.

Only Affinity can read .afphoto files, so Photoshop only sees the flattened image if you ask it to read a TIFF that contains Affinity Layers.

 

Actually, TIFF layers are actually called pages. I don't have PS installed currently, but I made the following 3-layered TIF in PhotoLine and am opening it in Corel Photo-Paint.

The older Windows Photo Viewer would open such a TIF and can cycle through the pages. Faxes can/do create multipage TIFs as well. 

However, last time I used PS, multpage tiffs created in about any software would only load page one. That was back with CS4 (maybe earlier).

[Fixx]

TIFF pages and TIFF layers are different things. Both are though addons to baseline TIFF specification.

[George3]

I'm just saying. Give me the option in Affinity to - "save as Adobe tiff layers". That's all.

Help me live in an Adobe world while using Affinity until Affinity has a larger foot print and can steer the ship.

[walt.farrell]

49 minutes ago, George3 said:

I'm just saying. Give me the option in Affinity to - "save as Adobe tiff layers". That's all.

Help me live in an Adobe world while using Affinity until Affinity has a larger foot print and can steer the ship.

Why don't you just Export a PSD if you need to share something with Adobe users?

(Some things, such as editable text, won't work, but that would be true if Affinity saved PSD information into a TIFF, too.)

In any case, I doubt that Serif would do that, as the format of the PSD data in TIFF is probably even less documented than the format of PSD data itself. But I don't know that for sure; it's just a guess.

But if you want that function, you should request it in the Feature Requests forum, where the Developers will see it.

[George3]

Thanks for the feed back. I'll do that.

[pablito6318]

On 1/25/2020 at 12:04 PM, George3 said:

Thanks for the feed back. I'll do that.

George3, did you find a way to Export the layers to PS and preserve the layers?  I'm taking images on a microscope with three colours that would be easiest to work with if thy remained as layers (there is way to regenerate the channels but I should not need to go to all the extra work when they started out as really nice layers) when I generated the composite. 

[George3]

Sorry for the delay - this probably is no help now, but I believe the only way to 'save' back to a layered PSD file is via export function to a PSD. It's all cumbersome. It may work better with the new version of PS  - but I did it the other day and the "Smart Objects" were all gray scale.

I have an older version of Photoshop (SC5). Really, if it only works with the New version of PS - I'd be working with PS and dump AF...