Back Save For Previous Versions of Affinity Photo

[Keito64]

Hi there all,

Could we have a feature to be able to save to previous versions of Affinity Photo on Mac. I've updated to the latest version (presently 1.8.1) yet a colleague [who, for whatever reason, not for discussion] is not updating and thus unable to open my files.

Sooo errrrm.... yeah, back saving. Please.

[fde101]

In the interim, try using PSD as an interchange format, as that should at least preserve some of the layer information?

[GarryP]

Welcome to the forums.

I think this would be a bad idea, for a lot of reasons.

Try asking yourself these questions:
* Which previous versions should the user be allowed to revert to? 1.8.0 / 1.7.3 / 1.7.2 / 1.7.1 / 1.7.0 / 1.6.x / 1.5.x / earlier?
* What happens with features/functionality that work differently in previous versions?
* What happens when someone is relying on ‘broken’ functionality in an earlier version?
* What happens with features/functionality that don’t exist in previous versions?
* How does the software alert the user to the fact that the document won’t look the same after reversion?
* How can the user review all the possible changes that would happen on reversion?
… and the list just goes on and on.

And that’s just from the user's perspective, never mind the massive amount of extra work the developers would have on their hands to maintain software that can do the same things in different ways depending on which version the user might possibly want to revert the document back to.

In my opinion it just doesn’t make sense to have this sort of functionality.

P.S. In can envisage specific points in the future when it might be useful to be able to revert a document back to a previous version but I won’t say what they are as that would bring up all kinds of other arguments that I don’t want to get into.

[Ron P.]

While I agree with most of what @GarryP posted, there are other apps that do allow for this. One example that I use is Paintshop Pro. Your presented with a drop-down menu selection to choose what previous version to save it as. It allows saving in up to 11 previous versions. However it rarely works well if saving to a version that is more than 2 versions older, due to as mentioned, functions/features that are not available in earlier versions. I think PSP provides a prompt message warning the user of this.

[Granddaddy]

Clearly problems might arise when saving a document to a format other than the native format of the application. Possibly some functionality will not be saved when older versions of the native format are used.

But it should also be remembered that saving to older formats and to formats understood at least in part by other applications is a time-honored tradition in desktop computing.

For example, as a dinosaur I continue to use MS Office 2000. In that suite, Word 2000 offers to save documents in 28 different formats, including formats used by competing word processing applications. Word 2000, through a free addon, can also read the docx file format introduced with Word 2007. 

Excel 2000 offers to save files to 31 different formats, including spreadsheet formats of competing programs, as well as older Excel formats.

I would welcome the option to save APhoto files to the Ver 1.6 file format that was so much smaller in size than the current format. It has never been explained what capabilities might be lost in such an APhoto file. Remember that the huge increase in file size that began with Ver 1.7 was attributed to a last minute change in the Affinity file format to accommodate features of APub, not features of APhoto.

[subetha]

I completely second Keito64's wish! The main reason for me is the buggy version 1.8.0 of Publisher on Windows right now - it did not even start after a few times of usage. I had to downgrade the complete Affinity suite on two computers just because of that - not only on that Windows machine, but also on my mac to still be able to work with both computers on the same files. Luckily I noticed the problem before converting all the recent files... else I'd really had been f***ed!
I can totally understand that problems in new versions of any software may occur - but in that case it's an absolute necessity to have some kind of interchange of files between versions!!! Maybe a possibility to import newer formats, or a separate conversion app?

 

[LionelEstriga]

Hi, I am facing the same problem. The impossibility of recording in previous versions does not make sense. It seems to be a strategy to get more sales. In the software I use: Sketchup, Rhino, Adobe Photoshop, Autocad... there is always the possibility of saving in previous versions, to achieve a workflow between different companies and people who use different versions. I really like the philosophy of having an alternative robust enough to stand up to Adobe. Image Line had an amazing strategy to license lifetime updates with FL Studio. It does not allow recording in previous versions, but those who have a license can always install the latest version. It's a strategy to combat cracked software.

[ThinkDifferent]

This is an old topic, but I'd like to add another vote to request this feature. I maintain a very long usage cycle on all software and OS's for a number of reasons, and a feature like this could help improve collaboration with colleagues. In my experience, updates...

1. break things
2. are often unnecessary, depending on your needs
3. take away features I enjoy
4. add features I may not need
5. add learning curves that waste my time
6. add expense for my customers
7. require updates further up the line such as OS, hardware and more, and as a result...
8. break more things

This isn't to say updates aren't more than welcome when I'm ready. But creating a system that's rock solid and that I know well for many years is far more important to me than having the "latest".

As others have stated, there are plenty of software examples that include the ability to export for past versions. An example I can think of is when Apple went from older versions of Pages to newer versions. They offered an export version on the newer version to export to 'Pages '09'. This was a valuable tool when my wife and I were working on two different generations of Mac OS X. I had both versions of Pages, and yet I could also save to the older version, even if I used the newer version on my machine.

Yes, certain things could break. But this has been the course of software for decades. Allow it to break, throw up a dialog box if you can, or put the message in a side panel, and let the user sort out the rest. People understand that things break when moving backward. Even when Affinity Photo exports to PSD, things don't work, layers rasterize, etc. It's to be expected. As for how far to go back, I don't know. My vote is AP 1.5.2. 🙂