1. - How do I make Affinity Media Browser recognize an Aperture Library located elsewhere but in the "blessed" Pictures folder?

[alsina]

That's it. Follows the long story, which you may not need to read to answer my above question :-) Hopefully I'll explain myself clear. And thanks in advance! Muchas gracias!

 

I have been for the last year or so running a solution combo that includes Apple Aperture and Pixelmator, after abandoning Adobe Photoshop... which I used in my practice since v1.0.  

 

I am currently trying to include Affinity Photo in my workflow. Yes, I can tell Aperture to open files in Affinity, but it is super cumbersome to have to use the Save As... command in order to save the .PDS file that Aperture sends to APh. APh won't defaults to the file's origin folder, etc.

 

So, I'm trying to test the Media Browser in the hope the workflow may be more streamlined.

 

Now, strangely, Affinity Photo (APh) shows in the Media Browser an old Aperture Library that I used to run in a drive that's not even running anymore. The Aperture Library resides in an external drive, not in the "blessed" Pictures folder. 

 

Have any of you run into this situation? How do I point a Media Browser to an Aperture Library located elsewhere but in the "blessed" Pictures folder? Would you kindly help a fella?

 

Yours,

Cesar Alsina

www.cesaralsina.com | www.graphicbiz.biz

[My Strawberry Monkey]

Hi Cesar, it does not appear the media browser allows you too look elsewhere besides the default Aperture/iPhoto/Pictures or dragging in a folder.

 

Regarding your workflow, I have already made a few posts on this forum for those wanting to Keep Aperture for managing their pictures but edit in Affinity Photo

 

Not sure why your choosing save as rather than just save. 

 

 In Aperture in the menu bar go to Aperture - Preferences - Export - External Photo Editor and choose Affinity Photo and choose your file format and colour space, once done and inside Aperture you can right click on a picture and tell it edit with Affinity Photo (I take it from you post you already know how to do this) Once inside Affinity photo and you make you edit and you press save it will save back to Aperture for you.  

 

Out of interest what is the .PDS file? that sounds like a Power Director Video file. 

 

 

 

Allan

[alsina]

Out of interest what is the .PDS file? that sounds like a Power Director Video file. 

My bad, it is .PSD of course, a Photoshop file. Sorry about that.

[A_B_C]

Hi Cesar, have you seen these threads? Maybe there are some answers to your questions … or at least you will see that you’re not alone …  :(

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6341-media-browser-not-displaying-all-libraries/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/9750-media-browser/

 

I am sorry, but there seem to be still some problems with the Media Browser. Have you tried to put an Alias of your external library into the Pictures folder? Does that make any difference? 

 

Alex

[alsina]

Not sure why your choosing save as rather than just save. 

 

Thanks Allan.

 

In the past, for many years, using Photoshop as external editor for Aperture (which you can choose using the procedure you describe above), my workflow was this:

 

I open my raw file while in Aperture—after some editing in Aperture—with my assigned keyboard shortcut, which would make Aperture to create a .psd (Photoshop) file and trigger the system to open it in Photoshop. Once the image opened in Photoshop I would do my thing and I would just use the Save command whenever I wanted, as many times I need during the course of editing. The file would be saved, no questions asked by the app. The file would be updated and preview in Aperture would reflect so.

 

That is not possible in Affinity Photo. This is what happens:

I open my raw file while in Aperture—after some editing in Aperture—with my assigned keyboard shortcut, which would make Aperture to create a .psd (Photoshop) file and trigger the system to open it in Affinity Photo. Once the image opens in Affinity Photo, I do my thing (AWESOME TOOLS AND STUFF IN AFFINITY PHOTO!), hit the Save command and Affinity brings up a system window showing you the last folder you save a file at, not he origin folder of the file you're working on. That is already bad. Additionally, this system window will allow you to save a copy of your file as a .adphoto file, NOT a .psd file, which is a fatal disaster for the workflow. Not other option is offered on that system window/panel.

 

So, I need to use a different procedure in order to save the file I'm working on. I use the Export command (again, my mistake, I said Save As in the original post above, is Export, sorry about that.), which allows me to select the file format in an Affinity pop-up panel, I choose .PSD manually, hit the Export button, and then I am presented with a system window that allows my to search the file's origin folder—as said above, Affinity won't show you the origin folder as Photoshop does—which is terrible. Once I find the right folder, I then hit Save and the systems alerts me that "xxxx.psd already exists. Do you want to replace it?".

 

As I do save several times during the curse of editing a file, this is really killing the joy of working on Affinity Photo.

 

I really hope I explained myself clearly. And many, many thanks for your time.

[alsina]

Hi Cesar, have you seen these threads? Maybe there are some answers to your questions … or at least you will see that you’re not alone …  :(

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6341-media-browser-not-displaying-all-libraries/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/9750-media-browser/

 

I am sorry, but there seem to be still some problems with the Media Browser. Have you tried to put an Alias of your external library into the Pictures folder? Does that make any difference? 

 

Alex

Thanks Alex, I'll check them out!

[chrisw]

Hi Cesar, it does not appear the media browser allows you too look elsewhere besides the default Aperture/iPhoto/Pictures or dragging in a folder.

 

Regarding your workflow, I have already made a few posts on this forum for those wanting to Keep Aperture for managing their pictures but edit in Affinity Photo

 

Not sure why your choosing save as rather than just save. 

 

 In Aperture in the menu bar go to Aperture - Preferences - Export - External Photo Editor and choose Affinity Photo and choose your file format and colour space, once done and inside Aperture you can right click on a picture and tell it edit with Affinity Photo (I take it from you post you already know how to do this) Once inside Affinity photo and you make you edit and you press save it will save back to Aperture for you.  

 

Out of interest what is the .PDS file? that sounds like a Power Director Video file. 

 

 

 

Allan

Thanks a million...now I can use Aperture for file organization & edit with Affinity Photo if needed.

[My Strawberry Monkey]

Hi Cesar,

 

No worries. Yes I understood but still confused to your workflow, maybe its me but is there a reason why you would create a .PSD from your original RAW file in Aperture to Affinity photo? (Didn't even know Aperture could do that) Do people do that, are there benefits or is it just they way your use to working with photoshop? Like mentioned a simple right click on the file would open up in Affinity Photo and save any edits back.

 

Have you tried that method but just using your RAW/Tiff/JPEG?

[My Strawberry Monkey]

Thanks a million...now I can use Aperture for file organization & edit with Affinity Photo if needed.

 

No worries. I still use Lightroom, never really liked Aperture.

[alsina]

Hi Cesar,

 

No worries. Yes I understood but still confused to your workflow, maybe its me but is there a reason why you would create a .PSD from your original RAW file in Aperture to Affinity photo? (Didn't even know Aperture could do that) Do people do that, are there benefits or is it just they way your use to working with photoshop? Like mentioned a simple right click on the file would open up in Affinity Photo and save any edits back.

 

Have you tried that method but just using your RAW/Tiff/JPEG?

 

Hello Allan.

 

Yes, using a photoshop file certainly gives some advantages: .PSD files allowed you to save layered files and can be opened by several different apps while proprietary formats (such as .afphoto or .pxm) will open only with Affinity Photo or Pixelmator only. I do not work editing with JPEG files because as we know JPEG is a degrading format and carries very little information other than just pixels and some color space info. Finally, I work RAW files in Aperture because any editing in Aperture is non-destructive. That's the magic of Aperture: Your camera RAW files are kept intact no matter what you do to them inside Aperture, and gives you the choice to further edit with third parties (via plugins or opening files in another app) by creating a new file (Photoshop or TIFF) that reflects all editing you may have done to your image.

 

I understand that .PSD (photoshop) files are also proprietary, but being Adobe the leader and factual winner of the market, their "standards" are adopted by several other small houses, including Serif.

 

I really do not understand how you save layered files with formats different than .afphoto just by simply hitting the save command: I have tested this editing .psd, .jpg, and .png files and all of them presents a dialog box to save as a .afphoto file, not the original format. Am I missing something?

 

This has turned interesting, maybe a little convoluted and complex, but that's the nature of our professions. :-)

[My Strawberry Monkey]

I'm aware of the benefits of a PSD, was just trying understand how that works with Aperture as it does not have layers, so guess if you want to go back a few months later it would still have to open in photoshop to make any adjustments if needed. I can store the RAW files in Aperture/LR and edit in Affinity Photo with 1 click make an edit hit save and its back where it started, still puzzled why you would need a PSD to do that besides wanting come back at  a later date to adjust.

 

I use Lightroom and its the same, non-destructive so never needed to save as .PSD.

 

I don't/you can't, just saving a file will give you that option, you are correct, it would have to be export and choose PSD if you want a layered file other than .afphoto. It would be a flattened file, maybe there was a misunderstanding, whether its iPhoto/Aperture or LR it works the same way, use those apps as management, choose Affinity photo as the external editor and choose a file and right click and edit in Affinity Photo, do your thing hit save and its back, yes as a flattened file. If I want to keep the layers I would export, or just save as a .afphoto file. I'm use to LR, so besides a few tests here and there, I use Affinity Photo as I did PS, for cleaning up, removing people, compositing etc

[JoJu]

Thanks Allan.

 

In the past, for many years, using Photoshop as external editor for Aperture (which you can choose using the procedure you describe above), my workflow was this:

 

I open my raw file while in Aperture—after some editing in Aperture—with my assigned keyboard shortcut, which would make Aperture to create a .psd (Photoshop) file and trigger the system to open it in Photoshop. Once the image opened in Photoshop I would do my thing and I would just use the Save command whenever I wanted, as many times I need during the course of editing. The file would be saved, no questions asked by the app. The file would be updated and preview in Aperture would reflect so.

 

That is not possible in Affinity Photo. This is what happens:

I open my raw file while in Aperture—after some editing in Aperture—with my assigned keyboard shortcut, which would make Aperture to create a .psd (Photoshop) file and trigger the system to open it in Affinity Photo. Once the image opens in Affinity Photo, I do my thing (AWESOME TOOLS AND STUFF IN AFFINITY PHOTO!), hit the Save command and Affinity brings up a system window showing you the last folder you save a file at, not he origin folder of the file you're working on. That is already bad. Additionally, this system window will allow you to save a copy of your file as a .adphoto file, NOT a .psd file, which is a fatal disaster for the workflow. Not other option is offered on that system window/panel.

 

So, I need to use a different procedure in order to save the file I'm working on. I use the Export command (again, my mistake, I said Save As in the original post above, is Export, sorry about that.), which allows me to select the file format in an Affinity pop-up panel, I choose .PSD manually, hit the Export button, and then I am presented with a system window that allows my to search the file's origin folder—as said above, Affinity won't show you the origin folder as Photoshop does—which is terrible. Once I find the right folder, I then hit Save and the systems alerts me that "xxxx.psd already exists. Do you want to replace it?".

 

As I do save several times during the curse of editing a file, this is really killing the joy of working on Affinity Photo.

 

I really hope I explained myself clearly. And many, many thanks for your time.

 

mystrawberrymonkey already pointed out another way to just edit a RAW file directly out of Aperture without any need of exporting and importing. You can set up the output file to TIF (16 or 8 bits) or to PSD (16 or 8 bits). When you're done with your thing, just press Save and close the picture in APh (btw. I like this APh, otherwise it's confusing Affinity Photo with Photos.app from Apple).

 

What happens? Aperture is copying your adjusted RAW and exports a file to Affinity. After saving it in Affinity, Aperture reimports the edited file (unfortunately using the same file title). And as you imagine, the file size is huge. A 16 bit 36 MP in TIF goes up to app. 200 MB.

 

The same goes for using the plugins in Aperture, which are the Nik collection (but the standalone versions, so it's not really plugins). Altogether the handling of Aperture is great, but I'd prefer non destructive editors or plugins. I don't know, if there are any?