Affinity Photo & Filter Forge broken since AP 1.6. Will it ever be fixed?

[Andreas Franke]

A well known bug in AP is that a selection in AP can not be filtered by the Filter Forge Plugin because AP
is handling parameters in a wrong way since AP 1.6. We are now on 1.8 and the bug was not fixed until
today! When will it happen? It's a shame!

https://www.filterforge.com/forum/read.php?FID=8&TID=15412&MID=150169&sphrase_id=4598896#message150169

[Gabe]

Hi @Andreas Franke

As far as I'm aware, we only send full size layer information to plugins, and not selections. As a workaround, you could make your selection, CTRL + J to duplicate it on a new layer, and apply your FF effect to that new layer. I will move this to feature requests, as it's not a bug, but a missing feature. 

[fde101]

I just tried applying FilterForge to a selected pixel layer (no mask, no pixel selection) and it crashed:

Filter Forge 9.0, Affinity Photo 1.8.2, Mac OS 10.13.6, 2010 Mac Pro

 

Curiously, this resulted in crash logs for both Affinity Photo and Filter Forge (I did not have the Filter Forge app open when I tried to start the plugin):

Filter Forge_2020-04-02-111704_Mac-Pro.crash

Affinity Photo_2020-04-02-111926_Mac-Pro.crash

[Gabe]

Was this just a one-off @fde101? 

[fde101]

3 hours ago, Gabe said:

Was this just a one-off @fde101? 

No, it is repeatable.  I just tried it again with a totally different image and get the same thing.

 

EDIT: I ran the update last night so this one was against the released version of 1.8.3.

[John Rostron]

Filter Forge 9 works OK for me on Windows 10, Photo 1.8.2.620.

John

[fde101]

I am thinking this might be a sandboxing issue as I am using the MAS version of Affinity Photo.

Unfortunately, I can no longer check this against the beta now that I have the updated version of the released app installed...

[Gabe]

We tried it with the MAS version and was fine for us....

Any chance you can grab the AffinityStore trial version and see if it's fine please? https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/90-day-affinity-trial/

[fde101]

No crash in the trial version.

If I make a pixel selection before entering the plugin, the entire layer seems to be sent across, with no obvious effect of the selection itself, but while sending it across without a selection gives me a white background behind the random scribble I put in place to have some content, when there is a pixel selection the background is rendered as transparent.

Applying a mask to the layer by dragging a shape onto the thumbnail appears to behave identically to having a pixel selection in place (even without having a pixel selection).

A mask layer seems again to do the same - the entire layer comes across with a transparent background instead of a white one, and without the masking applied.

 

If I apply the filter in that state, it seems to work just fine, and the mask is correctly applied to the modified version after it is returned to Affinity Photo.

It seems to be only the preview within the filter that is not dealing with the situation well.

 

However, after doing all of this, I went back to the MAS version and again get the crash.  I get the crash with or without a pixel selection.

[Gabe]

Have you Authorised global Preferences > Plugins in your MAS version?

[fde101]

On 4/6/2020 at 9:37 AM, Gabe said:

Have you Authorised global Preferences > Plugins in your MAS version?

Thanks, I did miss that, and it fixed the crash problem.

The first time I opened it after doing this I had to re-enter my registration information for some reason, but it seems to be working correctly now when there is no selection or mask.

When there is one, it shows the entire image in the plugin preview, but actually does mask the selected area as the only part it is being applied to.

As far as I can tell, once the Authorize Global is completed, the plugin is working perfectly in the MAS version.

 

It would certainly be nice if the application didn't crash when a user doesn't know to take that authorization step, though...

[Gabe]

14 hours ago, fde101 said:

It would certainly be nice if the application didn't crash when a user doesn't know to take that authorization step, though...

This seems to be a regression from 1.7, were Authorise Global was not needed. I've logged it with our developers. 

[tree-standing]

On 4/6/2020 at 3:37 PM, Gabe said:

Have you Authorised global Preferences > Plugins in your MAS version?

do you think this would help with getting AffinityPhoto to recognize Filter Forge?  I have the latest versions of both, when I installed FF, I did not get the option about installing it as a plug-in for AP, installed it anyway and then physically added the folder to the plug-ins. However, when I try to use it, I get this message: <class XFW::StateError> The control <class Controls::Control>@000000000CB200B0 has no window handle.  I'm not sure what to do.

[kirk23]

I'd love to see something like filter forge working natively in APhoto.  Staying live, not rasterized into a layer.    We have pixel content  "linking", right . Why not making  it mixing  and interacting  from different layers of origin   through  node based interface?     Could be a huge advancement. 

Maybe in Designer  if it would be easier there.    I recall some old version of Filter forge stayed "live"  on Xara5  decade ago.   Been slow as hell although. 

But with Affinity GPU support perhaps it could be  something  better working .    An ability to build your own "live" filters.  

I'd pay up to 1k for a something rivaling  Substance Designer  and working  in connection to regular Affinity photo or Designer layers with quick and easy compositing abilities and brushes.   

 

[kirk23]

4 minutes ago, kirk23 said:

 

I'd love to see something like filter forge working natively in APhoto.  Staying live, not rasterized into a layer.    We have pixel content  "linking", right . Why not making  it mixing  and interacting  from different layers of origin   through  node based interface?     Could be a huge advancement. 

Maybe in Designer  if it would be easier there.    I recall some old version of Filter forge stayed "live"  on Xara5  decade ago.   Been slow as hell although. 

But with Affinity GPU support perhaps it could be  something  better working .    An ability to build your own "live" filters.  

I'd pay up to 1k for a something rivaling  Substance Designer  and working  in connection to regular Affinity photo or Designer layers with quick and easy compositing abilities and brushes.      

Please , make Affinity soft true advanced and beyond of all that Adobe annoying toys including Photoshop one.

[James Allen]

Is anyone else still having problems with compatibility between Photo and Filter Forge on Windows 10?  After a hiatus for most of 2021, I have recently returned to a project in which I was previously using Photo 1.8 and Filter Forge 10 without any issues.  In the interim I updated Photo to 1.9 and more recently to 1.10.  I now find that no selection information is passed from Photo to Filter Forge.  For my needs this renders the FF plugin useless, and it is a key asset in my workflow.

If I uninstall Photo 1.10 and instead install Photo 1.8, the two programs work together exactly as expected, with selections once again honored as expected.  There are, however, two problems with this as a solution:

1. I have many files that I opened in Photo 1.9 or later, so they can no longer be opened in 1.8.
2. In the long term I definitely want to be able to update Photo to later versions.

Also, the following quote puzzles me:

On 4/2/2020 at 5:06 AM, Gabe said:

As far as I'm aware, we only send full size layer information to plugins, and not selections. As a workaround, you could make your selection, CTRL + J to duplicate it on a new layer, and apply your FF effect to that new layer. I will move this to feature requests, as it's not a bug, but a missing feature.

I have used a few versions of Affinity Photo prior to 1.9 in conjunction with Filter Forge and the selection info was passed along without issue. In fact, as I said above, it works fine in version 1.8.  So the assertion that the selection information was never sent, and that this function should be a new feature appears to be a misunderstanding.

If anyone can offer some current insight into this situation it would be much appreciated!