jubro Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 I am creating designs in APhoto for printing. I've been told by a friend that I might need to provide a flattened file to the printer (I am aware the printer requires png files). I which situations should I flatten & what are pros & cons? Quote Affinity Photo 1.10.6.1665 / Affinity Publisher 1.10.6 - Win 10 Home 64 bit 22H2, OS Build 19045.2251 - Asus ROG G20CB - i5-6400 2.7ghz - 8gb RAM - NVIDIA GX950- BenQ BL2783 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Rostron Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 If you export to png (or jpg), your document will automatically be flattened before export. Your original document will remain in its unflattened state so you can save it as aphoto, psd or tiff. Flattening is destructive, so you do this at the end, before export in the final form. John jubro 1 Quote Windows 11, Affinity Photo 2.4.2 Designer 2.4.2 and Publisher 2.4.2 (mainly Photo). CPU: Intel Core i5 8500 @ 3.00GHz. RAM: 32.0GB DDR4 @ 1063MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 As John pointed out the PNG is flattened so I wouldn't bother with flattening the .afphoto file that you work with simply because the printer may see some sort of mistake in the PNG and ask for a fixed file and then you can fix things easily. jubro 1 Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jubro Posted April 19, 2020 Author Share Posted April 19, 2020 Thanks very much for your responses John Rostron & Old Bruce. I understand what I needed to know. Cheers. 1 hour ago, John Rostron said: If you export to png (or jpg), your document will automatically be flattened before export. Your original document will remain in its unflattened state so you can save it as aphoto, psd or tiff. Flattening is destructive, so you do this at the end, before export in the final form. John Are png & jpg the only file types where the doc is auto flattened on export? I require png for tee-shirt printing, but for fine art prints I usually supply tiffs, for example. Quote Affinity Photo 1.10.6.1665 / Affinity Publisher 1.10.6 - Win 10 Home 64 bit 22H2, OS Build 19045.2251 - Asus ROG G20CB - i5-6400 2.7ghz - 8gb RAM - NVIDIA GX950- BenQ BL2783 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 TIFFs can contain Layers so in that case what I would do is Save as... (make a copy of the Affinity document) flatten that and export the TIFF, then toss the document in the trash, keeping the original. jubro 1 Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.5 | Affinity Photo 2.5.5 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.5 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jubro Posted April 19, 2020 Author Share Posted April 19, 2020 30 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: TIFFs can contain Layers so in that case what I would do is Save as... (make a copy of the Affinity document) flatten that and export the TIFF, then toss the document in the trash, keeping the original. I don't understand. If the tiff can contain the layers of the project, why bother saving as an Affinity file at all? Wouldn't it be possible to open the tiff in the future for re-working the project if desired? Quote Affinity Photo 1.10.6.1665 / Affinity Publisher 1.10.6 - Win 10 Home 64 bit 22H2, OS Build 19045.2251 - Asus ROG G20CB - i5-6400 2.7ghz - 8gb RAM - NVIDIA GX950- BenQ BL2783 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minus44 Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 2 hours ago, eightysevens said: I don't understand. If the tiff can contain the layers of the project, why bother saving as an Affinity file at all? Wouldn't it be possible to open the tiff in the future for re-working the project if desired? A TIFF file can indeed have multiple layers. However, the TIFF format will not be able to retain proprietary information such as can be preserved in the AFPHOTO format. For example, Live Filter data will not be saved within TIFF file layers. If you use those effects, then you need to save them in the native AFPHOTO format. jubro 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 8 hours ago, Ulysses said: A TIFF file can indeed have multiple layers. However, the TIFF format will not be able to retain proprietary information such as can be preserved in the AFPHOTO format. For example, Live Filter data will not be saved within TIFF file layers. If you use those effects, then you need to save them in the native AFPHOTO format. Sorry, but that's not correct. Almost all Affnity Photo data is preserved if you Export a TIFF with the "Save Affinity Layers" option enabled, including Live Filters. History is not preserved, and I have a vague recollection of finding one other thing that is not preserved, but I apparently didn't take any notes on that. It might be in a forum post somewhere. Snapshots, Live Filters, and other layers are retained. Any layers in TIFF files hold proprietary data, because standard TIFF images do not have any layers. So anything that exists as layers in a TIFF has been added in some proprietary format by the program that created the TIFF. Adobe can put PSD format information into TIFF files as layers, and Affinity can put .afphoto format data into TIFF files as layers, when requested. Minus44 and jubro 1 1 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minus44 Posted April 20, 2020 Share Posted April 20, 2020 3 hours ago, walt.farrell said: Sorry, but that's not correct. Almost all Affnity Photo data is preserved if you Export a TIFF with the "Save Affinity Layers" option enabled, including Live Filters. History is not preserved, and I have a vague recollection of finding one other thing that is not preserved, but I apparently didn't take any notes on that. It might be in a forum post somewhere. Snapshots, Live Filters, and other layers are retained. Any layers in TIFF files hold proprietary data, because standard TIFF images do not have any layers. So anything that exists as layers in a TIFF has been added in some proprietary format by the program that created the TIFF. Adobe can put PSD format information into TIFF files as layers, and Affinity can put .afphoto format data into TIFF files as layers, when requested. Oops!! Thank you for correcting that, @walt.farrell. It's not like me to post inaccurate info. It seems that I didn't check the box to "Save Affinity Layers" for my TIFF file test. 🙃 Apologies to the group. But like yourself, I also recall that there are certain proprietary features that are NOT preserved along with the TIFF. I'll have to do some digging through the forum posts when I have time to do so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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