Show Stopper: Exporting in Affinity iPad

[Eftaliotis]

This is really a show-stopper. I’m working on book project of historical images that will include around two hundred photos edited in exactly the same way and this morning I sat down to export the first 20 edited images to 16-bit TIFF. I have to go through the following steps for EVERY SINGLE PHOTO:

1. Load the photo
2. Select Export
3. Select 16-bit TIFF
4. Wait for regeneration because 8-bit is selected by default
5. Check the other settings
6. Click on OK
7. Choose my cloud folder
8. Navigate down to the folder where I’m going to be saving these images — 6 steps
9. Exit the photo
10. Save the photo just to be sure because Affinity never tells me if it’s saved or not

This is beyond ridiculous. The only thing the Export screen remembers is that I’m exporting to TIFF, everything else has to be reset every time. You should really be able to export all the photos in a project in a batch. But failing that, at least the Export screen should have presets that you can save, or should at least remember what you did on the last export. This is so bad that I’m seriously considering taking the new iPad Pro to the Apple Store today, returning it, and getting a Microsoft Surface Pro instead, since I’m still within the 14-day return period. There is no way that an efficient workflow is possible at the moment. It just isn’t going to happen.

[Khoji]

PS: My phone seems to have logged in with an account I didn't know was active. I'm the original poster though...🙈

 

Hi Erkka,

Thanks for this information. That would have been great if I had found it but all the searches I did indicated Affinity had no batch output. However it still wouldn't have made Affinity Photo a viable option for me. I've given up on it and returned the iPad Pro.

Apart from its other limitations I just can't live without Capture One and quite a few plugins I use.  If I could justify spending that much on it as an additional device -- in addition to both a desktop and a laptop -- it would be "nice to have". But there's no way it can replace a laptop for me for photo editing yet and it's too expensive as another additional device. 

Edited May 25, 2020 by Khoji

[Eftaliotis]

13 hours ago, ErrkaPetti said:

Ok...

But, please, tell us more what you miss in the iPad version of Affinity Photo?

A matter of facts, if you missed Batch functionality you certainly miss a lot of other powerful features...

That's quite possible, even though I worked through many of the tutorials on the Serif site and invested in a paid course on Affinity Photo for the iPad and worked all the way through it before asking any questions. The fact is, even if Affinity had been perfect for me in itself I would have switched back from the iPad to a laptop because the entire platform is just not ready for my kind of photo editing. That is not a reflection on Affinity, it's just the way I want to work: I need a wide range of tools and plugins, I need the full functionality of both Capture One and Photoshop, I need all the original Fuji film simulations on RAW (and no, LUT approximations are not the same thing) and also the ability to use tools from additional programs like Luminar 4 and others.

Above all, my money-making work is in Windows software development, and I frequently have to do some work while on the road doing photography as well. If I switch to the iPad I need to carry both my laptop and my iPad, and that is too much weight, and even more importantly too much unnecessary expense, particularly when the laptop is actually a much more capable photo editing platform in terms of all the tools available to me. I really, really like the iPad and I like working on it. That is why I succumbed to temptation and upgraded my old Gen 1 iPad Pro to the 2020. It really pained me to return it, I would have loved to keep it. But even without the annoyances in Affinity I still would have done it, for now, because for the work I need to do I need a laptop upgrade and the very expensive iPad would just be an additional luxury that I can't justify at the moment.

[Eftaliotis]

1 hour ago, ErrkaPetti said:

So, to summarize it all, you were optimistic enough to believe that a 25 bucks iPad app (Affinity Photo) could replace both Photoshop and Capture One ?

I don’t think it’s the Affinity Photo that is the problem here, it’s your optimistic expectations of the app

That's a reasonable criticism. However, to be fair I wasn't really expecting that, and I had also done extensive tests on it on my old Gen 1 iPad Pro that showed me how capable Affinity potentially was. That is why I bought the new iPad for it. I just misjudged how much I would miss all the other tools. Also, Affinity is much more than a $25 app, and that is one of its problems. Despite the things that I personally found annoying, its capabilities really do rival Photoshop for a large section of photo editing, and at the moment it is way more capable than the current version of Photoshop on the iPad. (And at the slow rate Adobe is adding features to Photoshop for iPad it's going to be a couple of years before they catch up.)

I understand why the generally low price level of apps on iOS forces Serif to charge such a low price. However, that is probably holding them back. It's definitely a professional-class application with professional potential, and for what it can do and can become it should really cost a LOT more. Then Serif would have more resources for better support and investing more in development. Unfortunately, they would get crucified with 1-star ratings in the App Store if they tried to charge that. Also, now that they've started at such a low price it's really difficult to increase it -- lowering prices is always easy, raising them is very hard. 

And that is really the conundrum of professional class apps on the iPad: The App Store has created such a low price level that it's very difficult to justify development of apps with the kind of depth and breadth that Affinity Photo definitely has. That is most likely why we're not going to see a version of Capture One on the iPad any time soon. Phase One charges professional prices for professional software and they won't be expanding to the iPad as a platform before there is a reasonable chance of getting a better return there. My guess is that is also the reason Adobe is not pushing ahead with Photoshop for the iPad development all that quickly: Even though they are covered by including it in the general subscription plan, the iPad is still not a very attractive business proposition as a platform for professional-grade apps that have a smaller niche market and must charge higher prices to be economically viable.