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Affinity's usability is such c**p that I'm considering going back to adobe.


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I've been using affinity for 2 years, the whole suite, and in general I was happy because these last two years didn't need much 2D work. It worked for me. These last months I have had to work more with this and I have to say that I am tired of the lack of usability design that the program has. 

It is not normal the headaches that the program gives me because it does not have implemented BASIC things. I don't know where these usability ideas for the program come from but they're terrible, and what used to be a passable problem is making it impossible for me to work decently. I'm going to talk specially about Affinity Photo but the problems are applicable to all programs.

Hotkeys, they're crap. I don't know who the hell thought that to change the size of the brush you have to do Ctrl+Alt+LeftClick+RightClick but for the love of God, kill him. Don't make more people suffer. The problem with this hotkey is that it is such an OBVIOUS problem that the fact that it has not been fixed and nobody says anything scares me. On top of that there's no way to change it because it's hardcoded. You can see that whoever designed it has never used a stylus. Because to ask that you have to do Ctrl+Alt+LeftClick+RightClick with a stylus is to torture the user.

It's just that it's misconfigured by default, as if you're trying to move between selection modes. That the shift+hotkey is not activated to move between them by default, or it wasn't. Then things like while you are making a selection box you can't move it while you are creating it. Please, do you know how much time I waste with this nonsense? You can't imagine.

Another example, the selection with loop is not 3 modes of selection, depending on the submode you are in you have some hotkeys or others. Or it is three tools or one that gives access to everything without having to click on the toolbar.

Then work with the alpha, who has designed this system? It is impossible to work comfortably with the alpha of an image. You have to be creating a layer, converting it to a mask,... I don't even know where to start.

Do I want to deform a piece of my layer? I CAN'T, it turns out that the perspective tool works only with the whole layer, not with the part I'm working on. Really? Not to mention that there are 4 separate tools that do the same thing.

- Transform
- Distort
- Perspective
- Select

It's the same tool in different places. If I want to modify a layer and at the same time the perspective I have to switch between tools. It's disastrous for the concept from any user perspective.

What pis**s me off most about all this and many others that I don't mention is that it's NONNESS, which can be easily fixed in a short time and nothing is done for years. There have been complaints about all this in the forums since the beginning. And they're still ignored. That's why I'm thinking about going back to adobe. Even if it's more expensive, with a lousy licensing system and a thousand telemetry services. I use affinity photo and get frustrated because it has basic errors. It has problems that make it seem like nobody uses it in QA.

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4 minutes ago, Alberto said:

That's why I'm thinking about going back to adobe. Even if it's more expensive, with a lousy licensing system and a thousand telemetry services.

What a pity. So you won't experience it anymore, that the hotkeys for changing size and hardness for a brush have changed. 😢

9 minutes ago, Alberto said:

which can be easily fixed in a short time and nothing is done for years

You have insights about the difficulties fixing this?

------
Windows 10 | i5-8500 CPU | Intel UHD 630 Graphics | 32 GB RAM | Latest Retail and Beta versions of complete Affinity range installed

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Where have changed the hotkeys? I have the same hotkeys with last affinity photo without any option to change it.

 

Yeah, must be really hard

- to change a hotkey for brush size

- that perspective tool works with your selected part and not all the image.

- That you can move the selection when you are creating it

- That selection modes use same hotkeys.

- That open images are not blocked by default

- That added images are not added in a diagonal stupid order without any option to add in the center

 

At least it is needed 2-3 strike teams for this type of things.

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Hey, I get your frustration. 

 

They will fix some stuff, they won’t some other stuff… They’re not the biggest team in the world with the most resources. 

 

We should be much angrier at other big guys like Adobe — wich need 12 months to ship one selection feature on the iPad. But again, maybe I shouldn’t be mad at them — because Affinity Photo for iPad gets so unstable once you start having bigger documents that I just export them as .psd and go to Photoshop on iPad because it’s so reliable and stable.

I get stressed because Affinity is not perfect, and that transform tool thing you were talking about is sooo accurate — I wanted it to work like you described for years.

 

But we shouldn’t ignore how much the team is already doing with us paying them 50€ as a one time fee.

 

They are doing A LOT. 

And things will get fixed.

 

Until then, go to Adobe.

 

If you don’t want to — maybe leave feedback in a *softer* tone? :)) Took me quite some time as well to realise that softer tone gets the developers listening more than angry shouting.

Hackintosh running Big Sur 11.2.3, Coffe Lake i3 with UHD630 graphics

MacBook (Early 2015) running macOS Mojave

iPad Pro 11-inch (1st generation) running iPadOS 13.5

Vista PC in the attic 

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I have tested right now the beta... and they have change the LeftClick+RightClick+Ctrl+Alt by LeftClick+Ctrl+Alt

 

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

 

Seriously, why have changed a crappy hotkey for other crappy hotkey? Ctrl+leftclick is not used, for example, adn it where used, nothing is more important that brush size.

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I don't think the problem is the size of the team. They have a suite that has 3 programs on 3 different platforms with so many different interfaces.

It's a problem of UX design, is that I'm asking for ease of use and decisions that are easy to implement in any software. There may be some more complicated ones, like unifying the transformation tool or changing the way of working with alpha, than if they are more deep changes. But the main problems are simply bad usability decisions that affect hotkeys. I can understand that giving the user the option to configure all the hotkeys is complicated to implement. But not that putting a single button and mouse movement as a hotkey is.

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  • 2 months later...
On 7/17/2020 at 12:58 PM, Alberto said:

I don't think the problem is the size of the team. They have a suite that has 3 programs on 3 different platforms with so many different interfaces.

It's a problem of UX design, is that I'm asking for ease of use and decisions that are easy to implement in any software. There may be some more complicated ones, like unifying the transformation tool or changing the way of working with alpha, than if they are more deep changes. But the main problems are simply bad usability decisions that affect hotkeys. I can understand that giving the user the option to configure all the hotkeys is complicated to implement. But not that putting a single button and mouse movement as a hotkey is.

Yep. Photo doesn't need additional features. It needs a complete usability overhaul with the assistance of usability designers. Amusing now that it was build up from the ground a few years ago that it now needs another rebuild - this time just usability-wise not technically.

Well, probably not going to happen even in version 2. Enjoy.

  • "The user interface is supposed to work for me - I am not supposed to work for the user interface."
  • Computer-, operating system- and software agnostic; I am a result oriented professional. Look for a fanboy somewhere else.
  • “When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.” ― Confucius
  • Not an Affinity user og forum user anymore. The software continued to disappoint and not deliver.
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On 7/17/2020 at 12:48 PM, Alberto said:

I have tested right now the beta... and they have change the LeftClick+RightClick+Ctrl+Alt by LeftClick+Ctrl+Alt

 

Why?

Why?

Why?

Why?

 

Seriously, why have changed a crappy hotkey for other crappy hotkey? Ctrl+leftclick is not used, for example, adn it where used, nothing is more important that brush size.

The new hotkey is a lot better than the old one, especially for tablet users, but I can understand the confusion regarding it being ctrl+alt+L click instead of just ctrl+L click for extra clarity. It is however not that complicated to do with a keyboard either (there are several keybinds that combine modifiers like ctrl+shift+Z to redo, etc.), so it isn't really the disaster you make it out to be when compared to the old one, which was in fact impossible to use on certain tablets with no R click functionality. At the very least it was super inconvenient to use since pressing R click+L click with my Wacom pen was super awkward.

I do hope however that the devs will start adding features to fill those empty modifier spots like ctrl+L click and normal R click. Would be nice changing your brush opacity and flow for brushes on ctrl+L click as a separate feature from the current ctrl+alt+L click command. You could also add tool specific settings to ctrl+L click like the Smudge Tool having flow and strength as tool settings instead of opacity and flow that the Brush Tool uses. R click would greatly benefit from having the  brush manager open up as a pop-up screen like Photoshop does.

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On 9/20/2020 at 4:44 AM, telemax said:

I wonder why changing the brush size isn't just Ctrl + Left click? (Ctrl + Drag)

Same here. One possibility I can think of is that they have other plans for shortcut features down the road and left it vacant for that. Or they wanted users to get used to using more than one modifier since there are other tools that use ctrl+alt as well like the Freehand Selection Tool which they also changed in the same Beta along with the other selection tools.

Still, it's just speculation until the devs say something about their reasoning.

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On 9/21/2020 at 6:59 PM, Frozen Death Knight said:

Same here. One possibility I can think of is that they have other plans for shortcut features down the road and left it vacant for that. Or they wanted users to get used to using more than one modifier since there are other tools that use ctrl+alt as well like the Freehand Selection Tool which they also changed in the same Beta along with the other selection tools.

Still, it's just speculation until the devs say something about their reasoning.

I'm answering my own question. Ctrl + Left click is used for erasing in the Pixel Tool.
By the way, this is much more convenient than the Eraser Brush Tool.

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2 hours ago, telemax said:

I'm answering my own question. Ctrl + Left click is used for erasing in the Pixel Tool.
By the way, this is much more convenient than the Eraser Brush Tool.

Yeah, but since I use completely different brushes when painting and erasing, it wouldn't be as useful to me. If it still used your custom picked eraser brush from the tool instead of the currently used brush, I could see this being a lot more useful. ^_^

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