Import .afmacros issues

[Paul Batty]

I brought this issue up in a forum and ‘walt.farell’ suggested I mention it on the Feedback for Affinity Photo, so here goes.

Keep in mind I dabble with Affinity Photo and its sister programmes on desktop and use Photoshop a lot for work and play.

I use 'Actions' in Photoshop quite a bit; everything is controlled from one panel. It only uses one file type to save and import these actions or groups of 'Actions'. Whereas 'Affinity Photo' makes use of two panels (and two file types to deal with individual or grouped (category) ’Macros’

To be honest It was a fair time since I had played with 'Macros' in Affinity that it slipped my mind that two panels were required to achieve a really simple task of importing saved 'Macros' (or grouped Macros saved as categories) and I got frustrated that the import function on the 'Macro' panel could not see my saved macros because they were' .afmacros' files and commented on what I thought was a possible glitch.

Walt.farell said the following: 

"Why do you think it's a problem? 

.afmacro (no s) contain a single macro and are used with the Macro panel.

.afmacros files are a different format, holding multiple macros, and are used with the Library panel."

 

So to make things easier for all concerned if we have to use two panels instead of one I suggested the following:

When using the import macro button in the macro panel, would it not be a good idea for the software to recognise both a single .afmacro, or a grouped  .afmacros files and automatically  import them in to the library ready for use with a notification advising the macros have been imported to the Library. It would save a lot of hassle and time.

A comment made by R C-R said "How would this know which library category to add the macros to? The Library panel might not even be visible/open at the time."

Then I had another thought:

When importing the action or grouped actions using the macro panel, give the user the ability to choose a destination category in the library, in addition make the Library panel automatically switch on, if it switched off.

I think these are features which would be of benefit to all who make use of 'Macros' making 'Affinity Photo' a little bit more intuitive to use!