Affinity Photo Windows Customer Beta - 1.9.0.780

[petr0m]

Great that the rotation of canvas has been implemented. Two suggestions:

1. I would wish for a possibility to use this feature with a digital drawing stylus. Like pressing a button and dragging left and right to rotate instead of scrolling. In most cases dragging will be more comfortable instead of scrolling the weeel. Especially if there is like a snap to origin orientation if you move to that orientation slowly. Maybe make those two behaviours (scrolling and dragging) available in the options to switch.
2. A kind of compass indicator for the rotation would be nice, in case you are very zoomed in and want so see at which angle you are working at the moment.

[Jowday]

This should be the inner dialog in the mind of a user experience designer prior to a beta release.

[Chris J]

13 hours ago, dmstraker said:

Curves x and y point values are much appreciated. Thanks.

A query: The y-value origin seems to be top left, so increasing y goes downwards. Not the normal mathematical x and y. I wondered why it is done this way. Is this how PS does it?

Hi there. You are correct. That's wrong. I will fix that asap.

Thanks for letting us know.

Chris

[TEcHNOpls]

Hi, quick FYI, while default rotation reset shortcut is supposed to be in AP, it seems that it was not set at all when I did upgrade from previous version.

[dmstraker]

7 hours ago, Chris J said:

Hi there. You are correct. That's wrong. I will fix that asap.

Thanks for letting us know.

Chris

Cheers, though a bit confused now as @Jowday said origin top left is as used by PS. Happy with whatever is 'right'.

[Jowday]

34 minutes ago, dmstraker said:

Cheers, though a bit confused now as @Jowday said origin top left is as used by PS. Happy with whatever is 'right'.

Did I? 🙂 I showed an animation of how it works in PS. Perhaps that is what you are referring to. This is what the Photoshop Help says about their curve adjustment and what it represents:

Quote

Curves overview

In the Curves adjustment, you adjust points throughout an image’s tonal range. Initially, the image’s tonality is represented as a straight diagonal line on a graph. When adjusting an RGB image, the upper-right area of the graph represents the highlights and the lower-left area represents the shadows. The horizontal axis of the graph represents the input levels (original image values) and the vertical axis represents the output levels (new adjusted values). As you add control points to the line and move them, the shape of the curve changes, reflecting your image adjustments. The steeper sections of the curve represent areas of higher contrast while flatter sections represent areas of lower contrast.

And here you see curves in Photoshop in action - more telling perhaps:

Photo

This is the Affinity Help - written by an engineer? 

Quote

Settings

The following settings can be adjusted:

• Select a color mode (GREY/RGB/CMYK/LAB) from the first pop-up menu.
• Specify a single color channel to apply the adjustment to, including the layer's alpha channel. Master (the default choice) applies the adjustment to all channels. Select from the second pop-up menu.
• Picker—allows you to drag on the image to modify the adjustment. The initial click will place a node on the curve in relation to the pixel selected. Dragging up will lighten the image while dragging down will darken it. The curve graph will update accordingly.
• Input minimum and Input maximum are useful for 32-bit documents with out of range tonal values, but can also be used to fine tune the manipulated tonal range in 8-bit and 16-bit documents:
  • Input minimum—specify, in float, a minimum value to use as tonal input.
  • Input maximum—specify, in float, a maximum value to use as tonal output.

I am not sure what help or clue the labels X or Y provides the user with in the context. What effect does these values have, Serif. Output and input makes much more sense. 

And as a reference to the world - GIMP curves - also input-output:

Because in the end we use these terms in the software elsewhere:

Photoshop

Even Photo

Also GIMP

[Frozen Death Knight]

1 hour ago, Jowday said:

Did I? 🙂 I showed an animation of how it works in PS. Perhaps that is what you are referring to. This is what the Photoshop Help says about their curve adjustment and what it represents:

And here you see curves in Photoshop in action - more telling perhaps:

Photo

This is the Affinity Help - written by an engineer? 

I am not sure what help or clue the labels X or Y provides the user with in the context. What effect does these values have, Serif. Output and input makes much more sense. 

I mean, x and y aren't that complicated to understand. Understanding the x and y-axes and reading graphs are taught to children in grade school. Just dragging the curve will show this relation in a couple of seconds.

I can agree that the Photoshop method is solid, but the Affinity version is hardly that confusing. One advantage of reading the values from 0 - 1,000 with x and y values is that it can be calculated more in terms of percentages rather than the 0-255 Input/Output values that Photoshop deals with. For instance, try finding the 50% value of 255 just off the top of your head compared to just typing 0,5.

Why not let the user choose between the two methods if there is a use for having the value range as 255 with Input/Output labels? Would at least be a decent compromise.

[Jowday]

You didn't learn plotting graphs in relation to curves in Photo editing software. You learned what a graph is. This is about basic usability and coherency from feature to feature in Photo and across programs as well. Who ever asked for X and Y coordinates among users of Photo software now that no one else uses it? Where is the advantage? How does it improve curve editing? How intuitive is it?

[Frozen Death Knight]

58 minutes ago, Jowday said:

You didn't learn plotting graphs in relation to curves in Photo editing software. You learned what a graph is. This is about basic usability and coherency from feature to feature in Photo and across programs as well. Who ever asked for X and Y coordinates among users of Photo software now that no one else uses it? Where is the advantage? How does it improve curve editing? How intuitive is it?

Then please, enlighten me. I am not a photographer, so I am naturally not going approach the way you expect to be using curves. I like the current version of the range as 0-1,000 since it works for me when working on my art and my thought process of working with percentage type values. Unless you explain why it is important to have it from 0-255, I will not understand you.

Besides, I didn't say that I was against adding that as an option if it was just that, an option. Doesn't Photoshop have something similar as well? That GIF you posted earlier shows two different options for the range, one being labelled as 0-255 and the other as %. Seems to me like a reasonable thing to request for Affinity as well.

[dmstraker]

<tiptoes away>

I did claim confusion.

However, I have confidence the good Serif folks will fix what needs fixing.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Here's an example of how I use the current version of the curves. Easy to get very exact values on a percentage basis. No need to type "0.5" or the like, just ".5", ".35", ",76". etc., etc. A perfectly reasonable approach to using curves if you ask me. Adding more options for how to type in curve values would of course be a nice plus.

Anyway, speaking of this feature, I think I might have found some bugs regarding it, @Chris J. Apparently you can type a value smaller or larger than the current range 0-1,000. Got some wonky results with the curve which could only be fixed with Reset, since I couldn't access the actual handles for moving the curve values with certain settings. Maybe change it so that if you type in a value larger than 1 or smaller than 0, the curve handle resets back with the value 1 and 0 respectively? That way the value can never go beyond the current range set in place.

[Chris J]

The range is -100 to 100. For 32-bit Documents support.

[Mark Ingram]

1.9.0.791 is now available.