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What I really hate on Affinity Photo


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  1. Does not memorize last folder you saved an image to.
    After restart you have to dig through your folders again.
    Every other tool memorize the last used folders in the combo box in the save/open file dialog.
     
  2. Raw development cannot be easily stopped for exit.
    You have to exit raw developement first and afterwards to confirm again. This is annyoing.
    1.JPG.e9eabd867984dc150fc5131deb241241.JPG

    2.JPG.f0ec52f9c7501dc83ab6c5056623888a.JPG
     
  3. You cannot save raw development progress.
     
  4. In raw development, only simple gradient layers. No radial or ellipse.
     
  5. GUI is slow.
    It is really slow and not always responsive.
    Sometime I have to choose my pen 3 times till it really gets selected. And window, canvas refresh... all is slow.
    Using GTX1050, having 16GB RAM on a i7 Intel 4x 2.2 GHz machine.
     
  6. Slices tool. No (magnet) alignment of slices available.
     
  7. No color/luminance range selection. Only poor color picking with tolerance. Does not work most of the times.
     

Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher V2
Windows 10 Pro, 64 GB RAM
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12x 3.8 GHz), MSI X570 Unify
GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8 GB, NVIDIA driver version 471.41 (Studio)

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@JeffreyWalther,

Your #4, yes there are Radial and Ellipse gradients. Look at the context toolbar when you have the gradient overlay tool selected. It's a drop-down menu. The context toolbar is very short, located just to the right of the Cancel button.

Affinity Photo 2.4..; Affinity Designer 2.4..; Affinity Publisher 2.4..; Affinity2 Beta versions. Affinity Photo,Designer 1.10.6.1605 Win10 Home Version:21H2, Build: 19044.1766: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3301 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s);32GB Ram, Nvidia GTX 3070, 3-Internal HDD (1 Crucial MX5000 1TB, 1-Crucial MX5000 500GB, 1-WD 1 TB), 4 External HDD

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Only point 1 bothers me a little. If you hate it so much why do you keep using it? There are many more expensive and slower alternatives.

-- Window 11 - 32 gb - Intel I7 - 8700 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
-- iPad Pro 2020 - 12,9 - 256 gb - Apple Pencil 2 -- iPad 9th gen 256 gb - Apple Pencil 1
-- Macbook Air 15"

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1 hour ago, AlainP said:

Only point 1 bothers me a little. If you hate it so much why do you keep using it? There are many more expensive and slower alternatives.

I mentioned it because even cheap or free tools have this feature.

Even me, if a write a new app in C#, this is one of the first features I implement when loading or saving a file! This is standard!
It is easy to remember the last used paths and store them somewhere.

Slower alternatives? Affinity is slow, there is barely no room to get worse. For example raw developent (processing) takes so long.

 

 

Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher V2
Windows 10 Pro, 64 GB RAM
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12x 3.8 GHz), MSI X570 Unify
GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8 GB, NVIDIA driver version 471.41 (Studio)

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1 hour ago, JeffreyWalther said:

Slower alternatives? Affinity is slow, there is barely no room to get worse. For example raw developent (processing) takes so long.

I don't know about the computer you use Affinity Photo on it, but I've been working for years with Lightroom and Photoshop, almost since they came out on Windows, and so many other RAW  software and Affinity has won. On my system the RAW dev. is equal or sometime faster that the other soft I worked with. And in the beta version, now that they have implemented hardware acceleration, RAW processing is almost twice as fast. The reason why I still use another software for RAW processing is that when I come back with a few hundred photos to work on..... Photos is really not the tool for it yet. I use On1 PhotoRaw and believe me it's much slower than Photos.

That is my last comment on this subject.

-- Window 11 - 32 gb - Intel I7 - 8700 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
-- iPad Pro 2020 - 12,9 - 256 gb - Apple Pencil 2 -- iPad 9th gen 256 gb - Apple Pencil 1
-- Macbook Air 15"

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4 hours ago, Ron P. said:

@JeffreyWalther,

Your #4, yes there are Radial and Ellipse gradients. Look at the context toolbar when you have the gradient overlay tool selected. It's a drop-down menu. The context toolbar is very short, located just to the right of the Cancel button.

Thanks for pointing out a point I forgot to mention above:

  • The interface should be cleaned up in places and
    tools should be in one place instead of being spread all over the place.
    Adobe Photoshop already has that and it's pretty annoying.

 

Untitled.jpg

Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher V2
Windows 10 Pro, 64 GB RAM
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12x 3.8 GHz), MSI X570 Unify
GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8 GB, NVIDIA driver version 471.41 (Studio)

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4 hours ago, fde101 said:

Tools are on the toolbar on the left.

And some are on the Toolbar, so they are a bit spread out.

@JeffreyWalther: The icons you've highlighted on the lower right of your screenshot are not tools. They are icons that may happen to look like tools, but they simply add an overlay layer (and their icon represents the kind of overlay layer they add).

-- Walt
Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases
PC:
    Desktop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 

    Laptop:  Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU.
iPad:  iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1

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3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

They are icons that may happen to look like tools

That statement is really a solid indication on its own that the UI has room for improvement.

Nevertheless, I still think that popup is in the right spot on the context toolbar.

 

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

And some are on the Toolbar, so they are a bit spread out.

That should be fixed.

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On 10/6/2020 at 11:08 AM, JeffreyWalther said:

You cannot save raw development progress.

Hey Jeffrey,

AP is a pixel editor that added a single RAW file development persona
(only one!) because the purpose is to edit an image. Since a RAW is
unalterable it won't record or save in sidecar files the tweaks, for that
one needs a real converter.

There are things that bug me too after being a user for years. :40_rage:

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A "user for years" .... with only three posts on the forum....

-- Window 11 - 32 gb - Intel I7 - 8700 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
-- iPad Pro 2020 - 12,9 - 256 gb - Apple Pencil 2 -- iPad 9th gen 256 gb - Apple Pencil 1
-- Macbook Air 15"

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Salut d'un montréalais en Europe depuis 30 ans!

Ben oui, Alain, après avoir travaillé avec CS6 a part quelques semaines
d'adaptation à la suite de Sérif, je me suis remis au boulot content d'être
sorti du cercle d'adobe. Je me suis débrouillé tantôt tout seul tantôt avec
les tutoriels en ligne.

La pandémie ralentit tout, j'ai donc un peu de temps pour le forum. :P

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46 minutes ago, AlainP said:

A "user for years" .... with only three posts on the forum....

Sigh. A new low. Believe it or not, some people actually learn and produce without living their life on a forum.

I used Adobe for decades without a single post on the Adobe forums. But I did read a lot. And followed tutorials. I never had to post anything. Plenty of knowledge out there and plenty of features in Adobe CC. I believe @Nikon Shooter did the same.

But why are you questioning him and his honesty, Internet Judge Alain P. ? I often see many users here as member of a semi-religious cult rather than a user base of creatives. Question the product and the usual responses pop up. Some users here could use auto replies posted by first generation chat bot tech. Would probably save them for several hours a week. The replies doesn't help Serif or the product development by the way. 

Quote

The sad thing is, fanboys don't realize, that these companies that fuel their passion, don't really give a damn about us. To me, defending a multi-national corporation like their your own family, is ridiculous. These organizations don't come to your house and help you when you're sick, they don't help you move, or drive you to the airport. They don't support you in any way. It's a business, not a friendship. As soon as you can no longer buy their product, you disappear to them.

 

  • "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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Salut @Nikon Shooter  !

@Jowday.....😁 his honesty... semi-religious cult wow... ????   He's just whining every time he posts something that's all there is. 

-- Window 11 - 32 gb - Intel I7 - 8700 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060
-- iPad Pro 2020 - 12,9 - 256 gb - Apple Pencil 2 -- iPad 9th gen 256 gb - Apple Pencil 1
-- Macbook Air 15"

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On 10/6/2020 at 7:22 PM, JeffreyWalther said:

Thanks for pointing out a point I forgot to mention above:

  • The interface should be cleaned up in places and
    tools should be in one place instead of being spread all over the place.
    Adobe Photoshop already has that and it's pretty annoying.

 

Untitled.jpg

I really don't see how removing the current placement and moving those settings there would improve the UI in the slightest. The upper toolbar has always been a standard used for showing specific custom settings that are relevant to the selected tool in question. You completely undermine the very idea of having this bar by doing this change. I can also have my gripes with certain aspects of the Affinity UI, but this part is in fact very consistent across not just Affinity, but other similar programs as well. To be perfectly frank, your idea is "all over the place".

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On 10/6/2020 at 11:08 AM, JeffreyWalther said:
  1. Does not memorize last folder you saved an image to.
    After restart you have to dig through your folders again.
    Every other tool memorize the last used folders in the combo box in the save/open file dialog.

This, together with the madness that is the use of "Export" instead of "Save As", which completely destroys my workflow,  is the main reason why, after extensively trying this software, and also liking a lot of his features, I will not buy it for now, and I will stick with Photoshop.

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9. You cannot disable "new update available" dialog everytime you open Photo.

No pro updates everytime an update is availble during running projects. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher V2
Windows 10 Pro, 64 GB RAM
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12x 3.8 GHz), MSI X570 Unify
GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8 GB, NVIDIA driver version 471.41 (Studio)

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  • 3 years later...

I got sick of Adobe's jacking up price of Creative Cloud subscription, went looking for a Photoshop alternative, found Affinity Photo this morning, and have been playing with it. I have a question and a gripe.

Question: in PS, if I do "Help", I can search for "drop shadow" and I hover over the "drop shadow" in the search result, PS will point me to that item in the menus. See pic.  Is there anything like that in AP?

S2023-12-04at15_49_39.thumb.jpg.a28697cf86a62b8d02aa91351fb3d108.jpg

Gripe: my biggest gripe so far is that while there seems to be copious documentation, it lacks the most basic steps.  For instance, I needed to know how to do drop shadow. I found the "Using layer effects" page.  It says:

"Layer effects can be applied to any layer from either the Effects panel or the Layers panel."

Great, but how do I find these "Effects panel" and "Layers panel"?!!! 😡 Clicking on the "Layers panel" link at the bottom of that help page took me to the "Layers panel" page but there's nothing there about how to get to that panel.  Ditto the "Effects panel" link. 🤬

I happened to notice the "FX" icon in the right column but I wonder how long it would have taken me, or anybody, to find the "Effects panel".

Effects_panel.jpg.5b0373330cac1ccb888e79ebe4bb394a.jpg

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2 hours ago, aqn said:

Question: in PS, if I do "Help", I can search for "drop shadow" and I hover over the "drop shadow" in the search result, PS will point me to that item in the menus. See pic.  Is there anything like that in AP?

Affinity has the same search feature in its Help menu, it's standard with macOS apps, but since drop shadow isn't a menu command that one won't work. (Note: on rare occasions, the search box won't be in the Help menu. Just restart the app to fix it. I think this might be a macOS bug and not an Affinity bug per se, but regardless, just restart it.)

If you're new to the app, I recommend using the Help system via the website rather than the macOS Help browser. Then it won't be on top of the Affinity window and you can keep it open and bookmark it. https://affinity.help

As for the panels, they're all listed in the Window menu just like Photoshop.

Good luck

Download a free manual for Publisher 2.4 from this forum - expanded 300-page PDF

My system: Affinity 2.4.0 for macOS Sonoma 14.4, MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro)

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3 hours ago, aqn said:

Question: in PS, if I do "Help" […]  Is there anything like that in AP?

How about actually opening the Help menu and check out all the menu items that are listed in there, and what might possibly happen if you select any of those…? 

 

  • Quote
  • Affinity Photo 2 Help
  • Affinity Photo 2 Learning Portal
  • Quickstart Guide
  • What's New
  • Video Tutorials
  • YouTube Creative Sessions
  • Visit Affinity Spotlight
  • Visit Support Forums
  • Benchmark...

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

I recommend using the Help system via the website rather than the macOS Help browser.

Yes, the MacOS Help app has always been seriously pathetic.
However, if Affinity Photo is installed in the default location in the Applications folder, you can also open – and bookmark – the offline help using this local URL in a browser of your choice:

  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/en-US.lproj/index.html

^ That's for the US English localization which I personally prefer.
The same content as on https://affinity.help/photo2/en-US.lproj/index.html

Other help localizations are in the corresponding *.lproj folders:

  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/de.lproj/index.html
  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/index.html
  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/es.lproj/index.html
  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/fr.lproj/index.html
  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/it.lproj/index.html
  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/ja.lproj/index.html
  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/pt-BR.lproj/index.html
  • file:///Applications/Affinity%20Photo%202.app/Contents/Resources/AffinityPhoto.help/Contents/Resources/zh-Hans.lproj/index.html

MacBookAir 15": MacOS Ventura > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // MacBookPro 15" mid-2012: MacOS El Capitan > Affinity v1 / MacOS Catalina > Affinity v1, v2, v2 beta // iPad 8th: iPadOS 16 > Affinity v2

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