.dds, mip map, normal map, BC7, etc.. Support ?

[InfaRed]

Hi, I purchased Affinity and pretty shocked to find I can not just load and edit my .dds files. Also seemingly no support for mip map and normal map generation on save ? And no BC7 options ?

Advertised as a replacement for Photoshop, I already feel like Gimp and Paint.net is better. lol Whats going on here ?

Hopefully there are just some plugins I need to download and then this "Photoshop replacer" will finally work like all other apps do ? Free apps Gimp and Paint.net do this. So I am expecting I am just missing something here ? I await your answers, thank you -

 

[Pšenda]

Just a question - if you are buying something, why not find out what the application can do? For example, by trying the trial version, or just by reading the properties (supported formats) on the web. I recommend, at least you wouldn't be so shocked.

[InfaRed]

It advertises as the Photoshop Replacer. I shouldn't have to demo it. Also I would have bought it anyway for other stuff.

Don't see how that response helps though. No questions were answered as to whether I am missing the features somewhere or not or maybe plugins avail for Affinity that do as I ask ?

Also, my post should be taken seriously if Affinity wants to grow, cause everything I mentioned is seriously getting popular thanks to millions of people getting into game modding now. Affinity would benefit from it.

Plus, Affinity should just literally do everything Photoshop does. This is a no brainer IMO. Then Serif will be topping Forbes Magazine all thanks to my advice.

Ohh, side note, after fiddling around some more, I also found Affinity to lack in how it handles Alpha Channels. Lots of improvement there to be more user friendly. Ability to load transparency as a alpha channel from the file itself upon opening is a must.

Either case, seriously, does Affinity do this or not ?

Edited October 31, 2020 by InfaRed

[RNKLN]

9 minutes ago, InfaRed said:

Plus, Affinity should just literally do everything Photoshop does. This is a no brainer IMO.

If you want to be helped by forum members i suggest you don't come with this type of nonsense statements.

[Pšenda]

37 minutes ago, InfaRed said:

It advertises as the Photoshop Replacer.

Where does Serif say that? Thanks for the link.

[InfaRed]

48 minutes ago, RNKLN said:

If you want to be helped by forum members i suggest you don't come with this type of nonsense statements.

Dang, I hope this isn't another one of those stuck up places. Too many of these going around the net now a days. Anyway, its all peace and hair grease from the Middle East man.. Lets calm down here, lol - There is nothing nonsense about what I asked and said. If you think it is nonsense, then I guess you don't the concept of logic I present. Thats fine. But please don't call it nonsense when someone asks a car company to make a car that rolls on wheels down the block like the other car company. Its not a nonsense thought, suggestion or concept. Its actually rather logical.

Edited October 31, 2020 by InfaRed

[InfaRed]

11 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Where does Serif say that? Thanks for the link.

So go to their home page. If you can not read between the lines here, then I do not know what to say.
First off, the layout of offering Photo, Designer, Publisher... doesn't ring a bell to you ? Ok, there is your link, do the math.

Next we have this: " Trusted by professionals - Affinity Photo has become the first choice for photography and creative professionals around the world, who love its speed, power and precision. Born to work hand-in-hand with the latest powerful computer technology, it’s the only fully-loaded photo editor integrated across macOS, Windows and iOS.

Add the two together and come on man, its not my imagination, they are advertising taking Photoshops place. Which IMO is great ! I love it. I want it. Look man, all peace here, but I'm saying its hard to deny the marketing concept here is to replace Photoshop and thank god ! Adobe's evil communist subscription motto needs to go down. So I support Affinity now as they seem real.

But all I ask is, #1 does it do the things I ask ? If not #2 I am surprised, but #3 its ok, when can they implement it ? I am sure they should want to since lots of people use the competition for such - Thats all I am saying. No reason to get all fan boy on me. Bottom line is its a question and the question's answer has the ability to possibly help Affinity here get popular "professional" features.

Hopefully I worded that all correctly ? lol I mean no harm man.

[emmrecs01]

@InfaRed

19 minutes ago, InfaRed said:

If you can not read between the lines here, then I do not know what to say.

To expect potential users to read between the lines is surely tantamount to potentially suggesting there is false advertising being used.  If the advertising says it is a "Photoshop replacement" then yes, it should and must be exactly that, or false representation is being made.  But it doesn't say that, anywhere, including in the section of the publicity you quote. 

Unfortunately, perhaps, you have read between the lines and assumed something which has never been claimed or stated.

Jeff

[walt.farrell]

11 hours ago, InfaRed said:

I purchased Affinity

If you purchased directly from Serif (not from the Mac or Microsoft stores), then you can return the product(s) within 14 days of purchase and get a full refund. It sounds to me like you did not research enough before the purchase, and if you meet those return requirements, I suggest that you return it and look for someting different. You can email affinityreturns@serif.com to initiate the process.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

If you purchased directly from Serif (not from the Mac or Microsoft stores), then you can return the product(s) within 14 days of purchase and get a full refund. It sounds to me like you did not research enough before the purchase, and if you meet those return requirements, I suggest that you return it and look for someting different. You can email affinityreturns@serif.com to initiate the process.

“Reading between the lines”, I don’t think the OP is looking to return the product.

2 hours ago, InfaRed said:

It advertises as the Photoshop Replacer. I shouldn't have to demo it. Also I would have bought it anyway for other stuff.

 

1 hour ago, InfaRed said:

Adobe's evil communist subscription motto needs to go down. So I support Affinity now as they seem real.

 

[InfaRed]

Thanks Alfred, yes exactly. I love Affinity and want to keep it. Thats not the point. Trials = not the point. I know what I want before I buy and I buy.

Completely sorry to all if I came off wrong or rude. My style, and its how I like to be talked to = straight to the point. SO I skipped all the "ohh Affinity is the best ever, great product guys !" (10 giant thumbs up), exclamation points everywhere. Haha, you get the idea. Its text, so again I apologize if some read into this wrong.

Also its a bit frustrating how most companies now pass on "customer support" to a forum. Where I know I will come across nothing but uptight fanboys. NOT saying anyone here is, just using lingo here,, all good.

Now ALL that aside. I ask any extremely avid Affinity savvy badd asss here... is there something I am missing or does affinity not have support for .dds files, normal map generation, bit map generation and loading/importing transparency as alpha ?

Thanks in advance - (I just wanna know this first, so I can then make a suggestion in the suggestion place.) I'm the first to know I can be a lame asss when it comes to finding something so wanna make sure I'm not being retarded here in finding it.
 

**DISCLAIMER**  to all the overly sensitive people that follow falsely over hyped technically wrong trends -  I use the word retarded in its original definition term, not slang or derogatory definition. Retarded after all specifically means something by definition and not something bad... it can be used to correctly describe "being slow to realize" something or even a machine being slowed down, ect.. IMO being slowed down to realize something is not a bad thing or bad to say about myself or anyone else.

Edited October 31, 2020 by InfaRed

[InfaRed]

6 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

If you purchased directly from Serif (not from the Mac or Microsoft stores), then you can return the product(s) within 14 days of purchase and get a full refund. It sounds to me like you did not research enough before the purchase, and if you meet those return requirements, I suggest that you return it and look for someting different. You can email affinityreturns@serif.com to initiate the process.

Thanks for the help Walt ! You know, it's ok. I love Affinity. And I am almost positive I will eventually be able to do what I want on it soon. (hopefully). If not, I am still happy !

I use it for other things too. I just would like to be able to it for them others as well. I purchased it a while ago. I am slow when it comes to getting around to doing everything. REAL slow. lol that's why trials never work out for me. But again - I did my research first and am happy with my purchase. Just was surprised to find that out is all. I think how it went down is I more recently came into the need of editing .dds files for game modding. Literally millions of people do this, its super popular and I recently got into it. (late to the party).

So then I was like, oh I was told paint.net and gimp and photoshop do this.. then no prob, I'm a go to my handy Affinity app cause its better ! haha, then I realized it. Thats how it went down. So yea - seriously I still am surprised it doesn't or is so hard to find. When I go to the "export" choice, the list of options is pretty limited (IMO).

I am confident this will grow over time. But again, surprised. You tap into the world of catering to the gaming crowd, which in turn is the texture making crowd, and believe me, you just opened doors. Thats all my points were and I jumped ahead in my mind accidentally and just came off wrong like I was talking to friends ! haha.

[InfaRed]

7 hours ago, emmrecs01 said:

@InfaRed

 surely tantamount to potentially suggesting there is false advertising being used.

Hey Jeff, thanks for trying to clear things up. But I want to be clear I never claimed "false advertisement". Cause I know what you are saying. Technically by law since they did not come out and directly say those words.. yes. You are correct. But I am also correct cause I never said "false advertisement".

I said what I stand behind and I think you all know to be true. It's obvious. They are advertising in a way that this is a direct alternative to PS. Same names, same lingo, etc.. as I pointed out. NOT false advertisement no. And I am not upset in any way. Nor do I want to return my purchase. I am happy. Just surprised is all, how the packaging appears, yet the contents do not deliver the packaging implication. The packaging here clearly represents PS. I think we can all agree there. Hence what I said.

Its not a big deal, or a big worry. Just want to get a clear answer is all so I can then suggest/request what is needed. 🙂 Or better yet (hopefully) be shown I am not seeing something and someone show me where these features are ! Or separate downloaded plugin maybe ?? hopefully ?

Edited October 31, 2020 by InfaRed

[Old Bruce]

Short answer:

No .dds file import or support. Not sure about the others... etc

[InfaRed]

56 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Short answer:

No .dds file import or support. Not sure about the others... etc

Thanks for the answer Bruce ! Helps a lot.

If anyone knows about the BC7 compression, let me know -

[myclay]

Hello InfaRed,

mip map and normal map generation on save - along other advanced saving features are as of now not officially in any Affinity Product.
Serif has announced that they are looking and working on adding more support for game art users, this image below was shared.

A couple years ago long before the pleasant announcement above,  I tried to build my own solution with the available tools within Affinity Photo which allowed for example to

• quickly turn text or vector shapes to normalmaps.
• use profiles on normalmaps to change their appearances.
• mixing/combining non destructively vector and pixel layers and also erasing parts of them at the same time.

After getting some feedback and tinkering a bit more, I took it all down since there are issues in how Affinities internal calculations work, which can´t be solved from a users perspective.

So yeah, as an 3D artist, waiting for a proper solution is the only way for now.

[InfaRed]

MyClay, thank you so much for this post. Explains a lot and backs up several of my concerns.

Also confirms with me that I just need to wait. So thanks again for such a greatly informed post.

Thanks for sharing. And thanks to you, OldBruce and Alfred for being the ones that truly helped on this subject.

I also sent a detailed letter to Affinity asking for all the advanced professional gamer artist tools and file support. Seen a thread here to about it. So this is a extremely popular asked for thing. Extremely surprised they skipped this when first building this app. So strange.

[myclay]

Hello InfaRed,
just in case you didn´t know, there is a standalone solution from Nvidia available for mipmapping and BC1-BC7 compression,
it is called NVIDIA Texture Tools Exporter.
The  Photoshop plugin (incompatible with Affinity Photo since its a *.8bi file format)  is not needed for the standalone to work.

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-exporter
create a developer account, download and have fun.

There is also a Legacy version (from 2013) available of the initial Texture tools which allows partial support for the usage from Affinity Photo since it uses a *.8bf file.
https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworksdownload#?dn=texture-tools-for-adobe-photoshop-8-55

I would strongly recommend the newest solution the first link (Standalone version) which was first released around march 2020.

[InfaRed]

Thanks again brother !

Yes I actually already own Nvidia's Texture Tools Exporter. Its cool. I played around with it. So my thing was less about the fact that I can not do these functions, but more that I'd like Affinity to have it built in (like others have). So I am accomplishing these tasks elsewhere.

I find myself gravitating towards how Paint.net does the mipmapping and BC1-7 saving. BUT imo it kinda lacks in editing. Especially the alphas. Paint.net is surprisingly good though for free. Gimp on the other hand is much better at editing and functionality and alpha editing, but lacks completely in saving it. LOL

Photoshop is obviously king, but I don't do subscriptions. So they lost my business. But simply put, any company making a photo editing software just needs to mimic PS abilities and layout and functionality to a tee and the world would be happy.

On a personalized complaining note , lol - I feel having only a "export" option as saving is just not only ridiculous, but confusing and makes no sense. "Save" and Save As" is world industry standard for decades and should remain as such. "Export" means when you want to export something to another program. And for the most part is rarely used compared to Save and Save As.

It always baffles me how some companies like to reinvent a wheel and then make it not round. There are some things you just don't change or try to change cause they don't need changing. And "Save As" is one of those things. But ok, lets say you wanna reinvent the wheel, I get, ok, I'd be for it IF and only if you improved it.

Edited November 2, 2020 by InfaRed

[R C-R]

16 hours ago, InfaRed said:

On a personalized complaining note , lol - I feel having only a "export" option as saving is just not only ridiculous, but confusing and makes no sense. "Save" and Save As" is world industry standard for decades and should remain as such. "Export" means when you want to export something to another program. And for the most part is rarely used compared to Save and Save As.

FWIW, in the Mac world "Export" usually refers to saving a file in some file format other than the current one. In Mac apps it used to be accessed via File > Save As, with various UI methods like one or more cascading popups to select the format & the options that format supports. More recently, Mac apps often do not have a  File > Save As menu item (or it is an alternative to the File > Duplicate item accessed by holding down the option key with the file menu open), & may have instead a File > Export or File > Export As XXX item if the app only supports exporting to a single different format. Some apps have both File > Save As & File > Export, & possibly other related save options (save a copy, save to server, etc.) depending on the type of app & the kinds of files it can open.

Basically, however it is labeled, exporting involves changing the format of the file.

[InfaRed]

Yea, I seen this change too in my Macs. I don't like Duplicate. IMO there was nothing wrong with Save, Save As, Export. I liked it when we had those. I find Save As being less of a step in renaming and also allowing to rename and put in different location all in same one move/click. With Duplicate I feel they think its cool, but it is actually less efficient. (IMO)

You are right though, Save As usually was used to just save the same file, but make it a different name and change stuff and save as separate file. Export was when you wanted to change the file type to something else. (Usually). But when implicated correctly, you could really do both from either. Remember that ? Cause the same options came up for either choice. Hence why I think they just removed one.

But remember this. Some apps used to use Export and Import only for when you wanted to export the file into another app. Hence why there was also Import. IMO, this is the truest definition of Import/Export. And I'd like to see it go back to that. Export to literally export the file to another app. Save as to duplicate and/or change file type, name, etc.. No need for Duplicate. Worse invention ever. I don't wanna duplicate anything, I want to Save it As something else.

I know just opinions. But those are mine. And thats the only thing I'm voting on this Nov 3rd ! haha.

(btw I am not only the biggest Futurama fan you will find, but I happen to be watching it this moment and the first time I looked at your Avatar, and then read your caption, Professor Farnsworth literally said it AS I was reading it ! 

Buwaaaht ?

Edited November 3, 2020 by InfaRed
Roswell That Ends Well

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, InfaRed said:

Some apps used to use Export and Import only for when you wanted to export the file into another app.

Yes, and what do you see as the problem?
The native format of the Affinity application is *.afxxx files. Other files/formats are foreign (non-native) files from other applications, and therefore the application data must be exported to them. At the same time, this clearly distinguishes for users that it exports (does not save) to a file, in which case some information (layers, blending, live filters, adjustments, fx, vector is rasterized, ...) may (and probably will also be) lost.

[InfaRed]

18 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Yes, and what do you see as the problem?

Sorry, I want to be clear, there is no problem at all. Just 100% personal preference. The concept now currently makes no sense to the English language. #1 Export means to travel/send, and travel has to take place. Or you are not exporting anything. It does not mean to change. So that's that.

Now let me explain how it makes no sense to back my personal preference along with the English language being used properly. Lets say I load up a .jpg file and I want to save it as a different save but still a .jpg. In Affinity, since they incorporated their "Save As" all wrong, if I go to "Save As" like I should do if I want to follow the English language correctly because I do NOT want to export anything to anywhere, I can only save as a afphoto file. Which is wrong conceptional wise.

So even though I do not want to change the file nor do I want the file to travel anywhere (the real definition of export) I still need to go to "Export" and "export" a .jpg file to a .jpg file ! lol Come on, everyone has to admit thats stupid. They incorporated Save As and Export wrong.

I never seen a app that uses only export as the function to save. To me its a bit alien.

Again, there is no problem. I was just speaking personal preference as far as what makes logical mental sense to my brain personally (and the English language).

I 100% see your points and understand the concept of why some may be ok with it. But "Save As" also means all that you said, except it makes more sense in English. "I want to SAVE this file AS something else. = Save As. 

Export is exact same thing, yes. But not only does it mean to travel/send somewhere, but also to my brain the word equals a more serious task. When I want to do something simple like load up a .png and SAVE it AS a .png or .jpg, or anything other than a .aphoto file, then, imo the words "Save As" makes sense. Export to me feels like.. I want to teleport something to somewhere else. Which, is needed too ! Yes.. But I like Save As for most common simple save as tasks and export for more serious "traveling tasks" and Save just means save whatever I currently have open no matter what file it is.

The way it is now, is Save As only will save a Affinity file, and like I explained, that really doesn't make sense for those times I want to save a same file as the same file but AS a different save.

 

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, InfaRed said:

When I want to do something simple like load up a .png and SAVE it AS a .png or .jpg,

Sorry, but if you just want to rename/copy a file (of any type and format) to another, then the file manager (like File Explorer) is for that. After all, you will not use an application that processes and edits these files for these operations!

If you Open any file/format in Affinity, you will load it and convert it into native working data so that you can further edit it. Then Saving this working data (even if you haven't actually made any edits) is simply Export, unless you save in native *.afxxx format. Easy, and completely logical (for me).

[InfaRed]

41 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Sorry, but if you just want to rename/copy a file (of any type and format) to another, then the file manager (like File Explorer) is for that. After all, you will not use an application that processes and edits these files for these operations!

No, you're misunderstanding. I didn't say you're not editing. I said jpg to jpg. For instance, open/load a jpg, edit some things in affinity then save as a jpg. This should be "Save As". Not export. It's illogical.