Fix groups please

[Dodgyb2001]

Hiya,

Group layers currently don't display adjustment layers within them unless there's another layer beneath them covering the whole area. This is bad for your psd import as all the adjustment layers in groups will not be displayed. Please fix this, it was driving me mental. Also, there is currently no way to draw a layer from outside a group in to be the bottom layer of the group, it always ends up as the child of the bottom layer of the group. Please fix this too.

Test.psd

[fde101]

4 hours ago, Dodgyb2001 said:

Group layers currently don't display adjustment layers within them unless there's another layer beneath them covering the whole area

Adjustment layers in Affinity Photo are applied to layers below them in the layer stack and are constrained to operate only within the group that contains them (if any).

This means that an adjustment layer in a group is applied to layers within that same group but below the adjustment layer - this is intentional and expected.

In your test PSD, the adjustment layer is at the bottom of the group.  Since there is nothing underneath it within its group there is nothing for it to be applied to, so it isn't applied to anything.

This is correct behavior, nothing to fix.

 

I'm not sure how the Adobe stuff behaves, but if it expects something else, then the layer order may need to be modified upon import to preserve the intent of the document - that would be a sensible improvement for Serif to make if that is all it is, but I am wondering if it may cause problems with PSD files generated by the Affinity products where the layer order is expected to be maintained, if it was created with the Affinity product behavior in mind?  This could be the case when working with an external DAM-type solution and using PSDs for interchange with its catalog, for example.

 

4 hours ago, Dodgyb2001 said:

there is currently no way to draw a layer from outside a group in to be the bottom layer of the group, it always ends up as the child of the bottom layer of the group

Not sure what you mean here - I can easily drag a layer from outside a group into the bottom of the group without it becoming a child of an existing layer of the group:

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

In your test PSD, the adjustment layer is at the bottom of the group.  Since there is nothing underneath it within its group there is nothing for it to be applied to, so it isn't applied to anything.

This is correct behavior, nothing to fix.

 

I'm not sure how the Adobe stuff behaves, but if it expects something else, then the layer order may need to be modified upon import to preserve the intent of the document - that would be a sensible improvement for Serif to make if that is all it is,

Is this perhaps an example of the situation where the PassThrough blend mode for a Group operates differently in Photoshop than it does in Affinity?

[fde101]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Is this perhaps an example of the situation where the PassThrough blend mode for a Group operates differently in Photoshop than it does in Affinity?

It does behave differently:

 

[MEB]

Hi Dodgyb2001,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
This is indeed due to the way Affinity deals with pass through mode. If differs from Photoshop implementation. The devs are aware of these differences however this is considered by design. You can achieve a similar behaviour as Photoshop if you add a white fill layer to the bottom of the groups's layer stack and set its blend mode to Multiply.

[Dodgyb2001]

On 11/4/2020 at 11:36 PM, MEB said:

Hi Dodgyb2001,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
This is indeed due to the way Affinity deals with pass through mode. If differs from Photoshop implementation. The devs are aware of these differences however this is considered by design. You can achieve a similar behaviour as Photoshop if you add a white fill layer to the bottom of the groups's layer stack and set its blend mode to Multiply.

But this breaks Photoshop loading/saving and seems like a bad design decision, for the reasons stated.