Discusssion of Challenges moving from Photoshop to Affinity Photo

[PeterinJapan]

I'm trying to take the plunge from Photoshop to Affinity Photo after 25+ years. I'd like to say kudos to the developers for making such an amazing tool that is so functional and elegant.

I'd like to start a discussion about issues and (small and large) frustrations I've been experienceing, and would like to get feedback from others who have switched

Things that I just have to get used to

• The way to transform is to switch to the Move tool and then you're immediately moving and transforming. I need to teach myself to not hit command + T to transform something. Since there's no "click enter to accept what I just did" it feels weird and is hard to get used to.
• Ditto for adding text: I enter the text I want to add, and I am done, without there being a "finalize this input" and thus, no way to undo text I just added by hitting escape. The paradigm is not impossible to adapt to, but hard.
• It's a "modern" app so no Applescript support. This will presumably make automation harder for me. 

Things I think Affinity should consider changing

• Command + click on a layer always selects the layer (the layer occupied by the part of the image) in Photoshop, but in AP you need to click the Move tool first, or hit V...unless you're in a place where you can't hit V. Anyway, it would be so nice if anytime I have the command key down (on Mac) or control key down (on Windows) the program would know I wanted to click on objects/layers and start moving them
• Something I do OFTEN in Photoshop is get some image in my clipboard, then type command + N to make a new document. Photoshop knows that I probably want to paste the image into my document and makes an image the dimensions of the clipboard image (or rather, the dimensions of the image in the clipboard are pre-filled into the dialogue box). This doesn't happen in AP, meaning that I end up with a large pasteboard and no way to easily get the correct cropped size that I needed. 
• One small reason I wanted to change was that Photoshop CC 2019 doesn't play nice switching between laptop screen and docked laptop with big screen, hence I am always manually moving the palettes out of the way. I hoped AP would more gracefully put my palettes where they were last time I was on this size screen, but it doesn't seem to be happening. 
• Unlike Photoshop, there is no Crop command, meaning that I can't draw a marquee box then crop it. Forcing me to get out the crop tool and redo all the work is very hard on us users. 
• AP doesn't always "follow the rules" with Mac UI. First, when I close out an image, sometimes it leaves a blank "Affinity Photo" window blocking my work. I cannot close the window with command W (I am a power user so I use the keyboard a lot), and have to click the box. I would really like this to not do this as it messes up the Mac's UI rules.

Does anyone have advice on how I can better adopt to the new paradigms of the new program coming from a Photoshop user? 

[Fixx]

2 hours ago, PeterinJapan said:

Things that I just have to get used to

Command-T is of not much use as long as free transform is not available... (though perspective tool can substitute somewhat)

Text tool has never been a trouble for me (but then I find PS text tool clumsy too)

2 hours ago, PeterinJapan said:

Command + click on a layer always selects the layer

CMD-click always makes pixel selection out of a layer, regardless the tool. No trouble for me...

2 hours ago, PeterinJapan said:

Something I do OFTEN in Photoshop is get some image in my clipboard, then type command + N

True, PS way is neater. Affinity does this with ALT+SHIFT+CMD+N which is quite a collection of keys. On the other hand PS creates background layer and pastes clipboard as a new layer which is not neat. (Not to mention I get often clipboard contents pasted as smart object when contents was just plain pixels..)

2 hours ago, PeterinJapan said:

Photoshop CC 2019 doesn't play nice switching between laptop screen and docked laptop with big screen

I find Affinity to be much worse in this regard.

2 hours ago, PeterinJapan said:

there is no Crop command,

No there is no such thing. I wish devs would change behaviour that selection would transform to crop selection when changing tool to crop tool. Thus cropping would be simple press C press enter and it would be possible to fine tune crop selection if needed.

2 hours ago, PeterinJapan said:

AP doesn't always "follow the rules" with Mac UI

No it does not. Inactive panels obscure active panels and save/open dialogs which should never happen. I though can close the useless application window with CMD-W.

I still tend to use PS for simple destructive fixes and do AP only for complicated compositing.

[PeterinJapan]

Thanks for the great feedback! My approach is to try to make AP as close to Photoshop by using Keyboard Maestro to hit the menu items i expect when I hit the old Photoshop keys. It's working pretty well. I can fix the "Photoshop doesn't make an image based on the clipboard" by mapping Command N to that menu item , which works well!

I am slowly getting  using no cop tool. 

Yes, getting used to things pasting as Smart Objects instead of pixels is a little hard to get used to. I think there's a way to turn that off. 

Is there any way to make the black pasteboard area not scroll away when I'm making a marquee box? I'm used to the workspace being static but AP likes to scroll way off to the side of I have the marquee tool selected and move the mouse over there. Can't find a "lock background from moving" option. 

[ZufDraw]

I’m with you on the getting used too.
cmd-t - still getting used to after months of using AP. 
Layer selection is horrible indeed
text editing is fine for me. 
Editing the layout and switching screens in between has been a tedious for me too. I now have a studio setup in the beta version with docked tools that I load before switching displays. You could try that. 

Another issue is aliasing is a bit off on some zoom levels 
But Worst of all is the horrible behavior of swift brush Strokes on low zoom levels (<25%) that occurs on both desktop and iOS. very jagged lines. It’s a shame because on one hand the brush is more flexible , but it falls short in some basic areas. It’s a pity few people report this, probably because I do more manual drawing and writing in my artwork. 

I do prefer some thing like copy and pasting (in place by default) behavior of layers, also between documents and the excellent non-destructive perpective adjustment layer.

So if you are asking how to adjust to the paradigm, well some things like the direct selection (and the inability to turn it off) are just plain bad interface decisions that should change instead of getting used to. It seems their wish to make it cross platform (osx- win - iOS) limits the optimization for the pc version. But there are improved ways of working that we just need to adjust to, but after decades of photoshop (and sketchbook pro in my case). It’s hard indeed. Just hold on and keep the feedback coming. Affinity’s potential to be a game changer  is huge