Why is this program awful, buggy, and overly complicated?

[Xyphien]

Since I quit using photoshop I've tried time and time again to force myself to use affinity and every time it causes me a huge headache. Why is everything overly complicated for absolutely no reason, why is it that out of no where I'm unable to use the marquee tool to select things, why is it that clicking delete when you have the marquee tool selected deletes the entire photo and not the selected are, why does the brush randomly turn into 10% opacity when it's set to 100% even through it worked two seconds ago. Why can't the program just work like any other program in existence works. It makes trying to do logos and designs a huge headache, literally. I try to google things, and the overly complicated steps to 'fix' the problems nine times out of ten don't even do what I need it to do. These features I mentioned are a single click of a button in photoshop. You select the select/marquee tool and BOOM you can use it. You select a brush, and BOOM it's being used exactly how you want it to be used. You want to delete something in the selected area? Duh, why else would. you. select. it. of course it deletes. Yet for some reason this program refuses to use common stuff that I assumed everyone used throughout history of photo editing software. Can someone please shed some light on why it's like this? If I can get some sort of logical answer it'd at least allow me to put myself in the prospective of that and I can understand that there's a purpose to this madness. However I simply cannot fathom any logical reason behind any of this sort of stuff.

[mia Taugts]

We are here at Affinity.
If another program is better for you, then use it and stop complaining

 

[IPv6]

1 hour ago, Xyphien said:

Since I quit using photoshop I've tried time and time again to force myself to use affinity and every time it causes me a huge headache. Why is everything overly complicated for absolutely no reason, why is it that out of no where I'm unable to use the marquee tool to select things, why is it that clicking delete when you have the marquee tool selected deletes the entire photo and not the selected are, why does the brush randomly turn into 10% opacity when it's set to 100% even through it worked two seconds ago. Why can't the program just work like any other program in existence works. It makes trying to do logos and designs a huge headache, literally. I try to google things, and the overly complicated steps to 'fix' the problems nine times out of ten don't even do what I need it to do. These features I mentioned are a single click of a button in photoshop. You select the select/marquee tool and BOOM you can use it. You select a brush, and BOOM it's being used exactly how you want it to be used. You want to delete something in the selected area? Duh, why else would. you. select. it. of course it deletes. Yet for some reason this program refuses to use common stuff that I assumed everyone used throughout history of photo editing software. Can someone please shed some light on why it's like this? If I can get some sort of logical answer it'd at least allow me to put myself in the prospective of that and I can understand that there's a purpose to this madness. However I simply cannot fathom any logical reason behind any of this sort of stuff.

AP just uses more concepts that PH. For example PH has only one type of "pixel layer", which can serve as mask, as drawn image and as image inported from else where. AP has 3 concepts here, which are needed to be taken into account - normal pixels, "mask" pixels and "image" pixels. This concepts helps in some advanced areas but gives a problem with simple tasks //

You just need to read what is type of layer you are working on. It is written in layers outliner after layer name. And then make a step to convert from current layer type to one you need.
Judging on your selection problems you are trying to use "Image layer". selection deletion not working on "image" layers, you need "pixel layer", so you have do "rasterize" first.

This is already "legacy workflow" so it is unlikely will change in any foreseable future

[Alfred]

First of all, you’ve posted to the ‘Photo Beta on Windows’ forum when there isn’t a current beta, and secondly you’ve posted a dense paragraph conflating multiple issues that would be much more easily discussed in separate threads.

1 hour ago, Xyphien said:

why is it that out of no where I'm unable to use the marquee tool to select things

What were you doing immediately beforehand?

1 hour ago, Xyphien said:

why is it that clicking delete when you have the marquee tool selected deletes the entire photo and not the selected area

You’re trying to work at the pixel level but you’re working on an ‘Image’ layer. Right-click the photo layer in the Layers panel and choose ‘Rasterize’ to convert the layer to a ‘Pixel’ layer so that you have a collection of pixels instead of a single object. Deletion will then have the result you expect.

1 hour ago, Xyphien said:

why does the brush randomly turn into 10% opacity when it's set to 100% even through it worked two seconds ago

You probably pressed the 1 (‘one’) key on your keyboard. The numeric keys provide quick access to opacity levels of 10%, 20%, etc, when relevant to the current tool.

[loukash]

1 hour ago, Xyphien said:

Can someone please shed some light on why it's like this?

Yes:

We've all been brainwashed by Schmadobe. Me for almost 20 years. It takes time to escape such massive indoctrination. Even though I have purchased each Affinity app within the respective first week it was released, i.e. being an occasional – and often frustrated – user since 2014, it took me until last winter until I was ready for the transition.

Be patient, ask questions, watch tutorials, have fun exploring new workflows. (And sometimes be angry about bugs and a few missing workflows…)

[AlainP]

First post.... and whining !

It's not exactly like Photoshop ..... because it's not Photoshop ! If you love Photoshop... you know what to do. There are so many RAW files editors, and good ones, they all work quite differently, but nobody is complaining that Luminar, ON1 or any other are not like Lightroom.

[DarkClown]

Hi Xiphien,

first of all welcome to the forum.
It's propably a bit unfortunate to start your first post with such a rant. Despite the fact one can extract understandable issues from your post the majority of readers will react defensive or agressive like Mia.

You are picking on a long term critisized topic where the affinity guys tend to have "little sense" for: the workflow. I'm with AP now for roughly 5 years (getting away from any Adobe product) and been trying to support, critisize and bring in ideas. Many things did not make their way into the product - dome did. And by the time I got an undestanding what is helpful to report and what not. 

- When you struggle with any kind of behaviour you will always find someone here (even from the Affinity support) that will be helpful and explain things (even if the answer can easily be found in Google)

- When you found a bug you will always get feedback (or people showing you what to do better to overcome the bug or to tell you that it's not a bug but a feature "by design") - In many cases expect them to seriously work on a bugfix for the next or upcoming version if the bug can be tracked (meaning: asap).

- When you have suggestions for new features or how you would like to see things change put it in the "suggestion" section in the forum. Don't expect any Affinity answer - they don't comment on suggestion or future development (maybe people agreeing with you or pointing out a workaround)

- Don't bother to mention workflow improvements since it propably is the only thing that will have no effect on development at all. From my experience even crucial topics in workflow haven been ignored for 5 years. There seems to be quite a strong force behind affinity to keep some things as initially invented and not willing to learn or change. Mayby internal changes would be to significant to change things without a major release.

So my recommendation would be to kindly ask for support when you struggle with something. Put each question in a single topic post and put things in the right forum. As Alfred already mentioned trhis is the beta forum and your rant propably more belongs to the general forum

And always keep in mind: it's not as bad as it seems and you'll get used to some new things - old habbits can be a struggle sometime
Cheers, Timo

[loukash]

57 minutes ago, DarkClown said:

There seems to be quite a strong force behind affinity to keep some things as initially invented and not willing to learn or change.

The reason could also be that for many users, those "things" are working perfectly, or at least "just fine not to worry about it".
You can't please everybody.

[DarkClown]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

The reason could also be that for many users, those "things" are working perfectly, or at least "just fine not to worry about it".
You can't please everybody.

I'm sure there a some topics that might cause discussions since some people don't care/don't use them or simply get along with what's there (maybe even due to lack of knowing better).
On the other hand there are workflows that undoubtly need a serious rework (e.g. parameter resets, lacking ability to remember useful defaults, missing commands that would ease workflow etc.). Considering that I've been trying for 5 years to adapt to the "Affinity way" to handle things I feel able to judge what changes are an improvement (sure there are some things!) and where significant additional steps are required to get things done. Some procedures are just illogiocal and ridiculous ... until today ... just try to change parameters for export: edit first parameter "dimensions" and change the area - all entered data gets resetted ... completely ridiculous ... programming wise a tiny change. Still not done after 5 years ... of course you can define it as "by design" ... does it improve the workflow? I guess no 🙂

[ronald618]

When I'm frustrated with Affinity Photo, I always remember the old axiom: "You get what you pay for".

 

 

[DarkClown]

2 hours ago, ronald618 said:

When I'm frustrated with Affinity Photo, I always remember the old axiom: "You get what you pay for".

 

 

If there's anything you can't complain about it's the value for money! Outstanding!

[mia Taugts]

11 hours ago, DarkClown said:

or agressive like Mia.

It wasn't aggressive at all.
In the German-speaking world, there has been a time-tested folk saying for many centuries that goes:
"As one calls into the forest, so it resounds out". 😀

[Xyphien]

On 3/31/2021 at 4:56 PM, IPv6 said:

Judging on your selection problems you are trying to use "Image layer". selection deletion not working on "image" layers, you need "pixel layer", so you have do "rasterize" first.

I was on the pixel layer.

 

On 3/31/2021 at 4:33 PM, mia Taugts said:

then use it and stop complaining

Advancements are made on complaining. If you remove complaining there's no room for companies to evolve. Did the sonic movie get changed because everyone kept their complaints to themselves? No.

 

On 3/31/2021 at 5:02 PM, Alfred said:

then use it and stop complaining

I wish I knew, I even saved and re-opened it and it's still unable to be used.

 

On 3/31/2021 at 5:23 PM, loukash said:

, watch tutorials

90% of the tutorials aren't geared to the specific needs I have at the time. If they are then they're like 12 minutes long on how to delete the background of an image, which is baffling to me lol. Why can't I just highlight it and click the delete button rofl.

 

13 hours ago, DarkClown said:

It's propably a bit unfortunate to start your first post with such a rant. Despite the fact one can extract understandable issues from your post the majority of readers will react defensive or agressive like Mia.

 

It may be my first post, but I've been attempting to use this for a while now. I actually asked for a refund about a year and a half ago but my S/O was using it so I retracted the email and kept it. So it's not like I'm someone just grabbing it and complaining. This is over a year of build up. 

 

12 hours ago, loukash said:

The reason could also be that for many users, those "things" are working perfectly, or at least "just fine not to worry about it".

Ah yes, go to any affinity photo tutorial that's several minutes long explaining how to do something simple, and see the sheer amount of people confused and looking into how to do something that takes half a second on another program. 

 

10 hours ago, DarkClown said:

Some procedures are just illogiocal and ridiculous ...

^^^ So... many of them are like that lol.

 

6 hours ago, ronald618 said:

When I'm frustrated with Affinity Photo, I always remember the old axiom: "You get what you pay for".

 

Yeah, you have a point. It still sucks THIS is the 'best' alternative for PS though. I'd be willing to pay more if there was something out there that just functioned better and made logical sense. Sadly, it's either pay an arm and a leg monthly/yearly for PS or suck up and use this extremely below standard program which I own anyway.

 

4 hours ago, DarkClown said:

If there's anything you can't complain about it's the value for money! Outstanding!

The price tag isn't bad, but what you get for the price tag is bad.

[iconoclast]

It's your personal opinion, and that is okay. But my personal opinion is totally different. Not everything is perfect in Affinity Photo, but even in Photoshop not everything is solved in the best way. Every software has its own solutions. So use the software you are most comfortable with. It's your choice.

[firstdefence]

When people make tutorials they cater for all users, novice to pro, pro's will likely scan the video pick out salient points and move on, novices will watch all the way through, possibly twice or follow along with the video to learn. If you can't spare minutes to learn, learning will be hard. Impatience will make learning so much harder, I know several people like this, 2 mins into a video and they throw the rattle out of the cot, criticising the person that actually took the time to make a video that was 12 mins long but probably took them hours to do to help others learn.

Complaining is fine if something is faulty but even then to get to a point where you rant, is your fault, You waited until you were frustrated enough to be annoyed because something was different, NOT necessarily faulty or not working, as others have pointed out, some of your trouble is lack of knowledge. Before you got to that stage you should simply have come here and asked a question, "how do I do this", "Why isn't this working", "what am I doing wrong", "is this a bug"

Affinity ain't perfect but they do fix a lot of stuff. Photoshop is no better, all you have to do is look at the multitude of forums for adobe products and the problems people have, so placing photoshop on a pedestal as a elegant design solution is an illusion that is easily seen through if you are an avid user of that product and many people on here come from a photoshop background, me included.

[loukash]

12 hours ago, Xyphien said:

the 'best' alternative for PS though

Hm.
If only there were an affordable alternative that walks like PS, talks like PS, quacks like PS, possibly even has PS in its name like PS?

[iconoclast]

There is one thing I want to say additionally. I am not really a fan of tutorials, especially on Youtube, because every dilettant out there can make such a tutorial, without much kowledge, and tell a lot of bullshit. And many beginners wont even perceive it. But there are many excellent tutorials for all three Affinity programs on Youtube, that helped me verry much. And even this forum is great.

[loukash]

5 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

on Youtube, because every dilettant out there can make such a tutorial, without much kowledge, and tell a lot of bullshit

Even many of those relatively good tutorials are bearable only at ×1.5 speed…
Especially compared to @James Ritson's tutorials which are brilliant.