Early feedback & ideas

[john hardy]

Hi, I've been using Affinity Photo for a short while for photography, and am quite familiar with Photoshop.  I have to say the Affinity Photo fundamentals are great, the idea of different persona's for example and the similarities to Photoshop shortcuts to make transition easier, but also the improvements which Photoshop should have had long ago, such as a curve based blend options, live filters, updates to adjustment layer interfaces, lack of visible banding issues on screen after making certain adjustments when zoomed out.

My initial suggestions are:

- In panorama stitching and ability to output layers so that it's possible to check the stitch line carefully.  I need this for some reproduction work I do, if I know where the stitch line is, I can check the quality of the stitch (and Photshop often does a poor job aligning the layers to the nearest pixel, I find myself having to adjust it manually too often)

- When an adjustment layer is added, it has a little black & white circular symbol, it would be better if this symbol actually matched the type of adjustment, otherwise they all look the same and it's harder to find later.  If I re-name instead I don't want to type 'curve' etc into every layer.

- the layer has a tick to turn it on and off, I'd like that tick on the left side, rather than the right - just a small efficiency thing because it means overall less movement of the cursor around the page.

- The adjustment panel shows a nice list of adjustments, I'd like to be able to click the adjustment symbol without having to get 'preset' options drop down, I just want the adjustment.  It takes up too much space in the interface.

- Another space problem is when using laptops, the histogram at the top, if on, takes up a lot of space so there is little room to see layers if you also have the adjustment panel shown.  Basically it needs better space usage in the panels for smaller screens.

- Inpainting improvement, it seems to have more visible repetition than I'd expect, and doesn't always seem to follow the contours/alignment of the existing image information well when putting in new detail. 

I'm sure there's more, they'll come later.  But keep up the good work.  I tried the Beta version some years ago and it seems to have improved a lot in small ways since then.

 

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, @john hardy.

7 hours ago, john hardy said:

The adjustment panel shows a nice list of adjustments, I'd like to be able to click the adjustment symbol without having to get 'preset' options drop down, I just want the adjustment.  It takes up too much space in the interface.

You might consider, instead, using the Adjustments icon at the bottom of the Layers panel, or the menu Layer > New Adjustment....

7 hours ago, john hardy said:

Another space problem is when using laptops, the histogram at the top, if on, takes up a lot of space so there is little room to see layers if you also have the adjustment panel shown.  Basically it needs better space usage in the panels for smaller screens.

In case you're not aware, and in case it helps, you can collapse a panel row by double-clicking on the title tab of any of its panels.

 

[carl123]

7 hours ago, john hardy said:

- When an adjustment layer is added, it has a little black & white circular symbol, it would be better if this symbol actually matched the type of adjustment, otherwise they all look the same and it's harder to find later.  If I re-name instead I don't want to type 'curve' etc into every layer.

I don't understand, Adjustment Layers are already named, in the Layers Panel, according to what adjustment it is.

7 hours ago, john hardy said:

- Another space problem is when using laptops, the histogram at the top, if on, takes up a lot of space so there is little room to see layers if you also have the adjustment panel shown.  Basically it needs better space usage in the panels for smaller screens.

All studio panels are undockable and dockable to other banks of panels.

So, you could (for example) dock the layers panel to next to the histogram tab or have the layers panel just floating on the left-hand side of the screen

Once you have the panels where they suit you the best you can simply create a preset to save/restore that layout as and when needed

You can also have multiple saved layout presets for different types of work you may be doing