Affinity Designer Color Channels

[Sigil]

So I got Affinity Designer with the intention of transitioning away from PS for my work. I do art for videogames and a major aspect of that is specialized texture maps that use individual color channel information for game rendered lighting effects and masks. This often means I directly manipulating the color channels to either pack three grayscale maps into one file, or to edit a normal map (which uses RGB for vertical, horizontal, and forward lighting information).

I noticed pretty quickly that color channel options don't exist in Designer, and I was wondering if that was a feature you were planning to add? Without that ability I find myself unable to complete most tasks.

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, Sigil said:

So I got Affinity Designer with the intention of transitioning away from PS for my work.

If PS is Photoshop, why not use an adequate Affinity Photo app?
ADesigner is more of an application for vector drawing, something like AI (Illustrator).

[Sigil]

9 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

If PS is Photoshop, why not use an adequate Affinity Photo app?
ADesigner is more of an application for vector drawing, something like AI (Illustrator).

Vector is my preferred method. It's non-destructive and scalable. both are important for my purposes.

[Pšenda]

7 hours ago, Sigil said:

Vector is my preferred method.. ... both are important for my purposes.

Then you should use ADesigner for vector drawing, and APhoto for others. And use the Edit in... command to switch between applications (or StudioLink in APublisher) that allow you to work comfortably on a single workfile.

[Sigil]

12 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Then you should use ADesigner for vector drawing, and APhoto for others. And use the Edit in... command to switch between applications (or StudioLink in APublisher) that allow you to work comfortably on a single workfile.

I appreciate your advice, but I'm just here to ask the developers if they had any intention of adding color channels to Designer. Thanks.

[languidcorpse]

This is the same problem that I have with affinity. I so love so many things about it but then in my workflow I just have to be able to load complex alpha masks directly into the alpha channel. There is not an easy way to do that. If I have something which is a simple black and white mask sure I can remake that selection. But creating one from it color channel is not always ideal nor what you wish to do.

If I have something I am pulling out of Zbrush or another package I might have a very complex black and white alpha mask that I need to plug directly into my alpha channel. If I not then the software is completely useless to me no matter how much I like it, because these parts of the workflow I use continuously in the course of the day.

Another one is if I want to create a vector mask, (as you have here mentioned) there is no way to turn a simple selection into a vector.

As an art director for decades now I can tell you that these essential tools for game development end up being deal Breakers and I would guess from reading your forums keep a lot of people from using it full time in development.

But as I said there are so many things that I truly love about it!  The way that you see everything on full-size  - the overall setup seems so much smarter and fresher than Photoshop but then there are only like three things that are just completely stop me in the water and I have to go back  to Photoshop.  

I was truly hoping in this latest release some of these would be addressed but I was heartbroken to see there are improvements for text but yet the core image tools are still missing some powerful functionality. Hire game a game artist as a consultant. Or someone in entertainment visual development. 😉  

Edited June 27, 2021 by languidcorpse
typos- German keyboard ;)