Affinity Photo (1.10.1) and FontLab 7.2.0(7649): copy/paste won't work

[nicolasbulb]

Hey there, 

I'm working on a type found project for signage and I've tested Affinity Photo to skew and treat my photo archives then I'm making selection of each letter, but when I copy the selection from Affinity Photo (version 1.10.1) in FontLab 7.2.0 (7649), nothing happens. It's blank.

I've tested in Photoshop CS6 or even the latest CC21 and it works as expected.

I'm going to post this in the FontLab forum as well but my guess is that is an Affinity Photo bug because it won't work in Glyphs 3 app either.

Anybody tried on their side?

thx.

[MEB]

Hi @nicolasbulb,
Can you expand a bit please? What are you copying from Affinity Photo exactly? an image layer, pixel layer, a curve/path object? Assuming it's a pixel layer, how are you copying it from Photoshop (what commands, or keyboard shortcuts) etc? Thanks.

[nicolasbulb]

hi @MEB, 

Sure… I have some pixel layers with typography photo archives, and I'm making a marquee selection around a letter and I hit cmd-C (normal) copy of the selected pixel layer. Then nothing is pasted into FontLab 7 neither Glyphs 3. Ideally, I'm working with a Level Adjustement layer in order to contrast a bit the typography and I hit cmd-shift-C (in order to have a Merged copy) of the same selection but again, …nada, nothing is pasted.

With the same PSD document, if I do exactly the same process cmd-C or even cmd-shift-C (Copy Merged), it works as expected with either Adobe Photoshop CS6 or CC 2021 with my MacBookPro 15 late 2013 and Mojave 10.14.6.

 

Thx.

[Old Bruce]

Have to ask because I would think that a font program would work with vectors only, I just do not know. Does FontLab 7 accept pixel information from the clipboard?

[kenmcd]

20 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

Does FontLab 7 accept pixel information from the clipboard?

Yes.

It would be helpful to see the actual APhoto doc.

@nicolasbulb What is actually ending up in FontLab/Gylphs when you paste from PS? Is it just an image? I am wondering if the copy of the mixed images and curves gets flattened into just an image and that is what is pasted.
Again, like to see the AP doc for testing.

FontLab and Glyphs may be rejecting the mixed image/curves data.
No font format supports both except OpenType-SVG.
So you may have to convert to SVG and paste the SVG in.
What type of font are you making?

[nicolasbulb]

Okay okay, to be clear, with the exact same PSD doc, the copy and paste pixel image reference is pasting either in FontLab 7 or Glyphs 3 just fine. Obviously, there's something wrong with the way APhoto is handling clipboard export.

@Old Bruce Yes, font editor works with vectors but with recent OpenType features, you can also work with bitmap image in order to create colored bitmap font. But in my case, @LibreTraining I'm working on a standard font but I copy paste image reference in bitmap in order to use it as a  typographical reference when I'm building my shapes.

Here, I've made some screenshot for you to see a bit better what's going on:

1. here an example of the glyph "S" in APhoto

2. here's the initial slot for letter "S" in FontLab 7

3. here's the copy and pasting from APhoto 1.10.1 to FontLab 7

 

4. and here's the copy and pasting from Adobe Photoshop to FontLab 7

 

well well. I've uploaded the .afphoto file of the "S" as well.

I hope it helps to fix the bug.

Many thanks.

N

A-TerreauCornavin-typefound-S.afphoto

[kenmcd]

7 minutes ago, nicolasbulb said:

Obviously, there's something wrong with the way APhoto is handling clipboard export.

That is what I was getting at - my guess is that the clipboard output from PS is only an image.
Whereas from AP it may be both image & curves, which causes the font apps to reject it.
So we need to know what AP is putting on the clipboard vs. what PS is putting on the clipboard.

[MEB]

Hi @nicolasbulb,
Thanks for the additional details. I'm seeing the same behaviour here and checking what's going on. From  my testing seems we are sending some vector data along with the selection to the clipboard (a vector rectangle used as clipping mask). I'm checking with the dev team if we can do something about it. Thanks for raising/reporting the issue.