No .afphoto extension when saved

[Jeremy Sal]

When I save a layered document in Affinity Photo Designer and Publisher I don't get the extension .afphoto.

At the moment it just saves the file name with no extension.

How do I get it to save the extension?

I'm working on the new m1 mackbook pro.

Thanks 

Jeremy 

 

[Old Bruce]

There is an OS preference to hide or show file extensions. Go to the Finder menu and choose Finder > Preferences... and go to Advanced tab.

[Jeremy Sal]

Thank you so much Old Bruce.

Have a great one!

[Alfred]

26 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

There is an OS preference to hide or show file extensions.

I don’t understand why anyone ever thought it a good idea to hide filename extensions by default. It’s the same on Windows and iOS.

[Old Bruce]

Just now, Alfred said:

I don’t understand why anyone ever thought it a good idea to hide filename extensions by default. It’s the same on Windows.

I remember when OS X was introduced and we had to have file extensions. I thought that was a huge inconvenience and was actually quite upset about it. Now I use them and change to always show them whenever I reinstall the OS. But yes I agree the default of hiding them is moronic.

[Pšenda]

3 hours ago, Alfred said:

I don’t understand why anyone ever thought it a good idea to hide filename extensions by default.

Because most "basic" users have no idea what an extension is and what it is used for.
If they want to work with the files - they use "only" its name, and its extension is completely irrelevant to them.

[Alfred]

27 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

most "basic" users have no idea what an extension is and what it is used for

Most “basic” users know that a JPG file is a picture file. If someone sends them a file named beautiful.jpg they’re quite likely to double-click on it so they can admire the beautiful picture, but if they can see that its real name is beautiful.jpg.exe they have an important piece of extra information which might save them from inadvertently installing malware.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, Alfred said:

I don’t understand why anyone ever thought it a good idea to hide filename extensions by default. It’s the same on Windows and iOS.

I think at least on Macs it might at least in part be because when file names are longer than will fit in the available space in Finder windows, Open dialogs, & the like, they are abbreviated by removing characters from the middle of the name & replacing them with the horizontal ellipsis character … so something like a file named "To Affinity and beyond version 22 with pix layers.afphoto" might display as "To Affinity a…ayers.afphoto"

Considering that (I think) file names can exceed 500 characters & some extensions (like ".aftoolpresets") are fairly long to begin with, it does not seem like that bad an idea to me.

[Alfred]

18 minutes ago, R C-R said:

they are abbreviated by removing characters from the middle of the name & replacing them with the horizontal ellipsis character

So without the afphoto filename extension you’ll get a few extra characters before and after the ellipsis, something like “To Affinity and b…ix layers”. Not a huge improvement in terms of uniquely identifying the file, but still offering the potential to conceal the nature of a piece of malware.

[Pšenda]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

Most “basic” users know that a JPG file is a picture file. If someone sends them a file named beautiful.jpg they’re quite likely to double-click on it so they can admire the beautiful picture, but if they can see that its real name is beautiful.jpg.exe they have an important piece of extra information which might save them from inadvertently installing malware.

You asked why extensions are hidden, not why it's a stupid idea. After all, displaying extensions is the first action I perform after a new OS installation.
By the way, protection against malware and other viruses should be addressed in principle, not just questionable protection by not clicking on suspicious file extensions.

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, Alfred said:

So without the afphoto filename extension you’ll get a few extra characters before and after the ellipsis, something like “To Affinity and b…ix layers”. Not a huge improvement in terms of uniquely identifying the file, but still offering the potential to conceal the nature of a piece of malware.

Macs do not use the extension to determine if a file is a document or executable code, so there is very little chance that a user will accidentally execute any code, whether or not it contains malware. And of course for iPads you can't install anything that doesn't come from the App Store so there is almost zero chance of malware infecting an iPad that way.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

You asked why extensions are hidden, not why it's a stupid idea.

No, I didn’t ask why they’re hidden. I know why, but I think it would be better if they weren’t.

5 hours ago, Alfred said:

I don’t understand why anyone ever thought it a good idea

 

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

You asked why extensions are hidden, not why it's a stupid idea.

It would be stupid only if most users knew the purpose of extensions and/or cared about seeing them. I do not think those are good assumptions.

[iconoclast]

I'm not sure, but as far as I remember, if you rename files in the file manager, you have to be careful to keep the right extension - if it is visible. Otherwise the file could become unreadable. If the extension is hidden, it will be kept anyway.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Macs do not use the extension to determine if a file is a document or executable code

If you double-click on a *.afdesign file it will open in an Affinity app, won’t it? What happens if you double-click on a *.dmg file?

35 minutes ago, iconoclast said:

I'm not sure, but as far as I remember, if you rename files in the file manager, you have to be careful to keep the right extension - if it is visible. Otherwise the file could become unreadable. If the extension is hidden, it will be kept anyway.

You should get a warning from the operating system if you try to change the extension, and if you want to change it on iOS (e.g. to rename a *.afpub file so that it opens in AD or APh by default) you have to jump through hoops to make the extension accessible so that you can edit it.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

Macs do not use the extension to determine if a file is a document or executable code

If you double-click on a *.afdesign file it will open in an Affinity app, won’t it?

Yes, of course it will open in AD. But it is just a document file, not executable code.

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

What happens if you double-click on a *.dmg file?

If it is supported disk image file type it mounts the image as if it was a physically attached volume (basically, a disk drive) using the faceless DiskImageMounter.app & its contents are displayed in a Finder window. From there, it depends on what the user wants to do with the content, but nothing executes automatically, nor is there any way I know of to make an app in that window look like a document.

There are also other safeguards built into the OS that make it very difficult for malware to masquerade as any kind of document file.

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Alfred said:

What happens if you double-click on a *.dmg file?

 

24 minutes ago, R C-R said:

If it is supported disk image file type it mounts the image as if it was a physically attached volume (basically, a disk drive) using the faceless DiskImageMounter.app & its contents are displayed in a Finder window. From there, it depends on what the user wants to do with the content, but nothing executes automatically, nor is there any way I know of to make an app in that window look like a document.

There are also other safeguards built into the OS that make it very difficult for malware to masquerade as any kind of document file.

Thanks for that. The reason I asked is that on Windows if you double-click on a *.exe file, it will run. Back in the days of Windows 3.x it was not unusual to have a *.pif (Program Information File) containing information used to run an MS-DOS program under Windows, and the OS would treat it as an executable file. Very dangerous!