Toughts on Affinity

[Maarten_]

Hiya,

I have been increasingly frustrated with Adobe and was super hyped about hearing about Affinity. I am currently evaluating whether we should make the switch with our company.

The best thing so far is that the software aims to be as powerful/more powerful than Adobe's tools, but without the many, many scummy business practices that come with Adobe (the biggest two for me are 1: riddling your PC with undocumented processes that are supposedly doing DRM-checks or worse, and 2: luring you into an Adobe ecosystem with their 'cloud' and putting all business emphasis on this and not on the tools themselves).

I'm willing to trade in a few comforts to make the switch, and I'm also willing to pay more than Affinity is currently charging. But in my few hours of evaluation, one thing worries me.

I have a workflow (in this case, I want to export a bunch of icons from a 'master file'), but there are two standing bugs/missing features in Photo that make this quite a hassle. One of them is that slices don't stick to grids. The other is that there is no dynamic export layers to files feature (you'll always have to make slices first). But the exact issue is beside the point.

What worries me is that both these things have been pointed out as early as 6 years ago, with many users asking again and again for this to be fixed or added.

As a software developer myself, I understand that we cannot fulfill every request, but in 6 years, with so many '+1's on these issues, that just doesn't seem right, and doesn't inspire confidence. I would love to hear a developers thoughts on this.

I am still super super exited by there being a serious competitor to Adobe's apps. And this from a company that doesn't just serve many anonymous shareholders. I was so excited even that I played around in my head with submitting an open job application as an external software contractor, because I want to help this effort in any way I can.

Thanks for your time,
Maarten

[MEB]

Hi @Maarten_,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your feedback. You don't have to worry about these things. There's no need to create the slices yourself nor issues quickly exporting them. Please take a look at this tutorial that covers the whole process. It should reply to most of your questions. Let us know if you still have issues/questions.

[Maarten_]

Hi @MEB, thanks for taking your time.

But that doesn't address the issue, since I still need to create separate art-boards, so it only moves the problem to a different place. Also, I mentioned that I'm using Photo and not Designer.

I'm okay with creating new export slices manually, but they should at least stick to my grid, which they don't. I can't go and adjust x/y/w/h manually for 100+ icons. This issue is at least 6 years old. Was no progress made on this issue since then?

[MEB]

Hi @Maarten_
Creating a grid of artboards is quite simple/quick with Power Duplicate and as long as they are correctly pixel aligned (that is, use integers for its X,Y coordinates and width/height) Affinity Designer automatically creates a slice for each artboard and exports them without issues. 

Affinity Photo is not really the most adequate app for this task - you can't create artboards with it natively (although it supports them if they were created in other app of the suite) and was primarily designed for RAW development/photo editing. We are trying to keep each app as much focused on their fields/areas as possible.

Regarding to slices and snapping, although technically possible it would cause other inconveniences/compromises: slices use integer positions only and as such cannot be snapped to arbitrarily/floating positions like other objects, guides and grids. If we do change the apps to support floating point positions then you would have to worry to snap slices to integer values/pixels as well which in the end may not worth the trouble. For icon design, Affinity Designer is really the best choice here. If you ever need/require some feature present on other app of the suite you can always send the document directly to that app going to menu File > Edit in... and selecting the app you want to send the document to.

[Maarten_]

Hi @MEB, even though I used the word 'icons', I'm not talking about the kind of graphics design icons that you are referring to. I'm editing textures for my game development environment and Affinity Photo remains the best tool for this use-case.

I read earlier that the problem is that integer and float positions don't match, but I feel that any of these solutions would help a lot:

1. Allowing the user to create grids and guides in integer space, so conversion is never a problem.
2. Allowing slices to have floating point dimensions, and rounding them off upon export ("last moment").
3. Allowing the new slice to snap to floating point guides on creation but immediately convert them to integer positions ("earliest moment").
4. Allowing the slice to snap ONLY IF the floating position matches a proper integer position (within a specified error margin, for example).

I understand that (2 and 3) is not preferred from a technical design standpoint, but would still be valid if the user is properly warned of possible rounding errors. I realize (4) also comes with its compromises.

But looking at it from a user experience stand point, I feel it's simply very weird that you can create grids and guides, but cannot use them for slides.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Maarten_

[Pšenda]

4 hours ago, Maarten_ said:

Affinity Photo remains the best tool for this use-case.

And what is the problem, as MEB writes, of creating a document with suitable artboards, which will then facilitate the creation of slices, and continue working on them in APhoto?

[Maarten_]

4 hours ago, Pšenda said:

And what is the problem, as MEB writes, of creating a document with suitable artboards, which will then facilitate the creation of slices, and continue working on them in APhoto?

Two things: I read in the manual that you cannot create artboards in Photo. I'd rather not switch apps just for that. If there's a way in Photo, I'd love to hear.

Secondly, manual creation of artboards, just to simulate/recreate a grid which I can then use to again create slices of, is exacfly the extra work I'm trying to avoid. Note that I'm making 100+ icons without a pre set amout, layout or predetermened name.