I purchased Affinity Photo now - need help please

[pixfan]

Hi,

 

After 10 days of testing I purchased Affinity Photo now and I need help in finding some feature. I used AP help, but there are still questions remaining.

 

1) How can I save adjustments made on one image to use exactly the same for other images?

 

2) Given I adjust a parameter, for instance the contrast or saturation, by 10%. When I adjust another parameter and go back to contrast or saturation it shows 0% again. So there are only relative changes. Is this normal? Its hard to get comparable adjustments for different images this way.

 

3) For masking o selection I mainly use a hardness of boarders between 0% and 30%. The default value is 80% and every time I use the feature, it is reset to 80%. That is annoying. Is there a possibility to fix it at say 20%?

 

4) Is there a fast possibility in Affinity Photo to browse through a number of images and delete the unneeded ones?

 

Thank you for your help!

 

Dieter

[MEB]

Hi Dieter,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

 

1) Assuming you're talking about the Develop Persona, you can use Presets to save your settings for each section (Basic, Lens, Details and Tones). Just click on the Preset dropdown on top of each section and select Add Preset to save the current settings. There's currently no way to save all in a single "global" preset.

 

2) I'm not sure what parameters are you referring to. In Develop Persona all values are kept until you Develop (commit) them. After that point there's no way to revert/edit them. Further adjustments are  done trough the Photo Persona which has live (non-destructive) adjustements and filters. Am i missing something?

 

3) No, currently there's no sticky settings (coming later) or a way to change brush defaults (as far as i know). You can however associate a brush (with specific settings) to a Tool, so when you select that brush the corresponding tool will be automatically selected.

 

4) Affinity Photo is a RAW developer/converter and Photo editor. It's not intended to be used as a DAM (Digital Assets Management) software. You can open and edit more than one image at the same time but it's not suited for the type of workflow you are describing. We will offer our own DAM solution later.

[pixfan]

Hi MEB,

 

thank you for your fast help. 

 

1) Yes, I am talking about the Develop Persona. Just copying the adjustments made on an image, such as in LR, would increase comfort and speed a lot. Final Cut Pro has "Copy Adjustments" Option to copy adj. from one clip to others.

 

2) I am talking about the Photo Persona in this case. I have tested it again. When I went to HSL and moved saturation to 10%. Then I went to WB and increased also there by 10%. When i got back to HLS, Saturation was at the starting position 0%.

 

3) How does is exactly works?

 

4) Thanks. 

 

Regards

Dieter

[MEB]

1) Yes, there's always room to improve things here. Hopefully this will become better as we move forward.

 

2) I believe you're using the Adjustments tab for this, clicking on the thumbnails. Those thumbnails are presets, so every time you click on them you are setting the values they define. Note that when you use them you are also adding the respective Adjustment layer to the Layers panel with the values you set. So to edit them later you should go to the Layers panel, double-click the respective adjustment and do further edits there, not on the Presets found in the Adjustements tab since they will set the pre-defined values again.

 

3) Go to the Brushes panel, click on the small menu icon on the right and select New Round Brush for example. The brush will be added to the end of the list. Double-click it to open the Brush editing dialog and set the slider as you see fit. Almost at the bottom, you have a dropdown labelled Associated Tool. Click on it and select the tool you want to associate to your newly created brush. The Tool icon should now appear near the brush in the Brush list.

 

4) You're welcome  ^_^

[pixfan]

2) I see, but I just taped for instance the "HSL" or "white balance" Text (not the preset icons underneath) and changed the parameters such as saturation in the dialog that poped up.

 

3) Thats great, thanks.

 

Is there a way to to reach adjustment layers faster, without going into the menu layer --> new adjustment layer --> adjustment HSL (e.g.), in a more direct way? By a button or a set shortcut, perhaps? The same would be nice for menu options such as filters --> Shadows/Highlights I very often use. 

[MEB]

You can also access adjustments and live filters trough the icons on the bottom of the Layers panel. Just click on them and select the adjustment/filter you want to add.

[pixfan]

It helps to find my workflow. Thank you very much.

 

A final question. Why is there a highlights and shadows dialog in the develope persona which is not that powerful and a different one more powerful  of effective as a filter in the filters menu? For changing shadows and highlights properly for my needs, I have to go out of the develope persona (only for this adjustment).