Affinity Photo: Where's the manual?

[T_Y]

I am a pro running a one-man department working 50 hour weeks with a staggering backlog of work. I don't have time to play with the app trying to guess what things do and how they work. If I have to spend fifteen minutes poking around just to find an eyedropper tool (or equivalent) that is fifteen minutes  I can't get back.

 

I've owned Designer from the get-go. Many times I've fired it up, messed around with it and stumbled on all sorts of intuitive ways to do things I don't want to do (and in a totally over-the-top fashion), but in the end, I quit and go back to Photoshop so that I can get work done.

 

The long and the short - six video tutorials and a busy forum is a less than ideal way to get up and running. Now that the app has won its award and customers are buying, perhaps you could take the time to provide formal documentation.

Speaking from 20 years of experience in marketing departments, the one thing you don't want to do is make a ton of sales, have customers say it looks cool but they can figure it out, and then they tell everyone that the app is confusing and hard to figure out. It will blow up in your face.

 

Speaking from 15 years of experience as a paid software reviewer, the same goes: It looks great. It is very powerful. It is extremely affordable. It takes a ton of messing around it can be mastered. Consumers and prosumers will enjoy spending the time to figure it out. Professionals will need to volunteer quite a few unpaid hours before switching. In terms of the app itself, I would award five stars but in terms of being able to get up to speed in any reasonable amount of time, take away two stars.

[Callum]

Hi T_Y 

 

Welcome to the Forums :)

 

We have a lot more than six video tutorials available on our website here :) We are making a manual for the app but at the moment it isn't ready. However in the meantime you could use the in-app help. This can be accessed by going to Help > Affinity Designer Help Inside here you will find in-depth help explaining each tool. 

 

C

[James Ritson]

Hello T_Y,

 

Thanks for your feedback - it would help greatly if you could indicate how you came to discover only six tutorial videos, as we've produced well in excess of a hundred between Designer and Photo. Any way that we can further highlight this to ensure people discover them is worth considering.

 

As Callum mentioned, both apps also ship with a built-in Help system that is searchable. It covers all the tools, major and minor features, and I think it would be a good reference point for you being that you're familiar with similar software.

 

Hope that helps,

James

[Oval]

What can we learn of this topic? Somebody is searching a manual, that is not offered, starting work in Designer and cancels it by Photoshop … Some things really could be easier for Affiinity beginners to gain quicker from “hidden” tools. Notice the search of the eyedropper … One solution could be a tool overview overlay screen, displayed temporarily by keystroke, perhaps shown once at the first app start and integrated in Affinity Help. Another example: A newbie has no idea of using expressions in fields, because this is not even mentioned in the beginning of the help file. But that is needed because there are no individual transforming tools yet.

 

We are making a manual for the app 

Surprise. We have not seen that on the roadmap. How much will it be?