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Remove the stupid export preview


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7 hours ago, Frank Jonen said:

let's waste the user's time by forcing them to wait on a beachball for each and every settings change

You don't have to wait; you can export without waiting for the preview to render

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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For some file formats and use cases the export preview is essential:

 

Hardware: Windows 11 Pro (23H2, build 22631.3296, Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22687.1000.0), Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-14900K @3.20 GHz, 64 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX A4000 (16GB VRAM, driver 551.61), 1TB + 2TB SSD. 1 Display set to native 2560 x 1440.
Software: Affinity v1 - Designer/Publisher/Photo (1.10.6.1665), Affinity v2 (universal license) - Designer/Publisher/Photo, v2 betas.

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16 hours ago, carl123 said:

You don't have to wait; you can export without waiting for the preview to render

Not true. I'm getting a beachball with every element I click on and have to wait. A process that shouldn't even take 5 seconds, takes minutes. I haven't seen a single preview yet, just the spinning fan in the preview window while the beachball annoys me in the settings.

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6 hours ago, 4dimage said:

For some file formats and use cases the export preview is essential:

 

Should be optional.

For my use, I compress from an uncompressed, flattened master file. Saves a lot of time. So there that'd hinder me as well. For people who want to go straight to final and tinker around with each image, it could be useful to wait around and fiddle. It doesn't even have a region of interest selection, you always have to wait for the entire layer stack to render.

I now shudder at the prospect of having to do actual work in Photo which also has this crap now. I have composites of several GB. If I have to wait for that shit, I'm done with Affinity. That's atrocious.

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@Frank Jonen it would be nice to use less f… words in this discusion 😇

Hardware: Windows 11 Pro (23H2, build 22631.3296, Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22687.1000.0), Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-14900K @3.20 GHz, 64 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX A4000 (16GB VRAM, driver 551.61), 1TB + 2TB SSD. 1 Display set to native 2560 x 1440.
Software: Affinity v1 - Designer/Publisher/Photo (1.10.6.1665), Affinity v2 (universal license) - Designer/Publisher/Photo, v2 betas.

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@Frank Jonen regardless of how I feel about the export preview window (it needs to be optional), I wonder if using the export persona would work better for your particular workflow? By default the export persona creates a single default 'slice' (the entire image) which can then be set the export using whichever options you've either set for it, or for the default export settings. A couple of annoying aspects is that it appears you cannot define your own preset as default, and this workflow now requires you to tap the 'export persona' button, select your preset (or default) and then press 'export slices' (bottom right corner of the slices window)—which is far more involved than using the keystroke ⌥⇧⌘ + S and hitting return[1] (assuming the export settings are correct). 

[1] UX note: if you're going to offer default instantaneous actions that use the return (or enter) keys such as the 'Export' button within the Export dialog it is considered good practice to differentiate that choice by using the applications 'accent colour' (of which there currently in none in the Affinity v2 apps).

Opinion: The number of UX mistakes (especially when OEMs supply OS design guidelines) in v2 is very worrying. I know Serif wants to use their own abstraction layer across platforms, but I can't help but feel it's now running into Adobe's territory where no longer feels at home on any platform. Abstraction layers are incredibly useful, but there does need to be a baseline to the UX used in these abstraction layers that generally maps to the defined best practices on all supported platforms. Also see 'swiping' a finger on a layer in the layers panel on the iPad, it's not at all what you would expect that interaction to feel like on the iPad.

image.thumb.png.5d3eda84790ce1c83e0996eef9405fd0.png

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@Bryan Rieger Export Persona only handles single page stuff and I had some problems in the past with Export Persona not being that reliable with EXRs.

I have a few Publisher documents too that would become a nightmare to work with if I'd use Publisher v2 for it. Skydomes in various states for example. Publisher so far was great to manage HDRIs that only need a few elements changed between each version. Now in v2 it's unusable. Same with texture sets. I was able to keep everything tidy in one place, export the pages all in one go and be done. Not possible anymore. It would take forever.

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I would've thought surely they'd optimized everything before it were made so preview was the default. Especially so as to not hog other system resources unintentionally. I will say that my impressions is that sometimes the programs are more resource heavy in areas it really shouldn't be. Other programs can do the same functionality without locking the machine up until it finishes. It was mentioned in another thread by a mod that the program pegging CPU to 100% is desired behavior and I remember in the past them saying it is normal for the program to take advantage of every bit of hardware available to it. Which sounds good in theory, but I'm not so sure in practice (leaning more towards unoptimized code). It assumes a lot of about our machines, available resources, etc. I'm not saying it should be able to run on a potato, but maybe not so easily lock up doing simple functions if the tasks are repetitive (if that makes sense)...

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