Default location for Save As (and Export)

[Irre]

I also can’t understand why this little thing has not implemented yet. The current weird behavior causes so much loss of productivity in everyday work. :-(

[Wood Kit]

8 hours ago, Marder said:

Hear hear 🙂 Very important in a workflow. A good one.

But this request is from 2016 I just realized! Ouch!

Ouch indeed - I hadn't realised this simple request had been over four years in the asking.

[p10n]

1 hour ago, Wood said:

Ouch indeed - I hadn't realised this simple request had been over four years in the asking.

Yes its a real pity. But, never give up!

[Wood Kit]

I have asked them about it on their Facebook Group - Commenting on their posts is the only way to do it:

https://www.facebook.com/affinitybyserif

and on their twitter:

https://twitter.com/affinitybyserif

If we keep asking about it then they might move it up their to-do list? 

[Jowday]

39 minutes ago, Wood said:

If we keep asking about it then they might move it up their to-do list? 

Yes. And Biden will in his next speech growl his new death metal song.

[criffel]

I tagged them in a tweet poll. Feel free to vote and retweet! 

 

[Samuli]

Still an issue in 2021. And it's not just "Save As…", each file action is its own little island. So if I open a file, Save As…, find the original folder, then I'm ready to Export that file and I get to do it again because it assumes I want to Export to where I exported last time.

So, basically this is designed to work well with large series of images that all end up in the same places. But that's what Lightroom does for photos and Affinity is not particularly suited to that workflow. It's even more obvious when you consider Designer and Publisher. They're not factories, they're design apps. 

It's engineer logic vs. designer logic again. Serif sits squarely in the engineer space.

[criffel]

1 minute ago, Samuli said:

Still an issue in 2021.

I was really really hoping the 1.9 update would address it. So disappointing.

[Wood Kit]

Oh for a "Same as source" button - What about a new open source branch?   

[p10n]

I think a good behavior would be:

1.) Save As: Default to the current file's folder.

2.) Export (pdf etc, but also for palettes): Default to the folder where I last exported to, when the current document was open. At first time, use current folder as in 1.

(Also Corel has always been much smarter with that, for decades. To be fair, its a different price range. If the Mac Version of the Corel Suite would have came out 3 years earlier, I would now happily be using Corel.)

Affinity seems quite stubborn here. Looks like we have to buy DefaultFolderX to make the Affinity products complete.

[loukash]

I hate to repeat myself, folks, but:

On 12/24/2019 at 5:30 PM, loukash said:

On Mac, this is actually a system function. Open/Save dialogs are provided by the OS. The OS also keeps track of last places and writes the location into the respective application's preferences file (*.plist).

Hence:

On 12/24/2019 at 5:09 PM, loukash said:

get Default Folder

… if you don't like it.
I've done that over a decade ago and never looked back.

[criffel]

3 hours ago, loukash said:

I hate to repeat myself, folks, but:

Hence:

… if you don't like it.
I've done that over a decade ago and never looked back.

Thanks for the recommendation, but this doesn’t work. I tried it last time you recommended it and it’s not any faster than saving shortcuts in the sidebar or keeping the original folder open and dragging that into the save box. Adobe products and several other creative apps keep the last file save/save as location PER FILE. So when I work on one client that wants to have their files saved in one location and the next client wants their files saved in a totally different location then I’m not having to jump back and forth every time I make a change or create something new for a different client. Unless I missed something, default folder x just let’s you set a default folder per app. Not per file. If Adobe has done it for the last 15 years then I think affinity should be able to do it as well. Not having it just wastes so much time for anyone using affinity professionally.

[loukash]

9 hours ago, criffel said:

it’s not any faster than saving shortcuts in the sidebar or keeping the original folder open and dragging that into the save box.

• save folder sets
• save favorites for each folder set
• add keyboard shortcuts to favorites
• save default folders (hence the app name) to each folder set for any particular app you're using in that set
• switch folder sets from the global Default Folder menu
• use keyboard shortcuts to browse recent folders or open Finder windows
• etc…

So many possibilities, I haven't even used them all myself.

9 hours ago, criffel said:

Adobe products and several other creative apps keep the last file save/save as location PER FILE.

I'm not sure if I actually like that. But perhaps it's just me.

9 hours ago, criffel said:

default folder x just let’s you set a default folder per app. Not per file.

In Default Folder, you can create "folder sets" for each client then. Be creative.

9 hours ago, criffel said:

Adobe has done it for the last 15 years

Having worked with Adobe apps for more than 20 years, rest assured that my own mindset is also locked into their way of thinking. This is not necessarily a Good Thing as far as I'm concerned…

Edited February 14, 2021 by loukash
blue text: clarified, see below

[Wood Kit]

 

7 hours ago, loukash said:

• save folder sets
• save favorites for each folder set
• add keyboard shortcuts to favorites
• save default folders (hence the app name) to each folder set for any particular app you're using in that set
• switch folder sets from the global Default Folder menu
• use keyboard shortcuts to browse recent folders or open Finder windows
• etc…

So many possibilities, I haven't even used them all myself.

I'm not sure if I actually like that. But perhaps it's just me.

Create folder sets for each client then. Be creative.

Having worked with Adobe apps for more than 20 years, rest assured that my own mindset is also locked into their way of thinking. This is not necessarily a Good Thing as far as I'm concerned…

I think most people who use this forum know how to create folder and structure their files to their liking. ( I don't think you even need to be creative to do that.  )

Most GUI editors (of text, image or audio etc) out there will by default give the option to save any derivative or exported file in the same folder as the source file currently open.
Even MS office does it on a mac!  Its basic usability. Don't make the user do stuff if they don't need to...
..and if the user does want to save elsewhere, then there are all your fine time-saving suggestions above 🙂 

The point of this thread - the behaviour of the save/export dialogue in all of the affinity Apps 
Back to Philipp (P10n')s initial Post Suggestions way back in 1967:

1.) Save As:   Default to the folder where the current file lies.|
2.) Export (pdf etc, but also for palettes):    Default to the folder where I last exported the respective file type when the current document was open.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, Wood Kit said:

I think most people who use this forum know how to create folder and structure their files to their liking

Just to clarify: I was talking about the "Folder Sets" feature in the Default Folder app, not an actual folder hierarchy on the drive.
 

[Samuli]

On 2/14/2021 at 11:46 AM, loukash said:

I hate to repeat myself, folks, but:

Hence:

… if you don't like it.
I've done that over a decade ago and never looked back.

It might be a system feature but obviously there are different ways to work with it, otherwise this issue would affect each and every app on your computer, but instead, it's a problem of a select few apps. Most apps I use (for example: Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, Ableton Live, LibreOffice) do not have this behaviour. So, this kind of makes it a developer issue, instead of an Apple issue, unless all these other developers have some sort of side deal with Apple which is not available to Serif.

As for Default Folder – I have made it a rule to stay away from apps that change system behaviour. I have found that they invariably break another thing when they fix one. It might not be an issue for you, but I have a very bad track record with them, so I steer clear.

[Wood Kit]

16 hours ago, loukash said:

Just to clarify: I was talking about the "Folder Sets" feature in the Default Folder app, not an actual folder hierarchy on the drive.
 

Ok - Understood - I agree with Samuli's comments - Default Folder is a clunky workaround that doesn't really do the job and it needs to screen record to render it's GUI correctly?!?

Serif just need to prioritise a mod to the Save and export Code, push it to all 3 apps and we will all be smiling in our current working folders :0)

[p10n]

On 2/14/2021 at 2:56 PM, loukash said:

[...]

So many possibilities, I haven't even used them all myself.

Actually, DefaultFolderX is a huge overkill. To get a major part of the desired (sane) behavior, all we need is one single feature of DefaultFolderX. You need to activate it by that tiny little option saying "In Save dialogs, use the current folder of the file" – see screenshot.

However, as someone else wrote, I, too, am not so happy installing lots of system tools, especially if I only one need ca. 1% of their features. And, yes, I am 99,9% sure every programmer can override the immature default behavior of the OS X file dialogs – its obviously one of the first things most app programmers do...

[Shivadas]

Is there not a wishlist place where we can upvote the hell out of this? In the mean time I've fully switched to affinity. But e.v.e.r.y. time I don't spend those 10/20 seconds navigating to the right folder, I end up having to spotlight search for my file...!

[Wood Kit]

If you find one, please please let us know!  

Twitter poll version here: https://www.robgee.co.uk/

ask them by commenting on posts on facebook? https://www.facebook.com/affinitybyserif

[Keith Curtis]

I agree that to "save as" or "export" with your own suffix added on the file name to the same folder is fundemental to quick and dirty editing by-passing having to save it as an affinity file as it is rare that I would need to return to it later.

I did find a work around where when you are about to export the edit you scroll down the file menu to "open folder in explorer" and copy the path name in the path window then when exporting paste pathname in the path window at the top.

There should so be a button to export back to the original folder in the export dialogue as this is about the only program I have found where you cant just "save as" to the original file location.
Better still there should be an option to save as jpg if you dont need the afphoto file in the save as dialogue as an alternative to convert so you got the best of both.

[Marcus_Dobler]

I really like Affinity but I'm losing so much time with this wired SAVE AS, I've to go back to Adobe! What a shame

[paulie.reklama]

Hi, I agree, please add this function.

[damir]

I just joined the Affinity, bought everything they make in order to switch from Adobe. Checked ton of things beforehand, and then BUM, back to Stone Ages on fundamental feature. Discussing with designers if this is necessary is borderline stupid. It is more functional and that is it. Being silent and not acting for years on this topic is just plain mean. 

Affinity, what is wrong with you people, this is not even a feature this is a bug. Who and for what reason is preventing this mistake to be corrected? Answer this to the community of your users.

[robinp]

On 2/14/2021 at 9:46 AM, loukash said:

I hate to repeat myself, folks, but:

On 12/24/2019 at 4:30 PM, loukash said:

On Mac, this is actually a system function. Open/Save dialogs are provided by the OS. The OS also keeps track of last places and writes the location into the respective application's preferences file (*.plist).

 

It might well be controlled by the plist, but to say that this is normal macOS behaviour would be simply wrong. The save behaviour of Affinity apps is perhaps unique among the macOS apps I use. This is part of the problem: it is utterly alien. The other part of the problem is that it is rubbish regardless of whether it is alien or not.

If you accept that this is a problem, then we are never going to get apple to fix it because this is a choice that has been made by Serif for their apps in how they interface with macOS. There is nothing apple could do to fix it because it isn't a problem of their making. How do I know that? Because every other app I use works the *correct* way.

The only people that can fix this is Serif. So please stop complaining about repeating your potentially technically correct point that simultaneously completely misses the point of this conversation.

Edit: does anyone know where the .plist files for Affinity apps are located? I've had a gander around the various Preferences folders where these are typically located and I cannot see anything.

Edit 2: found the plist files. ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.[appName]/Data/Library/Preferences

And there is nothing I can see in there that controls the default save location. I suspect if it were as simple as a plist setting, Serif would have provided a toggle in the preferences panel for users to be able to select which behaviour they wanted a long time ago. It is very likely hard coded into the apps.

Edited June 21, 2021 by robinp