Adding Plugins to Affinity V1 on M1 MacOS

[CFK]

Hi,

Having Trouble getting Plugins to work even after watching Robin Whalley's tutorial. In Preferences they show up highlighted "Unknown" in yellow and under filters-Plugins they are dull Grey. When I click on the default folder it brings them as a .alias not .plugin. Not sure if that's normal as I don't have Ps on this computer. I've restarted AP and computer and it still doesn't work. when I try and open Plug-ins it's default is to try and open them in DXO PL5 for some reason and I can't change that to AP.

I'm running AP 1.10.6 on an M! with MacOS Ventutra 13.0.1. They are Russell Croman's Astrophotography's Xterminator PI's

Any help would be much appreciated, Thanks !

 

Reid.

[CFK]

Am I asking in the correct Forum ?..........

[walt.farrell]

Just now, CFK said:

Am I asking in the correct Forum ?..........

Yes.

[nickbatz]

2 hours ago, CFK said:

Am I asking in the correct Forum ?..........

You are, but some plug-ins simply don't do anything in Affinity Photo 1 or 2 - such as the two I'd like to use (Canon Pro Print & Layout and Gigapixel AI).

[walt.farrell]

Additionally, make sure that your document is RGB (specifically RGB/8 or /16), and that you have a Pixel layer selected when you try to run the plugin.

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, MEB said:

Seems you are trying to apply the filter to an embedded (or linked) RAW file, not to a pixel layer (see image below to see how the pixel_layer icon looks). If this is the case you need to right-click the layer in the Layers panel and select Rasterise to turn it into a pixel layer. The filter should then become available in the filter's menu commands.

From the OP's mention of running  AP 1.10.6 on the Mac, which the screenshot in that post seems to confirm, unless I misunderstood something here, isn't embedding or linking RAW files a new feature of V2, so not available in V1 & thus in V1 it will always be developed into a pixel layer?

[CFK]

17 hours ago, nickbatz said:

You are, but some plug-ins simply don't do anything in Affinity Photo 1 or 2 - such as the two I'd like to use (Canon Pro Print & Layout and Gigapixel AI).

Ah ok. Ya I’ve seen people use the same plug-ins on tutorials but it may have been windows I suppose. I’ll double check. 
 

thanks

[CFK]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Additionally, make sure that your document is RGB (specifically RGB/8 or /16), and that you have a Pixel layer selected when you try to run the plugin.

Ah, good call. It may actually have been a 32Bit FIT file, I’ll try to put in a 16Bit tiff and double check the colour space. 
 

someone on a FB group mentioned Rasterizing it. Tried that but nothing. I’m terrible with computers, I could be doing something very basic wrong but tried to follow the tutorial as close as possible. All I know is that the plug-ins remain greyed out. I’ve never used a plug-in before, so I tried to quickly add the NIK Collection to see if it was plugin specific and it didn’t work either. That’s when I gave up and tried it on the trial of AP2.

Failed again……
 

 

[MEB]

Hi @CFK,
Try this please: right-click the Affinity Photo app file in the Applications folder and select Get Info. Then in the General section tick Open using Rosetta. Run Affinity Photo and launch the plugin. Does it work now? Astrophotography's Xterminator does support 32bit files and should work in both Affinity Photo V1 and V2.

[nickbatz]

4 hours ago, CFK said:

Ah ok. Ya I’ve seen people use the same plug-ins on tutorials but it may have been windows I suppose. I’ll double check. 
 

thanks

To be clear, the ones you're trying to load may well work absolutely fine, especially under Rosetta as MEB suggests.

I wasn't so much grousing as saying it's possible for plug-ins to show up inside the program - i.e. you're doing everything right - but still not work.

[CFK]

6 hours ago, MEB said:

Hi @CFK,
Try this please: right-click the Affinity Photo app file in the Applications folder and select Get Info. Then in the General section tick Open using Rosetta. Run Affinity Photo and launch the plugin. Does it work now? Astrophotography's Xterminator does support 32bit files and should work in both Affinity Photo V1 and V2.

Ok, i finally made it home after a 13 hour day in the cold windstorm, got the kids to bed. Checked. YEP. It’s cause it’s a 32Bit FIT document. Opened the same as a 16 Bit TIFF and POW, worked !

Thanks to all that responded, simple as that and I feel like a complete simpleton yet extremely excited ! Wow wow wow 🥸

[MEB]

Hi CFK,
There's no need to convert to TIFF or reduce it to 16 bit. Here's a 32 bit FIT with the filter being applied in V1:
   

[CFK]

On 2/14/2023 at 5:27 AM, MEB said:

Hi CFK,
There's no need to convert to TIFF or reduce it to 16 bit. Here's a 32 bit FIT with the filter being applied in V1:
 

 

Ahhhhhh, I see where I went wrong. I didn’t Unlock the pixel layer ! Works now ! Thanks so much, very much appreciate all the help !