Question on Serif's roadmap and plans for plugins.

[Guest]

Hello mods, MEB, 

 

As a new AP user, I'm interested in Serif's plans for plugins, and any roadmap you may have. I'm particularly interested in how you prioritise building support for new plugins, and how an end-user like me could contribute. 

 

I ask, because my workflow currently uses a couple of plugins - CF systems' Color Perfect, and Topaz B&W. Color Perfect is great at converting raw linear scans of negatives or chromes to working images, but you probably seldom come across anyone using such a plugin. 

 

Any more information on your approach to plugins would be helpful. I'm stuck with PS-CS5 for now for some of my work, since Color Perfect and Topaz B&W need PS to run. 

[Asha]

pingssgp--quite a few of us have been asking about plugin support, and usually the answer is that development is ongoing, and that Serif also needs cooperation from the plugin developers. On that note, it might help if you ask the companies that make your plugins for AP compatibility! As more people ask, AP will get noticed :)

[Guest]

So far, I've communicated with the developers of the plugin I mentioned earlier. I had a problem entering the registration code, among other difficulties with this plugin and AP. I got a message from David Dunthorn at CF systems. Their plugin is supported on another image editor called PhotoLine and I also asked about it. Here's what he had to say.

 

"21.2.2016: We currently have no plans to support Affinity.  ColorPerfect makes extensive use of the Photoshop/Elements plug-in environment and it takes a lot of detailed work by the staff of a different photo editor to support it.  Photoline came to us several years ago and we cooperated with them (largely by helping them to identify missing elements in the plug-in environment they provided) to get ColorPerfect working in that editor.  Several other fairly major photo editors Gimp, Paintshop, etc., that supposedly support Photoshop plug-ins are nowhere near robust enough to support ColorPerfect.  The Key uses only the most elementary functions of the plug-in interface to function, so if Affinity does not support that, a lot of ColorPerfect will be missing as well."

 

So, it looks like we're out of luck for now. Meanwhile I've tried the other photo editor he spoke about, PhotoLine, and found that it works quite seamlessly with Photoshop plugins. If Serif is serious about PS plugin compatibility, I think there's a lot of work to be done, going by the comment from David above. This is why I asked for the roadmap, so that we have some sense of potential availability and that we can plan our purchases and workflows with or without Affinity Photo. Hope we get a bit more info from Serif.

[vague-logic]

Most of the Topaz plugins already work fine with Affinity Photo (AP) if they are set up correctly in the AP Preferences, plugin tab. For BW Effects I have the following entries:-

 

Plugin Search Folder>  "Library/Application Support/Topaz labs/BW Effects 2/Plugins"

Plugin Support Folder> " /"

Don't enter the quotation marks!

 

Don't forget to tick the "Work with unknown plugins" box

 

This approach will work for most of the Topaz plugins apart from Glow, Texture Effects, Impression, and the new DeNoise 6 and Remask 5 (earlier versions do work). I haven't spent much time trying to sort them out as they work stand alone anyway.