Using Affinity Photo 2 as a Lightroom external editor

[Seajay]

I have been very pleased with Affinity Photo, I recently updated it to version2.

 

I have Affinity Photo 2.0.4.msix installed on my Windows 10 computer. I am unable to access it from my Lightroom 5 software as an external editor.

 

 

1.      Is there any way I can get Affinity Photo 2.0.4 msix to work as an external editor in Lightroom 5?

2.      If I uninstall Affinity Photo 2.0.4 msix and install the msi version, will Lightroom recognise it as an external editor?

3.      Which is the best method of uninstalling Affinity Photo 2.0.4 msix in order to install the msi version?

[Callum]

Hi Seajay,

This is a known issue with the MSIX builds I'm afraid. Switching to the MSI version of the apps should allow you to use Affinity as an external editor in Light Room.

Thanks
C

[Komatös]

Deinstall the msix before you install the msi version!

[Seajay]

Thank you both for your replies. I uninstalled Affinity Photo 2.0.4.msix and installed the msi version which works as an external editor with Lightroom.

Thanks.

[Komatös]

You are welcome!

[cid69]

Patience and understanding please! I used to think I was tech savvy (about 15 yrs ago) but am now having a terrible time getting Photo V2 to work with Lightroom. I actually gave up using Affinity because I couldn't figure it out. I stumbled on this thread and thought Ahaa!....so I deleted my Affinity2 file and downloaded the MSI installer/program. I opened Lightroom chose a photo and went Photo/Edit In/Affinity Photo/Edit with LR Adjustments. Lightroom made a .psd copy but nothing else happened. Photo 2 didn't open. Please help.

[v_kyr]

19 minutes ago, cid69 said:

Lightroom made a .psd copy but nothing else happened. Photo 2 didn't open. Please help.

... etc.

[cid69]

Well, I think I'm done. I'm pretty good at photo processing but as a 76 yr old I'm past the point of being tech savy. I've read pages and pages of posts on this subject but I don't know how to write a .bat file or where to put it or how to accomplish many of the other suggestions for a "work around". Why should I have to? This doesn't seem to be an issue with many other programs I use in conjunction with Lightroom Classic. I had used Affinity for a number of years before this issue came up and was happy with it's performance. I bought V2 with high hopes of an even better experience. I guess I'll just chalk it up as a bad investment. This shouldn't have to be rocket science....but I guess it is.

[walt.farrell]

38 minutes ago, cid69 said:

Well, I think I'm done. I'm pretty good at photo processing but as a 76 yr old I'm past the point of being tech savy. I've read pages and pages of posts on this subject but I don't know how to write a .bat file or where to put it or how to accomplish many of the other suggestions for a "work around". Why should I have to? This doesn't seem to be an issue with many other programs I use in conjunction with Lightroom Classic. I had used Affinity for a number of years before this issue came up and was happy with it's performance. I bought V2 with high hopes of an even better experience. I guess I'll just chalk it up as a bad investment. This shouldn't have to be rocket science....but I guess it is.

If you want to use applications like Lightroom Classic that lack support for modern Windows functions like MSIX-based applications (such as Affinity V2), your choice is to find a better application to replace Lightroom Classic, or complain to them about their lack of support for MSIX-based applications, OR uninstall the MSIX-based version of the Affinity V2 applications (all 3 if you have them) and reinstall V2 using the alternative EXE/MSI-based installers. Then you'll have software that Lightroom Classic should support.

You can uninstall the current Affinity V2 apps you have by right-clicking on each in the Start menu, and choosing Uninstall. Or using the Windows Settings app, and choosing Apps & Features, and uninstalling from there.

Then, the FAQ below will tell you where to download the alternate installers from:

 

[cid69]

Walt,

Thanks for the response but I've already tried the uninstall/reinstall with the exe/msi installer and it didn't work. In reading thru pages and pages of posts, I find I'm not the only one with this problem....and I did uninstall the mxsi version first.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, cid69 said:

Well, I think I'm done. I'm pretty good at photo processing but as a 76 yr old I'm past the point of being tech savy. I've read pages and pages of posts on this subject but I don't know how to write a .bat file or where to put it or how to accomplish many of the other suggestions for a "work around".

I think it's not that difficult, you can go through it step for step.

1. Check how Lightroom deals with this, meaning how it passes an image over to another app and where to customize and set that up accordingly in LR.

• See therforas an example in the LR Classic help:   Open and edit photos in Photoshop
• Or maybe even better look here:  How do I add external editors to Lightroom Classic?

 

2. Dependent on which Affinity Photo installation version you use (MSIX or MSI-EXE installer) setup and tell LR where the APh exe resides.

For an APh MSIX installment you would have to make use of the Affinity ...

• aflaunch

... help utility, which is a command line tool and offers to open any Affinity app (Retail, Beta, or MS Store one) with some file(s) as passed over argument(s).

Quote

Usage:  aflaunch -a name -b build [args]

Where:

-a name : One of the following

   Designer2
   Photo2 [Default]
   Publisher2

-b build : One of the following

   Retail [Default]
   Beta
   MSStore

args : [Optional] All remaining arguments to be passed onto the target application (must be last)

The -a and -b arguments are optional, so you can ignore them unless you want to launch a different app, or the beta or MS Store versions.

We could for example call the aflaunch tool for an Affinity Photo 2 retail version and passing over one or more file arguments this way ...

•  aflaunch  somefile1.jpg  somefile2.jpg ...
•  aflaunch  -a Photo2  -b Retail  somefile1.jpg  somefile2.jpg ...

A Win old style batch file is just a textfile with some included commands and the specific file extension ".bat". - So a batch file "afstart.bat" would look contents wise in it's simplest form like this ...

Quote

@echo off
aflaunch  %*

... OR ...

Quote

@echo off
aflaunch  -a Photo2  -b Retail  %*

... which in turn starts the aflaunch tool then for Photo2 retail version and passes all arguments (the used %* in the batch) given to the batch file over to aflaunch.

We can then call that "afstart.bat" file like this from a DOS shell ...

Quote

%  afstart somefile1.jpg  somefile2.jpg ...

 

And finally for LR you would set it up to access that "afstart.bat" file when LR should call and start APh with some file argument.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, cid69 said:

 

Thanks for the response but I've already tried the uninstall/reinstall with the exe/msi installer and it didn't work. In reading thru pages and pages of posts, I find I'm not the only one with this problem....and I did uninstall the mxsi version first.

I don't recall seeing any from people who had the problem once they install the EXE/MSI version. 

It is a bit odd, I think, that you're using PSD. I would have expected TIFF, from what I've read. 

But if the Affinity app isn't opening, your Lightroom configuration may be incorrect. Can you show us what you did, and where you have Photo 2 installed?

[cid69]

V-KYR, Walt, and especially Red Sands, thank you very much for your patience and help. After Red Sands' post I studied my situation some more. The main issue was finding an .exe file. In all the previous machinations I performed from info on older posts, I was looking for it in C"/Users/Name/App Data or affinity. I finally searched in C;/Programs/Affinity/Photo2 and found it. I know it may sound simple to you but this old guy that started before Windows was a thing and is now struggling to keep up it wasn't so simple. Thanks again all! Now back to the main point of photo processing.