Questions About Recording Macros – What Works, What Doesn’t and Workarounds or Alternative Ways

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Hey everyone,

This is a bit niche and I have not checked if a topic like this already exists. What I'm looking for is a compatibility guide with workarounds for creating macros. For the past few days I have been trying to create macros but keep getting stuck because its so unbelievably cumbersome. One big PIA is the level selection. It’s a mess with all its confirmation prompts – just select the damn level I clicked on already! Anyway, I already got used to that by now, that’s not the issue.

These two are my current questions, and I haven’t found a solution for it, maybe some of you have ideas?

1. Creating a fill layer and changing its colour
   It's just not possible, you'll get this warning and the colour will be reset:
   
2. Select all (as in an unspecified number) layers (to group them or similar)
   There's no keyboard shortcut or menu item that does this, as far as I know.
   Anyway, for some reason I didn't notice the option in the menu. It even has a shortcut! 🤦‍♂️
   Solution: Select → Select all Layers or ⌥⌘A

Do you have similar questions?
Is there maybe already a place where questions like these get asked and answered?
Does someone know how to get these operations to work or how to work around them?

Have a nice weekend
Dennis

[firstdefence]

Many things that cannot be done using mouse movement can be done using the menu selection, if a menu option exists, I know that you have to move the mouse to do that but you know what I mean.

So to that end you can create a fill layer and then from the Edit menu use Fill... and add a fill or so you would think, but, it doesn't work, how frustrating is that!!! what it appears to do is set the fill layer to a semi transparent state. 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

14 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Many things that cannot be done using mouse movement can be done using the menu selection, if a menu option exists, I know that you have to move the mouse to do that but you know what I mean.

So to that end you can create a fill layer and then from the Edit menu use Fill... and add a fill or so you would think, but, it doesn't work, how frustrating is that!!! what it appears to do is set the fill layer to a semi transparent state. 

Yes, there are countless problems I encounter all the time when trying to create a clean macro. The whole recording process isn't as smooth as I'd like it to be. Also, the actions within a recorded macro cannot be rearranged or deleted (only disabled), so there's no proper way to clean things up after recording – my OCD is in full swing rn. 😖

[v_kyr]

47 minutes ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

Yes, there are countless problems I encounter all the time when trying to create a clean macro. The whole recording process isn't as smooth as I'd like it to be. Also, the actions within a recorded macro cannot be rearranged or deleted (only disabled), so there's no proper way to clean things up after recording – my OCD is in full swing rn. 😖

Well, yes there are generally many limitations for the APh macro recording facility and a lot of things won't work here at all. Where the most critical, beside certain not recordable actions is, the missing runtime dynamics for adapting doc sizings and the like. - Also the macro layer behaviors (and certain other operations) have to be menu based recorded in order to be taken into account at all. - For the later said about layer behavior, one of the older APh tutorial videos is still essential to know (marked below), as it partly shows how one have to deal with those things then.

Macros

• Macros

• Macros: Equations

• Macros: Layer Behaviour <***

• Batch Processing with Macros

 

[stokerg]

3 hours ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

Creating a fill layer and changing its colour
It's just not possible, you'll get this warning and the colour will be reset:

I can't see another way to do this.  I've tried a few things and all result in 'Can't Record Set Fill'.  I'm just trying to work out the logic of being able to record adding a fill layer but not being able to record setting the fill.  I'll see if I can find out any information on this, as it is possible I've missed the point of being able to add the fill layer but not set the fill.

 

[carl123]

3 hours ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

1. Creating a fill layer and changing its colour
It's just not possible, you'll get this warning and the colour will be reset:

Choose the colour first then add the Fill Layer

The colour chosen does not show in the macro recording steps but the fill layer is recreated using that colour

[David in Яuislip]

If you always want the same fill colour then do carl123's method
To allow colour change then the best I've come up with is this which uses Colour Overlay fx on a white pixel layer

When you run the macro and click on the colour panel to change it, the sliders don't work (I'm using RGB Hex) and you have to sort of stab at the colour bar or else type or paste in the hex value

FoxFill.afmacro

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Another question: Is there a way to show the individual actions in the history palette, rather than just the name of the macro that played? I'm having a really hard time with my macros and there's no way to find out at what point my sequence went wrong - there's just no way to undo it step by step, just the end result, which is completely different from what I saw when I created the action.

And even if I could understand where something went wrong in my macro, there is no way to rearrange/correct individual sections/actions within a macro. I’d have to start at 0. Ugh! Or am I missing something? 😩

I'm not talking about de-activating individual actions within a saved macro, I'm talking about changing the order in which they appear chronologically. (Even though I know it’ll probably break the Macro in another way, but than again you’d fix that as well.)

[firstdefence]

The Macro feature is very rudimentary, but this is the case with a lot of Affinity brushes, assets, styles etc have little in the way of edit-ability or organisational options. I find this odd because from my experience the majority of professionals are quite organised aka pencil straighteners, it's like everything has been done a bit half-hearted. Whether that was to get a product to market I don't know but as Affinity matures the lack of these organisational features become more and more obvious and grind workflows to a halt while workarounds are found. It's the same with Macro's it's almost like a token gesture more than a powerful ally and workarounds have to be found to fill in the gaps.

[firstdefence]

43 minutes ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

Is there a way to show the individual actions in the history palette, rather than just the name of the macro that played

No, it's the macro that is recorded in the history not the macro steps contained within, so you would undo the macro and consequently all of the steps contained therein. I'm assuming you'd like to be able to expand the recorded macro in the history to step back a few steps or simply to see the process has been run correctly?

[David in Яuislip]

I'm a bit short of time at the moment, hopefully this picture tells a story. Editing macros is not possible and the workarounds are woeful, it is what it is

[Mr. Doodlezz]

30 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

No, it's the macro that is recorded in the history not the macro steps contained within, so you would undo the macro and consequently all of the steps contained therein. I'm assuming you'd like to be able to expand the recorded macro in the history to step back a few steps or simply to see the process has been run correctly?

Yeah, something like that. I'd like to follow the process and go back step by step and analyse at what point the action went wrong.

I know you can edit macros from the library. But even that's limited to a) what parameters to display while the macro is running, and b) either disabling or enabling certain actions of that macro. Rearranging is impossible.

This means that a) we can't analyse where a macro went wrong because it doesn't create a viewable/scrollable history, and b) we can't reorder certain actions because of logical errors. Man, both of these problems render the macros feature basically useless at this point. I’d rather memorize the steps and create the same thing from scratch every time. At least that way I get what I want/need. 😒

[Mr. Doodlezz]

10 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

I'm a bit short of time at the moment, hopefully this picture tells a story. Editing macros is not possible and the workarounds are woeful, it is what it is

Ah yes, I hadn't really thought of it that way – thanks @David in Яuislip!
But to me it just feels like cluttering up the macro even more, besides I’m completely loosing overview. Argh!

Edit: Oh wait, but that means … if, hypothetically speaking, steps 3-65 were correct but step 2 was wrong … I'd have to redo steps 2-65? 🤣

Haha … and here I thought macros were there to save us time and make our lives easier. I guess I was wrong all along. 🥲

[Old Bruce]

32 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

... hopefully this picture tells a story. Editing macros is not possible and the workarounds are woeful, it is what it is

 

26 minutes ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

if, hypothetically speaking, steps 3-65 were correct but step 2 was wrong … I'd have to redo steps 2-65?

That many steps in a macro makes me nervous. I record several short Macros, then record a macro which is just playing all the different macros in the proper order, not necessarily the order I recorded them in. "Editing" becomes easier.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

9 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

 

That many steps in a macro makes me nervous. I record several short Macros, then record a macro which is just playing all the different macros in the proper order, not necessarily the order I recorded them in. "Editing" becomes easier.

I was also thinking about this kind of workaround (there it is again), macros that build on top of each other.
While yes, single macros creating one big macro makes them easier to edit, it adds another level of complexity imo. 🫠

Also, of the 65 single actions, about 30% are a combination of »select parent layer«, »select group« and/or »select layer x«. 😩

[Mr. Doodlezz]

I just don't get it … why won’t Photo offer me the first option, select the layer by name? As I understand it, it's literally one of the most basic tasks – select a layer called »Base« within that group. I don't want to »Select child number 1«, I want the layer with that exact name. Why is this option not available? Man, this is getting me all worked up and I have not even had a proper breakfast. 😩

[David in Яuislip]

15 hours ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

if, hypothetically speaking, steps 3-65 were correct but step 2 was wrong … I'd have to redo steps 2-65?

No, it's not that bad
Just turn off the first two steps and save to Library as Part2
Record a new macro
step 1 Same as the old one
step 2 The correct step 2
step 3 Call Part2

Have a look at this
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/182995-functionality-no-longer-in-photo-v2/#comment-1061879
and the url link, it might explain your problems with recording the selection of a particular layer. I have not investigated child layers, I lost the will to live

The secret to retaining your sanity when using macros is being able to outthink the Serif programmers and realising when to give up

[smadell]

As to the inability to specify a color for a Fill layer, I have found that (i) there is no way to specify a pre-determined color for a Fill Layer; but (ii) you can add a Pixel Layer and fill it with a color, and you can specify that color as part of the macro.

Not at my desktop right now, so I hope I get all this in the right order. (1) Add Pixel Layer, and optionally give it a name; (2) Choose Fill... from the Edit menu; (3) In the dialog box that opens, click in the color box next to "Custom Color" (or whatever it might be called - don't remember). Once the color picker dialog opens up, specify the desired color with which to fill the pixel layer; and (4) Close the color chooser and click "OK" within the Fill... dialog.

What you get is a Pixel Layer filled with a single color, of your choice. The macro will remember the choice you made, and will be repeatable in the future (irrespective of what the application's Color Picker currently shows). Changing the color of the layer after the macro has been run is obviously not as simple as it would be for a Fill layer, but it's a start...

[Mr. Doodlezz]

On 5/13/2023 at 10:01 AM, David in Яuislip said:

No, it's not that bad
Just turn off the first two steps and save to Library as Part2
Record a new macro
step 1 Same as the old one
step 2 The correct step 2
step 3 Call Part2

Have a look at this
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/182995-functionality-no-longer-in-photo-v2/#comment-1061879
and the url link, it might explain your problems with recording the selection of a particular layer. I have not investigated child layers, I lost the will to live

The secret to retaining your sanity when using macros is being able to outthink the Serif programmers and realising when to give up

Right, so it's nesting then? Because I want to avoid nesting at all costs, because for me it adds a whole new level of confusion and complexity to the subject. Instead of correcting in one macro, you end up having to correct in 3 – that just screams for more continuity errors to me. 🥴

Or does it add the raw steps instead of linking other macros? 🤔

Forget all that, I just tried this. Setting up the custom input fields while running a macro within a macro is suuuuper messy – I'm out, sorry.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Yesterday I had something of a breakthrough, I finally got my macro to work flawlessly. ✨
The first thing the macro does is deselect everything – nothing is selected – in order to follow my principle to make it as independent and nondestructive as possible, right until the end. And it worked like a charm!

Now, running it today with the same document, the very first thing that happens is this:

It was rasterised because it wasn't rasterised – got it, thanks for that very detailed explanation! 🤦‍♂️

The base layer/group, which doesn’t even get touched by the action, instantly gets rasterised without any reason. Why? Why now? What has changed?!
There is literally no previously selected layer, and even if there were, it wouldn't affect the Macro because it works with its own newly added layers!

Man, this whole macro thing is so bloody buggy. It's so frustrating that I might just stop trying and accept that they're not really an alternative to Actions at this point. Damn!

And yes, I know you can turn this off in the Assistants options – it's just that you shouldn't have to because there’s no reason for it!

[David in Яuislip]

51 minutes ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

Right, so it's nesting then? Because I want to avoid nesting at all costs, because for me it adds a whole new level of confusion and complexity to the subject. Instead of correcting in one macro, you end up having to correct in 3 – that just screams for more continuity errors to me.

I don't understand your term nesting. What I described was a means to salvage a hypothetical 65 step macro which had an error at step2
You can't edit macros, all you can do is disable steps with the checkboxes and append commands to the end by recording new steps
So in that case, the defective macro is replaced by a new front end which then calls the old first macro with the first two steps disabled ie one defective macro becomes two. It's not elegant and I don't do it, I prefer to get all the steps correct and re-record it completely. However, this clunkiness can help if you're trying to perfect a long macro as you can keep trying different approaches at the end knowing that the first part is ok
I believe it's possible to construct macros as sort of modules which you can then use in various SupremeCommanderMacros™©® where the modules can be called however and in what order you want but I don't do that either
I've already pointed to the problem with selecting layers, the clipboard is next to useless, resizing stuff is a nightmare best avoided, there's no file saving other than what New Batch Job can do
Good luck with your quest, you'll probably hit the same wall that many of us have, sometimes you'll get a lightbulb moment, sometimes it's best to give up
 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

5 minutes ago, David in Яuislip said:

I don't understand your term nesting. What I described was a means to salvage a hypothetical 65 step macro which had an error at step2
You can't edit macros, all you can do is disable steps with the checkboxes and append commands to the end by recording new steps
So in that case, the defective macro is replaced by a new front end which then calls the old first macro with the first two steps disabled ie one defective macro becomes two. It's not elegant and I don't do it, I prefer to get all the steps correct and re-record it completely. However, this clunkiness can help if you're trying to perfect a long macro as you can keep trying different approaches at the end knowing that the first part is ok
I believe it's possible to construct macros as sort of modules which you can then use in various SupremeCommanderMacros™©® where the modules can be called however and in what order you want but I don't do that either
I've already pointed to the problem with selecting layers, the clipboard is next to useless, resizing stuff is a nightmare best avoided, there's no file saving other than what New Batch Job can do
Good luck with your quest, you'll probably hit the same wall that many of us have, sometimes you'll get a lightbulb moment, sometimes it's best to give up
 

Yeah, over the years I collected many bumps. 😅

Btw. I edited my comment, probably a minute before you quoted me, so feel free to re-read it. 😁

[David in Яuislip]

1 hour ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

Man, this whole macro thing is so bloody buggy.

No it's not. It's a computer program and it does the same thing every time as it adheres to strict rules which, errr, haven't been published

 

1 hour ago, Mr. Doodlezz said:

accept that they're not really an alternative to Actions at this point.

I admire your 'at this point' optimism, Affinity macros are no match for PS Actions and they are not really macros ie the recorder doesn't store keystrokes, look at the farce with the clipboard where you can copy/paste an image and the macro ends up containing the image. Hours of fun but not really if you are trying to get a job done

Anyway, good luck again, I have a barbecue to light

[walt.farrell]

12 hours ago, smadell said:

As to the inability to specify a color for a Fill layer, I have found that (i) there is no way to specify a pre-determined color for a Fill Layer; but (ii) you can add a Pixel Layer and fill it with a color, and you can specify that color as part of the macro.

Not at my desktop right now, so I hope I get all this in the right order. (1) Add Pixel Layer, and optionally give it a name; (2) Choose Fill... from the Edit menu; (3) In the dialog box that opens, click in the color box next to "Custom Color" (or whatever it might be called - don't remember). Once the color picker dialog opens up, specify the desired color with which to fill the pixel layer; and (4) Close the color chooser and click "OK" within the Fill... dialog.

What you get is a Pixel Layer filled with a single color, of your choice. The macro will remember the choice you made, and will be repeatable in the future (irrespective of what the application's Color Picker currently shows). Changing the color of the layer after the macro has been run is obviously not as simple as it would be for a Fill layer, but it's a start...

I may have lost something in the discussiion, but you can specify the color for a Fill layer. You just need to choose it first, using (for example) the Color panel.

Thus, you can record:

1. Choosing the color.
2. Adding the Fill layer.

At that point you have the Fill layer, with the color you chose, and that can be easily changed after the macro stops running.        

 

 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

10 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I may have lost something in the discussiion, but you can specify the color for a Fill layer. You just need to choose it first, using (for example) the Color panel.

Thus, you can record:

1. Choosing the color.
2. Adding the Fill layer.

At that point you have the Fill layer, with the color you chose, and that can be easily changed after the macro stops running.        

 

 

There's also the question of how to capture the ability to set the colour each time individually.
That is, one time I run the action and decide I need a blue fill, another time I might need a yellow fill.

The colour you set while you record the macro, as suggested by you and @David in Яuislip earlier, is fixed and can't be changed when running the macro.

Also, a macro doesn't have to end nondestructively, so the result might be a rasterised layer, or in my case even a layer mask instead of a pixel layer.