In-depth Affinity Photo training / book(s)?

[lphilpot]

Are there any complete, in-depth educational resources out there for Affinity Photo? Personally I prefer printed to video training.

There are lots of YT tutorials which can serve as adjunct content, but I'm talking about something like in the "old days" (get off my lawn, LOL) when 400+ page books covered every single feature and capability of software, stepping through every option of every one. I remember learning CorelDRAW that way decades ago. All I've found for Photo so far is shorter form content (i.e., less than 20 minutes generally).

Any pointers?

Thanks.

[Ron P.]

Serif stopped producing their hard cover books prior to 2.0. The best we can do is do internet searches. I've located a couple of resources with a quick search, on Amazon. The first is someone selling one of Serif's books, however since the books are scarce, it is quite pricey, double what it originally sold for.

Affinity Photo Book

Another is a book authored by Frank Walters, The Affinity Photo Manual

[lphilpot]

Yeah, I remember seeing Walters' book, but unfortunately both are for Photo 1. Of course there's a lot of overlap, though. However, at only 176 ages I wonder how in-depth it can be.

Do you know if these books are more of "here's a photo and we'll edit it" or a feature-by-feature complete reference (with examples)? It appears the former rather than the latter, but just looking at Amazon reviews it's a little difficult to tell.

They're both available at a reasonable price in some format or another (physical used, Kindle, etc.). Kindle is better for me than video but still not nearly as good as a physical paper book. I'd actually prefer a PDF over Kindle if it came to that choice.

Thanks.

[v_kyr]

• Written Tutorials to download
• Essential Affinity Photo 2
• Mastering Affinity Photo 2023
• Affinity Photo Guidebook - Version 2
• The Affinity Photo Manual 2.0
• ...

[lphilpot]

Wow... I'll need to take a closer look this afternoon when I have more time, but thanks!

[lphilpot]

Now that I've had a chance to review those links, the last three look most interesting (I already have Robin Whalley's slightly more in-depth Photo ebook). However, they appear to be project-based tutorial type books and fairly basic.

I'd really like to find a definitive, deep and complete description of every tool, button, gesture and dialog in the program, as it were. Maybe done in menu and / or toolbar order? Lots of descriptive text with just enough examples (if at all) to clarify the text. I'm not too interested in "let's add text with a glow to this image", but rather something kind of like what used to be shipped (e.g.) with programming tools: A document of every function, all parameters, precise authoritative descriptions and a short example. I.e., "this does that when you move this slider to the right".

Apparently what I'm looking for doesn't exist. But thanks for the pointers nonetheless -- I'll keep them bookmarked.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, lphilpot said:

Apparently what I'm looking for doesn't exist.

It does exist for APh 2 but not in your language, there's a german complete APh reference book (about 832 pages), as there are also some for APub2 and ADe 2 too ...

• Affinity Photo 2 - Das umfassende Handbuch
• Affinity Publisher 2 - Das umfassende Handbuch
• Affinity Designer 2
• ... etc.

[lphilpot]

I don't supposed if I emailed them and asked politely enough, they'd translate it, huh?  🙃 How good, I mean, quick are you?  LOL It might be faster for me to learn German (NOT...)

Thanks.

[v_kyr]

26 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

I don't supposed if I emailed them and asked politely enough, they'd translate it, huh?

Can't tell or don't know. - But they have some subsidiary in Boston ...

Quote

... The subsidiary in Boston, Rheinwerk Publishing, develops the English-language SAP program.

... further see on their website under ...

• Foreign Rights and Permissions

[lphilpot]

I actually already asked them.  😁

[Old Bruce]

35 minutes ago, lphilpot said:

LOL It might be faster for me to learn German (NOT...)

All the German I know is "Einen Kaffee bitte."

[JoesB]

Thank you v_kyr for the links; the german version probably will do. Even it is for V2, many things will be the same. And I already have version 2, though not installed yet.

[v_kyr]

38 minutes ago, JoesB said:

Even it is for V2, many things will be the same. And I already have version 2, though not installed yet.

They also have V1.x books of those!

[JoesB]

Thank you. Diving into some things makes it handy to read and reread stuff a few times.

[thomaso]

On 5/24/2023 at 6:51 PM, lphilpot said:

I actually already asked them.  😁

Would you let us know their reaction? I am just curious because they might know already the lack of an English edition.

This reminds me to another printed book about image editing respectively developing (not: composing, masking). I bought this edition (640 pages) many years ago because of its detailed description of the entire process, while the understanding is more or less independent from a specific app. (accordingly the book mentions only a few certain apps for certain sections, years before APhoto came up). I still wonder why this appears never have to been translated.

"Handbuch Digitale Dunkelkammer: Vom Kamera-File zum perfekten Print: Arbeitsschritte und Werkzeuge in der Digitalfotografie"
April 2011, Jürgen Gulbins, Uwe Steinmüller

https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/3898646440/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4

[lphilpot]

21 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Would you let us know their reaction? I am just curious because they might know already the lack of an English edition.

Short and not-so-sweet: "I am afraid not. Sorry, that we cannot offer you any help in this regard."

As a non-German reader, I was hoping for a translated version. There seems to be a real dearth of in-depth third-party material on Affinity Photo.

[v_kyr]

26 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I still wonder why this appears never have to been translated.

Since there where and are already a bunch of english language digital darkroom books ...

• "digital darkroom" books

... the effort and costs for the publisher may not be profitable here!

[JoesB]

@v_kyr Bought the book about Affinity Photo V2 last night, book and e-book.
For the macro's there is no better info than I already had. Thank you for your hint. Couldn't find a V1, but that woun't be a problem I guess.
A book is great. Sitting in the garden and reading is far more pleasing than staring at a screen.
The macro's still are a nasty thing to work with. Heard someone say one can use a macro in a macro. Not found that workaround yet, but it may be a solution to adding a watermark to different file sizes with one click.
Time will tell.
Thank you once more.
Regards.

[v_kyr]

54 minutes ago, JoesB said:

For the macro's there is no better info than I already had.

Well APh Macros are pretty limited in their capabilities either way, there were some quite good older tutorials and forum threads about how to deal with their shortcommings.

• Macros 1.5

• Macros: Equations

• Macros: Layer Behaviour ***

• Batch Processing with Macros

 

54 minutes ago, JoesB said:

Couldn't find a V1, but that woun't be a problem I guess.

Some online book stores and Amazon should probably still have some ...

• On Amazon - though they also tell you that there's now a V2 book of that also available

However, a V2 book should be more up to date and shows the additions since v1.x, thus should be even better.

 

54 minutes ago, JoesB said:

The macro's still are a nasty thing to work with. Heard someone say one can use a macro in a macro. Not found that workaround yet, but it may be a solution to adding a watermark to different file sizes with one click.

Macro in a Macro is here more adding the steps included in one macro to the end of another macro, so more a thing of copy & paste of single macro steps. - See for example ...

• Edit Macro?
• A Google search will show you related threads -> macro steps site:forum.affinity.serif.com

... though APh Macros don't support any single step wise debugging or the like, so are pretty weak in comparison to what PS Actions do offer here.

Watermarking? - Good luck, since APh Macros don't handle any document size/orientation/place dynamically etc. they are not of much helpful use here for such tasks. You better deal with some third party tool scripting here by using ImageMagick or some Python scripts for such tasks.

However, I once somewhere showed in a (who knows where that is deeply hidden) forum thread, how to record reusable text in APh macros, but that has also it's statically limitations (no dynamic doc handling) to deal with.

Things will get here hopefully better in future, so some time when APh has and offers it's own scripting capabilities here!

Finally, have fun reading your new book relaxed in the garden!

[lphilpot]

53 minutes ago, JoesB said:

Bought the book about Affinity Photo V2 last night, book and e-book.
For the macro's there is no better info than I already had. Thank you for your hint. Couldn't find a V1, but that woun't be a problem I guess.
A book is great. Sitting in the garden and reading is far more pleasing than staring at a screen.

Care to post a page by page English translation, each day?  LOL Shouldn't take more than a decade, right? 

[JoesB]

@lphilpot Well, now you bring that up, seems to be a great idea. As soon as I am being bored I'll start with that. Just a bit patience may help though.

\

[v_kyr]

Well there are tools for such translate PDF file purposes, but I never used one of those services so don't know how good or bad they are.