Various feedback after 7-day trial of Affinity Photo 2

[faulknermano]

My 7-day Affinity Photo 2 trial is over, and I thought of summarising my experience.

 

7-day trial is short 🙂

I have to say that it's difficult to adequate assess Affinity Photo 2 within a span of 7 days.

 

Drawing stabilisers are great

I'm coming from an old version of PS (CS6) which didn't have this natively (only available via plugin), so this feature might be old news to many of you, but I found these to be a very convenient drawing aid.

 

PSD round-trip

The PSD worfklow is great. I understand, however, that PS Smart Objects are not "recreated" when AP exports embedded objects. This is unfortunate, but understandable. So far, in my experience, I'm pleased with the PSD round-trip workflow.

 

Feels like PS - usability

It is great that I feel that I don't have to adjust to a completely new photo editor. It may be different, but feels familiar, and I think this is the probably the biggest positive factor.

(It's good to have implemented Scrubby Zoom!)

 

Live Filter > Perspective vs Perspective Tool

I was initially confused by the AP's behaviour with the Perspective Tool vs the Live Filter variant. If Perspective Tool is used on a vector shape or embedded object, Assistant (if active) rasterises it immediately. With help from the people in the forums I found that the Live Filter > Perspective is what I wanted.

However, this prompted the question: why does the Perspective Tool (in the Tools panel) not simply behave like the Live Filter variant (especially if the Layer type being operated on is _not_ Pixel), since we always have the option of rasterising when we want.

 

Perspective Tool reset behaviour

This is an odd one that certainly belongs in this feedback forum. I've had quite a hard time getting to grips with the way it "resets" when you do not manage to perfectly click on the node. See the gif below to see what I mean: if you miss the handles and drag, the tool will turn into a box and reset any modifications you have done. This was extremely frustrating as I was trying to precisely put those handles in exact locations, and any mistake at all will nix my work.

 

Line Tool (or Shape Tools in general)

There are some simple things that would have been of great convenience such as having the ability to resolve the results of the Line or any shape tool as pixels on the active Layer. Right now each drawn line/shape can only be represented as a vector shape in its own layer. As a result, small drawn lines accumulate in the Layer stack, and it soon becomes difficult to spot which ones you want to merge down.

We can keep on merging down frequently but is quite inconvenient, as the drawing lines may be done in rapid succession (and the user is thinking of drawing lines and shapes, not managing accumulating layers).

 

Embedded Objects ("Smart Objects")

AP's embedded objects are great, as they give "referencing" capability. And Live Filters support these, which gives us a very widely used capability.

However, in my opinion, the PS Smart Objects true advantage is simply the convenience of being able to create them from selected Layers, something that AP doesn't do. In all other respects Embedded Objects function as powerfully as Smart Objects. But without this  simple "convenience", it's not very useful in my workflow.

 

API

I understand that an editor API is in the works, which is great!

 

UI font size not modifiable

A small thing, but I hoped that UI font size could be enlarged, and perhaps even changed.  🙂

 

Some functions not exposed to hotkeys

E.g. setting foreground/background colours' panel cannot be brought via hotkey. Not a big deal because there are ways around it.

 

Summary

My trial experience is narrow mainly because I've been able to use AP only for a few aspects. The Embedded Object limitation I mentioned above is effectively a show-stopper for me, so whilst I had complained about the shortness of the trial period, I probably won't need to trial any further.

But even if I didn't spot the limitation, a short 7-day trial makes it hard to positively choose AP despite its excellent usability.

I use a photo editor for independent vfx and game work. I go through sessions of different tasks across weeks, e.g. concept painting, vs ortho line drawings, vs texture painting/processing, vs HDR tonemapping. I don't use the same set of tools all the time. So it makes me ask myself "Will I encounter any showstopper issue for a particular aspect I haven't had opportunity to test?" 

Nevertheless, AP is an excellent application; it's obvious how much work has been put in there. Serif's done a really a good job, and I look forward to seeing more its development, hopefully some progress on the Embedded Objects front! I'm keen on the editor API, too.  

 

[Alfred]

4 hours ago, faulknermano said:

a short 7-day trial makes it hard to positively choose AP despite its excellent usability

When Serif first started offering trial versions of the Affinity apps, the trial period was ten days and there were many posts about its being too short. It was increased to thirty days not so long ago, which made it look as though Serif had come to their senses, but shortening it to just seven days is inexplicable.

If you buy from the Affinity Store instead of the Mac App Store or the Microsoft Store, your purchase is covered by a 14-day ‘no quibble’ money-back guarantee, effectively lengthening the trial period by two weeks, but purchasing from the MAS or the MS Store seems to suit some people better. In any case, a 21-day trial obviously isn’t as good as a 24-day or 44-day trial!

[fde101]

5 hours ago, faulknermano said:

UI font size not modifiable

A small thing, but I hoped that UI font size could be enlarged, and perhaps even changed.

UI font size should really be controlled by the operating system rather than the application, but there actually is a "Large" option under the User Interface section of Preferences/Settings (at least on macOS; from what I have seen on the forums the Windows version is missing a few of the UI options that the macOS version offers).

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, fde101 said:

from what I have seen on the forums the Windows version is missing a few of the UI options that the macOS version offers

Sadly, the UI font size can’t be changed independently on Windows.

[faulknermano]

7 hours ago, fde101 said:

UI font size should really be controlled by the operating system rather than the application, 

If the operating system had per-application-level control, I don't mind where it is set. But in my case, I am working on Windows, and as Alfred mentioned, we don't have the facility for that. I have scaling enabled to 110%, which is a global scale. Developers have different aesthetics, so UI font sizes vary widely, make global scaling insufficient.

8 hours ago, Alfred said:

If you buy from the Affinity Store instead of the Mac App Store or the Microsoft Store, your purchase is covered by a 14-day ‘no quibble’ money-back guarantee,

That's great to know. Thanks for that info.

[Alfred]

8 hours ago, Alfred said:

If you buy from the Affinity Store instead of the Mac App Store or the Microsoft Store, your purchase is covered by a 14-day ‘no quibble’ money-back guarantee,

 

7 minutes ago, faulknermano said:

That's great to know. Thanks for that info.

You’re welcome. I neglected to include this link earlier:

https://store.serif.com/help/#returns