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Saving as .psd without exporting


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Im loving Affinity, great job.  

 

I am however trying to integrate it into a larger workflow using Cinema4D and Unity3D.   Its great that I can open up a .psd into affinity but I want to be able to save as a .psd each time without having to export and save a separate file.  I deal with hundreds of files like this and it is very slow and much more complicated to export separate .psd's.   

 

 Unfortunately there is no support for Affinity in 3D apps and doesn't look there will (or ever will be).  This could be solved if files could simple be saved .psd.   

 

Is there any way of saving .psd without export?  

 

Thank You!

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Thanks for the reply,

 

It would be really nice to have a preferences option to be able to save as .psd.  It could really help integrate power users into bigger 3D texturing workflows and open a lot of doors to pro artists.  It would definitely be worth considering for your team.

 

Keep up the great work. 

 

www.gabrielsmetzer.com

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Export can overwrite source file, quite easily as it keeps the old name in export dialog. Just click "replace".

Personally I don't see much difference in save as and export. Maybe save as has been generally used for same kind of formats and export for radically different formats/features, but practices vary.

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  • Staff

There are a couple of exceptions.  We allow saving back to a JPG if your document is still a flat image, and saving back to TIFF if you originally opened a TIFF with embedded Affinity layers.

 

At all other times, if you opened a non-Affinity file, you'll be asked what you want to do at save, depending upon the structure of your document.

 

You can see what file format Affinity will attempt to save by checking the filename of the document.  If you manage to do a regular Save to a JPEG or TIFF and no dialog was shown asking how you want to save, it's because it managed to write back to original file.

 

Saving back to a PSD is slightly contentious in my opinion.  We have added it as an option so that people using a DAM that relies on PSD for its interchange format can work more cleanly with Affinity Photo.  It does, however, come with some very serious caveats.  Our PSD import/export is not a one-to-one process.  PSD import will significantly change some of the more advanced features of a PSD, and PSD export will again have to change certain elements of an Affinity document.  For this reason, it will be an option only in Affinity Photo, and will be turned off by default.

 

It is our advice that for typical usage, you should import PSD files, then work with them in the Affinity afphoto format, and use PSD export for producing final output documents.

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.psd export to replace the original file works fine when I have one or two files.   Once I have dozens of .psd's  buried in folders it becomes a big hassle to make quick edits and find and replace each one.  I typically work on big projects with other artist and naming conventions can get muddled this way too.  (We would love to replace our current editor ;) )

 

Tiffs are great too.  I tried the .tiff option.  The problem is AFP flattened the layers which makes future edits difficult.  

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AFP will embed its own layers into a TIFF, if your document has multiple layers.  You should be asked before saving how you want to proceed.

 

If you open a TIFF with Affinity layers already in it, Affinity will continue to save back to the TIFF without needing to ask again, and will include Affinity layer information.

 

The only way Affinity would save a TIFF without your layers is if you told it not to (save a flattened version).

 

Note, that if you open a TIFF with Affinity layers in another app (including Photoshop), the Affinity layers will not be handled, and if you re-save fro another app the Affinity layers will most likely be lost.

 

More info on TIFF 'layers' - https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/22756-faqs-a-statement-about-fireworks-layered-png-and-layered-tiff-files/

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Success!

 

Sorry for being a noob here.  I just updated to AFD 1.5 and AFP 1.5 Beta today.   The TIFF workflow functions beautifully now!  I can integrate this into my 3D design workflows and happy to not use .psd.

 

Thanks Affinity team for listening to your artists.

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  • 3 years later...

In case anyone wanders into this thread as I did - it's the first thing that came up on Google, this has been addressed.

If you open up Edit > Preferences > General there is now an option that is unchecked by default, "Enable Save over Imported PSDs".  Check that, and the keyboard shortcut CTRL + S will save over an opened PSD file instead of needing to go through the export process.

This is a HUGE workflow thing for me, because most of my colleagues still use Photoshop, so I have to work on PSDs often that are group access.  I'm a big save-and-save-often person, so constantly mashing CTRL + S while I work, and needing to stop to export every time was mind numbing.

tl;dr fanboy gushing nonsense below ...

I'm amazed at how many of the "deal breaker" differences between Affinity and Photoshop have been addressed by the developers.  People ask for changes, and it gets done and Affinity just keeps getting better.  AND - and this is a big thing to me - they offer changes as an option, rather than jamming the change down everyone's throat so people that like the software as-is don't have to get used to a change they don't want.  Not only do the Serif folks fix things, they handle the changes PERFECTLY.  I'm such a huge fan - buying AP is the best thing I've done for my work in years.

Sorry about the suck-up gushing - it's just great to find that everything I've wanted changed has been changed...Serif has impressed the hell out of me and I'm totally fanboy now.

Thanks!

~ Mark

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7 hours ago, Avant 5 said:

If you open up Edit > Preferences > General there is now an option that is unchecked by default, "Enable Save over Imported PSDs".  Check that, and the keyboard shortcut CTRL + S will save over an opened PSD file instead of needing to go through the export process.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Mark.

I just wanted to be sure you knew that that option is viewed by some of us as unsafe. The Affinity applications do not have complete PSD support. The most obvious case may be that any text in a PSD file that you export (or save) will be rasterized, and will not be available for subsequent editing. With that option enabled, if the PSD file has any text in it, and you save over the original, you have just destroyed the editability of the text in that PSD file. It would be better to Export to a new filename, to ensure that you do not inadvertently lose critical data in your original PSD file.

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  • 3 months later...

@Avant 5, I agree with you. I do love affinity but saving editable type as PSD needs to happen. I simply work with too many people across London that use PS. I'd be screwing up their files and duplication doesn't cut it. Looking forward to 1.9 upgrade. Here's hoping.

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  • Staff

Hi steve99, Avant,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Even if we exported text as editable text to PSD, we do not recommend using PSD as an exchange file format between Affinity and Photoshop. There's no feature parity between the two apps and a few things will get lost or may be changed/modified during the process (layer styles, blend modes etc etc). Adobe can also make modifications to their format at any point breaking compatibility/interfering with Affinity import. If you absolutely need to work/exchange PSD files with other people/colleagues we recommend to keep working with Photoshop.

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