Opening Spp files

[Richard Hunt]

There does not seem to be support for opening Spp files. Bit of a nuisance.

[Chris B]

Hi Richard,

This was a decision made by the development team. As Affinity Photo is not a direct replacement for PhotoPlus, we will not be including support for this, or any of the other Plus apps across the Affinity range.

[Richard Hunt]

Not really a big issue for me.

[Howard Worf]

I think this might be an irritant for users of Photoplus who are looking to upgrade. Backwards compatibility is always important.

[Richard Hunt]

Exporting as, say,    PNG or PSD from PhotoPlus is not hard, but i's a pain.

[Mark Ingram]

I think this might be an irritant for users of Photoplus who are looking to upgrade. Backwards compatibility is always important.

 

There is nothing to be backward compatible with - Affinity Photo is a brand new application that has never been released before (on Windows).

[Richard Hunt]

Perhaps an export filter for PhotoPlus?{ 

[Patrick Connor]

Perhaps an export filter for PhotoPlus?{ 

Hey Richard, good to hear from you again.

 

As we are not updating PhotoPlus again this is not going to happen. As I may have said elsewhere Serif PhotoPlus and Affinity Photo are different programs and do not share any code. We have not added the ability to load PhotoPlus files, because if we did every feature that is saved in the files would need to be read and interpreted in exactly the same way, meaning that Affinity Photo would have to support every saved feature of PhotoPlus. This is not currently possible, sorry.

 

We recommend that you continue to use PhotoPlus for your existing projects and for the tasks that PhotoPlus is best suited for, and that you use Affinity Photo for new projects that suit Photo's features.

 

If you still want to get some work from one program to the other, we would suggest that in you export as a PSD file (or try TIFF or PNG) and open that file in Affinity Photo/PhotoPlus as needed.

[Richard Hunt]

Sure, I appreciate what the reasons are and it's obvious why. A clean break is  best  as otherwise you end  up  spending resources  supporting  features or  formats  which users miss initialy  then forget.

[Hendreforgan]

Whilst I can see the reason for "distancing" earlier Serif products from Affinity I do find the official response a little frustrating.  I've been a loyal purchaser of Serif PhotoPlus since it's very early days and though over time it's "instant solutions" aimed at casual users caused me frustration you could get the software to do exactly as you wanted by manual controls, maybe more than 75% of my private collection are still stored as SPP files.  Indeed it wasn't until I evolved to a Nikon DSLR and a Sony NEX-VG20 that the need to handle RAW files meant I started to use Capture NX2 and Capture One Pro instead, thus I'm finding the GUI for Affinity more comfortable then the leap from SPP.

 

Yet I have carefully stored almost all of my earlier 35 mm film scans as SPP files . . why do anything else as that was where I would be using them.  So thinking of the time it will take me to use PhotoPlus to convert these to an intermediary file format isn't that welcoming.  Yet I'm glad that Serif have moved on . . they were in danger of losing the very users that they built up their business on.

 

The King is dead . . . Long live the King!

[deekaybe]

Same answer for Affinity Photo than for Affinity Designer. So same answer (or comment) from my side. There is a lot of effort put into getting compatible with Adobe format than with Serif's own one. Somewhere, I have some difficulties to accept this "technical" explanation.

[Patrick Connor]

Whilst I can see the reason .....  Yet I'm glad that Serif have moved on . . they were in danger of losing the very users that they built up their business on.

HENDREFORGAN,

 

Welcome to the Serif Forums. :)

 

You are in a similar position to many of our Plus range customers, and what you say is true if they perceive a need to use our new Affintiy functionality on documents created in DrawPlus, PagePlus or in your case PhotoPlus.

 

For Photo editing, you would probably be able to continue to use PhotoPlus for may years, retouching or re-editing the work that is already in .SPP format, but how often do you actually go back and edit those works? If the answer is "lots of the time", then I would see how it is important to you to take an older .SPP and import it into Affinity . However if the answer is "it's only required rarely" then I would suggest to just keep PhotoPlus for those times, and use whatever you want for new photos, hopefully that would be Affinity Photo.

[TEcHNOpls]

I have a number of files in SPP format, and I'm afraid I may hit a "technical obsoletion" at one point, if a newer version of Windows will not work with PhotoPlus or such. I'd rather migrate my photos to new format.

 

If, I could export to PSD with layers, then I could spend some time to make adjustments etc. But now I can't and might as well export to 16bbp PNG files. NOT a good solution.

[SrPx]

Wait... I had the notion that Photoplus allows exporting layers, provided you would "rasterize" first masks, text layers, etc.  Your version can't do this ?

[TEcHNOpls]

I only get a merged image.

 

For reference:

I usually have one or more imported 16bbp tiff images as layers, with masks (sort-of manual HDR).

Over that I have one ore more pixel layers with fixes (clones, copy/pastes).

Over that I have two grouped level layers with masks.

Over that I have grouped color corrections (HSL, Curves, color balance, etc. with and without Masks)

Over that I have watermarks/logos.

These easily go 350MB with upto 700MBs sometimes. (you can see why Photo can be a savior for me now with it's speed :) )

[SrPx]

I am reading photoplus x6 or x8 can export layers in psd, if those masks gets rasterized, but surely, it'd visually change the global result rasterizing all that... You get a merged file even if you rasterize each layer ?

[SrPx]

After reading some posts from Photoplus, I was in the probably wrong idea that photoplus is indeed faster loading and working with images than A. Photo... Anyway, IMO, to really work faster, best is to upgrade hardware...An ssd disk is a world of difference (just consider after 2 petabytes it stops functioning, as maximum. And some others can start to seriously wear much before.) An i5 cpu of these days, with a bunch of ram (16+ or 32) and an average card (purchased today) IMO go much a longer way than the differences between using one or another software.

[TEcHNOpls]

HI,

 

I'm working off SSD disk (system+data), have 8GB for now, my CPU may be a bit dated but I do the same stuff in Photo and it's MUCH faster and more fluent (inherently be design), no stops to when switching from layer to layer etc.

[folivio]

I bought ALL of the PhotoPlus Graphic Authority packages offered by Serif, but now many of the files cannot be opened due to the lack of .spp support. That's a problem for me.

 

Frank Olivio

[Mark Ingram]

I bought ALL of the PhotoPlus Graphic Authority packages offered by Serif, but now many of the files cannot be opened due to the lack of .spp support. That's a problem for me.

 

Frank Olivio

 

That's OK, you can continue to use PhotoPlus to open those files.

[Hendreforgan]

HENDREFORGAN,

 

Welcome to the Serif Forums. :)

 

You are in a similar position to many of our Plus range customers, and what you say is true if they perceive a need to use our new Affintiy functionality on documents created in DrawPlus, PagePlus or in your case PhotoPlus.

 

For Photo editing, you would probably be able to continue to use PhotoPlus for may years, retouching or re-editing the work that is already in .SPP format, but how often do you actually go back and edit those works? If the answer is "lots of the time", then I would see how it is important to you to take an older .SPP and import it into Affinity . However if the answer is "it's only required rarely" then I would suggest to just keep PhotoPlus for those times, and use whatever you want for new photos, hopefully that would be Affinity Photo.

 

The small issue with that answer I'm afraid is does anybody have a crystal ball, who knows now what they want to re-open several years from now?  It is much more sensible to either have the means to open .SPP files by it's replacement or a genuinely reliable means to convert them.  This may turn out to be an issue for your longer term supportive customers a lot more than the new business you'll get from refreshing your products image and as we all know Serif have depended upon, and given good bonuses to, their existing customers.  The "corporate answer" coming out of Serif isn't what many of them will want to hear.

 

The policy as it stands would rest more upon Microsoft than Serif with regard to "future proofing",  I use Capture NX2 for RAW images from my Nikon DSLR which, though it's running happily on W10, was shelved/sold off by Nikon years ago and the new owner used the name within it's Nix Collection and, though Nikon seem to be rolling out "Capture NX-D", it's not a true replacement.  So, at some point, upgrades to W10 will make my copy of Capture NX2 useless . . . and the same thing then is destined for presently working editions of PhotoPlus.

 

If the reason why is genuinely "physical" in that the "engine" within Affinity simply can't communicate then that's the conclusion to your argument but please tell us so . . but if it's based more upon Serif's requirement to earn new business, thus it's a "promotional" decision, then I for one suggest that Serif re-consider.

[Thomas An.]

Ok, my 2 cents and why I don't buy the official explanation.

1) Affinity is not a separate product from Photoshop with no 1:1 feature set with it and yet it DOES open/save PSD files; it understands a completely different company's product but not SPP files which is Serif's own format. This a very weak decision in my view.

 

2) The idea that we can keep using Photoplus indefinitely is not valid. I got caught in the exact same issue when moving away from PaintShop when Corel bought it over. Now all my old *.pspimage files from 2008 cannot be accessed because the last version of Paintshop that created them no longer runs on Win10; even in Win7 or WinXP compatibility mode.

 

3) The notion that Affinity a new line of products and no continuity is necessary, is weak. From the user perspective, once you discontinue work on the Paintshop line then Affinity is it's replacement. Your internal codebase differences are not my problem. You figure out how to bridge them and provide some continuity for your older user base. 

 

4) If I have to keep saving my files in PSD to ensure indefinite continuity and not keep getting caught in these proprietary traps, then why shouldn't I (the user) just bite the bullet and go with Photoshop in the first place ? You are teaching us a lesson that we should stick with the mainstream industry standards. For instance had I stayed with Photoshop since 2003 non of these obsolescence headaches would be troubling me now.

 

Don't want to hear any arguments of "why you need to open old SPP or PSPIMAGE files"... my workflow is non of your business.

 

T