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First time in affinity photo


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I've downloaded the affinity photo windows beta and this is a video of me using it for the first time. I think it might have some useful data for the UI designers, so I wanted to share it to you. I'm very experienced Photoshop user. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edxxiCjQjc4

Sorry for the language. I wanted to speak my native language, so yeah. You might not understand a word. :/ 

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I am not sure what bug you are trying to demonstrate in your second video but you are using a brush with considerably less than a 100% flow rate & 0% hardness at the beginning, which may explain why you are getting those results when you paint quickly.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I am not sure what bug you are trying to demonstrate in your second video but you are using a brush with considerably less than a 100% flow rate & 0% hardness at the beginning, which may explain why you are getting those results when you paint quickly.

Okay, I have never had similar problems in Photoshop or any other painting program with similar settings. I really think it is a bug. There were an areas that could not be painted, not even when the mouse was released and then clicked again. Sometimes even 3th click wasn't working.  Also I tried to reproduce the bug today with the similar settings and it did not happen. 

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I just took another look at that video & noticed that you are painting with the Color Replacement Brush Tool, not the Paint Brush Tool. Since you are applying that to what is (I think) an initially empty pixel layer, I believe all you are doing is replacing nothing with white to begin with, & then replacing white with white where you have already painted with that brush ... or something like that.

 

I am not sure what you were trying to do but that probably is not the right tool (or layer) for that.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I just took another look at that video & noticed that you are painting with the Color Replacement Brush Tool, not the Paint Brush Tool. Since you are applying that to what is (I think) an initially empty pixel layer, I believe all you are doing is replacing nothing with white to begin with, & then replacing white with white where you have already painted with that brush ... or something like that.

 

I am not sure what you were trying to do but that probably is not the right tool (or layer) for that.

Okay thanks. :) That might explain the problems I had. It seems I selected the wrong tool with pressing shortcut key ( B twice. That feature is known by me from Photoshop Elements, but it is not in Photoshop PRO, so I did not notice the tool change, because using Affinity photo for me is like using Photoshop Pro. I think there would be something that indicates the tool change. The little icon in tool bar is too little to be noted. 

 

I wanted to create with the brush tool a selection that could be used to adjust the exposure of the dark areas of that image.

I tried few methods to do that, but because I had that wrong tool selected, I could not achieve it:

 

1. Use white layer and change the blending mode to overlay. Now adjusting it's opacity I can make it brighter only little. It looks similar to what you can do with exposure tool. 

2. Create an exposure adjustment layer and use a layer mask to determine the area I want to get altered to the effect. 

 

You are dev? Can I ask some questions about the future that came to my mind while testing?

 

-The lens blur filter. I use it very often in PS to create very complicated DOF effects to images. Those cannot be done with the new PS:s new blur gallery filters, neither AP:s depth of field blur filters. When doing it with the lens blur in PS, I need to create a selection with for example quick mask tool. Now there are pixels that are selected something between 0% - 100%. That value effects to the lens filter, so the areas of 0% are blurred with 0% of the radius value. 50% areas are blurred with 50% of the radius value etc.

 

Currently how the filter works is not very useful, cause the result is not so pleasing at the areas that are not 100% selected. 

 

-Adjusting quick mask with levels. I think  it does something when changing levels, but I don't know what, cause the program does not show visually what happens to my selection.

 

-Invert selection check box to filters. if I want to add for example lens blur to some selected area, I might wanna edit the not selected areas only, but forgot to invert the selection before adding the effect. So this could be one fast shortcut to have better workflow. 

 

Allow moving elliptical and rectangular selections with space, or ctrl or some other key while drawing them. This is very important, because if you wanna position your rectangular selection perfectly, you should be able to move it at the same time when you are doing it.  

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I am not a developer, just a user like yourself.

 

Regarding tool selection, the icons are indeed small but one thing that will help you know which one you have selected is the text in the Status Bar at the bottom of the window. (Note in your video it says "Drag to start replacing colour.") You can also customize the keyboard shortcuts, for example by removing or changing the ones for the different brushes so that the B key only selects the Paint Brush Tool. Clicking on the small triangle at the base of the tool's icon (or just clicking & holding on the icon itself for a second or so) will pop out a small menu of the selection of tools grouped "under" that icon. You can also customize the Tools palette, rearranging the icons as you like and/or replacing the grouped tools with individual ones for each of the tools you want quick access to on the palette.

 

It will help to remember this is not an Adobe app & that while some things work the same way many things do not. It will take some time to get used to that but there is a built-in help system, lots of videos in the Tutorials section of this site, & this forum to make that process easier.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Thanks. Very good ideas you have. I think I'm not going to change the shortcuts. I think that the program should be used as it is designed. If I change something, I might get confused with some tutorial, or if I'm in future making tutorials of this program. 

And it is true that this is not Adobe software, but I see that maybe 90% of the features are actually almost straight rip off from Photoshop or other Adobe products. I think they don't even try to hide it. I was actually almost home right when I opened the programs. Only some little changes were visible related to Photoshop. For example I could not find how to change color. lol Indeed, those things are not problem for me. But i have not yet decided if I'm going to buy this or not because of other reasons. 

My problem is that I'm almost married with Adobe. I use almost daily Photoshop, Premiere, InDesign, After Effects etc... Serif is not quite there yet, but I believe that they are actually all the time testing for alternative programs they might produce in future, so I really think that the times of Adobe monopoly are gone more or less. Also Serif programs seems to be optimized very well. Of course they are very light also related to Adobe products. For example Photoshop maybe has more lines of code than what Windows NT has. And that's lot. 

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Regarding the shortcuts, you can revert to the factory defaults at any time, as well as saving any current custom set(s) you find interesting & reloading one at some later date. All the Affinity apps are designed to be customized in many ways, including the layout of the Tools palette, the keyboard shortcuts, the main menu bar layout, & even where the Studio & other panels appear in the workspace.

 

This is one of the things many users seem like a lot about it.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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