A couple of wishes.. I am probably not alone

[thomas.dahl]

I think Affinity Photo has great potential and I will continue to use it and ditch Photoshop.  But, it is a little rough in places.

 

1.  Why can we not have "back" and "forwards" buttons?  I know that the History tab is there, and yes it is cool, but there are times when I just want to go back a couple of steps without having to open and close tabs.  They do not need to be there by default, but I would love to be able to add them.  I liked them in PagePlus, WebPlus etc.

 

2.  The painbrush tool "brush size"n only shows the mouse pointer with the correct diameter after you click somewhere else..  Why not have it change in size automatically as you adjust it..  I have to go back and forwards to get it to the right size. A little thing, but it is annoying and shows a lack of polish in the application.

 

3.  Why can I only save in Affinity's own format?  I found the "export" option eventually, but it makes no sense to me to leave the option out of the "save as" menu.  I am asking to "save as" and as such I am indicating that I want to save under another name and usually another format.  Again, a bit rough.. Oh, and when I export and the location dialog comes up "affinity format" is the selected format although I chose "jpg"... 

 

4.  Many of the Adjustment tools have eratic and confusing dialogs.  When I try to adjust "Exposure" I see several preset options.  Where is the rest of the settings such as a slider?  Very strange..

 

5.  Why are the "sharpen" filters not adjustment layers?  And why are there no setting for unsharp mask?

 

Many such issues which make the product a bit annoying to work with.  I am looking forward to more "usability" improvements.  The other Serif products are so much easier to use, but of course they have been around much longer.

 

Thomas

[Peter Werner]

Regarding point 3, this is how it is usually handled in most professional graphics software. Save and Save as are for native file formats that can be saved and re-opened without any loss of data and everything intact. Export is what you use when you want to get data out of the software for delivery or interchange with other software only.

 

One big reason why it makes sense to keep these separate is that you don't want to choose a format that does not support the full Affinity document model by accident when you do "Save as". If you did, your document would still be marked as "saved", and when you close the document, the software wouldn't ask you if you want to save it, meaning you would lose all the information that the file format you chose doesn't support.

 

Let's say you created an unsaved document and did some work on it, then "Save as" to JPEG, and then closed the document, you'd completely lose all your vector and layer information without any warning. Or even more subtle, if you did a "Save as" of a document to JPEG to send to a client as a proof, and then continued working on the document and in the end clicked "Save" (or pressed Cmd+S by habit), it would not only overwrite your JPEG proof file, it would also again discard all the information that keeps your document editable. Also, new users would have to know which file formats would preserve which editing capability or they would be bound to lose work by accident.

[Keith Reeder]

Regarding point 3, this is how it is usually handled in most professional graphics software. 

 

But not in photography-orientated "pixel editors".

 

While I don't have a problem with the Export dialogue, I see no logic in having to "export" a file to 16 bit tiff when I could just as easily Save As a 16 bit tiff.

 

Like PhotoShop.

 

Or PaintShop Pro.

 

Or (IIRC - it's been a while) Photoline, to name three programs broadly similar to Photo.

 

2.  The paintbrush tool "brush size" only shows the mouse pointer with the correct diameter after you click somewhere else.  Why not have it change in size automatically as you adjust it..  I have to go back and forwards to get it to the right size. A little thing, but it is annoying and shows a lack of polish in the application.

 

Yep, that one bugs me too.

 

Let's keep some sense of perspective though, Thomas - Photo is still a baby in development terms. The developers are extremely responsive to these things though, and - resources permitting (I imagine that's always going to be the stumbling block) - will fix these niggles as quickly as they can.

 

So a little "lack of polish" is both understandable and forgiveable.