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Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.6 - Beta 1)


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I couldn't agree more with the post.

 

(Well not the toy part, ja as I'm using now Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop for my daily workflow.)

 

But I really do miss those Sticky settings in all the tools ( Specially crop and selection tools )... not sure why this has been neglected in AP, it's a real productivity killer.

 

Also the new/advanced Shadow'Highlights filters is an improvement but still VERY behind Camera Raw results.

 

 

Please address these issues first instead off adding more bells and whistles.  Don't make v 1.6  Big Marketing Feature the ability to switch to a light or dark user interface, really....?

 

 

 

I hope in the next versions Photo will pay more attention to improve quality and UX of existing tools and functions than making its list of features longer and longer. What looks nice on app store and marketing communication does not help on daily basis, when results produced by particular tools matters and small nuances of usability make difference and impact overall experience. Sometimes I have impression that Photo already has more bells and whistles than adobe's counterpart but when it comes to use its poor crop tool, clipping shadow and highlights processing, clunky vignette filter or lack of sticky setting after two yrs of dev, I give up and go back to camera raw quickly. There are more important things waiting for improvement than introducing a new color of user interface, really... Please make a tool, not a toy :)

 

------------------------

Fernando Velarde

www.velarde.com

Instagram.com/soyfervelarde

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Good to see the new version coming, thanks.

 

What would be cool is to reduce drastically the size on the disk of the application. You told once the engine of the software was kind of duplicated multiple times for each color space or something like this if remember well. That would be nice to optimize the size now.

 

Something I would love to see like velarde, is an improved raw tool, as good as camera raw. For now I still use darktable which is way better.

 

Also, the merge to HDR works quite fine for creating fake hdrs (=> tone mapping is the real term, before marketing department stole the term hdr),

what would be awesome is to have a true hdr compiler that generates 32 bit pictures with multiple exposure and zero tone mapping, that can be used as dome light texture for cgi.

What would be extremely cool too, is the possibility to use the hdr merger AND the image stitching algorithms at the same time (to replace what PTgui does actually).

 

And as usual, a wish for a linux version..  I know you don't care but that would put affinity in the hands of those that creates the biggest movies and more...

 

I know I'm asking a lot, but I just want affinity to be the ultimate 2d software :)

 

Best

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  • Staff

Talking about 32-Bit: A lot of things just break in the beta when you work in 32-Bit.

Please make a beta forum thread about your findings to see if we can replicate this

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Some bugs spotted in AP 1.6 beta so far:

  • Lighting filter (both live and destructive) reacts badly when adjusting the handles. If you click slightly besides the blue handles and drag, the configuration distors itself and the lighting configuration "umbrella" transforms into a straight line.
  • The "double tap to adjust size" is buggy with Frame Text tool. Sometimes, it tends to make break lines when adjusting the width. When font size is changed using the far right-bottom handle, then the "double tap to adjust size" starts to work totally randomly making the frame size and font size absolutely unpredictable (yes, it also changes the font size!).
  • The "File has been modified" save dialog tends to pop out repeatedly even if "Save" button has been pressed before and the file has actually been saved.

UX/UI designer, IT analyst & consultant, Business Architect at Cool Ticket (www.coolticket.co).

MacBook Pro 13'' Early 2015, 3,1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, Apple Thunderbolt Display 27'' (2560 x 1440).

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Hmm … I believe the matter is a bit more convoluted, Frank. Try the following:

  • Open the Beta and reset your fonts from the preferences
  • Open a document created either in the App Store or in the Beta version
  • Select the Text Tool and click the font chooser on the context toolbar
  • Now toggle between Recent and Used
  • On my machine, this will add the document fonts to the Used list

I have the impression that the font readout is triggered by the toggling. Do you see the same?  :)

From what I can tell, if the last used tab in the context toolbar font chooser is "Used" & the fonts are reset, "Used" will actually show "All" fonts when the font chooser is next opened. Toggling to any other font tab & back to "Used" (or even just clicking on "Used" again)  corrects this & just shows the fonts used in the document.

 

Except, from what I can tell "Used" will always show the default font even if it is not currently being used anywhere in the document, & any other font that was used in the document but then deleted & the document saved, closed, & opened again. It is as if "Used" includes the history of all the fonts used in the document rather than just the ones it currently uses.

 

All of this seems like a refresh/update issue for the context toolbar font chooser, if that makes any sense.

 

EDIT: It appears that clicking a second time on "Used" clears from the list any fonts that were used in the document but then deleted (after a save, close, & reopen) ... sometimes. I got that to work once, after I quit the app, relaunched it, & reopened the saved document, but I could not repeat that.

Edited by R C-R

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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So still no change on poor crop tool. Dealbreaker to me as I need a quick ans easy crop tool as is in Photoshop. So will keep going with Photoshop. As so many users are not happy with crop tool, and nothing is happening, seems as there is no intent of changing this, ... why?

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As so many users are not happy with crop tool, and nothing is happening, seems as there is no intent of changing this, ... why?

 

Because most of Affinity customers prefer "spectacular" unicorns, not "ugly" but solid workhorses and product managers know that?

 

So, in the meantime please enjoy a new color of interface :) While using another "never-ending beta" software, where the priority is to add new "shining" features instead of polishing core toolset, to improve processing quality and productivity. Crop is an essential tool to every photographer's workflow. How it is implemented in Photo is just one example of many things that need improvements and hold people back from switching to AP. PS and AP have comparable, long list of features but it doesn't mean they produce similar quality results or offer comparable user experience. 

 

 

Please stop painting unicorn with another color, just deliver workhorse, reliable and comfortable for daily photographer work :)

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curves *cough cough*

 

 

Do you really want a crop tool to remembers mode you selected last time and use most frequently? ;) No way, you have to set "original ratio" each time you use the tool. Because it is so surprising for product designers that most popular use case for photographers is to crop their photos and preserve aspect ratio. Is it really so big dev challenge to keep last setting or provide modifier keys to fix proportions when you drag crop selection? How long is this waiting for improvement, 2 years?

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Because most of Affinity customers prefer "spectacular" unicorns, not "ugly" but solid workhorses and product managers know that?

 

So, in the meantime please enjoy a new color of interface :) While using another "never-ending beta" software, where the priority is to add new "shining" features instead of polishing core toolset, to improve processing quality and productivity. Crop is an essential tool to every photographer's workflow. How it is implemented in Photo is just one example of many things that need improvements and hold people back from switching to AP. PS and AP have comparable, long list of features but it doesn't mean they produce similar quality results or offer comparable user experience. 

 

 

Please stop painting unicorn with another color, just deliver workhorse, reliable and comfortable for daily photographer work 

 

 

If you think Affinity Photo is a toy and that the developers and most of the customers are not serious about making a good tool, why do you even bother using it?

 

For me, I get a lot of professional work done in AP, just like I did in PS. That said, I would be happy to see improvement to the crop tool. 

 

I do think the method of making overly dramatic posts to somehow get what you want does not actually work well. But hey, you can keep trying that way  :)

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personally, I have always been a little afraid of them …  :mellow:

 

 

Maybe they are mysterious but they raise emotions and are good selling points. When new version of some application is announced the most hyped and commented by media are all that features that "do some magic". Like "content aware something" removing your mother-in-law instantly from family photographs ;) Term like "improved productivity", "better user experience" or "sophisticated highlights recovery algorithm" does not sound so sexy...

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Of course, you made a valid point, sobi. I am always with the people preferring usability over some sort of magical processes. Very often, such seemingly magical processes are something you can achieve with some technical knowledge yourself.

 

However, I don’t know exactly what processes that are already implemented in Affinity Photo you would call “unicorns.” From my perspective, the latest additions really made sense to a professional workflow. In particular, I wouldn’t call the option of having a light user interface a “unicorn” in the sense you seem to have intended. But that has been discussed at considerable length elsewhere …

 

In any case, all that doesn’t invalidate your point, and I didn’t want to convey the impression that I believe what you said is nonsense. In fact, I voted for sticky crop tool settings and other usability impovements already in 2015, and I wonder, no less than you do, why such seemingly simple improvements haven’t found their way to the beta yet:

 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/15749-life-after-14/?p=71636

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/6435-multi-sticky-settings/

 

Nonetheless, I think the general direction of the development is right. We have a lot of usability improvements in the last beta, such as the new font selector, the glyphs panel, the new options for the rotation center, and yes, the light interface. So considering all, I don’t think the development could be characterised as focusing on “unicorns” only.

 

Does that make sense?  :)

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Of course, you made a valid point, sobi. I am always with the people preferring usability over some sort of magical processes. Very often, such seemingly magical processes are something you can achieve with some technical knowledge yourself.

 

 

 

Unicorns vs work horses, tool vs toy are just metaphors about focus and priorities how product is developed. I prefer quality over quantity.  

 

The list of functions/features is really long and I would say it's even "more than enough" at this moment. The problem is how some of them are implemented. In terms of usability, quality of produced results (processing) and productivity. There are glitches and lacks in core tools/functions that are waiting for improvement more than year. 

 

Light GUI is just an example, of course useful function for some applications but still it is nice to have. It is not as essential as other gaps that are frustrating and impacting everyday workflow. 

 

 

You know, I got a car with all options included and powerful engine but its steering wheel is square. Instead of correcting that steering wheel I am offered with new color... 

 

Professional tool is as good as the weakest part of workflow it offers, single pain points can ruin overall experience.

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Light GUI is just an example, of course useful function for some applications but still it is nice to have. It is not as essential as other gaps that are frustrating and impacting everyday workflow. 

 

 

You know, I got a car with all options included and powerful engine but its steering wheel is square. Instead of correcting that steering wheel I am offered with new color... 

 

 

 

A better analogy would be if you had a car where the dash panel was black and the speedometer dial was an extremely dark gray.  Then you would see the value in "a new color."  Not all cosmetic changes are purely cosmetic.

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In fact, I voted for sticky crop tool settings and other usability impovements already in 2015, and I wonder, no less than you do, why such seemingly simple improvements haven’t found their way to the beta yet ...

I think there are probably two reasons for this:

 

1. The development team is small & there are only so many hours in a day.

 

2. Not infrequently, what seems like implementing a "simple improvement" to users actually is a highly complicated process that may require many changes to the code & a lot of testing & revisions to identify & eliminate the bugs that can cause. There may be dozens of arcane things to consider that users usually don't think about, like how best to implement the changes to maintain acceptable screen rendering performance for both hardware & software renderers, the constraints imposed by the 'universal' Affinity file format, how to maintain compatibility across all supported OS versions & two different operating systems, anything that could affect import & export support, etc.

 

Add to that the need to update the built-in help topics for each of the language localizations the apps support.

 

Beyond that, there is little or no agreement among users about which improvements are most needed, or even if it is more important to fix existing bugs or add anything new to the apps.

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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Unicorns vs work horses, tool vs toy are just metaphors about focus and priorities how product is developed. I prefer quality over quantity. 

If we are considering this metaphorically, one person's unicorn may very well be another's work horse.

 

You don't have to follow this forum for long to notice how many different things different people consider "must haves" they believe should be the top development priorities. In terms of the car analogy, it is like saying that only one model needs to be built, outfitted with all the options one buyer wants, & all the other buyers will want that same model, outfitted the same way.

 

That is never going to happen.

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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Can you look at the clone stamp functionality again?

It would be much easier to use if the crosshairs in source mode would work in an absolute way rather than this weird sort of relative way. 

Also an option to toggle a straight line between the two would be a great help with aligning the source to the target.

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Hi,

My Beta 1.6 doesn't work. It opens up, gives me the starter screen but that's it. I cannot opern Preferences or load a photo. I've removed and reinstalled it, including downloading a new version, but it persits with this problem.

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