Photo for iPad first impressions

[Peter Werner]

Congratulations – Photo for iPad seems like an incredibly capable tool that finally opens up iOS for more professional work. My iPad Air is not supported, so here are my initial impressions based only on the tutorial videos (which do work fine on iPad Air). These are what I think are the most pressing issues that, if fixed, would get this thing even closer to perfection  ;)

• Putting something like "Deselect" into a contextual menu isn't that great – I think if each Persona had a few buttons next to the Persona selector for quick access to very frequently used operations, that would be much more fluid. This would also solve having the "Develop" command being only visible when you have the Hand tool active and having to dive into a menu for toggling clipping preview, which is something that is often used in a "switch it on, change something, switch it off to check how it looks, switch it on again" type workflow.
• Maybe it's just the videos, but I didn't see any way to use a brush to paint selections.
• It would be good to have a setting that switches the Adjustment and Filter studio panels to a simple list or icon view, or, alternatively, add buttons to the Layers panel that show popovers with filters a iPhone-style sliding categorized navigation list. The current design seems to require way too much scrolling and also has very colorful icons that distract from the document. If I just want to add something fast, the current design is not great. Also, a "previous filter" item at the top like on the desktop version might be a good idea.
• Levels does not have any histogram whatsoever – if the intended use is to just use the scopes panel, some kind of indicator where the selected black and white points fall inside the histogram/waveform is needed for precise control, as well as a way to make the histogram/scopes bigger than they currently are. Quick access to clipping highlights also (which would actually make more sense as a global option that's available in the other Personae as well, excluding Liquify). Output levels are missing as well.
• Double tap to fit to screen is nice, but quick pinch to fit like in Procreate seems more fluid to me (it might just be that my middle finger is somehow abnormally long, but two-finger taps are often recognized only after the second or third try for me)
• Straightening seems a bit fiddly – it would be nicer to be able to drag out a line and then have the end points movable even after you release the touch. Basically with an "Apply" button instead of committing right away. Right now, if you get it wrong or wonky, there seems to be no way to cancel and no way to get it really precise. Similar problem with the Inpainting and Mask Refinement brushes – an "apply on release" check box would make this more convenient. If disabled, it would allow you to paint multiple strokes and then press an "Apply" button. Same on the Desktop – I can't count the number of times I've used one of these brushes, hit the screen edge and had no way to scroll the document without the incomplete operation being applied, leaving no way but to undo and repaint a potentially complex selection.
• The curves UI in Develop (and possibly the regular Adjustment, it's not shown in the videos) seems to be too small for precise adjustments. A button that pops it out over the full screen like Procreate does by default would be very nice. Also, like with Levels, there needs to be a way to see where a point falls on the histogram/waveform, numeric coordinate inputs and a clipping warning for it to be really useful.
• It would be much more useful if dragging on the layers would adjust Opacity instead of doing multi-select. Selecting could be implemented either by having an additional column with checkmarks permanently shown to the left of the layer name, or by having a "Select" mode that makes that column appear after press of a button like in many other iOS list views to prevent accidental selection. That would also be more intuitive for new users.
• A "Hide Selection" option would be very useful to see what selection edges look like after an adjustment. Goes for Desktop as well.
• This is nitpicking, but the square buttons in the Layers panel don't match the round look on the other buttons, like "Return", "Document Menu" etc.
• The Inpainting Brush "Inpainting in progress" overlay seems like it would get really annoying if you have to do a lot of inpainting because it would make your screen flash after every brushstroke. It also makes it harder to compare before and after since you get to stare at that blurry wall instead of before/after images in direct sequence. A smaller progress indicator like the non-intrusive "Marked as Pick/Reject" feedback popups in Adobe Lightroom or a global progress bar next to the Persona selector would be a lot less distracting.
• A lot of the Develop UI is really colorful and could distract from the image. I already mentioned the Adjustments previews as another case of this. In Develop, for instance, the RGBCMY sliders could just have their knob colored instead of half the slider (background of the slider indicating the percentage could be gray instead of R/G/B/C/M/Y), or maybe the colored part could just be a thin line like on standard iOS sliders.
• It's not clear from the tutorial videos if this is there, but a "double-tap any numeric input, slider or option to reset to default" feature would be great. On the desktop as well. Or alternatively or additionally, a "default" button in the popup calculator would seem like a good idea to me.
• Develop seems to lack an option for numeric inputs. This is essential for precise corrections.
• It would be nice if the popup calculators could do basic maths, like those in Flame. So something like "current setting * 1.5" would be really easy to do.
• History seems to have no "Purge History" button that would save storage space on complex documents, especially ones with a lot of paint strokes. The only way to do this currently seems to be to do a "Save as". Also, having the initial document state in the history list would be useful. And an option to use the great split-screen compare mode with history steps would be nice (though admittedly not essential).
• The size of the application bundle is extremely large, more than a GB. Anything you could do to reduce this would be greatly appreciated since storage is usually extremely limited on Apple devices, there is no way to use memory cards, and the images being worked on potentially get rather large, especially considering that they are saved with history by default and that 41 megapixel raw files are within the norm these days.

Hope this feedback is helpful, congratulations on the spectacular launch!  :)

[anon1]

> Putting something like "Deselect" into a contextual menu isn't that great – I think if each Persona had a few buttons next to the Persona selector for quick access to very frequently used operations

> Maybe it's just the videos, but I didn't see any way to use a brush to paint selections.

> It would be good to have a setting that switches the Adjustment and Filter studio panels to a simple list or icon view,

> Levels does not have any histogram whatsoever, quick access to clipping highlights/ shadows 

> The curves UI in Develop (and possibly the regular Adjustment, it's not shown in the videos) seems to be too small for precise adjustments

> History seems to have no "Purge History" button that would save storage space on complex documents

 

 all - YES SIR, good observations as far as I can tell  B)

but why don't you ask for handoff?!  :D

 

 

> It would be much more useful if dragging on the layers would adjust Opacity instead of doing multi-select.

< I think it actually works very well

 

> It's not clear from the tutorial videos if this is there, but a "double-tap any numeric input, slider or option to reset to default"

​< works as far as I can tell

 

> The size of the application bundle is extremely large, more than a GB

​< current apple hardware has much room (up to 256GB), working with images requires space anyway so people working with images seriously will have space anyway 

 

 cheers  :)

[Peter Werner]

I imagine Handoff will come once the desktop version catches up to the 1.6 codebase, and I'm sure it's something the dev team is aware of anyway, considering that they already seem to have had it working internally at the time that video was made.

 

But Photo on Desktop is currently utterly unusable for me because of this bug anyway – it causes the entire system to hang whenever I select anything, so handoff wouldn't be much use  <_<

 

I disagree about people serious about image editing necessarily having lots of space – if you look at the app store reviews, you'll see that a lot of people are hoping to use the software even on the traditionally rather underpowered iPad Minis. Wasteful use of storage space is one of the reasons why Apple devices these days are replaced much more frequently than theoretically necessary.

[MEB]

@Peter Werner

Thanks for your feedback Peter.

 

@MBd,

The Smart Selection Brush Tool is located in Selections Persona (second icon on the toolbar on the left).

[anon1]

@Peter Werner

Thanks for your feedback Peter.

 

@MBd,

The Smart Selection Brush Tool is located in Selections Persona (second icon on the toolbar on the left).

We/ I was talking about quick mask mode to paint a selection, is that available as well?

[MEB]

MBd,

In Selections Persona, tap the ellipsis icon and select Selection As Layer ▸ Toggle "Edit Selection As Layer". You can use the Smart Selection Brush Tool from the same Persona or the Paint Brush Tool from the Photo Persona (to paint with lightness values) as you do in the desktop version. You can also switch the type of overlay/mask display from the same menu (Selection as Layer).

[anon1]

Aaaah

Tap the three dots next to the personas while beeing in the selection persona

 

Thanks

 

Maybe change the naming to quick mask? Seems a bit weird to me as is

 

"If you think something is not in the app, chances are you just missed it and it is already there ;)"

[anon1]

@Peter

> It would be good to have a setting that switches the Adjustment and Filter studio panels to a simple list or icon view,

 

Maybe you knew already but I just noticed that you can tap onto the *adjustment* text and thus get a list view, and actually also see the presets for each category, really well done by the affinity guys

 

Now I have to say I really hope the mac app gets polished again :D

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31440-feedback-ap-is-a-good-software/?p=152399