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Affinity Photo for ipad - feedback


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Yeah, I use it with only my left hand too, that was the point? I mean, I use the pen with my right hand and then I rest the left hand on the left side of the iPad, it's usually angled with the Smart Cover, you know, in the "drawing position", that's why I felt that the quick adjustments should be there where you have your thumb and the tools could be at the bottom since you don't jump between tools as often as you change brush size etc, then you could just swap tools with the pen without it feeling weird. But maybe I'm alone in thinking it's a bit strange to either use the pen to use the quick menu or to move your hand down? Just makes sense for me, I would like it if it was optional like you said. Not a deal breaker by any means, just a thought.

Thats why i put everything on the left on that mockup I sent earlier in this thread. For drawing, the left border is the optimal place (if you draw with your right hand) to put the most used buttons for the reasons you describe. I understand the design logic behind the context bar beeing at the bottom of the screen - to clearly separates visually it's function - but I guess affinity apps will be used by people who can handle a more "dense" (information wise) unified toolbar - we are trying to ditch the desktop ;)
 
As always, I am asking for an *option*. For those who want the context bar at the bottom, thats cool - if one want to compact it at the left, allow him to do so, give the users flexibility in the UI please :)
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Thats why i put everything on the left on that mockup I sent earlier in this thread. For drawing, the left border is the optimal place (if you draw with your right hand) to put the most used buttons for the reasons you describe. I understand the design logic behind the context bar beeing at the bottom of the screen - to clearly separates visually it's function - but I guess affinity apps will be used by people who can handle a more "dense" (information wise) unified toolbar - we are trying to ditch the desktop ;)

 

As always, I am asking for an *option*. For those who want the context bar at the bottom, thats cool - if one want to compact it at the left, allow him to do so, give the users flexibility in the UI please :)

Why would it be more dense if you just swapped places between the tools and the quick menu? It would be the same amount of buttons just placed a bit differently.

 

Edit: oh, you want EVERYTHING on the left side, that's not what I meant, I just want the quick menu on the left where I have my thumb and then have the tools menu on the bottom. That way you can fit more tools on the screen as well. Seems like a win/win. Easier access with your thumb and more space for the tools.

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Why would it be more dense if you just swapped places between the tools and the quick menu? It would be the same amount of buttons just placed a bit differently.

 

Edit: oh, you want EVERYTHING on the left side, that's not what I meant, I just want the quick menu on the left where I have my thumb and then have the tools menu on the bottom. That way you can fit more tools on the screen as well. Seems like a win/win. Easier access with your thumb and more space for the tools.

That's cool too. I wish the UI is movable/dockable so we can put these panels (or buttons) everywhere, so everyone will have his own UI to fit specific workflows :)
 
Even if the user wish to put *all* the panels (even the studio ones) on the left, why not? Someone may find it more useful this way. The only way for a pro UI to become perfect is to allow the user to adjust it to his own needs. No two professionals work exactly the same way, specially not artists, each own have a particular style or need 
 
This kind of flexible UI, of course, is not easy to do, but if someone can do it properly on the ipad, I bet on Serif ;)
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That's cool too. I wish the UI is movable/dockable so we can put these panels (or buttons) everywhere, so everyone will have his own UI to fit specific workflows :)

 

Even if the user wish to put *all* the panels (even the studio ones) on the left, why not? Someone may find it more useful this way. The only way for a pro UI to become perfect is to allow the user to adjust it to his own needs. No two professionals work exactly the same way, specially not artists, each own have a particular style or need 

 

This kind of flexible UI, of course, is not easy to do, but if someone can do it properly on the ipad, I bet on Serif ;)

 

Having it completely adjustable will be difficult, allowing for two panels to swap places might be easier, but I don't know. It will be interesting to see what happens next for sure.
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First off, congrats on the big release.  Fantastic to see Affinity on the iPad (and just to see more serious tools on the iPad in general).  Was flipping through WWDC news and saw the news and went "Wait, WHAT."  Picked it up immediately.  Great to see it at such a low price too (even without the introductory pricing).  It's a really amazing package for $20.  I use Procreate a lot for sketching and this is a great complement to that.  Makes the overall illustration experience on the iPad feel a lot more complete.

 

Some general thoughts after using it for a few days (apologies ahead of time if all of this has been said or I'm just missing something):

 

- Performance is really impressive (12.9" iPad Pro).  Zooming/panning, brush performance even with really large brushes, all super solid.  Stability has also been great so far, no hard crashes to speak of yet.

- Love the interface overall.  I'm sure converting over the desktop interface to a tablet interface was no small trick, and I think you guys have nailed it.  Few wrinkles here and there, but overall super slick.

- Brushes, brushes, brushes.  The brush system is great overall, but this has kind of been the big killer for me at the moment.  You can't duplicate, move or update existing brushes near as I can tell, which makes it difficult to test and tweak new ones.  Brush settings also aren't persistent, so if I'm switching between two different brushes I have to set the brush up every time I switch.  I could set brushes up in Affinity on my Mac and import, but I like to futz with my brushes a lot, so that's not very practical.  It would also be great if brushes had a small label in the overview list.

- Having a dedicated Rotate tool seems odd when you can just zoom and pan at any time otherwise, but not rotate.  I can rotate the iPad itself of course but it's not nearly as fast as doing it in software.  Also that would be manual labor.

- Lasso selection - this is kind of a personal style thing, but I tend to use lasso selections a lot.  Right now I have to go through a lot of steps to get to the Selection persona, select the lasso tool, make my selection, go back to the Photo persona, paint in the selection, go back to to the Selection persona and deselect.  A direct Lasso hotkey and Deselect hotkey would help a lot with that.

- Eyedropper behavior is really inconsistent.  I do love that you can hold to pull it up from the Brush tool while holding.  I've had a bug a lot where it won't come up until I paint a stroke with my finger then try again.  Also a fair amount of the time using the actual Eyedropper tool doesn't actually update the brush color.

- Layers - love having good clipping masks.  Would be great if layers were labeled with current blending mode.

- Hotkeys - was a bit surprised hotkeys were in the first release at all, so that's awesome.  Just keep adding more.  Deselect hotkey.  An official hotkey list would be great too (unless there is one and I've just missed it).  I've been referencing the Mac hotkey list but they're definitely not one to one.

- Export/file system - would be great to be able to open/save directly from Photos.  Would also be nice if it remembered the last source I imported/exported from so I don't have to navigate to it every time.  Airdrop support would be great.

- Pencil support - would be great if different tools could be assigned to finger input vs. Pencil input.

- Minor thing - if I unpin the Layer panel, then make a new layer, the panel closes and I have to open it again to move or adjust the layer.

- Resizable interface elements would be cool.  I want a color wheel big enough to sit my coffee mug in.

 

Overall though, super impressive first release and really takes photo editing and illustration on the iPad up a massive notch.  Really looking forward to where it goes in the coming months.

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Great product. One thing that drives me nuts though that if I have healing brush selected and switch to the selection persona to modify the selection when I go back, the brush has reset to the clone brush. Switching from draw to select is such a common workflow I think this must be an annoying thing for many.

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There are good reasons why one wants to rotate canvas (artwork) instead of rotating the iPad itself:

 

  1. Not everybody works with iPad on his lap. Having it firm on the stand is like having a canvas on an easel. iPad is not a piece of paper. It's rather your drafting table with all the tools.
  2. While one would want to have the art at an angle for better strokes, rotating tools and menus is not useful at all. 
  3. Two finger canvas rotation is absolutely ubiquitous and conventional feature on many apps selling for 1/10 of the Photo app.

In short, having to make 4 gestures to rotate the art every time you need it is a deal breaker for ANY serious artist. Try to paint on Affinity Photo vs. ArtStudio or Procreate for example and you'll understand why. There is a good reason why iPad+pencil+painting program beats desktop+Cintiq combo every possible way. And not just the price tag difference (although it's staggering). Notice how PS artists constantly horizontally flip the canvas? That's their ONLY solution. Would they do it, if they could rotate the canvas? 

 

In short, painting is a two-handed job. One holds the pencil, another switch, control and adjust. That's why controls have to be on the left (or right for lefties). If there are too many and they don't fit the left and bottom toolboxes, there could be a big, under the thumb show/hide control button like in PaintStorm or Astropad.

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Notice how PS artists constantly horizontally flip the canvas? That's their ONLY solution. Would they do it, if they could rotate the canvas? 

 

Canvas flipping is usually needed to fix perspective and proportions, doesn't deal strictly with rotation.

Rotation is used to facilitate directional drawing and long curved strokes, because all we have a preferred direction of drawing.

With training an artist can use his elbow or even the shoulder and this can help avoiding rotation.

 

Btw with small surfaces i find it useful, since there are few Sergio Toppi and Glenn Fabry out there...  :D

 

  1. Two finger canvas rotation is absolutely ubiquitous and conventional feature on many apps selling for 1/10 of the Photo app.

     

     

Yep, true.

You're pretty new to Serif's community, they listen, so it will arrive sooner or later together with a bounce of option for UI layout customisation.

The white dog, making tools for artists, illustrators and doodlers

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App not compatible with my old iPad. My new Space Gray 12.9 Pro yet to appear in stock. How can I take advantage of Introductory Pricing with no place to download App?

Assume owning computer version nets me nothing in this deal.

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Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, jemity. :)

 

If you own the computer version, I presume you also own a Mac or a Windows PC! Log into the iTunes Store from there, purchase the app and then either transfer it or re-download it once your shiny new iPad Pro appears on the scene.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, jemity. :)

 

If you own the computer version, I presume you also own a Mac or a Windows PC! Log into the iTunes Store from there, purchase the app and then either transfer it or re-download it once your shiny new iPad Pro appears on the scene.

Too easy Alfred; and doesn't work. iPad version not on US Mac App Store or iPhone App Store. Downloading from iPad App Store requires iPad to be running 10.3 or later.

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Too easy Alfred; and doesn't work. iPad version not on US Mac App Store or iPhone App Store. Downloading from iPad App Store requires iPad to be running 10.3 or later.

 

No, not the App Store but the iTunes Store. ;)

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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No, not the App Store but the iTunes Store. ;)

At the moment, if you open iTunes to the "Apps" category on a Mac in the U.S. iTunes Store, at the top center of the window you should see Affinity Photo listed as an Editor's choice in the iPad app subcategory. (It will not appear in the iPhone subcategory since it will not run on them.)

 

Just click on that & it will take you to the "Buy" page -- you don't even have to search for it.

 

On the equivalent GB page, it is listed in the "Hot this week" section & also in the top section, but only if you side-scroll to 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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At the moment, if you open iTunes to the "Apps" category on a Mac in the U.S. iTunes Store, at the top center of the window you should see Affinity Photo listed as an Editor's choice in the iPad app subcategory. (It will not appear in the iPhone subcategory since it will not run on them.)

 

Just click on that & it will take you to the "Buy" page -- you don't even have to search for it.

 

On the equivalent GB page, it is listed in the "Hot this week" section & also in the top section, but only if you side-scroll to it.

Thanks Alfred and R C-R, but ultimately that takes me back to the same buy page as before. Which allows selection, but then nothing else happens. I'm guessing iTunes knows I don't not have compatible device. If it did download to computer, wouldn't there be another conflict as both iPad and Mac versions are called "Affinity Photo"? I'm losing interest; further aggravation may not be worth ten bucks.

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It's kinda distressing to see a thousand nitpicks on this forum. Let me share my experience (which dates back to the Quantel Paintbox in the 1980s through EVERY version of Photoshop through 2016.)

 

This app is amazing. Beautifully done. Great UI design. Embraces the limitations of Apple's locked down ecosystem without being shackled by it. It was the first app I loaded on a brand new iPad Pro 10.5 —and it may well be that solid hardware is a big part of the equation. I didn't even try to load it on our still quite functional iPad Air 2, because it only has 16GB of storage and we constantly have to offload stuff to keep going.

 

After installing the Mac beta of Affinity Photo, I was able to round-trip project files painlessly. Amazing. I can open up layered Photoshops from the distant past. SVG support is terrific (and yeah, I'll be in line for Affinity Designer on the iPad too.)

 

This app serves up the excitement I had when I first used Photoshop. I can't give it any higher compliment.

 

Don't stop now!

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Thanks Alfred and R C-R, but ultimately that takes me back to the same buy page as before. Which allows selection, but then nothing else happens. I'm guessing iTunes knows I don't not have compatible device. If it did download to computer, wouldn't there be another conflict as both iPad and Mac versions are called "Affinity Photo"? I'm losing interest; further aggravation may not be worth ten bucks.

Are you sure you are using the iTunes app on your Mac for this, not the Mac App Store? In iTunes, the product page should have a button directly below the Affinity Photo logo on the left. The button should show the price, followed by the word "Buy."

 

Click on that button to purchase the app, which will be downloaded to your Mac & then show up in the "Library" tab in the Apps section of iTunes. This has nothing to do with what iTunes "knows" about your iOS devices -- I bought & downloaded the app even though I do not own an iPad. There can be no conflict because the Mac version only runs on the Mac OS & the iPad version only runs on iOS. The download in iTunes is to an "ipa" file package stored in the /iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/ folder on the Mac, with its "kind" set to iOS app.

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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Are you sure you are using the iTunes app on your Mac for this, not the Mac App Store? In iTunes, the product page should have a button directly below the Affinity Photo logo on the left. The button should show the price, followed by the word "Buy."

 

Click on that button to purchase the app, which will be downloaded to your Mac & then show up in the "Library" tab in the Apps section of iTunes. This has nothing to do with what iTunes "knows" about your iOS devices -- I bought & downloaded the app even though I do not own an iPad. There can be no conflict because the Mac version only runs on the Mac OS & the iPad version only runs on iOS. The download in iTunes is to an "ipa" file package stored in the /iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/ folder on the Mac, with its "kind" set to iOS app.

Thanks to YOUR patience/persistence - I have it. Was in correct place all along, but attempting purchase from old desktop that is not part of my Apple double security family. Tried download from even older laptop (with newer OS) and was successful. Now, if I'm only billed for one download I'll be golden - thanks again.

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Downloaded the app on my Ipad Pro 9.7" and have a pencil so looking forward to finding out what is possible. Have used PagePlus and PhotoPlus over the years on PC without ever really realising the full potential of the software but have only recently been using an IPad so am still learning what it can do as well. First impressions very good and the tutorials are well worth watching. Found all the photos taken with the pad easily but have many more saved recently from a varety of sources, using Google which don't show up, though they are easily imported as needed. Thanks for making this available at such a reasonable price (remember paying around £100 for the entire PagePlus3 suite many years ago!), looking forward to learning and having fun with Affinity and the IPad which seem made for each other!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Add me to the list of users who REALLY want to see gesture preferences where we can define what the app should pay attention to and what it should ignore when our skin makes contact with the screen. When using a stylus, it tends to be the ONLY thing i want to make marks on the screen.

 

As for zoom, undo, and rotation, I strongly prefer those gestures to also be configurable by the user. I'm in agreement that the rotation and zoom are too easily triggered unintentionally on other apps and want full control here in this one.

• iMac 12,2, 16GB RAM, with Mac OS 10.13.6 (17G14033), Wacom Intuos3 9x12
• iPad Pro 12.9" 1st gen & Apple Pencil

http://dysamoria.com

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  • 2 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/7/2017 at 6:20 AM, MattP said:

With regards to the file management side of things, I totally agree we have work to do here - it's not as smooth as it should be - we'll obviously try our best to get this sorted out quickly.

 

 

There are posts from 2014 saying the same thing. What is so hard about this? Add a setting to set a default location for saving files.

 

The options could be:

 

1. Continue doing it the crappy way it is now.

2. Cloud Locations (any that have apps installed on the iPad).

     i. iCloud

     ii. Dropbox

    iii. Box

    iv. etc.

 

Honestly, this should have worked from day one. You guys even create an Affinity Photo iCloud folder but there isn't a way to even save a copy of a document into it from the iPad, only import from it. Having multiple copies of the same document and not having the edits in sync from Mac to iPad is dumb. If you are moving back and forth between devices (I have multiple iPads and Macs) you end up with copy after copy of the same file all with different edits.

 

I'm at a loss to understand how the developers at Serif could even think this okay. The first thing I thought when I discovered the lack of syncing was "this is really stupid". I don't know how anyone could think otherwise.

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