Alpha Gripes with Affinity Photo when used for games

[kloveridge]

I make computer games. I've done it for 20 years.

 

Its really frustrating that the only piece of software on the market that works with Alpha channels correctly is Photoshop. I *HOPED* that Affinity Photo would have done it right too (you'lve done a lot of things right). But as a game maker I need my image software to the following:

1. When I say a map needs to be 256x256 or 512x512 pixels, SAVE IT AS 256X256 or 512x512 pixels. I don't want some helpful algorithm thinking it sees a bunch of pixels that are empty. So it will shrink-wrap the map to eliminate the dead pixels. While this might make sense for many photograph needs. Its a bad policy for games. 

2. Alpha channel editing. We do a lot of stuff that can require weird alpha tweaking. It feels like working with Alpha channels in AP is awkward. Look at photoshop for inspiration. I need to paint the alpha. I need to do gradients in alpha. I need the alpha just to be a grayscale image I can modify. For that matter, I sometimes need to do that to RGB channels independently as well. Instead. Channels feel like they are special and not just a layer I can paint. Maybe this is already easy to do. But frankly, its not straightforward to do if it is.

 

[Fixx]

1. When does than trimming in export happen? In my system it works as expected.

2. Indeed channels and masks should be more simple to work with.

[kloveridge]

If pixels are painted to the extents of the canvas, alpha will export as expected. But I had a situation where the upper 50 pixels were all transparent. The map was a 512x512. But when I saved it, it would always save it as a 512x462. That's a problem.

 

When I make the canvas a 512x512 and hit save, regardless of the content, it must save a 512x512 map.