Pasting Images Into Alpha Channel

[Alej]

On 11/6/2021 at 9:10 AM, ambersand said:

Still waiting for an uncomplicated solution to paste into channels. Together with a few more filters, PNG compression, brush thumbs sizing and separated brush sets (not one big file in user profile) it is among the most desired items.

Exactly, the whole issue here is, whether the AP way is superior, is that people REALLY want AP to be a replacement, to make it work, for that to happen it has to have as less friction as possible. We aren’t bashing Serif devs, we are incredibly happy that they are doing what they do with performance and keeping things in check, is just that it’s so darn close in some things but not quite that it’s frustrating.

If I want to get rid of a certain other photo program I have to be able to do the same in a similar enough way, at least at the beginning, no macros, no splitting, no preview woes…

I jumped into this question thread right away because I opened a TGA file that had an alpha channel, that I wanted to invert, paint some stuff on it, Levels on a selection mask, resave. A 2min turnaround max for a dirty test before deciding on larger scale production decisions which turned in hours and hours of head-scratching, reading forums, etc… what happened? I had to do it back on known grounds and it took me 1hr 2mins instead of just 2mins and felt beyond frustrating, but that’s how much I wanted it to work.

[kirk23]

On 11/7/2021 at 6:26 PM, Alej said:

Still waiting for an uncomplicated solution to paste into channels

Here I did a new version of my previous macro that makes any open file with alpha  ready for instant channel editing.  Whatever you put in RGB and A groups goes  straight into respective channel at export  . It works a bit slow because it  makes my homemade version of "solidify"  to close  "black holes" gaps  in RGB channels ( where zero alpha pixels multiply pure black on RGB channels) .   You can decrease the number of "maxblure" steps to make it quicker .

btw.  The only issue with Aphoto and channels is  that it multiplys zero value alpha on RGB .     I asked Serif to fix it in feature request  thread  and nobody care .   Here my last try.

Let's make  Serif  hear .  If they fix it  APhoto would be a better choice really for channel editing since it does it non-destructively. Well Photoshop can do it too , just in less convenient way .  

 

openRGBA4.afmacro

[Alej]

No need for a direct format conversion, affinity can load and export psd files directly.
And the format’s features support are kept as up to date as possible in my experience.

[Tatom]

1 hour ago, Alej said:

No need for a direct format conversion, affinity can load and export psd files directly.
And the format’s features support are kept as up to date as possible in my experience.

It is not about PSD files.

[Alej]

Just now, Tatom said:

It is not about PSD files.

So, sadly it was about a condescending comment making fun of people, which I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. What an ignorant comment and person then, hope it's reported and banned.

@Lupearn Some people, for example, would go and prepare command line based massive Substance Designer files that do a lot of stuff on folders regarding channel packing, optimizations, resizing, material generation based on alphas (or smoothness to roughness conversion depending on engine), etc times 2000. And sometimes a quick test without having to go through the whole complicated pipeline just yet as a quick test makes a lot sense... and there's no real need to convert, it can still be done on PS, a company has no problem paying $20 per seat for a PS license, this is more about principle and wanting to find a different venue. Your comment is so condescending, short sighted and narrow.

Compare that to the civilized and insanely helpful member here @kirk23 who has shared macros, workarounds for the "zero alpha pre-multiplies the RGB channels, etc", thanks a lot for the efforts.

I will continue to use Affinity Photo on my personal time and professional time as much as possible, the community is ultimately very helpful (beyond a few rotten apples) and the devs are making great strides overall

[Fwiller]

On 11/9/2021 at 3:22 AM, kirk23 said:

openRGBA4.afmacroUnavailable

Trying to solve this exact problem. I appreciate you making these macros as a nice workaround, but they all seem to have been removed or are unavailable. Any chance you could re-upload them?

[Komatös]

Hi, @Fwiller

Maybe there is a problen at your side.

For me it look quite right:

 

Her are the macro file:

openRGBA4.afmacro

 

[lloyds]

Okay, I needed to work with RGBA and don’t have or want Photoshop.

So, instead, I created these two macros. 

1. CompositeToRGBA — which takes a RGBA image and turns it into four layers named red, green, blue and alpha (they are order dependent).

2. RGBAToComposite — this does the reverse. Takes the four layers and turns them into a composite image.

This has 0 minutes of testing so if things barf, feel free to change and complain. But they seem to work fine with files I’ve been using with Unreal. These are dumb macros that don’t try to change/fix anything. They’re also not based on anyone else’s macros, so they are public domain.

EDIT: Okay, this is a problem on Affinity’s side. As soon as I add the alpha it messes with the RGB channels. It shouldn’t but it does.

CompositeToRGBA.afmacro RGBAToComposite.afmacro

Edited February 27 by lloyds