Epic Skies Macro

[Charles p]

I appear to have loaded stuff but cannot get it to work as per Tutorial.

I can't see the skies except individually and can't get the box which appears in the middle of the screen in the tutorial. Currently stuffed. Please give pointers . This is as far as I get and the adjustment box to go with it.

 

[Callum]

Hi Charles P,

 

Welcome to the forums

 

I'm not sure I understand your problem exactly in which part of the tutorial does the box appear that you can't see?

 

C

[Charles p]

Sorry Callum, it was difficult to explain. Having spent more time trawling the forum it appears that the Epic Skies tutorial was based on using Mac toggles, not Windows, (which was really the confusing bit) and seeing thumbnails of the skies. My current Windows solution is access all the skies separately and choose one, note the reference. Go to Affinity, go to Place, then reselect the image by number and then carry on as per the tutorial although it seems the next important step is sorting sky opacity. If there is a way in Windows to pick up Skies and toggle through whilst in Affinity great. Anyway after hours with a hammer and chisel I have made a half decent job of a picture.

[IanSG]

In AP I use File / Place and this puts me in Windows Explorer, where I've got all the usual options to navigate to the folder I want and display the contents as icons of different sizes.  Under Win 10 the display options are in the top right hand corner.

[Charles p]

OK Ian I am on Windows 7 and have no intention of changing, will have to explore further. 

[IanSG]

The same options are in Win 7, and (I've just discovered) in the same place ,  You should see an icon that represents your current view with the options drop-down menu on the right.

[Charles p]

As you can see opening it from Place it gives me what you say but as you can see that although they are jpeg files, bottom right it talks about Affinity files. Whatever buttons I have hit so far no previews?! Stuck

[IanSG]

As per the drawing.  They're described as Affinity files because that's what will be used by default if you double click one of them.

[Charles p]

Thanks, its helpful but I am getting the same sky in all 50 images so not quite working right. Maybe beyond the capability of Windows 7. In fact its just the Windows image.

[walt.farrell]

28 minutes ago, Charles p said:

Thanks, its helpful but I am getting the same sky in all 50 images so not quite working right. Maybe beyond the capability of Windows 7. In fact its just the Windows image.

Windows 7 should be able to show you the previews, but in the Explorer window you need to choose the proper View options. @IanSG showed you where to find the View menu on the screenshot that you provided. You are currently set to Details, which does not provide a preview. Try choosing one of the View styles that includes the word "icons" or "tiles" or "content" instead.

[Charles p]

Cheers but no. Relooking at the response from Ian you can see bottom tight is File Type which shows as Affinity and I can't change it. So I assume it won't preview because it wants to look at an Affinity file not Jpeg. I have tried everything I can think of (which is admittedly not a lot) to look at other file types with no success. 

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, Charles p said:

Cheers but no. Relooking at the response from Ian you can see bottom tight is File Type which shows as Affinity and I can't change it. So I assume it won't preview because it wants to look at an Affinity file not Jpeg. I have tried everything I can think of (which is admittedly not a lot) to look at other file types with no success. 

Here's my "Place" dialog (though I'm on Windows 10, not Windows 7, that should not matter). The Affinity Files button (if I click on it) gives a long list of acceptable file types, basically any that Affinity Photo supports, including jpeg.

What determines the preview capability is not the name on that button, but the actual filetype (which is JPG for all those files), but more importantly,  what View option you've chosen. You have chosen to View->Details, and you do not get previews in Details mode. You need to choose a different View mode (Small Icons, Medium Icons, tiles, etc.) in order to get previews. You do that by clicking on the View icon that IanSG highlighted and choosing one of those other style options.

(The other difference I can see is that I have told Windows, via the View menu (or possibly the Folder Options menu for you) to show the file types. But I don't think that should matter.)

 

 

[IanSG]

30 minutes ago, Charles p said:

Cheers but no. Relooking at the response from Ian you can see bottom tight is File Type which shows as Affinity and I can't change it. So I assume it won't preview because it wants to look at an Affinity file not Jpeg. I have tried everything I can think of (which is admittedly not a lot) to look at other file types with no success. 

Sorry, but your assumption is wrong!  The file type (in this case) is simply indicating which program will be used to open the file by default.  What happens when you click on the arrow I indicated?   

[Charles p]

Thanks for your endeavours. Each response gives me a snippet to follow through further. Following all the advise above I am still no further forward so I stared looking at Windows 7.  With Open I it gives the normal multi drop down file extension options and thumbnails I would expect. With Place it just gives the Affinity file only. So, looking at Windows 7 Help pointed me at Change which programs Windows 7 uses by default. The option I think I want is Associate a file type with a program. Going there gives me a list of all programs with defaults and I have copied out all Affinity programmes (see attachment Affinity File Extensions in Windows 7.docx). Click on the programme and another box pops up where it shows the default and click on "Other Programmes" and there is a listed of other stuff. If my conclusions are correct I need to know is which of the Affinity programs drives Place and what programme I need to add to the Other list.

If people have not yet lost the will to live any feedback would be appreciated please.

Affinity File Extensions in Windows 7.docx

[walt.farrell]

I'm afraid your assumptions are not correct, and you are still looking at the wrong place.

Please ignore the box thart says Affinity Files. It selects the files that will appear, but is not relevant to whether previews are shown or not. Whether previews are shown is controlled by the View menu in the dialog, as we have tried to explain and as IanSG tried to show you. Here is another marked-up copy of your screen shot, with the View menu highlighted in green in the upper right of the dialog. You need to click on that and choose one of the icon options, not the details option that you have selected now.

(And if that is not working as I have described, please provide another screen shot for us, showing the dialog again with an icon option chosen, because that would mean that something we don't expect is happening.)

[Charles p]

Thanks for your patience. When I logged on this afternoon I think I had the thumbnails for a few minutes and then back to what we have seen already. In general I get thumbnails in everything except Small Icons, List, Details but that depends on file size. So I get  I have been experimenting with all sorts of options including deleting a reinstalling Epic Skies. The only conclusion is that I can't get Epic skies thumbnails in any form, although it appears when I click on an individual file. So it seems to be loaded properly, or is it (?). Is it something else I have not done or should be doing. Maybe its down to properties on folders?  

I include another screen shot going through place to one of my picture folders. (some files here are RAW so image expected)

[IanSG]

21 minutes ago, Charles p said:

I include another screen shot going through place to one of my picture folders. (some files here are RAW so image expected)

The screen shot didn't make it!  But please do as walt.farrell asked and post a screen shot of your epic skies folder with the icons selected.  

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Charles p said:

... I have been experimenting with all sorts of options including deleting a reinstalling Epic Skies. {...} So it seems to be loaded properly, or is it (?).

With the exception of the Uplift - Epic Skies.afmacros file, all the files in the Overlays & Macro folder are just ordinary JPEG image files, so there is no point in "reinstalling" them once they appear in the list of files.

[Charles p]

As I mentioned yesterday I thought the thumbnails worked and then didn't. Today its all fine!, why I don't know! Hope this shows below, its on Large Icons. So until the next time...... thanks.