Can't record 'Save' in custom macro

[Mr. Mendelli]

I'm fairly new to Affinity Photo and I've been figuring out how to do the things I learned in Photoshop in Affinity. One thing I had in CS6 was a macro that cropped an image, confirmed the crop, then finished by saving the image. I have figured out how to make most of my original macro, but adding 'Save' doesn't seem to be an option. If I stop the recording, save becomes an option again. Is this possible with Affinity Photo, or is there an alternative option for this?

[Lee D]

Hi Mr.Menelli,

Welcome to the forums.

At the moment the Save option isn't available when recording a macro, it may become available in the future.

[R C-R]

I have not tried this, or for that matter done anything involving batch jobs, but might it be possible to process one or more image files as a batch job & apply the cropping macro that way?

[v_kyr]

See also:

• AP - Batch Processing (& apply macros)
• Batch Processing with Macros

[R C-R]

The built in help file documentation & the two videos @v_kyr mentioned still leave a lot unanswered regarding applying macros in batch jobs. For example:

 

• Assuming one can select files from several different folders for one job & "Save into original location" is ticked, is each file really saved into its individual original folder & what happens if there is a name/filetype conflict with the original?

 

• What happens with macros that offer user interaction, either with a,b, and/or c value sliders or with macro steps that expose one of the available Settings options available from the cog icon during recording?

 

• What can we expect in terms of memory efficiency & CPU use, particularly when Parallel processing is enabled?

 

• What happens if a file can't be processed to completion & saved, for example because the save location runs out of available space or some other process interferes with access to it?

 

Overall, the built in help for both macros & batch jobs is minimal at best & at times a bit misleading, like when the Macros topic says, "Through the Macro panel, you can record any operation in Photo," which of course we know is more than a little over-optimistic.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

• Assuming one can select files from several different folders for one job & "Save into original location" is ticked, is each file really saved into its individual original folder & what happens if there is a name/filetype conflict with the original?

You have to authorize with that equally named button first otherwise you can't perform the actions. Further the selected files will be overwritten. - Even if you choose and use the "Save in" option and name the same directory here (in/out dirs are equal) the files will be overwritten. So during my tryouts there was no difference in behaviour here.

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• What happens with macros that offer user interaction, either with a,b, and/or c value sliders or with macro steps that expose one of the available Settings options available from the cog icon during recording?

There is no interaction performed for those macros, instead their default option values (those during recording dialed in values) are used and performed. So no interaction takes here place at all.

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... the rest ...

All good points, we don't know until we encounter these in some worst case scenarios!

[R C-R]

38 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Further the selected files will be overwritten.

That seems like something important enough to be mentioned in the help topic!  Not quite as important, it would also be nice if the help topic mentioned that defaults would be used for macros that otherwise offered user interaction.

[v_kyr]

@R C-R Though what is strange is, the authorize button will popup a directory/file selection panel, if you navigate there on that panel to some directory (another one from the root hierarchy or even the same one the files you've initially added are from doesn't matter or seems to play a role here) and select it, you can't perform the batch process (the batch process panel's Ok button will be disabled). So on that by the authorize button triggered directory panel only if you don't select anything at all and press Ok, afterwards the batch process panel Ok button is enabled and you can press it to perform the batch processing. - Thus I wonder what and why that directory selection panel is used at all here, if it doesn't offer any real functionality for that overall authorization state check.

[Polygonius]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

 

Overall, the built in help for both macros & batch jobs is minimal at best & at times a bit misleading, like when the Macros topic says, "Through the Macro panel, you can record any operation in Photo," which of course we know is more than a little over-optimistic.

 

Well, but on the other hand the manual is quite nice. No compair to the 5-minute-written-"help" by other apps.

Really advanced stuff belongs in a separate "manual", maybe as book for sale.

Stuff like "deep in macros / equations / batch...." should covered in detail in an official AP-book, but the current one seems also not dive deep into it and so i do not buy it.

[toltec]

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

"Through the Macro panel, you can record any operation in Photo," which of course we know is more than a little over-optimistic.

 

I find your statement more than a little over-kind.

[v_kyr]

6 hours ago, Polygonius said:

Well, but on the other hand the manual is quite nice. No compair to the 5-minute-written-"help" by other apps.

That highly depends, since some of those help topics are pretty much nothing else like a 5 minute write up, with pretty short one sentence descriptions! - Otherwise there wouldn't be so much over and over again the same questions here in the forum always about the same things. Also if everything would be pretty clear from the help system people wouldn't need any videos at all here to look after how certain things work and are intended to be used!

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Really advanced stuff belongs in a separate "manual", maybe as book for sale.

Really why, who says that and what is advanced? Overall it's more a bad common habit and idiosyncrasy nowadays, so to say when some companies started with that bad scheme (MS, Adobe, Apple etc.) so they can sell you their books and training services too and others jumped on and do badly follow here. - Like... you want to know how to use that software at all, well than you have to buy an extra book, which serves as our reference manual. - Pretty much more an overall money making marketing scheme.

In contrast there is a lot of software which comes along with much detailed handbooks/manuals, where you don't have to buy extra books just in order to find out how to use that software, some of it's functionality or solve certain tasks with it.

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Stuff like "deep in macros / equations / batch...." should covered in detail in an official AP-book, but the current one seems also not dive deep into it and so i do not buy it.

Generally the documentation is pretty weak for these things and practically only superficial. A lot of important things to know here aren't addressed at all.

[Mr. Mendelli]

On 2/6/2018 at 2:00 AM, Lee D said:

Hi Mr.Menelli,

Welcome to the forums.

At the moment the Save option isn't available when recording a macro, it may become available in the future.

I hope to see this feature in the future. Keep up the great work on Affinity.