Photoshop to Affinity Photo tips

[Ste Pickford]

Hello, I'm a long time Adobe Photoshop user who is looking into whether Affinity Photo could be viable replacement for PS.  I'm going to start using the 10 day trial today, but I wondered if there is a list anywhere of obvious or known 'gotchas' that are going to trip me up, or which may be stumbling blocks to switching.  Or if other users who've made the switch from PS have any tips or advice?

 

As well as looking at using Affinity Photo for new work, I also have many years worth of PSD files for various projects that I need to regularly access and occasionally modify, so PSD file compatibility, as well as editing features, is a concern for me.

I've browsed the forums already and there doesn't seem to be an existing thread covering this subject, although I did spot one issue:

 

Text in PSD files can be imported, but will always be rasterised when exported to PSD - so I guess that means I cannot use Affinity Photo to fully manipulate PSD files with text in them.

Any advice, or pointers to existing resources, are most welcome. Thank you.

[Gabe]

Hi @Ste Pickford,

 

Welcome to the forums. 

 

You can import text in PSD, as text. You just have to enable this in the settings. Go to Edit>Prefferences>General>Import PSD text as text rather than Bitmap. 

 

Also, any "smart objects" will be rasterised on import.

 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[MEB]

Hi Ste Pickford,

Welcome to Affinity Forums

Affinity Photo also doesn't have access/doesn't import paths stored in the Paths panel in Photoshop when importing a PSD.

[Ste Pickford]

Thanks, that's useful to know.  

[DM1]

If certain tools appears not to be doing anything, you may need to rasterise the layer or check that it says pixel not image on the layer type. 

[Ste Pickford]

Hello again!  I've spent some time evaluating Affinity Paint and gone through a fairly long list of features I use a lot on Photoshop, and been really pleased that pretty much everything I need is present in AP, often in a superior form, so I'll definitely be buying the software.

I've spotted a couple of minor issues, which I'll mention here for the benefit of any other PS users looking to make the switch, and I have a couple of questions about features I can't find. I'm sure I'll have more questions as I use it more.

 

The main problem I've found when importing PS files is the slightly different way AP handles adjustment layers and layer effects.  While AP matches PS in terms of all the actual layer types and effects, I find that they're calculated slightly differently in AP, and there are slightly fewer control options for layer effects.  This means that when I load in one of my existing PSD files created in PS, they don't look identical.  (I mainly make video game graphics and comic strips, so I tend to make heavy use of layers with graphicy-looking glow effects, shadows, adjustment layers for shading, etc.)  I guess a lot of the calculations in PS for exactly how 'outer glow' and 'brightness / contrast' etc. work are done fairly idiosyncratically, and you're not able to duplicate them exactly, AP might even be calculating them in a better way.  It's not a problem when creating new work, but does mean it's slightly awkward for me if I need to go back to an existing graphic I've created, alter it a little, and re-export it, which is something I probably will have to do from time to time.  Not a showstopper by any means, but something PS users might need to be aware of.

 

Also, I'm not convinced the all the blend modes are working exactly as they should in AP.  For example, if I create a new layer with an 'outer glow' effect, say red in colour, and set that to use 'add' blend mode, this red glow should be visible against a dark background, but should have no effect against a pure white background.  'Add' should only make things lighter, and you can't make white any lighter, but in AF this produces a red glow against a solid white background.  

 

Two little things I cannot find:

 

When transforming a selection, there doesn't seem to be any display anywhere of the scale as a percentage value if I'm scaling.  I can see the new pixel value of the scaled selection as a tool tip, and I can edit the target scale size in pixels in the Transform window (which are both great), but I would love to both see and edit these values as % as well.  I regularly have to make selections 10% bigger or 5% smaller, or whatever, so being able to do this without having to perform a pixel calculation in my head would be a big help.

 

There does not seem to be a quick way to duplicate a layer from one open document to another.  This is a feature I use many times a day in PS.  I tend to have multiple documents open and regularly need to copy layers from one doc to another.  In PS the right click / duplicate option on a layer brings up a dialogue to both alter the copied layer's name, and select the target document (from the ones open), whereas in AP the option just duplicates the layer in the current document. I can copy and paste the layer manually from one document to another, but that's a few clicks more, so this feature would be a neat time saver.

 

It does feel as if the software is developed primarily in the 'docked' mode for viewing documents, which I guess is perfect when editing photos.  I tend to use the float mode as in video games I'm working on lots of separate pieces of images (textures, references, etc.) which I need scattered around the screen. Switching into float mode feels a bit unfinished, as documents aren't centred properly in their windows (I need to manually scroll them around to see their contents), and I can't drag selections from one floating window to another.  Not massive issues, but slight niggles to do with the feel of using the software, and the number of clicks needed for regular operations.

Anyway, generally the software seems pretty great, and I look forward to using it more.

[R C-R]

For transforming objects or documents you can use expressions. The builtin help topic Expressions for field input in the Workspace > More section or the online version includes several examples of scaling using percentage & fractional values.

[Ste Pickford]

Ah, thanks, R C-R, I'd completely missed expressions.  They're pretty handy.

It still doesn't seem to do quite everything that I need (unless I'm missing something).  If I want to scale something down to 80%, say, I can type in *.8 in the transform panel, which works.  But it then updates the transform panel and shows the new pixel value, so I can't visually see anywhere on screen that I've currently got my selected object scaled to 80% of its original size.  Plus, if I'm then not happy with that scaling value, and want to just try a bit smaller, and see it at 75%, I can't type *.75 in the transform panel, as this scales to 75% of 80%, rather than 75% of the original size. So I'd have to cancel the operation, and restart, which is a bit cumbersome.

 

A realistic workflow might be that I need to scale something in a layer by an arbitrary amount, that I'm judging by eye (so just dragging the corners), then when I'm happy, I want to then scale some other, different sized elements on different layers, by the same amount.  So if I can see that in the first operation I've scaled by 72% (which I judged by eye), I can then do a 72% scale on some other objects that I need to match.  As far as I can tell that's not easily possible.

[John Rostron]

If you don't like 80% and would like to try 75%, then you could either use the history panel to back up one step or, more simply, use Undo (Ctrl/Cmd-Z).

John

[Ste Pickford]

Thanks.  Yeah, that's a little better, but I suppose I what I really need is to be able to play around, dragging the controls and judging by eye, but be able to see the scale as a percentage or proportion while I'm doing this, in addition to seeing it as a pixel size, so I can easily apply the same scale operation to other things of different sizes later.

 

Trying one scale, undoing, trying another, undoing, etc. is much more cumbersome.