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Macro recording capabilities roadmap


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First thx for all, what you have implemented so far, but there could be more:

 

1.

Edit an excisting macro is just only possible at the end. No way to replace or delete a step inside. If you have a base-macro (eg 42 steps) and plan to create variations of it (eg using another texture on step 11...) its impossible. You have to rewrite the COMPLETE macro. BTW: absolutely no way to edit an exizting equation.

2.

Working with groups or nesting or just placing in generall needs lot of concentration or some stunts are impossible. No gradient, fill.... of shapes....

(INFO: There is already also an undo for eg.last steps during processing, very useful for eg. placing a layer wrong or did a wrong brush..... Keep in mind just DURING the macro-session, after stopping the undo its gone).

 

3.

Organizing macros could be optimized. IF you have hundreds or thousends the exizting possibilities are not user-friendly. Subcategories would be nice. An easy way to move folder per drag/drop, a better visualization of the library-content, a search filed for macros... possibility for shortcut

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

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1.

13 minutes ago, Polygonius said:

No way to replace or delete a step inside.

Untick the step to effectively delete it

14 minutes ago, Polygonius said:

If you have a base-macro (eg 42 steps) and plan to create variations of it (eg using another texture on step 11...) its impossible

Create 2 macros:

In macro 1 after you add the texture at step 11 add a command to run macro 2 which contains the remaining 31 steps

When you want to replace the texture open macro 1, untick step 11,  (where you added the texture), also untick the run macro 2 command, add your new texture and then add the command to run macro 2 again at the end.

 

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

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Thx Carl,  thats right and i allways use macro-fragments but you have to "re-activate and rename the sliders which you want to use as prompt..." of the new-old macro-fragment you add. Second the old texture is keeping inside the macro. Deactivate is not delete. BTW: Do not know, i guess AP is creating intern bitmap-versions of the used images, so the macros grows extremly up with each unused but still inside picture.... Too avoid this i need at least 3 macro-parts... and if the macro is more complex and i want change more....But at least: if deactivte some blurs or other cpu-intensive process, its really not used and will speed up.

And maybe i want change other some more steps... it keeps uncomfortabel! In other words the macros as they are so a good for simple thinks. But for complex stunts there could be more. And macros are one the most powerfull features in AP. Would be nice if they become more attention from the dev-team. Its not so much missing, to make them perfekt.

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

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1 hour ago, Polygonius said:

But for complex stunts there could be more.

I think we can all agree about that. However, I also think that to do the kind of things we most would like to do, we need not just a better macro function than we have now but instead support for a full featured scripting language that offers user defined variables, conditionals & branching, error trapping, file system access, a text based editor, & so on. I doubt we will see anything like that until version 2 or beyond.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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16 hours ago, GabrielM said:

Hi @afarkas,

Welcome to the forums. 

We do not have an ETA for macro recording. You can always give our Beta a go and see if there are any improvements that you're after, but without mentioning what features you want to implement is hard to guess.

Thanks,

Gabe. 

Thanks.

Can i install the beta along with my ordinary install?

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  • 1 year later...

I think everybody is being very polite about the macro "editor" - which actually is not an editor by any means. I myself am an ex-programmer and neither I nor any of my people would have ever even just dreamt of publishing an "editor" in this pitiful state. And of course, I do realize that programming a macro editor is considerably more complicated than programming an editor for handling a grocery list. The present state of the "editor" is something that your otherwise excellent team of programmers are certainly deeply ashamed of. I rather suppose marketing wanted it put in before anybody had got round to programming it - so they just slammed the stub in - quick and dirty. 😉

Anyway, when will you be putting in a proper editor? Will you be introducing macro files in a human readable format? What priority has this issue on your list of things to do, or should your users rather revert to one of the many Windows macro recorders instead?

The product Affinity Photo is an excellent piece of software engineering and In my opinion it only has two immediately obvious blemishes:

1) The macro editor, which I have commented

2) The child layer distinction between "masking" and "clipping" in child layer situations where such a distinction has no meaning. This seems to be something historical.

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@simono, AFAIK, the macro feature has never been touted as an "editor." It is just a step based recording and playback feature, which its interface should make reasonably clear.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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49 minutes ago, R C-R said:

@simono, AFAIK, the macro feature has never been touted as an "editor." It is just a step based recording and playback feature, which its interface should make reasonably clear.

I'll just cite the menu: "Edit macro". To me this means there is a macro editor.

In actual fact the menu should read: "Extend macro" or something similiar.

Should I infer from your comment, that a fully fledged macro editior is not on the road map? That would be a great pity.

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30 minutes ago, simono said:

I'll just cite the menu: "Edit macro". To me this means there is a macro editor.

True, there is an "Edit Macro" item, but if you use it it should be reasonably clear from what you can & cannot edit in the Macro panel that it is not even remotely close to a full fledged editor that supports a scripting language with conditionals, variables, & so on.

The developers have mentioned from time to time that they may consider adding this to some future version of AP, but since it would require extensive reworking of the code & there are many other things with a much higher priority (like all the serious bugs in all the 1.8 versions of all 3 apps!!!), it unlikely we will see that addition for a long time, possibly only in a new 2.x version, whenever that paid upgrade is released.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I purchased Affinity Photo instead of renting PS a couple of months ago. AP had and has very good critiques - critiques that I can nothing but wholeheartedly confirm. Seeing that I just happen to have got around to the scripting stage, I am naturally somewhat disappointed. Even more so as I discover that the dreaded PS is using a type of JavaScript and some sort of script generator - and this has been the case for yonks and yonks.

I myself do not actually need that much scripting, but I believe more professional daily users of photo edititng software surely do. As far as macro recording and scripting goes, it seems you still have quite some way to go and one should keep in mind that Affinity is being sold as a tool specifically for professionals.

Maybe it would be a good idea to supply an API so that third parties can provide a scripting engine and take some of the the load off your own developers. On the other hand, if you supply a really well thought out API that would probably already be "half the battle won". 😉

Thanx for your very fast answering which I really appreciate.

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