Why the huge limitation in function?

[Cucu]

Affinity Photo for iPad is a powerhouse for editing pictures from digital cameras... one at a time. This philosophy is embedded in every single aspect of the workflow, from importing and making adjustments all the way to exporting. 

I have created an account on this website precisely to be able to ask the developers or marketers of the app (if they ever read this) who and why they’ve decided to blatantly limit the functionality of the iPad version of the app compared to the desktop version.  The fact that this limitation in function is not mentioned anywhere in the description on iTunes Store or in any of the tutorials or promotionals videos is appalling and borders false advertising. But I guess the answer has been in the title all along...after all, it’s Affinity Photo not Affinity Photos...

Inquisitively and respectfully,

Mihai

[Dan C]

Hi Cucu,

Welcome to the forums.

I'm very sorry to hear you feel this way, could you expand on what functionality you feel is missing to Affinity Photo for iPad?

Due to its smaller screen size, lack of native physical keyboard and usually lesser hardware than a desktop, the UI was re-written specifically for the iPad and it's workflow usually funnels towards one image at a time, as this is best for the iPads hardware.
Of course however you can open multiple images and edit them all separately, swapping between projects from the home screen. 

The desktop and iOS apps are their own software, sold and advertised separately. The iPad version is retailed at £19.99, whereas the desktop version is retailed at £48.99 and functionality will vary slightly. 

[Cucu]

On 8/1/2018 at 11:45 AM, Dan C said:

Hi Cucu,

Welcome to the forums.

I'm very sorry to hear you feel this way, could you expand on what functionality you feel is missing to Affinity Photo for iPad?

Due to its smaller screen size, lack of native physical keyboard and usually lesser hardware than a desktop, the UI was re-written specifically for the iPad and it's workflow usually funnels towards one image at a time, as this is best for the iPads hardware.
Of course however you can open multiple images and edit them all separately, swapping between projects from the home screen. 

The desktop and iOS apps are their own software, sold and advertised separately. The iPad version is retailed at £19.99, whereas the desktop version is retailed at £48.99 and functionality will vary slightly. 

At the very least, three things can be changed.   

First, please change the description of the app in the iTunes store to reflect the limitation: only one picture at at a time can be imported, opened, adjusted, exported etc.  I still can't believe how working with batch processing is considered such a trivial request.  iPad Pro IS more powerful than the computer requirements listed for the desktop version of the Affinity Photo app (which allows batch processing) on Affinity's website (https://affinity.help/designer/en-US.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Appendix/system_requirements.html?title=System%20requirements).  The insinuation that iPad Pro is limited in hardware power is ridiculous!

Second, please give the option to import a photo using the exact same filename as the original (expecting to keep the metadata is apparently blasphemous).  As of now, Affinity Photo imports a tabula rasa copy of the original file always with the name "Untitled".  This creates a huge headache when exporting the picture because one has to type in a name every ... single .... time! (since you brought up the lack of a native physical keyboard...)

Third, please give us the option to save presets that would support a) using the same adjustments made to one photo to be applied to the next photo and b) exporting a photo using the last settings, such file type (jpg, png, etc) and compression settings (low, medium, high etc).  Apart from typing in a new filename at every export, one also has to select the file type and compression settings... every...single...time...

[Dan C]

Many thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated. I'll be certain to pass it through to our development team.

We're currently developing version 1.7 for iPad and we hope to bring batch processing and macro creation to the iPad in this version, we'll have more information available shortly.

Filename retention and export presets have been requested previously on our forums and our developers are currently looking into this, many thanks for your continued patience here!

[Chesney8315]

Dan C, batch processing and macro creation on iPad is music to my ears. Don’t suppose there’s a release date for 1.7 yet?

[Dan C]

Unfortunately we don't have a release date yet, be sure to keep an eye on our forums as we'll announce it here first!  

[Cucu]

On 5/7/2019 at 9:54 AM, Dan C said:

Many thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated. I'll be certain to pass it through to our development team.

We're currently developing version 1.7 for iPad and we hope to bring batch processing and macro creation to the iPad in this version, we'll have more information available shortly.

Filename retention and export presets have been requested previously on our forums and our developers are currently looking into this, many thanks for your continued patience here!

Just letting the readers know that version 1.7 for Affinity Photo for iPad was released today.

However, none of the features requested in this post were included in the release, namely batch processing, transfering metadata when importing from Photos (for example) or export presets, to name a few. Here is hoping for version 1.8 in 2021!

(harsh post, i know, but i do wonder how the developers are prioritizing the features cried for by everyone on this forum).

[KeithPhoto]

Not harsh at all.  I  brought the Affinity Photo on iPad since it released in 2016 while on my trip in Prague.  I used it few times.  I decided that enough for me, with hundred of photos, I have to export it one by one from the iPad Pro.  I never went back to use it since then.  Back to Lightroom... 

Well there always has hope to bring only the ipad to my trip.  Now the iPadOS allow direct access to external drive.  What Affinity Photo going to do?

Also photoshop for iPad coming soon....

[Ulysses]

2 hours ago, KeithPhoto said:

Back to Lightroom... Also photoshop for iPad coming soon....

I’m sure you’ll be very happy working again within the Adobe ecosystem along with their subscription model.

But quite a number of us are essentially done with anything related to Adobe. I, too, would love having a batch mode allowing me to perform modifications across multiple images. However, my disappointment if this feature has not yet arrived in the iPad version does not approach my dissatisfaction with Adobe.

[wgphoto]

Just a note on filenames. If you bypass Photos, as I do, and import from cloud (Dropbox, in my case) filenames are retained. Give it a shot and see if that improves your workflow somewhat.

[pixelcoder]

6 hours ago, KeithPhoto said:

Not harsh at all.  I  brought the Affinity Photo on iPad since it released in 2016 while on my trip in Prague.  I used it few times.  I decided that enough for me, with hundred of photos, I have to export it one by one from the iPad Pro.  I never went back to use it since then.  Back to Lightroom... 

Well there always has hope to bring only the ipad to my trip.  Now the iPadOS allow direct access to external drive.  What Affinity Photo going to do?

Also photoshop for iPad coming soon....

Could you provide me the secret Info on how to copy settings in Lightroom Mobile on lets say 100 photos? (without the Desktop Version, maybe I missed that feature on my iPad)
Also I would like to export a 16Bit uncompressed TIFF from Lightroom Mobile to preserve all the information in the RAW File. Only 2 jpg export presets you said? well well, it feels a bit like Adobe is holding back on purpose. (Until Photoshop arrives probably at Adobe Max this year lol)

You compare Lightroom with a Photoshop like app. Also the Version of Photoshop coming to iPad is not the Desktop Class Version like with Affinity Photo. 

Edited June 6, 2019 by pixelcoder
add screenshot for cucu

[Cucu]

3 hours ago, wgphoto said:

Just a note on filenames. If you bypass Photos, as I do, and import from cloud (Dropbox, in my case) filenames are retained. Give it a shot and see if that improves your workflow somewhat.

Thanks for the tip! That does sound like two extra steps only to be able to import the metadata into Affinity for iPad: 1) copy the pictures from Apple’s Photo app  (the only real way to put pictures from the sd card directly onto iPad) into a cloud storage and 2) delete those photos from the cloud once i’m done (even if i had 1 Tb of cloud storage, which i don’t, the storage would otherwise fill up after a couple of uses).

to my knowledge, one can only copy the photos from the SD card into iPad’s photos once inserted into the sd card reader. It’s the only app that ever pops up. Maybe iPadOS will change that but this route is still far from efficient and it would only cover one of the missing features of Affinity (provided not by Affinity itself, but Apple’s new operating system).

Basically, Affinity Photo for iPad is just one marketing gimmick app - the app is basically included in any marketing for the iPad as a computer. They improve noise reduction with almost every update but they dance around actual features that we need. So much editing power for really nothing. Well, one photo at a time. I will stick to my desktop for any real photo editing. I’ve been disappointed again, Affinity.

[Ulysses]

Whenever there is a favorite function of the day that we don't receive in the latest update, it's all too easy to decry a piece of software as useless. 

I take a different viewpoint with Affinity Photo for iPad. This was the app that actually convinced me to upgrade to an iPad Pro so that I could take better advantage of its power. Because of the touch interface, there are a number of things that are different between it and the desktop version. However, the vast majority of the power of the desktop version is all there. The file compatibility between ALL of the Affinity apps — on desktop and on mobile — is an additional bonus. 

Saying that noise reduction is the only thing that got updated is a statement of clear frustration. However, it overlooks the numerous features that were updated or added, which a lot of us requested. I'm sure your requests are also being considered for a future update. 

There are a few things missing, and a few basic bugs that need to be cared for. But all of the major ones will be dealt with in time. Even now, we still have great apps for our desktops and iPads that have allowed me to completely do away with any connection with Adobe, which is another reason for a lot of us to be happy. No disappointment for me. 

[Ulysses]

6 hours ago, pixelcoder said:

... the Version of Photoshop coming to iPad is not the Desktop Class Version like with Affinity Photo. 

[Photo showing "New Batch Job" in Affinity Photo for iPad v1.7.0]

@pixelcoder thank you for this embedded photo! I was looking for the New Batch Job feature, but wasn't finding it (maybe because I was trying to access it from the menu as in the desktop version.) 

So I selected a batch of raw files stored in a cloud-based folder. I made my choices about the conversion format and dimensions, as well as other JPEG options such as Quality/compression, ICC Profile, etc.

Sorry to go off-topic, but there appear to be at least two problems. I'm hoping you can help:

1. the choice of ICC Profile doesn't seem to "stick". This may be related to a possible bug I found in v1.6.x and persists in v1.7.0 where attempting to convert to a different ICC Profile does not work. The image remains in whatever is the default Color Space. 
2. I can't figure out how to "Select output folder". Or at least the cloud folder I tell it doesn't seem to "stick". So the batch job appears to run, but never gets saved anywhere since no folder was actually selected. 

Can you confirm the above? Maybe I'm missing something. Thanks. 

[Cucu]

1 hour ago, Ulysses said:

Whenever there is a favorite function of the day that we don't receive in the latest update, it's all too easy to decry a piece of software as useless. 

I take a different viewpoint with Affinity Photo for iPad. This was the app that actually convinced me to upgrade to an iPad Pro so that I could take better advantage of its power. Because of the touch interface, there are a number of things that are different between it and the desktop version. However, the vast majority of the power of the desktop version is all there. The file compatibility between ALL of the Affinity apps — on desktop and on mobile — is an additional bonus. 

Saying that noise reduction is the only thing that got updated is a statement of clear frustration. However, it overlooks the numerous features that were updated or added, which a lot of us requested. I'm sure your requests are also being considered for a future update. 

There are a few things missing, and a few basic bugs that need to be cared for. But all of the major ones will be dealt with in time. But even now, we still have great apps for our desktops and iPads that have allowed me to completely do away with any connection with Adobe, which is another reason for a lot of us to be happy. No disappointment for me. 

Hi Ulysses,

my post was indeed one of frustration. Preserving metadata and being able to save presets when exporting images (e.g. same folder location, image compression parameters, etc) can hardly be called “favorite function of the day”. Without these basic functions, what do you have left? I gave noise reduction as an example of a systematic feature that gets more and more fine tuned with each update of the iPad app - just look in the history tab of the updates in itunes and you’ll see where the priorities of the developers lie.

My frustration with the Affinity for iPad is two-fold: that these basic features are missing from an app touted as “desktop class” and that the marketing machinery behind Affinity for iPad doesn’t care about it. I was fooled into buying the app thinking it offered the same functions as the desktop Affinity. I don’t care that i couldn’t get my money back but i care about the deceit behind it and the stubbornness of not fixing either of those things. I stopped using Affinity for iPad as soon as I saw how criticism is dealt with on this forum but i’ve still kept an eye out for updates hoping for these limitations would be fixed.

you say you were convinced to buy the iPad Pro just because of the Affinity app. Can you please tell me what your workflow is that makes it such a wonderful breeze for you? From your other posts on this thread, it seems that you first put your photos in the cloud from where you then pull into the Affinity Photo for iPad. The fact that you laud the “compatibility between ALL of the Affinity apps” makes me think that you do the bulk of your import and export (perhaps even the editing itself) on the desktop version, not the iPad. If that is so, then the Affinity Photo for iPad really is just a companion app and it then should be promoted as such on the App store and the Affinity website. 

[Ulysses]

I re-read my earlier reply. I'm sorry of my original reply at first sounded flippant. I really didn't mean to be. 

And trust me, I do "get" the frustration. There are some niggling but important bugs I discovered with the 1.6.x version for iPad, and these persist in v1.7.0. I have a workaround, but I really need the developers to get on top of this one because it seriously interrupts my workflow. I won't even get into how this bug rears its head when working with batches of images, since that's another problem entirely.

You're correct about the way our two workflows are different. I have almost no need to connect with external drives, having adopted a cloud-based approach as the go-between for my desktop and my iPad version. I suppose viewing the iPad version as a companion app is one way to look at things. However, I utilize the desktop and iPad versions nearly equally — depending upon whether I'm in the office or on the road. I do a lot of image processing while away from the office, export out to the cloud, from which I can then pick up working again at the office on either platform. So I consider each version essential to my workflow.

I don't see any deceit on Serif's part, but I do understand what you mean. The app works very well as a stand-alone app on its own merits. But I also suspect that some of your frustrations may be more related to the current state of iOS. Hopefully iOS 13 will resolve some of those. 

[KeithPhoto]

9 hours ago, pixelcoder said:

Could you provide me the secret Info on how to copy settings in Lightroom Mobile on lets say 100 photos? (without the Desktop Version, maybe I missed that feature on my iPad)
Also I would like to export a 16Bit uncompressed TIFF from Lightroom Mobile to preserve all the information in the RAW File. Only 2 jpg export presets you said? well well, it feels a bit like Adobe is holding back on purpose. (Until Photoshop arrives probably at Adobe Max this year lol)

You compare Lightroom with a Photoshop like app. Also the Version of Photoshop coming to iPad is not the Desktop Class Version like with Affinity Photo. 

Where in my post suggest compare affinity photo to Lightroom?  Can you please read it again... lol. I never want to argue this or that.  I pay for whatever get the job done easily.  

[wsteve]

8 hours ago, Cucu said:

 

to my knowledge, one can only copy the photos from the SD card into iPad’s photos once inserted into the sd card reader. It’s the only app that ever pops up. Maybe iPadOS will change that but this route is still far from efficient and it would only cover one of the missing features of Affinity (provided not by Affinity itself, but Apple’s new operating system).

 

I have been using AP for 3 days on my Ipad and thanks to this app and a wireless hub my ipad is now more than an armchair tv. AP/ipad  can upload and download from an SD card a hardrive, any kind of card reader that fits a usb slot and they open directly into AP. I have a wireless hub with an sd card slot and a usb 3 slot. The usb slot is powered and can read my hard drives I have no need for apple cloud and it bypasses the useless photo app and file system.

The app does slow down when processing multilayer psds.

Thanks Affinity Photo.

[wgphoto]

Just to add to Ulysses' reply, I personally use Affinity Photo for iPad in conjunction with Capture One on my mac. My process starts in C1, I export tiffs to dropbox, and then I retouch on iPad. I can see your frustration as well, but the pros definitely outweigh the cons, imho. I've been using the iPad version since day one and I too, was convinced to get a Pro based on this one app. I feel it's that good...for my workflow. This will improve once iPadOS rolls around, and will really improve if C1 ever makes it's way onto iPad, but that's a story for another time and place. Lastly, i will add that some of the limitations are a result of the OS, which Serif has no control over. Some things they do have control over still need to change, but as someone who has been using Affinity Photo on Mac (less and less these days) since it was a beta in 2015, I'm amazed at how much has improved in general in Photo, but even more so what has been done on iPad. It's not perfect, but it's the best thing out there, especially on iPad.

[Cucu]

Wgphoto, Ulysses, thank you for adding your voices. So it does seem that Affinity Photo really was designed as a companion app to the desktop version. The way the import and export are limited, the one photo at a time workflow etc. Now that i think of it, it makes sense why none of these basic functions were ever implemented - functions that make or break a software as stand alone, “desktop” class. It was their goal all along. I still think it’s a shame on Serif and Serif alone for the false marketing. May they use my twenty bucks wisely. I sign off.