missing basic photoshop features

[Gedd]

Had a brief  look at affinity photo and whilst concluding this was good value for money software I was a bit disappointed by the absence of some basic Photoshop features,these are  basic interface features which don't require fancy algorithms so I'm not sure why software which is trying to emulate Photoshop in so many  other ways would leave them out, just my 2 cents  worth.

crop doesn't remove pixels outside document bounds
layer visibility on wrong side of palette, most  other progs use the Photoshop left side,this became surprisingly annoying , the eye icon would be nice too
missing features:
no copy/cut to new layer
no default colour shortcut d
no ctrl alt z to move back through history
no hide selection - ctrl h
no right click to bring up brush properties window

 

[Old Bruce]

3 hours ago, Gedd said:

Had a brief  look at affinity photo and whilst concluding this was good value for money software I was a bit disappointed by the absence of some basic Photoshop features,these are  basic interface features which don't require fancy algorithms so I'm not sure why software which is trying to emulate Photoshop in so many  other ways would leave them out, just my 2 cents  worth.

crop doesn't remove pixels outside document bounds
layer visibility on wrong side of palette, most  other progs use the Photoshop left side,this became surprisingly annoying , the eye icon would be nice too
missing features:
no copy/cut to new layer
no default colour shortcut d
no ctrl alt z to move back through history
no hide selection - ctrl h
no right click to bring up brush properties window

 

That Crop thing bugs the hell out of me too.

The Preferences panel has a Keyboard Shortcuts pane which will show what the defaults are and you can change them there.

I am on Mac so it may be different for you but Copy to a new layer is possible, make your selection and hit Command + J, if you want the whole visible image instead of just the selected layer it is more convoluted but still doable.

[walt.farrell]

4 hours ago, Gedd said:

no ctrl alt z to move back through history
no hide selection - ctrl h

ctrl-z is Undo, by default (but you can change it).

View > Show Pixel Selection is a toggle that will show/hide the selection outline. By default it has no shortcut, but you can add one using the Preferences dialog, Keyboard Shortcuts.

[Wosven]

Some solutions:

• crop doesn't remove pixels outside document bounds: select one or more layers, right-click, + raterize will crop the current layer(s) to the visible area
• layer visibility on wrong side of palette, most  other progs use the Photoshop left side,this became surprisingly annoying , the eye icon would be nice too: that's different but not a problem, each app can be different

missing features:

• no copy/cut to new layer: select + ctrl+j or cut/copy-paste a selection in a new layer at the same position
• no default colour shortcut d: set yours shortcuts (shortcuts > misc), as said by @Old Bruce
• no ctrl alt z to move back through history: /
• no hide selection - ctrl h: set yours shortcuts (shortcuts > view), another option: you can deselect and reselect easily your last selection
• no right click to bring up brush properties window: it would be usefull

[Scott Williams]

crop doesn't remove pixels outside document bounds

I'm probably being a bit thick here but I don't understand what this means ?

 

[Old Bruce]

Say you have a 5,000 x 4000 pixel image and you use the crop tool to cut out that brother you don't like you now have a 3,000 x 4,000 pixel image. But it is actually still 5,000 pixels wide and your brother is still there, hiding in the cropped part. If you place that image in another document your brother is there too taking up space and drinking all your single malt scotch. 

[Medical Officer Bones]

On 11/3/2018 at 9:04 AM, Wosven said:

• layer visibility on wrong side of palette, most  other progs use the Photoshop left side,this became surprisingly annoying , the eye icon would be nice too: that's different but not a problem, each app can be different

Having the layer visibility control on the far right is a usability problem, and plain bad user experience design. I agree with the OP: it's really frustrating to work with.

The positioning of the checkmark breaks a fundamental interaction design law (Fitts's law) because the user identifies a layer by its thumbnail and/or label, and is then forced to follow the row to the right with their eyes to finally uncheck the visibility. But since the distance between layer identifier and the checkbox is relatively large, the eye will often re-check whether the thumbnail is the correct one in a document with multiple layers. I started noticing my eyes' behaviour even with just 5 or 6 layers, or so. The visual grouping of the control is all wacky.

Aside from the distance, the tiny checkmark target exacerbates this usability issue even further. It really is quite terrible UI design on display here. Beautiful example of how not to implement this basic task.

This design decision would be understandable if the task were a hardly-used one, but controlling the layer visibility is quite a fundamental action, and used all the time during work.

I am unsure what the developers were thinking when they decided to put this action so far away from the layer's visual and textual identifier. This really is basic 101 interaction design theory.

Having said this, perhaps Adobe has a copyright on this particular interface design?

Refer to this simple explanation of Fitts's Law: https://lawsofux.com/fittss-law

 

[hifred]

 

I'm also surprised how wrong the choice of a checkmark as an icon appears to me. I'm familiar with Eye-Icons or also Lightbulbs in different states to indicate visibility.
But the checkmark? It is an indicator of something in active state – and in this sense it is conflicting with the concept of layer locking. A locked layer, albeit showing a checkmark is not active – but it is visible (that again is nothing the checkmark can tell us).

The layer editor really deserves getting redone from scatch. Coming from Photoshop and being a really lazy layer namer I often don't know what I'm looking at in Affinity Photo – already in documents with just a few layers. Layers and masks being super tiny and displaying square (regardless of the aspect ratio of the document) is terrible, in particular when working on several monitors. In PS I need one click to give a window focus and can see right away that I'm looking at the correct layer stack: Yup, it has a portrait orientation, I can even see what's happening on layers and masks. Affinity by Design holds back all this valueable information, with it's generic 16x16px miniatures.  

 

 

[Medical Officer Bones]

The lack of a custom layer thumbnail size has been discussed to death before. It is only one of several GUI interaction design issues related to the Layer panel.

Here is what happens with longer layer labels:

As anyone can see, this is a less than desirable situation, and things will only get worse when a custom layer thumbnail size is introduced in the Affinity range. And I agree with your @hifred observation that a checkbox is the wrong indicator for layer visibility. 

There are a number of other design problems, and I again agree the entire panel should be scrapped, and rethought. For example, changing the blending range, changing the opacity, or coverage map: none of these are indicated in any way in the layer panel to show the user that a specific layer happens to have other settings applied to. Layers cannot be tagged with a colour either, nor is a search option provided to filter layers. And it is not possible to drag-select like in Photoshop.

But in this respect Photoshop is lacking as well. With both apps the user must select a layer first before it becomes clear which opacity and blend mode settings are applied. The only application that I know of that does include this information for each layer is PhotoLine, and that works very, very well. Looking at a layer comp in the layer panel immediately tells you how things work. I wish other image editors would allow for this, or at least include an option.

Anyway, the way the layer visibility controls are handled in Affinity reminds me of how a programmer would solve it. But it is only one of a whole list of layer panel issues and limitations. I do hope the developers are working to solve and improve these, but I was hoping to see some much-need improvements in the beta of Affinity Publisher, and noticed how little has changed.  Publisher is presumably the v1.7 version of the Affinity range? If so, we may be disappointed when V1.7 is released.

 

[hifred]

12 hours ago, Medical Officer Bones said:

But in this respect Photoshop is lacking as well. With both apps the user must select a layer first before it becomes clear which opacity and blend mode settings are applied. The only application that I know of that does include this information for each layer is PhotoLine, and that works very, very well. Looking at a layer comp in the layer panel immediately tells you how things work. I wish other image editors would allow for this, or at least include an option.

Could you elaborate on this a bit more or post a screenshot?  It's been a while since I last played with Photoline.

[Medical Officer Bones]

9 hours ago, hifred said:

Could you elaborate on this a bit more or post a screenshot?  It's been a while since I last played with Photoline.

@hifred

Here is an example screenshot. One could argue that it looks a bit clunky and different, but aside from that, once you get used to the icons, it works really, really well. Everything that's going on that is important to know about is directly exposed: image blend modes are indicated, opacity percentages, the layer type, the adjustment layer type is indicated with an icon, curve adjustments are shown as a thumbnail (love this myself!), which layers are editable, select-able, and or locked, whether an advanced layer blend is applied (fourth layer small icon), which layers have transparency locked, which groups are drawn isolated (asterisk)... and of course layer effects (here indicated with an 'S').

Instead of having to click on each layer to inspect what is going on under the hood, here we just glance over the layer stack, and understand what is happening in this file. I find other image editors' layer panels to be very awkward and inefficient to work with compared - even the "industry standard" Photoshop layer panel (aside from the missing drag option).

For those who are wondering about the checkboxes: these serve as a visual indicator for multiple layers selected, but also as a way to use the mouse only to select multiple layers: something that would require a modifier shortcut key on most other image editors. It's quite handy when working with the Wacom tablet.

What is missing compared to Photoshop: it is not possible to drag-select layer visibility, unfortunately.  For the rest I prefer this layer panel over Photoshop and other image editors/painting tools. (on a side note: PhotoLine's painting tools are however not in the same league as Affinity Photo, let alone compared to the ones in Krita.)

What is also nice is that Corel users can adjust layer navigation options to use the cursor keys to navigate the layer panel. I like the configuration options related to the use of the layer panel as well. And the fact that the user can zoom in and out of thumbnails on the fly by holding down the ctrl and scroll wheel.

 

[hifred]

Thank you - now I know what you mean. It's probably up to the individual use case but I personally would not need and want this particular feature. It's not only Photoline's notorious uglyness on display here - I imagine this per layer printout of parameters generally hard to implement in a way that doesn't look terribly busy.

I'd be served well enough with a reliable mechanism to target and quickly cycle through all layers under my cursor and getting a readout of the active layers settings in the stack. It kind of equals reading with a ruler - and is more in line with how I would analyze a file.

Just for the record: one may navigate through layers, chance opacity and blend modes with the keyboard inside Photoshop as well.

 

[Medical Officer Bones]

6 hours ago, hifred said:

Thank you - now I know what you mean. It's probably up to the individual use case but I personally would not need and want this particular feature. It's not only Photoline's notorious uglyness on display here - I imagine this per layer printout of parameters generally hard to implement in a way that doesn't look terribly busy.

True, it looks clunky, but at least it is functional and is very understandable. Affinity Photo's layer stack doesn't really look much better, though. And is not as readable. Compare the layer stack below, and I think that's pretty clunky looking as well as completely unreadable. I have no idea what is going on in that list. I certainly hope v1.7 will introduce a thumbnail size setting.

But you are correct that adding all layer parameters in the layer stack creates its own set of issues. So what do we go for? Form over function, or function over form? Or a good balance between the two? Myself I would prefer these things to be optional in a layer stack preference tab. It really depends on the complexity of the project.

Perhaps a bit more like Krita's layer stack (the newest beta release has a seamless thumbnail size slider) where the user is able to quickly hover over layers and an overlay is displayed (see the right screenshot)? It almost looks like a hybrid between Affinity Photo and PhotoLine.

Designing a good looking and easy to use/understand layer stack is quite a user experience design task. Perhaps a completely new and novel approach is required.

[Hansha]

A lot unfortunately. I would love to ditch PS but for start;

• Image calculations
• Convert selection to curves
• Mask editing equivalent to pixel layer (blur, sharpen, dodge and burn mask)
• Rubylith mask editing mode.

Basically masking is the only thing where I see shortcomings I can not circumvent ...