Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Plugins still don't work


Recommended Posts

Dear Affinity,

It's well over a year now and no Photoshop plugins work in Photo! In particular, NIK and Alien Skin are required for my workflow.

When I was in your beta, I raised this issue and the answers were not good. Despite that, I still purchased Designer and Photo with the hope that one day they would work. It's not like these plugins breathe rarefied air --- NIK was bought by Google and are free and Alien Skin Eye Candy and Image Doctor are right up there as most popular used.

After updating to 1.65, I see no progress has been made as can be seen by this short video I created. Alarming, at best. On top of that, there is actually a bug where preferences says 2 of the NIK filters work when in actuality they do not (and I tested this with a photo not in the video). Here's the screenshot of that.

Having said all of this, I am not here to blast you or inflame anyone and will not respond to anything of that ilk. Au contraire, I am here again to beg/plead you to be decisive about Photoshop plugins. This has been a gray situation that is perpetuated from my point of view and demonstrated by the short list of plugins you indicate are certified. In the next few weeks I have to make a decision about Adobe because my CS 5.5 Extended has hit a new problem for which the only current answer is to join the horrible Adobe Cloud --- and for which, by the way, a support agent I spoke to yesterday let me know that 80% of us older customers have voiced opposition to the Adobe Cloud model and yet 80% of those have still relented and have joined.

I truly love your approach, the great support and the reasonably close proximity to Photoshop and while I am still a novice I have also adapted Designer as my main vector program without any issues. But Photo won't happen for me without compatibility for existing plugins as I have 100's of files using both NIK and Alien Skin Eye Candy and Image Doctor. It's likely nontrivial for you and equally nontrivial for me.

If I know you have a plan to fix this once and for all, I can live with the delay until you get there (months, but not years!). In fact, I have said this before, I would bet you a nice dinner that the great folks at Alien Skin would work with you in some mutual way to get all their plugins working. If there is no plan or the plan remains gray then I will reluctantly buy Adobe Photographer for my business which will cost me about the same as if I followed my older strategy with Adobe to upgrade every 2nd version. I hate the thought of supporting Adobe, but like 80% of 80% who also hate it I will be compelled to buy it (and thus abandon Affinity Photo) --- this part of your strategy is not a winner as a purchase may not equate to adoption and in the long run those $'s will go to Adobe.

Rob->

PS: I also use Vertus Fluid Mask 3, which also does not work and while not as popular as NIK or Alien Skin, there is a big customer base.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The free Google NIK plugins do work -- just search the forums for info about that. The newer ones from DxO work (with some issues) on Windows but apparently not on Macs.

Some Photoshop plug-ins will never work in Affinity Photo because they rely on Photoshop-specific features (like Actions) that have no counterpart in Affinity; some might work if they can be rewritten (by their creators) to eliminate that dependency; & some should work if & when Serif/Affinity can identify & eliminate any compatibility issues that prevent them from working correctly now.

But there is no "once & for all" fix for this -- the two apps are too dissimilar "under the hood" for that kind of fix.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, R C-R said:

Some Photoshop plug-ins will never work in Affinity Photo

I doubt that anything other than ‘effects’ (*.8bf) plug-ins will ever work in APh. There are other plug-in types such as ‘acquisition’ plug-ins which too dependent on Photoshop architecture to work with other apps.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, KiheiMan said:

Not only does NIK not work, but there is a bug I demonstrated where it shows 2 plugins as "working" when they are not.

Which NIK collection plugins are you using (Google's or DxO's) & which platform are you using (Mac or Windows)? For me, the Google ones work fine on my Mac.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, KiheiMan said:

I'm using Google NIK and I am on Windows 10.

I am not a Windows user so there is not much more I can suggest, other than maybe watching the Affinity Photo - Installing Nik Plugins (Windows) video & making sure everything in it matches how you set up the plugins on your PC.

Maybe too obvious to mention but you did restart the app after installing them, right?

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would love it if the Flaming Pear *.8bf plugins (eg Flexify) could be used with APhoto.  I found it very useful with Photoshop for digital art and greeting card projects.  In fact I can find no way to try to install them on the Mac as the Finder does not list the component files of APhoto.  Is there a plugin folder and where do I find it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Islafurst said:

I would love it if the Flaming Pear *.8bf plugins (eg Flexify) could be used with APhoto.  I found it very useful with Photoshop for digital art and greeting card projects.  In fact I can find no way to try to install them on the Mac as the Finder does not list the component files of APhoto.  Is there a plugin folder and where do I find it?

You could try placing them in a folder and call that folder Flaming Pear Plugins, then point to that folder on the plugin tab of Affinity Preferences. I doubt this will work but worth a try. I'd do it but I'm a Mac user.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
B| (Please refrain from licking the screen while using this forum)

Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, Islafurst said:

I would love it if the Flaming Pear *.8bf plugins (eg Flexify) could be used with APhoto.

FWIW, I only have some of the free Flaming Pear plugins. The only ones I can get to work are the ChromaSolarize & Tachyon ones, & they only work correctly if I first do a "Select All" on the target layer, or otherwise make a 'marching ants' selection on the layer.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/30/2018 at 2:46 PM, KiheiMan said:

After updating to 1.65, I see no progress has been made as can be seen by this short video I created. Alarming, at best. On top of that, there is actually a bug where preferences says 2 of the NIK filters work when in actuality they do not (and I tested this with a photo not in the video). Here's the screenshot of that.

I'm actually on the Mac, but on the Win PC it behaves the same here for my NIK installment, as far as using a rasterized (pixel) layer.

nik_run.thumb.jpg.556b3f111acfc506a187f7e1713aa388.jpg

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, R C-R said:

FWIW, I only have some of the free Flaming Pear plugins. The only ones I can get to work are the ChromaSolarize & Tachyon ones, & they only work correctly if I first do a "Select All" on the target layer, or otherwise make a 'marching ants' selection on the layer.

Thanks for this suggestion.  I was about to give up after installing Flexify 2 (trial version) which cut the image up into blocks and made most of them transparent, just working on the others.  Then I did the Select All as suggested and got some promising results, without the transparent blocks.  Then I switched to Safari to come on here, and got a notice that APhoto had crashed!  That didn't happen when I was actually using it though, and it restarted ok.   Any ideas?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, KiheiMan said:

I'm using Google NIK and I am on Windows 10.

I too run Win 10 and previously used the Google NIK plugins and now have the DXO version. The latter all work, whereas at least some of the former did not.  (Honestly can't remember exactly which ones did or didn't work.)

I also have plugins from Topaz Labs and Photowiz, amongst a number of others, all working properly.  I think the title of this thread needs to be changedSome plugins still don't work!

Jeff

Win 10 Pro, i7 6700K, 32Gb RAM, NVidia GTX1660 Ti and Intel HD530 Graphics

Long-time user of Serif products, chiefly PagePlus and PhotoPlus, but also WebPlus, CraftArtistProfessional and DrawPlus.  Delighted to be using Affinity Designer, Photo, and now Publisher, version 1 and now version 2.

iPad Pro (12.9") (iOS 17.4) running Affinity Photo and Designer version 1 and all three version 2 apps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, emmrecs01 said:

(Honestly can't remember exactly which ones did or didn't work.)

Viveza was certainly one that didn’t work. I think Color Efex may have been another.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems that there is NO interest from the developers of AP as the plug-in page http://www.miguelboto.com/affinity/photo/plugins-support/win/ 

looks the same as it did two years ago near enough. I requested the option to use Qimage as a plugin from AP and was told that the developer of Qimage should contact AP so I contacted him   and he did contact AP but they failed to respond. I  replied to a post on this forum some time ago and one reply was 'why did I use AP' my reply 'because I thought it was my answer not to stay with Adobe' Afraid now I use On1 Photo RAW 2019 along side the CS6 that I kept hold of. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, Russ2 said:

It seems that there is NO interest from the developers of AP ...

I doubt very much they have no interested in improving PS plug-in support. Rather, I am reasonably sure it is simply that there are still other things with a higher priority they want or need to do first.

After all, they have mentioned that the code has undergone 'massive' changes to support new features in the 1.7 versions, so it would not make much sense to invest much time in making any improvements to plug-in support in the 1.6 versions that would not also work with the revised 1.7 code.

That said, they probably do not have a lot of interest in supporting Windows-only plug-ins, or (obviously, I hope) any plug-in that relies on a PS feature that has no counterpart in Affinity.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a person who came to Affinity on the promise of replacing Photoshop, this is disappointing at best. It acts like Photoshop and certainly makes life easier with common commands, but without plugin compatibility it is not a replacement.

As for Windows vs Mac, there is enough of us in both worlds to accommodate both IMHO. Implementing a plugin based on a "works in both principal" is not practical. Full Stop.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, KiheiMan said:

As a person who came to Affinity on the promise of replacing Photoshop ...

Who promised you that?

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

40 minutes ago, KiheiMan said:

You are literally translating what I said instead of figuratively understanding the intent.

Figuratively or literally, it is just not very realistic to expect Affinity Photo to be a replacement for Photoshop, particularly regarding plugin compatibility. The code is too different for that, & probably will be for many years to come.

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Eℓƒяє∂ said:

Viveza was certainly one that didn’t work. I think Color Efex may have been another.

They (the Google free) work fine for me. Color space needs to be RGB, 8 or 16 bit. They don't work if using 32-bit HDR.

Affinity Photo 2.4..; Affinity Designer 2.4..; Affinity Publisher 2.4..; Affinity2 Beta versions. Affinity Photo,Designer 1.10.6.1605 Win10 Home Version:21H2, Build: 19044.1766: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K CPU @ 3.30GHz, 3301 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s);32GB Ram, Nvidia GTX 3070, 3-Internal HDD (1 Crucial MX5000 1TB, 1-Crucial MX5000 500GB, 1-WD 1 TB), 4 External HDD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.