Collapse to image when un-docked

[Dennis Nisbet]

When I un-dock an image in Photo, how do I get the frame to collapse to the image frame? 

[Callum]

Hi Dennis Nisbet,

Welcome to the forums  

There is no automatic way to do this I'm afraid.

Thanks

Callum

[Dennis Nisbet]

Thank you for this information. This is one of many issues that limit the practical use of Affinity Photo. 

In Photoshop, this is done through Preferences and makes it much easier with fewer steps when working with multiple images.

So far, my impression of Affinity Photo is that it was designed to meet the needs of artists and designers more than people like myself who do photo-composites. 

My Daughter is the Art Director for a mid-sized printing company outside of Chicago. As an artist, she likes many of the Affinity features but really can't use it in her business.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Dennis Nisbet said:

So far, my impression of Affinity Photo is that it was designed to meet the needs of artists and designers more than people like myself who do photo-composites. 

I am not sure what you mean about doing photo composites, but if for example it is placing several photos in one document, have you considered using the Place command on the File menu for that? If instead you mean overlays that blend different parts of different photos in various ways in one document, you can use masks, layer blend modes, & several other techniques to do that.

[Dennis Nisbet]

In order to explain what I would like to see in Affinity Photo, I have prepared 2 Camtasia videos (Attached).

As I explained in the video, I work with multiple screens and do a lot of sizes adjusting on the fly. "Time is still money."

Every step counts.

I do not believe that what I am trying to do in Affinity Photo is unusual unless Affinity is going in a different market direction. If so, that's fine and I'll not keep trying right now and check back later.

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, Dennis Nisbet said:

As I explained in the video, I work with multiple screens and do a lot of sizes adjusting on the fly. "Time is still money."

Every step counts.

I don't understand why you are resizing the file with the girl as a separate step. Just select the image of the girl with the Move Tool & copy it to the clipboard. Then switch to the landscape & paste. Then just resize it as needed, just like you did anyway at about the 2:55 mark in your first video.

[Dennis Nisbet]

Good point, I've tried it both ways and the process I follow is faster.

Sometimes I am working with big images and it is easier to rough resize so they fit the background. then it's just a matter of positioning and perhaps a small size adjustment. You would be surprised at how much faster this is, especially if you are working with several images.  

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Dennis Nisbet said:

Good point, I've tried it both ways and the process I follow is faster.

Sometimes I am working with big images and it is easier to rough resize so they fit the background. then it's just a matter of positioning and perhaps a small size adjustment. You would be surprised at how much faster this is, especially if you are working with several images.  

I can't see how it could possibly be faster, since you still need to position the image & unless your rough resize is spot on you still need to do some size adjustment on the image pasted on the background. If those images are larger than the background, you can either zoom out to resize them using control handles or change their sizes & positions interactively in the Transform panel. Zooming & panning can be done very rapidly with keyboard shortcuts, without having take the time to change tools.

Something you may not yet have noticed is that you can click & drag on the x, y, w, & h text characters in the Transform panel to change their values interactively (& use modifier keys to change how quickly they change). You can link w & h so you only have to drag one of them to change size proportionally. You can also use expressions in field inputs, & several other methods to resize, move, sheer/skew, & rotate layers in various ways.

Aside from that, keep in mind that if you make any changes to the source file, you eventually have to either save those changes when you close the file or tell the app not to save them. The time it takes to do either one adds up, particularly if you are working with lots of images. You can avoid that by just copying the source as is, & you don't even have to clutter up the workspace with all those open windows, or arrange them so they don't overlap & take up screen space better devoted to working in the target document in a larger window.

End to end, the process I (& many others) have adopted is fast & fluid. It may take a bit of time to get used to it but if you give it a chance you may like it too. 

[Dennis Nisbet]

Thank you! I'll try everything you suggested and see if I can get it to work for me.

Meanwhile, do you have any ideas on my Shadow Script? I don't have a problem writing a macro but I can't find a way to create the flexibility I have with Photoshop.

I would love to ditch Photoshop but not until I have a high level of comfort.

BTW, I built a home and we lived in Plano, TX for about 14 years. Would love to move back, but my wife was just transferred to Chicago. So we are leaving California (hurrah) for snow!

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, Dennis Nisbet said:

Meanwhile, do you have any ideas on my Shadow Script? I don't have a problem writing a macro but I can't find a way to create the flexibility I have with Photoshop.

Macro support in Affinity Photo is still pretty rudimentary, lacking almost every feature of a scripting language, so I doubt you could create a macro to make the kind of shadows you want with it. There is the Outer Shadow effect you could experiment with, but I don't know how well that would work as part of a macro.

EDIT: I only mentioned the Outer Shadow effect because it might be possible to use it with a macro, but it just creates a drop shadow effect, so it isn't very suitable for creating photo-realistic shadows of images of 3D objects.

For that, I think you would need to duplicate the object, fill in the dup with black or grey, layer it behind the object, skew/shear it to get the angle right, & probably add a transparency gradient to make it look convincing.

Edited January 26, 2019 by R C-R

[Dennis Nisbet]

R-C-R, thank you for getting back to me on this. You have been really helpful. I think, for my purposes, Affinity Photo has a long way to go. I also think that Affinity Photo has a lot of great features and that there are many users that will leave Adobe for a better product.

Unfortunately, it just doesn't work well for me. Also, this forum has people writing on it like PaulRC and Steps, that left their manners and their interest in helping where they couldn't find them. 

I'll be leaving this Forum now. I am so glad to see that there was someone like you that was willing to help and perhaps, someday, Affinity Photo will be just what I need.

If you are still doing anything with PS then you know that one of their tools allows you to FREE TRANSFORM a layer. That's a biggie and a recent change that the made has really upset the professional community. 

I would love to see that same feature in Affinity Photo.

[Patrick Connor]

@Dennis Nisbet. I have hidden some of the posts in this thread that added nothing and were in my opinion inappropriate (or the post that replied to them). 

To all participants. These forums are our main support mechanism and I want anyone to ask whatever they want, irrespective of whether others here think it is the right thing to say

@Steps it is not right to stalk people on other forums, nor to quote their words posted anywhere outside these forums on the forums. Worryingly, 3 times in 1 week you are participating in a thread where a user has subsequently left these forums never to return. I must say that seems like more than a coincidence. Please stop being so defensive of Serif and expressing your opinions as forcefully it is clearly not as helpful as you think.

@PaulEC I have hidden your post as it was inappropriate to criticise a sample video asking about techniques.

[Dennis Nisbet]

@Patrick Connor I was on the PS Forum for some time trying to learn and have some influence on the judgment of Adobe. I became frustrated and wrote some things that were out of character for me. I do not need comments from others that are not helpful. Consequently, first I was temporally restricted without explanation. Having left the forum, I'll never know. Having left the Photoshop Family Forum, as soon as I can find out how I am going to ask that anything from me is deleted from that forum. 

I was really excited to read that someone on the Affinity Forum was trying to help. In exchange, I was hoping to encourage Serif to take a hard look at what Adobe has done and how it makes work faster and easier.

I'll try again to do that but if I encounter the same issues as I did with Photoshop, it is of little value to continue. 

[Steps]

58 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

 

@Steps it is not right to stalk people on other forums, nor to quote their words posted anywhere outside these forums on the forums. Worryingly, 3 times in 1 week you are participating in a thread where a user has subsequently left these forums never to return. I must say that seems like more than a coincidence. 

I did not stalk him. He started a posting saying that there is a big movement in Adobe forums to Affinity but provided no link. So I googled that because I thought it would be a interesting read. But I found instead other things. The quotation I made is taken from another post in this forum - please look it up.

I did not want anybody to leave the forums. All three people did that on their will.

1. Dennis Nisbet first reponse after asking for a link was leaving. My fault?
2. Simon Degay posted a very rude and offensive statement against developers in general (and I am also one) and I just asked him please not to go there. I was not involved in all that what came after that in the same topic. Was I? Heck, I did not even see his reponse.
3. The third user wanted to post in the plus community anyway. But yes,  I agree, expressing my confusion was not helpful. 

So... more than a coincidende? Maybe Adobe pays me for trolling users and forcing them to go back in such a clever way. If that's my skill I should offer this service. 

58 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

Please stop being so defensive of Serif and expressing your opinions as forcefully it is clearly not as helpful as you think..

Fair...

But let me ask why this post was okay with you then?

 I found it pretty offensive and rude, but it even got likes and I did not see you saying "Please, this is not how we like to talk to each other".

And also @jmwellborn likes every single post that critizes me even if she does not understand the topic at all.

How are he rules here? Sorry, but this annoys me right now.  It's unfair.

But okay, I got people don't want me or my input here.

@jmwellborn and friends made that quite clear. Got it. I also consider to leave.

EDIT: Maybe I am also responsible for this review by Simon Degay, the Self proclaimed greatest affinity Helper as he wrote once. I would quote his words here but that may break the rules.

Edited January 27, 2019 by Steps

[Patrick Connor]

16 hours ago, Dennis Nisbet said:

@Patrick Connor ... I do not need comments from others that are not helpful.

...

I'll try again to do that but if I encounter the same issues as I did with Photoshop, it is of little value to continue. 

I think my suggestion would be to ignore the replies that you do not find helpful, and any that are actually inappropriate should be flagged, rather than quoted and replied to. We moderators are not here all the time, but flagged posts are normally dealt with inside of 24 hours. 

I hope you find future threads calmer than this one and with your permission I would like to close this one to further replies to stop additional OT posts.

[Dennis Nisbet]

Done!