A Request for Affinity Photo

[Dennis Nisbet]

For many years, Adobe has continued to develop and refine Photoshop. Some of their features make it possible to do things quickly and those features have yet to be imitated by other companies. I have learned that many users are highly dependent on Photoshop and their consistency. Adobe has recently made some changes that interfere with their production routine.

I developed some Photoshop Actions. Then, working with a Scriptwriter, made those Actions into Photoshop Scripts. Most of the Actions were designed to expedite the development of Composite images where the original image was cut away from the background and didn’t match the new background size, lighting or color balance. These Actions included Shadow creation, Color Match, Season Change, and Vignette Creation.

In the attached video, I have illustrated several processes where I have questions. Complex workarounds are not a problem if they can be incorporated and executed as part of a Macro.

If the things I pointed out in the video are being worked on but not ready yet, that’s great. If not, well, that’s O.K. also. I would just like to know.

[v_kyr]

See this forum section...

• Feature Requests & Feedback

...which mostly deals with Affinity software requests, enhancements, feature wishes and the like.

[Dennis Nisbet]

@v_kyr , Thank you for responding back to me on this. I am hoping for a response directly from Serif.

I'm not smart enough to sort all those Feature Requests & Feedback. Plus, there are so many, it must be difficult for Serif to work their way through them.

That's why I prepared the video in hopes that it might be watched and a response sent back.

Thank again.

[R C-R]

The Feature Requests & Feedback forum is the one place you can be sure the people at Serif that need to see feature requests will see them.

[walt.farrell]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

The Feature Requests & Feedback forum is the one place you can be sure the people at Serif that need to see feature requests will see them.

Right. But even then, one should not expect a response. Serif reads all the feature requests and the resultant discussion, but only rarely responds to them in the forums.

[firstdefence]

Can a Mod move this to the feature requests section: @GabrielM

[Dan C]

45 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Can a Mod move this to the feature requests section

Done  

[MEB]

Hi Dennis Nisbet,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Regarding you video/questions, a few comments:

1 - Currently it's not possible to set a default unit for the documents. The selected unit depends on the type of the document you select in the New Document dialog (unless you set a specific unit there. A few users requested this already.

2 - Adjust frames to the images. As you discovered this doesn't work as you'd expect/wasn't implemented. I agree some windows managements functions/improvements would be welcome here but that's up with the dev teams. Worth creating a thread in the Feature Requests section.

3 - The behaviour where resizing one document changes the zoom on the other was already fixed in the latest Beta.

4 - Regarding the labels after the layer's name in the Layers panel - they are meant to help you identify the type of layer you are working it. Two of the types that seems to create some confusion is Image and Pixels layers. Pixel layers are the equivalent of what you are used to in other programs like Photoshop - they are raster based layers where you can perform all type of raster operations/work at a pixel level. Image layers are considered an object in Affinity: you can place them in the document, transform globally (scale, rotate, skew, etc), apply non-destructive adjustments/filters or even transparency (Transparency Tool) but you cannot edit/manipulate them at a pixel level. They are created when you use the Place Image Tool (in Affinity Designer only), the File ▸ Place command (Designer and Photo) or when you simply drag them from the Finder (Mac) or File Explorer (Windows) to the canvas of an opened document. To work with them at a pixel level that they must be rasterised first. To do it right-click on them in the Layers panel and select Rasterise. They are then converted to a Pixel layer type which you can then manipulate/copy/paste/work at a pixel level as you are used to from other apps.

5 - In the case of your video, you could simply opened the gym image as usual and drag the girl's image from Windows Explorer (or Finder if you are using a Mac) or alternatively use File ▸ Place to insert it in the gym's image document. You could scale or rotate it using the corner handles with the Move Tool selected: when you approach a corner handle from the outside the cursor changes from rotate to scale - click and drag to perform these operations while the cursor is being displayed; for middle handles it first displays a skew cursor then a stretch one - again click and drag to perform the corresponding operation. You can use these operations to manipulate/distort the copy of the girl image you want to use as a shadow. From here there's quite a few ways to apply a gradients/blur/transform the shadow in any way you see - some of them similar to photoshop - using layer FX (gradient overlays), live filters , adjustments as you see fit.

For requesting features, create a new thread in the Feature Requests section - as suggested - with an appropriate/clear title describing the feature (ideally one per thread) so we can easily track them. Thanks.

 

[Dennis Nisbet]

@MEB 

I really appreciate everyone that took the time to explain all this to me. There are so many great features in Affinity Photo and I am looking forward to the changes that are yet to come.

Based on what you and R C-R told me, I'll see how much of this I can apply to my workflow.

I believe it is coming down to having a feature that PS calls FREE TRANSFORM to quickly and easily adjust the position of the shadow layer. If so, I'll write that up in Features Request.

Thank you.

[MEB]

Hi Dennis Nisbet,
For perspective distortions you can use the a non-destructive Live Perspective Filter (menu Layer ▸ New Live Filter Layer ▸ Perspective Filter). For mesh warp distortions you can use the Mesh Warp Tool (from the toolbar on the left) - there's also a  (destructive) Perspective Tool there.