Usercreated Adjustment Presets – 1.7

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Hey guys,

why doesn't anyone talk about the lost adjustment presets after the update? I can't be the only one missing all his presets, can I?

Since the update about two weeks ago I have had massive problems recovering any of my adjustment presets.
(Screenshot of the palette is attached in case you're wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Yes, I opened a photo and clicked on the labels – they're empty.)
Under the section LUT alone there were 35 presets that I personally saved and collected over months and years!

I already had similar experiences with older beta versions of the apps, where certain folders could be copied so that all user-defined
settings are available again. But it doesn't seem to work this time.

To be honest, this situation makes me more and more disgruntled. I wonder why this palette, which was included in the programs
from the beginning, has no export function yet. Damn, even the crop tool has a function for exporting defined ratios.
Even later implemented functions like macros or assets can be exported! Why not curve or white-balance presets?!
Now excuse my little psych-out.

Fortunately I have a Time Machine Backup, but even if I recover the data from it, I can only work with the penultimate officially released
version – but that's obviously not a solution, who wants to work with an outdated version if there's a shiny new release with better features?

This btw. isn't just related to Photo, but also Designer. And it's not only on Mac, but also on Windows – I checked.

So if anyone has a solution to this problem, please - please- share it with the community!
Or just let me know if anyone else has this problem.

Cheers
MrDoodlezz

[Misha1966]

got the same problem, all the work of the last two years erased by the update!!!! Not even was asked to save presets (as it is not possible). This is inacceptable! This should be an easy to solve task and is of basic interest in any software!

[fde101]

I'd be curious as to how many people actually create custom presets... I'm sure there are more than just two, but if I am setting up Photo for myself on a new machine one of the first things I usually do is close the Adjustments studio to get it out of my way as I never use it (even with the provided presets) - I add the adjustments/filters using the popup menus at the bottom of the Layers studio, or from the menu bar, and tweak it manually each time.

Point being, this might not be getting a lot of attention because there might be relatively few people creating such custom presets?

[Murfee]

19 minutes ago, fde101 said:

I'd be curious as to how many people actually create custom presets... I'm sure there are more than just two, but if I am setting up Photo for myself on a new machine one of the first things I usually do is close the Adjustments studio to get it out of my way as I never use it (even with the provided presets) - I add the adjustments/filters using the popup menus at the bottom of the Layers studio, or from the menu bar, and tweak it manually each time.

Point being, this might not be getting a lot of attention because there might be relatively few people creating such custom presets?

I agree, I only ever used them when I first got A Photo, just to see what they did. Like yourself I tweak manually or use one of my many macros if I want to achieve a similar look on a batch.

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, fde101 said:

... I usually do is close the Adjustments studio to get it out of my way as I never use it (even with the provided presets)

The only times I use it is by mistake, errant mouse clicks.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Hey guys,

it's actually less about whether this panel is used by how many people than why the presets were deleted –
and more importantly how to get them back, if that's possible at all.
If you don't care about the potential of this palette and think it's stupid: Thanks for stopping by,
this thread is irrelevant to you. Just close this tab instead, go ahead and save your time.

If you are mildly interested though, read on.

The palette Adjustments exists since the beginning of the program, users (including me) who have been working with the
program for several years have spent a lot of time building their library.

I suppose most Photo users so far didn't have to work, knew or didn' t want to work with LUT presets (or lookups, as they
are called in Photoshop). Or maybe they don't have predefined guidelines like gradient maps that they use on a daily basis.

LUTs are a very convenient, clean and easy way to give images a distinct look in under half a second with just a click and
without countless additional layers. The Adjustments palette is the only convenient way to create them in Photo,
preview or save them. (The same applies to all other types of adjustments in the palette).

Unfortunately, Photo does not have the function to drag and drop preset files into program-folders (like demonstrated in the link above),
which are then automatically recognized and imported into the program, a double-click on the .cube files does not work in
this case either. Thus, if one would not want to use the Adjustments palette, one would have to create a folder on one's machine,
navigate there again and again via Photo in order to open one of the LUT files without knowing whether the look with the image
works the way one imagined it to.

1 hour ago, Murfee said:

Like yourself I tweak manually or use one of my many macros if I want to achieve a similar look on a batch.

As already mentioned, adding a LUT adjustment layer is much faster and more effective than running a macro – especially for
batch jobs with 50+ images and time constraints.

Cheers
MrDoodlezz

[Murfee]

Hi @MrDoodlezz

I fully understand the usefulness of LUTs & Gradient Maps for some images, I don't rely on them though.

Why don't you just add them back manually from wherever you saved them when you originally created them, or from wherever you saved any downloaded ones. Due to the lack of export settings in that panel I chose not to rely on it, I have also been using Affinity for a few years. That panel is convenient but not particularly safe if you need to rely on it's content. I always save important things that I rely on as either a Macro, or if its complex I save a master file in various formats, my LUT files are also saved and backed up.

This might help you recover your presets 

On 6/16/2019 at 1:22 PM, R C-R said:

If you have a backup of the per user folder where your settings were stored in version 1.6.x, this may be possible. Officially, it is an unsupported hack, so it is a 'try at your own risk' fix, but if you first back up the current 1.7 folder somewhere it should be reasonably safe to try. Just make sure the app is not running when you try it.

The folder location is different for Mac & Windows. This post by forum moderator @Leigh will tell you the file path for both, & down in the Reset Adjustments section that the Adjustment settings are stored in the adjustments.propcol file. So at least in theory, if you replace the current version of the file with the one from your backup & restart Photos, the adjustments you created in 1.6 should be available in the panel.

If this doesn't work, you can quit the app, restore the  1.7 version backup of this file (not the whole folder), & (hopefully) nothing will be amiss the next time you run the app.

 

[fde101]

17 hours ago, MrDoodlezz said:

it's actually less about whether this panel is used by how many people than why the presets were deleted –
and more importantly how to get them back, if that's possible at all.

 

Whoa, I brought up that point in response to the first two questions in your post:

On 6/15/2019 at 9:48 AM, MrDoodlezz said:

why doesn't anyone talk about the lost adjustment presets after the update? I can't be the only one missing all his presets, can I?

 

I do agree that if the functionality is going to be there then randomly throwing out the saved presets is bad.  I'm not arguing that this is not something that should be addressed, but I have no direct input to provide for that - the only thing I was curious about here was how prevalent this concern is across the user base, as the feature is probably not too widely used.  That doesn't mean it shouldn't work consistently if it is going to be there at all - this should obviously be fixed.

 

17 hours ago, MrDoodlezz said:

LUTs are a very convenient, clean and easy way to give images a distinct look in under half a second with just a click and
without countless additional layers. The Adjustments palette is the only convenient way to create them in Photo,
preview or save them. (The same applies to all other types of adjustments in the palette).

Yes, LUTs can be great when you are trying to apply the same look to many photos.  They are probably more heavily used in the video world than in the photo world, but just as applicable to photos and for many of the same reasons.

[Mr. Doodlezz]

Hey again guys,

9 hours ago, Murfee said:

This might help you recover your presets 

That's what I've been trying for days with different versions of my backup – unfortunately without the desired result.
In fact, I have always used this workaround as my reinsurance because I constantly create backups of my system and
wanted to avoid unnecessary collections of folders (usually I'm a hoarder, don't ask for my download folder …).
It's pretty convenient to store everything in one place or even one file. Admittedly, this time it was a fallback.

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

Whoa, I brought up that point in response to the first two questions in your post:

I wanted this to be more of a rhetorical question, related to why there hasn't been a single mention or official statement –
neither from users nor from Affinity – yet (I get there's a lot going on with Publisher right now).
Well, now it almost seems like I'm literally the only one who works with this panel. Makes this kind of a weird situation now …

8 hours ago, fde101 said:

this should obviously be fixed

Yeah, that's it, the essence of my post. I hope Affinity is drawing conclusions from this case. Probably not.

 

Unfortunately and conclusively, I also received this clever suggestion from Affinity: […] we recommend beginning your
collection once more […]. Okay, oh wow, thanks, that didn't cross my mind at all until now. But of course I got a lot of
time and patience left to rebuild all colour swatch libraries and assets (several lost presets in Designer) and name
each of the 30+ adjustment presets manually because why the hell should the app inherit the filenames when importing,
as is the case with brushes?

I guess it's the final verdict then. After two weeks of desperate recovery attempts and copying various folder versions
from Windows to Mac and vice versa I'll scavenge my backup for single files. Damn.

Cheers
MrDoodlezz

[Murfee]

21 minutes ago, MrDoodlezz said:

I guess it's the final verdict then. After two weeks of desperate recovery attempts and copying various folder versions
from Windows to Mac and vice versa I'll scavenge my backup for single files. Damn.

I hope that you get it all sorted. I have been bitten in the past when I had an external drive fail, since that episode I have multiple back up strategies

[Misha1966]

This problem has definitely to be fixed by Serif. Otherwise why should we begin to store adjustments in panels if all work is deleted with the next update? It means useless work and waste of time.

Edited June 23, 2019 by Misha1966

[Mr. Doodlezz]

11 minutes ago, Misha1966 said:

This problem has definitely to be fixed by Serif. Otherwise why should we begin to store adjustments in panels if all work is deleted with the next update? It means useless work and waste of time.

Absolutely!

On a side note: Publisher's StudioLink feature is very innovative and handy - however, neither my adjustment
presets stored in Photo nor my assets created and saved in Designer are displayed in the respective persona.

In other words, I have to switch between applications to get the full feature set of the other programs,
which make them so special. This way StudioLink almost immediately loses some of its meaning.

Well, it's like everywhere in life - there's always potential for improvement, let's hope for the best.

[TealLight]

Indeed very frustrating.  All my hand made custom curves are gone.

Does anyone know where they are stored in order to restore them with timemachine?

[Mr. Doodlezz]

9 hours ago, TealLight said:

Indeed very frustrating.  All my hand made custom curves are gone.

Does anyone know where they are stored in order to restore them with timemachine?

Hey TealLight,

the only way to at least see your presets again is, to restore the app inside your apps folder and also the user folder as mentioned by Murfee as well. At least this workaround worked for me, and I used Time Machine for this.

I’m not sure and can’t check right now but maybe you’ll be able to actually export the curves preset?

Cheers

[Gabe]

Hi all,

Sorry for the delayed reply. 

We are aware of this issue and it has already been fixed in the 1.7.1 (current) build. It has only affected the 1.7.0 build. Unfortunately, there is no way to recover the presets if you have already updated using 1.7.0. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

[Mr. Doodlezz]

On 7/16/2019 at 12:41 PM, GabrielM said:

Hi all,

Sorry for the delayed reply. 

We are aware of this issue and it has already been fixed in the 1.7.1 (current) build. It has only affected the 1.7.0 build. Unfortunately, there is no way to recover the presets if you have already updated using 1.7.0. 

Thanks,

Gabe. 

Hey, Gabe,

thank you very much for the statement – although not very pleasing.
Sorry, but I have to ask again: so there is absolutely no way to restore your presets from a previous backup of the officially released version (no beta)?
Not even after the old version has been restored and all presets are displayed again? Because that's the case for me.
I can see them, but I can't get them into the new version.

Greetings
MrDoodlezz

[Gabe]

We have no way of resorting them as they get deleted during the upgrade process. If you have a backup/restore point/restore software you can try that. 

[fde101]

4 hours ago, GabrielM said:

If you have a backup/restore point/restore software you can try that.

 

On 6/25/2019 at 6:13 PM, TealLight said:

Does anyone know where they are stored in order to restore them with timemachine?

 

???

[Gabe]

Oh sorry, I completely missed that question. 

See this: