A Newbie w/ Suggestions & Requests

[Doren Sorell]

Hello All:

I have been a professional photographer for many years, and for the past six years have been using Photoshop. I started using Lightroom then as well, but when I started tethering I went to Capture One Pro ... which totally beats Lightroom in my opinion. 

Since Adobe seems to be ... um, overly hungry with their subscription model, I wanted a better platform. After trying out Affinity Photo, I have fallen in love and just bought it. 

I do have some suggestions and requests. Not sure if I should put them all here but will attempt to make my initial list in this post, but if anyone knows if it's better to post these individually, or in a different manner, please let me know. 

• It would be size to add an Invert Selection button in the Refine dialog box ... thus making it easier to flip the selection after clicking Refine.
• When opening a file while in full screen mode, it would be nice to have a dialog box telling us that a file is indeed is opening (similar, maybe, to the box that comes up when saving). I know when one is not in full screen, we can see it say on top that a file is "...loading." It would just be since to have that in full screen as well.
• Maybe a "Pin Edges" feature in the Liquify Persona.
• Add the feature similar to Photoshop's Content Aware Scale, where we can stretch or add to the canvas and have Affinity [AP] add content.
• I feel that the Tool Bar on top is just too thick. I like having it there, and being able to customize it, but I tend to hide it until I need it, if I need it, because I like to work in full screen and have as much real estate as I can. Maybe having the ability to change it's size -- make it narrower -- would be nice.
• Maybe, when changing the size of the brush in all Personas with the slider, to have a preview of the brush on the canvas showing how the size will look.
• In Liquify, even though I love the Slide feature of seeing the before and after, maybe adding just button to toggle directly from Before to After -- that would be a great addition. 
• And maybe it's me but I feel that whatever size the brush is, especially if it's quite soft, it paints wider than the brush limits show. Thusly, I tend to make the brush smaller than I think and it works pretty darn well ... but thought I'd bring this up anyhow. Also, using a Wacom tablet, which I do, and using the method of holding the Option+Command buttons as I move my pen left and right to make the brush bigger/smaller, and up/down for softness/hardness, I noticed that the size is much bigger than what it turns out to be when I let go of the buttons. But maybe that's a Wacom thing? Not sure. 
• Maybe add a temporary way to rotate canvas and add keyboard shortcuts for it. There is a way to do it, and I've added shortcuts, but it's only in, I believe, 15 degree increments, but it would be nice to have full range. 
• Please, please, please ... add a shortcut (or a way to add a keyboard shortcut) to change the Flow on any of the brushes. I know we can change the Opacity with any of the number keys (or combinations thereof) but in Photoshop if I pressed Shift plus a number, it would change the Flow, which I used all the time. This would be great to add to AP. 
• Maybe there's a reason I'm not aware of, but I wish the Adjustment Layers and Live Filters, in all areas, would be in alphabetical order so it would be easier to visually find. 
• A great feature, like in Photoshop, would be to see thumbnails of recently opened files when you first open up AP. 
• And I think I've read here on the forum that there might be a bug with the thumbnails in the Layers Panel not always showing up right away, sometimes taking their sweet time becoming correctly visible -- as in, I place a mask on a layer and the mask is just plain black for about 10 to 60 seconds, sometimes more, before showing up as all white. Same goes for all Adjustments, Filters, Group Icons, etc ... yet sometimes it's instantaneous, which I think is how it's supposed to be, given all the tutorials I've watched. I do have an older iMac (2013) but I've read that it's a bug so I thought I'd bring it up here (and I have 32 GB or RAM, on a 3.2 GHz Intel Core i5, and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 755m 1024 MB ... so I think I'm pretty okay mostly, and plenty of storage on my Fusion Drive (yes, don't worry, my next iMac will have an SSD!!.) 
• Maybe I'm missing something, but if I have a mask on a pixel layer, and then try to resize or move the pixel layer behind the mask, they seem to be locked together, and I have to Undo and move the mask off that layer, then resize or reposition the pixel layer, and then move the mask back. In Photoshop, there was a chainlink between the mask and layer that could be unlocked if one needed to do what I just explained. That would be a nice feature to add to AP. Unless it's possible and I'm just not aware (please let me know if that's the case and how to do it). 
• It would be great to be able to resize any of the Adjustments Layer dialog boxes, since sometime dragging the sliders makes it hard to change the value in smaller increments. 
• And finally, even though I have finally figured it out, and it all now makes sense to me, I really wish that Groups, layers that are Children of others (which in essence are Groups too), and Masked layers visually looked different from each other. Meaning: They all have that right-pointing arrow in a black circle on the left side to press which opens them up, making the triangle in it point down. But -- Groups have that icon; Parent layers have that icon; and so do Masked layers ... thus all looking quite similar and hard to distinguish. I know (finally, after 10 days of trial and error and asking and researching) that Groups/Childed Layers are indented differently than Masks (not as far right as Masks), and I know now that a vertical blue small line to the right of the thumbnail I want to add a mask to is how it looks when adding a mask, and adding a Child (or clipping/grouping to a layer) is a horizontal line that doesn't go all the way to the left, and of course a horizontal blue line that goes all the way across the Layers Panel will merely put the chosen layer in the normal un-grouped and un-nested stack. But it would be great if they visually looked more different or distinct from each other. Anyhow, I hope that made sense, and would love to hear if others feel the similarly. 

Anyhow, thanks for your time, and if there's a better way to get Serif this info please let me know, or if any of the above is incorrect I'd love to know the corrections. 

 

Thank you.

[fde101]

Several good ideas here...

 

8 hours ago, Doren Sorell said:

Maybe add a temporary way to rotate canvas and add keyboard shortcuts for it. There is a way to do it, and I've added shortcuts, but it's only in, I believe, 15 degree increments, but it would be nice to have full range. 

Currently you can do this if you have one of the newer Wacom tablets that have the touch feature - you can use two fingers and "rotate" the canvas directly using the tablet.

 

8 hours ago, Doren Sorell said:

Maybe I'm missing something, but if I have a mask on a pixel layer, and then try to resize or move the pixel layer behind the mask, they seem to be locked together

You want to turn off "Lock Children" in the context toolbar.

[Doren Sorell]

3 hours ago, fde101 said:

 

You want to turn off "Lock Children" in the context toolbar.

Fantastic to know! Thank you.