Eye Candy 7 in APhoto

[Glicky]

Is it possible to use the photoshop plugin "Eye Candy" in APhoto?

(in Corel PhotoPaint it was possible to use)

https://www.alienskin.com/eyecandy/

[ashf]

As far as I know, It does work sort of, but it seems that there are some problems.
You can find many topics related to compatibility report of Eyecandy.

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

I just started trying out Affinity Photo this morning on my 27" iMac running Mojave 10.14.6, after having used Adobe Photoshop for many years. Eye Candy 7 is one of the plugins that I use in Photoshop. I can indeed confirm that Eye Candy 7 has some serious issues with Affinity Photo. While it will apply affects, in the actual Eye Candy editor window, everything is black, and there are other interface problems. As a result, because the element you are working on is black, and the effect you apply also shows up as black, you can't tell what it is going to look like until after you close the Eye Candy window. Furthermore, it applies the effects destructively on the same layer, unlike in Photoshop where a new separate layer is created. In short, if you don't like the effect, then you have to use the "undo plugin" option under Affinity Photo's "Edit" menu. I wrote to Alien Skin this morning to see if they plan on making Eye Candy 7 completely compatible with Affinity Photo. I hope so, because I use the plugin heavily.

Filter Forge also has some issues with Affinity Photo. If I select an element in one of my layers, and then apply a Filter Forge effect, the effect is applied to the entire layer, and not just to the element I have selected with the "Flood Select" tool.

[John Rostron]

13 hours ago, LongtimePhotoshopUser said:

Filter Forge also has some issues with Affinity Photo. If I select an element in one of my layers, and then apply a Filter Forge effect, the effect is applied to the entire layer, and not just to the element I have selected with the "Flood Select" tool.

You just need to copy your selection onto a new layer and remove the marquee. It will work then. (Don't forget to deselect the marquee with Ctrl-D first.)

John

[Glicky]

18 hours ago, LongtimePhotoshopUser said:

...While it will apply affects...

LongtimePhotoshopUser: In which APhoto menu did you find the effects? i don't see it in the Filter menu (like its in Photoshop).

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

12 hours ago, John Rostron said:

You just need to copy your selection onto a new layer and remove the marquee. It will work then. (Don't forget to deselect the marquee with Ctrl-D first.)

John

John, I see that you are on a Windows machine. However, that is NOT true, at least not on a Mac running Affinity Photo. As I explained in the other thread, on the Mac, unless you specify a selection, in either Photoshop or Affinity Photo, Filter Forge will apply the effect to the entire layer. You HAVE to use the select tool if you only want Filter Forge to apply the effect to part of the layer. This applies to both rasterized text layers, as well as to layers containing images. To reiterate, Filter Forge applies its effects to the entire layer, unless you specify otherwise with the select tool. Look at the images that FirstDefence posted in the other thread. It is as clear as day.

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

11 hours ago, Glicky said:

LongtimePhotoshopUser: In which APhoto menu did you find the effects? i don't see it in the Filter menu (like its in Photoshop).

Glicky, I don't know what platform you are on, but on my 27" 2017 5K iMac, after properly installing Eye Candy 7 in Affinity Photo's "Preferences" pane, you should see a new entry under Affinity Photo's Filters > Plugins menu which says Alien Skin > Eye Candy 7.

Once you select Eye Candy 7 in the menu, it will bring up a separate window for Eye Candy, just as it does in Photoshop. Again, this is how it works on a Macintosh. I don't know about Windows machines. It may behave differently.

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

11 hours ago, Glicky said:

LongtimePhotoshopUser: In which APhoto menu did you find the effects? i don't see it in the Filter menu (like its in Photoshop).

Glicky, before you get excited about trying to use Eye Candy 7 in Affinity Photo, please take note of what I said above. That is, that Eye Candy's window is all monochrome, so you can't even tell what you are doing. Yes, you can apply effects, but you will really be working in the dark. Here is a screen capture that I took. I hope it shows up here:

 

[Glicky]

I sent a report to "Alien Skin" about the Eye Candy 7 bug in APhoto. hope they will do something about it...

https://support.alienskin.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

19 minutes ago, Glicky said:

I sent a report to "Alien Skin" about the Eye Candy 7 bug in APhoto. hope they will do something about it...

https://support.alienskin.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Glicky, I communicated with their help desk yesterday and earlier today, and fully explained the problem to them. Their response was the following. I tried out their suggestion, but it does not work on my iMac. I told them what happened after I tried their suggested method, and am now waiting to hear from them again. Here is what they suggested:
 

Quote

 

Eye Candy 7 is designed, tested, and supported with Adobe Photoshop. I've added your interest to the request log for Affinity support.

I did some digging and found these steps from another user. I recommend trying it with a copy of whatever you are working on.
This is how we solved the problem:

1. Open Affinity Photo.

2. Open an image.

3. Click on Layer and then New.

4. This places a new transparent layer over the image.

5. Click on Layer and then Merge Down.

6. Open Eye Candy 7.

Note: A new icon appears on the layer after merge down - it looks like an artist's palette. This was not present prior to the merge down.

 

 

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

For those of you who are interested, I heard from Alien Skin again regarding their Eye Candy 7 plugin. Once again they confirmed what I already knew. That is, that the problem lies with the Affinity Photo app, and NOT with their plugin. They also confirmed that the above instructions are for a Windows machine, and NOT for a Macintosh user, such as Glicky and I. Here is what they had to say:

Quote

Thanks for trying and providing feedback. Yes that set of instructions was from a Windows user. 
You're correct that much of the responsibility for this is in Affinity's side. Plug-ins for Photoshop were developed using a specific SDK and it seems their implementation is incomplete. Without some official guidance from Affinity or a more complete implementation of the pathway developed by Adobe it's difficult to make them work successfully. We're continuing to monitor as updates are released though. We'll be letting users know when the two programs are working well together.

 

[TomM1]

I have received the same boilerplate reply from alien skin about Eyecandy.

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

Just now, TomM1 said:

I have received the same boilerplate reply from alien skin about Eyecandy.

Well, as far as I can tell, there is not much that Alien Skin can do about it as long as Affinity Photo does not fully adhere to Adobe's plugin SDK standard.

The bottom line for me at least, is that I cannot seriously consider switching to Affinity Photo until the Affinity Photo development team seriously addresses this issue.

I use Eye Candy 7, Xenofex 2, Filter Forge, more than a dozen Flaming Pear plugins, Topaz Labs Glow plugin, and SuperPNG on a regular basis in Adobe Photoshop. None of them work fully or completely in Affinity Photo, if at all.

So, while I could save $200/year by switching to Affinity Photo, at this point, switching would seriously cripple my daily graphic work. As I said, it is a very nice program, but in my view, it is just too early for the Affinity Photo development team to be making the claim -- as they do -- that Affinity Photo is Photoshop plugins compatible, when it is clearly not. In fact, I would dare say that it is a dishonest selling point to even make such a claim.

[ashf]

Serif said they are developing their own plugin system now so I'm not sure if they will improve PS plugin compatibility soon.
 

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

2 hours ago, ashf said:

Serif said they are developing their own plugin system now so I'm not sure if they will improve PS plugin compatibility soon.
 

Ashf, that is not very reassuring. It is their product, but if it turns out that they are not going to fully support Adobe-compatible plugins, then I think they are shooting themselves in the foot. I don't need to tell you that many thousands -- perhaps millions -- of people use Adobe products and Adobe-compatible plugins every single day. In my view, to not include full Adobe plugin SDK support in Affinity Photo is to ignore a huge potential market. And that starts with me. As a longtime Photoshop user who has a very established Photoshop workflow, switching to Affinity Photo is hard enough. As I've already said, not being able to use any of my Adobe-compatible plugins is just putting the nail in the coffin.

[ashf]

It's good to have better Adobe plugin compatibly, and yes I too want.
But I just mentioned my "guess" from what Serif said. 
As you see they tend to postpone something to implement something else because lack of human resource.

[R C-R]

19 hours ago, LongtimePhotoshopUser said:

Well, as far as I can tell, there is not much that Alien Skin can do about it as long as Affinity Photo does not fully adhere to Adobe's plugin SDK standard.

To fully adhere to Adobe's plugin SDK standard, Affinity would have to include all the frameworks, data structures, etc. that standard requires, not just in Affinity Photo but in all three of its apps. That means scrapping much of the core code built into the Affinity apps & replacing it with code that complies with that standard, much of which is older, slower, less efficient, requires more memory to run, or in some other way would be something Serif would consider inferior to the current code.

It would be much like rebuilding a Tesla roadster to run on an internal combustion engine.

Needless to say, the chances of Serif ever doing that are basically zero, so if you want that, the Affinity products are not for you.

[TomM1]

On 8/1/2019 at 3:36 PM, R C-R said:

To fully adhere to Adobe's plugin SDK standard, Affinity would have to include all the frameworks, data structures, etc. that standard requires, not just in Affinity Photo but in all three of its apps. That means scrapping much of the core code built into the Affinity apps & replacing it with code that complies with that standard, much of which is older, slower, less efficient, requires more memory to run, or in some other way would be something Serif would consider inferior to the current code.

It would be much like rebuilding a Tesla roadster to run on an internal combustion engine.

Needless to say, the chances of Serif ever doing that are basically zero, so if you want that, the Affinity products are not for you.

Isn't this what creative software developers do?

Find a way to make things work?

[LongtimePhotoshopUser]

2 hours ago, TomM1 said:

Isn't this what creative software developers do?

Find a way to make things work?

Precisely, TomM1. The reason why all of my current plugins -- Eye Candy 7, Xenofex 2, Filter Forge, more than a dozen Flaming Pear plugins, Topaz Labs Glow plugin, and SuperPNG -- work with Adobe Photoshop CS6, is because their developers did the hard work, and figured out how to make them work with Photoshop. They put in the hours.

Perhaps I am wrong, but the impression I am getting on this forum is that perhaps Serif may not have that same level of motivation when it comes to making Affinity Photo compatible with Adobe-style plugins. If that is the case, then as I have said before, they are going to lose a huge number of potential Affinity Photo users who depend heavily on Adobe-compatible plugins to do their daily graphic work.

Personally, over the years, I have spent thousands of dollars on Photoshop and Photoshop-compatible plugins. I am not going to sacrifice all of that time and money, and all of the plugins I enjoy working with, for a product -- no matter how shiny it may look -- where none of my plugins fully work, if at all. That just doesn't make sense, in my view.

Adobe has years of experience in the graphics market. Their products are rock solid, and they work. So I think that R C-R's comments are a bit blown out of proportion. Photoshop is not the old buggy that he seems to think. Thousands -- if not millions -- of happy Photoshop users are testament to that.

[R C-R]

31 minutes ago, LongtimePhotoshopUser said:

Perhaps I am wrong, but the impression I am getting on this forum is that perhaps Serif may not have that same level of motivation when it comes to making Affinity Photo compatible with Adobe-style plugins.

Serif does not have the motivation to rebuild its Affinity apps to be compatible with the myriad of Photoshop plugins, many of which rely on functions that do not exist in Affinity or are implemented so differently that there would be no way to adapt them to run on Affinity's code.

It would be like trying to rebuild a diesel-electric locomotive to run on coal-fired steam power.

[TomM1]

Oddball: “Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don’t you say something righteous and hopeful for a change?”

[cjamez]

so how do you install eye candy to affinity I tried to run the installer and it completed but I don't see it in Affinity

[Cobra Blade]

I was wondering this myself, anyone know how to install Eye Candy 7 so Affinity can use it... tried to do this on my Mac and Affinity isn't a selectable option for the installation.

[firstdefence]

You install it to the default Photoshop location but the plugins are located at: /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CC/Alien Skin/Eye Candy 7

Personally, I’ve not got it to work with Affinity on Mac, I can see it under the plugin menu as Filters > Plugins > Exposure Software > Eye Candy 7 but clicking it is; as the Talking Heads sing "a road to nowhere."  Generally windows users fair better with Photoshop plugin compatibility.

[Cobra Blade]

Ah, okay. Yeah, it was looking like you probably need Photoshop installed to install Eye Candy... but if it won't work even if I can get it past that step I guess I'm out of luck anyway.

Cool reference though in your response though. 😀