Posts by smadell

Hi again, JimCricket. I think that dealing with version 2.6 is indeed the issue. I also tried and failed to import the .afmacro file into v2.6, having created it in v3 (Affinity Studio). Since it is actually a fairly simple macro, I recreated it for you in my copy of version 2.6. Once again, it's zipped and attached to this post. Let me know if this works for you!

Good morning, JimCricket. I made a macro for you, and I think it's what you're after. Please note - the macro is named "Layers and Colors.afmacro". This is an individual macro, NOT a macro category.

The file is attached, but I had to make it into a ZIP file because of CreoFora limitations. You need to Un-Zip it first. Then, to get it into Affinity, do the following:

(1) Make sure the "Macro" panel is open. This macro will not get loaded if you try to get it into the Library panel. (2) At the very top of the Macro panel, there are a bunch of icons. Hover over them one by one, and find the one that will "Import" the macro. Click on that icon, and navigate your way to the "Layers and Colors.afmacro" file. Import this. (3) The macro will get loaded into the Macro panel. (4) You can run the macro from there by clicking the "Run" icon. However, if you want to keep it you should click on the icon labelled "Add to Library". This will let you save the macro to a category in the Library panel. (5) Once you've saved the macro into the Library, you can click it to run on any additional images you like.

Note: I think I covered all the things you were looking for. Please be aware that instead of just creating 2 more layers, each called "Background", I created a layer called "Background (Hue)" and another called "Background (Color Burn)". Hope you don't mind! Also, I added the Color Balance adjustment layers, but did not change any of the settings. I assumed that you would set those colors on a one-by-one basis.

Also note: in the file you supplied (thank you for that!) the HSL Adjustment layer has a very small area near the top left that was masked. I assumed that was an error, and omitted it.

Hi JimCricket. If you attach that template to a post so the actual structure is more obvious, creating a macro should be possible.

Hi, Daveyjones. I'm glad you got this sorted out. I was just sitting down to my desktop computer to try to duplicate what you'd done, and I opened the forum to grab your image. I see that disabling hardware acceleration was the answer. For some folks, Affinity Photo 2 still had significant issues with screen drawing with hardware acceleration turned on (though I'm not sure just why) and that was always the de facto question to ask when folks asked questions that resulted from extremely funky results, especially with weird colors and segmented screen draws (such as you experienced).

Anyway, good that you found the problem. Shame that the answer will slow down your results (although faster but crappy results are never a good thing)!

I'm so pleased that you like them, PaoloT. Enjoy them all!

Convoluted, yes. But I think it is fairly standard among editing software apps for marching ants to delineate areas that are 50% or more selected. When you create that initial selection, it probably has a sharp border because the active selection is all 100% selected. Once you feather the selection, the “border” of the selection becomes harder to define (in a practical sense). Hence, the confusion.

When feathering a simple selection, there is a reasonable argument to be made for drawing the marching ants at the absolute border rather than at the 50% mark. However, consider making a selection based on luminosity or based on a channel, or some other range. Any range-based selection would have to draw the marching ants somewhere or else the entire document would be surrounded by marching ants at its edges, rendering the drawing of them useless.

If you make your selection and apply a feather, you can visualize the feathered selection (the “end result”) by turning on the Quick Mask. Pressing “Q” will do this. While the QuickMask is active, switch to the Move tool and you can adjust the size and position of the selection. If I remember correctly, the selection is defined by a bounding box with handles that can be used to make the selection (including the feathering) larger or smaller.

New Mexico, friends. So, Mountain Standard time.

Good morning, BramleyLad (at least it’s morning where i am). I’m glad you found the macros, and certainly hope you enjoy them. Don’t forget that there are several other macro categories that I posted, all of which can be accessed here: Seth’s Resources

BTW, this group of macros is called “V2” because there was a V1 with less functionality. It doesn’t have anything to do with compatibility.

As R C-R suggested, all of the macros I posted were created in Affinity Photo v2, but all of them work well in Affinity Studio (v3). Also, thanks to R C-R for that compliment about the PDF file. (Now I’ll have to go back and look at it to figure out what I did so right!)

You’re very welcome, NALawanone . I hope they work well for you.

Beautiful image, Jennifer. And thanks for the shout-out (and the link)!

Simple - Choose Document > Unclip Canvas. Your entire un-cropped document should now be visible.

Where are Luke and Han? Where are C3PO and R2D2? I loved the music, but I must have missed the part where those Jedi Masters got their awards among the throngs of adoring rebels!

I am running MacOS Sequoia and have the recently-updated Nik v6 plugins. I can report that the “Apply” button now shows up and works as expected in at least Silver Efex, Color Efex, and Viveza (the only three I ever use).

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too, Jennifer.

Welcome to the Forum, Sueco and thank you for the shout-out. I’m glad you found the downloads, and equally glad that you’re finding them helpful. Once you’ve used them a bit, please come back and let me know which of them worked well (or which ones didn’t help at all!) Mostly, welcome to the club and enjoy yourself!

Quote from kaffeeundsalz

It now has three different selection modes: Default, Objects and Groups.

Yes, this was present in version 2. But, perhaps someone could answer me this: is there a way to set the Auto-Select behavior to something other than “Default”?

I always want to have auto-select set to “Objects” but it seems to always ‘default’ back to “Default.” I end up selecting the Group that an object is contained within rather than the object itself. (Is this just another complaint about non-sticky settings? I guess so…) Anyone have a solution or workaround?

As always, you are too kind, jmwellborn!