Are there any quick fix auto settings?

[NYC Guy]

Some editing programs have some automatic "quick fix' tabs you can select for simple edits. Does AP have this?

[MEB]

Hi NYC Guy,

I'm not sure if this what you are looking for but there's buttons to adjust automatically Levels, Contrast, Colours and White Balance in Affinity Photo (see attached screenshot - the four buttons on the right).

 

[NYC Guy]

Thanks, that might be what I was asking about and will check it out when I return home tonight.

[NYC Guy]

OK, I tried it and it worked. Just a small suggestion, I had to move my mouse over each icon to highlight the description. It would make life easier if the icons were simply labeled. :)

[R C-R]

OK, I tried it and it worked. Just a small suggestion, I had to move my mouse over each icon to highlight the description. It would make life easier if the icons were simply labeled. :)

Try this:

 

Right or control click on the menu bar & choose "Customize Toolbar" from the popup menu. At the bottom of the popup window, choose "Show: Icons & text." The text descriptions are of necessity brief, but should help.

[NYC Guy]

Try this:

 

Right or control click on the menu bar & choose "Customize Toolbar" from the popup menu. At the bottom of the popup window, choose "Show: Icons & text." The text descriptions are of necessity brief, but should help.

That helps a little as it now says "Enhancement" under the four icons. However you still have to hold your mouse over each icon to see a description. I like to follow the K.I.S.S. principle. :)

[R C-R]

That helps a little as it now says "Enhancement" under the four icons. However you still have to hold your mouse over each icon to see a description.

You may have noticed that there are a lot of options in the "Customize Toolbar" menu, including individual icons for each of the four enhancements. So, if you wanted to, you could replace the four-icon Enhancements item with the four individual ones. Do that, & with "Icons & Text" enabled, each will get its own more descriptive label.

 

Of course, if you do that for very many toolbar items, it is going to get very crowded & items pushed off the right side will only be available if you click on the ≫ symbol to reveal them. That's why the default is to use multiple item icons -- for most users it is likely to be the most efficient use of the available space, reduce unnecessary clutter, & minimize the number of extra clicks it takes to access everything on it.

[NYC Guy]

You may have noticed that there are a lot of options in the "Customize Toolbar" menu, including individual icons for each of the four enhancements. So, if you wanted to, you could replace the four-icon Enhancements item with the four individual ones. Do that, & with "Icons & Text" enabled, each will get its own more descriptive label.

 

Of course, if you do that for very many toolbar items, it is going to get very crowded & items pushed off the right side will only be available if you click on the ≫ symbol to reveal them. That's why the default is to use multiple item icons -- for most users it is likely to be the most efficient use of the available space, reduce unnecessary clutter, & minimize the number of extra clicks it takes to access everything on it.

Actually that helped me a great deal, thanks for the tip. Please remember that there are 3 types of users for this software, novices, intermediate and advanced. I am a total novice, this is the first time I am using a program like this and have a steep learning curve so please pardon the pun but I have to "paint by the numbers". :)

 

Based on the above, is there a way to have text visible showing the names of the tools on the left side of the screen or do I always have to hold my mouse pointer over them to see the description?

 

Also in preferences - tools - tool handle size I could not change the setting to largest. What am I doing wrong?

 

 

[MEB]

Hi NYC Guy,

Yes, to see the tooltip you have to mouse over the icons a few moments. There's no way to have description below them.

The Tool Handle Size only changes the size of the controls on canvas (bounding box handles, nodes control handles, gradients handles etc). It doesn't change the size of the icons on the interface.

[NYC Guy]

Hi NYC Guy,

Yes, to see the tooltip you have to mouse over the icons a few moments. There's no way to have description below them.

The Tool Handle Size only changes the size of the controls on canvas (bounding box handles, nodes control handles, gradients handles etc). It doesn't change the size of the icons on the interface.

 

Many thanks for the quick reply. I would love to see the text appearing next to the tools that identifies them as an option in the settings. Please remember that for a newbie there is a steep learning curve and I don't want to constantly refer to the video tutorials so every little bit helps! :)

[R C-R]

 

Actually that helped me a great deal, thanks for the tip. Please remember that there are 3 types of users for this software, novices, intermediate and advanced. I am a total novice, this is the first time I am using a program like this and have a steep learning curve so please pardon the pun but I have to "paint by the numbers". :)

For what it is worth, customizing the toolbar is a feature of many Mac apps (including for example Finder, Safari, & Preview). It works the same basic way on all of them because it relies on a capability built into OS X that developers can use without having to do all the programming for each app individually. Of course, which items can be added depends on the app, but the Affinity developers have included an unusually large selection, which makes it easy to customize the toolbar to suit the needs of just about any user.

 

Some of the other things you can do with apps that support a customizable toolbar may include rearranging the icon order, changing the spacing between them, hiding or showing text, or even changing the icon size.

 

If you are just now discovering customizable toolbars, you might find it useful to explore which other apps you use support it. One of the nicest thing about it is once you learn how it works in one app, you have pretty much learned how it works in all of them.

[NYC Guy]

By the way, when my trial is up and I purchase Affinity Photo will these changes I have made be carried over or do I have to customize them again?

[R C-R]

Many thanks for the quick reply. I would love to see the text appearing next to the tools that identifies them as an option in the settings. Please remember that for a newbie there is a steep learning curve and I don't want to constantly refer to the video tutorials so every little bit helps! :)

I am guessing that you have not yet discovered any of the several other ways you can customize the AP workspace. One of them, customizing the tool palette (not to be confused with the toolbar) won't make the tooltips always visible like you want, but understanding its options may help explain why this would not be practical.

 

To see what I mean, go to the View menu while in Pixel mode & select "Customize tools..." (It's the next to the last item on the menu.) Note that there are a whole bunch of tools available (90 of them if I counted right), more than would fit in a single column tool palette even on a very large screen Mac. Because of this, you can customize the palette with up to 8 columns, & use various combinations of single & multiple tool icons to conserve space and/or make the most often used tools selectable with one click.

 

Imagine what would happen if all their tooltips could be made always visible, taking up screen space that otherwise could be used to display your canvas. Even if you had a 27" monitor, in many custom configurations there would be almost no room for the canvas. On small screen Macs, even a single column configuration with just a few tools could cover so much of it that it would be hard to get much done without constantly panning & zooming.

 

For completeness, also note that you can undock the tools (so that the palette "floats" over the workspace), work in separated window mode, & float individual Studio panels or reorder & regroup the tabbed ones in the Studio. In separated mode it is even possible to have multiple views of the same canvas, or two or more different documents, all on screen at the same time, each visible in its own window.

 

So basically, every part of the user interface has to be usable with all these possible configurations, each of them requiring some part of the available screen space. Adding always visible tooltips to the mix would make that harder than it already is & leave very little room to actually use the app.

[MEB]

By the way, when my trial is up and I purchase Affinity Photo will these changes I have made be carried over or do I have to customize them again?

 

No, they will not be carried over. You have to customise them again. The trial is a little older than the MAS version and use its own set of config files.

[NYC Guy]

I am guessing that you have not yet discovered any of the several other ways you can customize the AP workspace. One of them, customizing the tool palette (not to be confused with the toolbar) won't make the tooltips always visible like you want, but understanding its options may help explain why this would not be practical.

 

To see what I mean, go to the View menu while in Pixel mode & select "Customize tools..." (It's the next to the last item on the menu.) Note that there are a whole bunch of tools available (90 of them if I counted right), more than would fit in a single column tool palette even on a very large screen Mac. Because of this, you can customize the palette with up to 8 columns, & use various combinations of single & multiple tool icons to conserve space and/or make the most often used tools selectable with one click.

 

Imagine what would happen if all their tooltips could be made always visible, taking up screen space that otherwise could be used to display your canvas. Even if you had a 27" monitor, in many custom configurations there would be almost no room for the canvas. On small screen Macs, even a single column configuration with just a few tools could cover so much of it that it would be hard to get much done without constantly panning & zooming.

 

For completeness, also note that you can undock the tools (so that the palette "floats" over the workspace), work in separated window mode, & float individual Studio panels or reorder & regroup the tabbed ones in the Studio. In separated mode it is even possible to have multiple views of the same canvas, or two or more different documents, all on screen at the same time, each visible in its own window.

 

So basically, every part of the user interface has to be usable with all these possible configurations, each of them requiring some part of the available screen space. Adding always visible tooltips to the mix would make that harder than it already is & leave very little room to actually use the app.

I appreciate what you are saying and I do have a 27 inch iMac which does  allow me some space to play with. At the end of the day if if the tooltips were visible and I was only using 1 or 2 rows I think I would still be ok and have enough usable space. At the very least there should be an option and we would then make the decision whether or not it works for us.