Had Enough - I give up.

[Sharkey]

Finally reached the point of - no more understanding!

 

I realise it is my own limitation of intellect but when you cannot understand the questions on this site let alone the answers it is time to give in.

 

Pretty sure I can carry on using AFP for years to come as long as the basics remain solid and not "upgraded" to unusable because they become more "intuitive"!

 

"Intuitive" is probably my most despised word in this techno. age, in that it generalises a completely individual feelin and high lights the lack of real intuitive capabilities in soft and hardware. There is a massive difference between intuitive and usability. One is a beyond memory/intellectual place in users control to an almost blind usage that for reasons unknown or learnable just (nearly quoted Apple) - has the affect desired by the user.

 

I do not believe the intuitive is possible with what we have at our disposal today; maybe down the line.

 

Anywayup, thats it for me. I will fumble around with what I know from now on and concentrate on my pictures.

 

I will update, if it is 'necessarry' but not just for more stuff that needs a 'degree in coding/cybernetics' to use/comprehend.

 

Adjust :- colour, sharpness, crop and the occasional filter for fun - thats my lot. An overstatement I know but you get my drift.

 

Regards.    Sharkey

 

 

[Oval]

Very unfortunate … please try to ask (again and again) if something is not clear. 

 

Kind regards

[toltec]

Don't do that!

 

I agree with you about being intuitive though. Despite using Photoshop for 30 years and considering myself an "expert" I found learning AP far from intuitive. It's not all Serifs fault, I found most software I ever used un-intuitive (aka baffling), at least in the early years and Serif have recently baffled me on several occasions.

 

I remember, back in the early days of stone chip memory (and when I still had hair), that I once wanted to put white text on a black background.  I bet you can do that!!!  At the time (print trade) this was sometimes called wobbing. There was no "intuitive" way to do it in the software (basically a word processor) so I looked in the index of the manual (remember those?) but no luck. Fortunately I was not under the usual time pressure so I took the manual (for younger readers, that's a book) home to read it. I eventually found wobbing was called "inverse video". That's software people for you ;)

 

I ended up reading the book pretty much all the way through because "inverse video" was in a section at the very back and I had not looked for "inverse video" in the index. Can't imagine why I never thought of it. Duh!

 

By reading the manual, I don't mean reading every word, just browsing through and reading the paragraph headings to see what they were on about. Simply knowing what could be done was a huge help. I could remember what it could do and pretty much what it was called (that was when I was still young enough to remember things). That really helped because if I wanted to do something I could always find the relevant page in the manual. Just as long as I avoided the index.

 

Modern software people don't seem to understand that (maybe I'm just showing my age). They think that help files are OK but, if you don't know that what you want to do is inverse your video, how do you look it up? They seem to think that by watching 120 hours of video online, you will stumble across it. I can tell you now, two thirds of what I have since learned about AP came from looking for it, but at least I knew what I was looking for. I simply wanted to do what I could do in PSP.

 

Fortunately as a retired person with time on my hands (aka Boring Old F*"t) I have been able to waste days of my time going through videos and searching for stuff that is either not in the help files or called something else. Like, why the heck is vignetting sometimes called Gaussian blurring? That's software people for you ;) Funny thing is, by searching for stuff, I have learned to do things I could not do in Photoshop, or didn't know it could do and and stumbled some great features in Affinity. 

 

When I bought my first computer all those years ago I remember looking at it in panic thinking "I'll never be able to learn that" but I did, little by little, and still am learning, little by little. Remember, the Titanic wasn't designed or built in a day, and look how well that turned out.

 

I suggest you buy a book about learning Photoshop. They are cheap second hand as it doesn't have to be up-to-date. Several are even free to download as PDF. Pick a photo project and figure out how to do it in Affinity Photo, asking on here if you need translation. Maybe I should write a book for Affinity. Trouble is, I might have to make a video on how to use it   :unsure:

 

Just don't give up. You can always keep learning. If someone had said to you 30 years ago that you could take a photo, load it into a computer and adjust it's colour or even put white text on a black background. ???

[gdenby]

I too am old enough that it was expected one might have to read a few thousand pages of manuals just to do the simplest things. There wasn't point and click, there wasn't WYSIWYG, or any intuitive work space. 

 

As a result of being the 1st staff member to have a personal computer, I ended up doing some departmental support for the rest of the staff. One thing that always bemused me was that people with advanced degrees, sometimes several, just could not get the hang of computer use. And I'm not talking about anything really complicated, like photo processing can be. I'm talking e-mail, or simply understanding the file system.

 

The best I could do was encourage people to take notes, practice the same thing repeatedly until it became habitual, and would encourage them to be able to describe what they were doing when something didn't seem to work right. I suspect some of it is personality type, but more often, its just background. One of my friend's on the staff was a professional photographer, but he never liked working with the "new fangled" digital cameras. As soon as a younger fellow joined the staff, he got the fancy Nikon, and the full Adobe package. The older fellow happily switched to learning how to make Daguerreotypes.

[Sharkey]

Thank you all for the quick responses.

 

It seems I am not alone - not that it makes any difference :rolleyes: 

 

Knowing that millions are starving does not stop me from being hungry (just unnecessarily and pointlessly guilty).

 

I cannot disagree with what has been said by each of you - but - I am unable to be that positive (long term depressive) so my decision to adopt a more pragmatic stance on software will stand. Personally, unless I repeat something at least a couple of dozen times the likelihood of me remembering it precisely is remote and precision IS required for digital stuff; plus the concentration levels are simply not there. :)

 

 

Regards.   Sharkey

[toltec]

.

 

It seems I am not alone - not that it makes any difference :rolleyes: 

 

 

No, but at least not being alone helps with depression ;)

[Sharkey]

.

 

 

No, but at least not being alone helps with depression ;)

 

Sorry Toltec, others suffering has done nothing for me for the last 30+ years but I thank you for the kind thought.

 

Regards.   Sharkey

[toltec]

Yes, sorry if it doesn't help.

 

I can only say try and keep positive, keep plugging away at Photo and I'm sure everybody here will help you all they can. 

 

Was there one particular thing you wanted to learn to use it for?

[Sharkey]

Yes, sorry if it doesn't help.

 

I can only say try and keep positive, keep plugging away at Photo and I'm sure everybody here will help you all they can. 

 

Was there one particular thing you wanted to learn to use it for?

 

No offense :) 

 

Not particularly. Next time I actually want to do something and don't know how I will ask but it is now unlikely that I will go much further than the basics that I know (think I know). As I have said the search for something that I cannot name is over.

 

Regards.   Sharkey

[PhotoNewbie]

I totally understand what you are saying. I grew up in a time when we played hopscotch and jacks vs sitting and thumbing thru an iphone. As I grew to be an adult and began to accumulate some possessions, most of them came with an Instruction Manual that was ok, overkill, but at least showed how to use it. Along came the computer age, no Instruction Manual, its just assumed you already knew how to use it. I have managed to learn to do what I want to do but will always struggle.

I loved Affinity Photo, from first getting it on my MBP in Nov 2015. I kept up in the Forum's infancy and learned alot from the Q&A but it has now gone far beyond my capabilities. I am mostly ok with it, I really only want to use the basic steps with AP to improve my photos of my black faced dog. I venture into the Tutorials occassionally and add another process to my AP capabilities.

I know an AP Manual is still on the roadmap but it would sure help so many that are overwhelmed. The tutorials are well done but the starting and stopping as you either perform the task on another device or jot down steps makes a written Manual seem so much better.

One big issue that I have is that I have asked many questions that have not been answered. I have seen it written that the Staff always put new user questions at a priority but I read on here "just ask if you have problems, we will be glad to help" Not my experience and us non techy users still need continual help.

I have made a post before that I was going to another editing software because I cant get my questions answered, but I cant find any that I like any better. So I'm sticking with it.

Dont intend to hijack this thread, just wanted you to know I am another that understands!

[Oval]

I know an AP Manual is still on the roadmap 

 

Are you sure? Not from Serif. Just a workbook.

[JustGeorge]

Sharkey,

I don't know if this is what you're saying, but I too experience a lot of frustration in trying to use the program.  My main issues are (1) the program's help file (search field often yields useless results); and (2) this forum (trying to find topics that are related primarily to Photo, especially AP for Windows).

 

My problem:  once I learn a procedure or technique, I may not use it again for a long time, and then can't find out how to do it again.

I suspect many of the users on this forum have at least some background and/or familiarity with Adobe's various products, which sometimes makes it hard for me to decipher what they're saying.  I think there are multiple terms for the same thing that I can't always decipher.

I started out using AP as a replacement for PaintShop Pro x8, which was a replacement for Topaz photoFXlab.  In the beginning I used it as a layered front end for the various Topaz plugins, gradually easing in to using more of the AP edit functions.  While that background helped me some, there's still a lot that confuses me with AP.

All of which usually results in not being able to know what it is I want to ask.

I've been evaluating the new Topaz Studio, hoping that it would simplify my workflow, but I'm totally disappointed with it.  So for me, I'll be sticking it out with AP, and try to figure out how to get the results I want without stumbling around so much.

I have found that the AP video tutorials are a big help.  I've watched many of them more than once, several of them many times.  While they're good, they often cover multiple procedures/processes, not reflected in their titles.  The PDF by dmstraker https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/37281-notes-on-in-house-affinity-photo-video-tutorials/has been extremely useful in finding help within those tutorials.  (I can't remember, but I may have needed to run optical character recognition on the PDF to make it searchable.)  Give it a look if you haven't already.  It might help with figuring out what you want to ask about.

 

A good manual, or better help manual and forum search capability, would go along way to alleviating some of my frustrations.

FWIW, YMMV, all the usual disclaimers.

--JustGeorge
 

[Alfred]

One big issue that I have is that I have asked many questions that have not been answered. I have seen it written that the Staff always put new user questions at a priority but I read on here "just ask if you have problems, we will be glad to help" Not my experience and us non techy users still need continual help.

 

There are so many posts here every day that some are bound to get overlooked, especially since there is no way to filter the list of posts by number of replies. If your question goes unanswered for more than a day or two, post to the thread again to 'bump' it to the top of the list.

 

Edit: I've just done a quick search. Of all the threads you've created in the past year, this thread is the only one that has not yet had any replies.

[PhotoNewbie]

There are so many posts here every day that some are bound to get overlooked, especially since there is no way to filter the list of posts by number of replies. If your question goes unanswered for more than a day or two, post to the thread again to 'bump' it to the top of the list.

 

Edit: I've just done a quick search. Of all the threads you've created in the past year, this thread is the only one that has not yet had any replies.

You didnt go back far enough then, I have been "stuck" and come on here asking for help and no answer

[PhotoNewbie]

Are you sure? Not from Serif. Just a workbook.

"Written" instructions in a formal document! I dont care what its called.

[toltec]

"Written" instructions in a formal document! I dont care what its called.

 

In my day, I would have called that a manual too.

[MEB]

Hi PhotoNewbie,

I'm sorry you are having trouble using the program. We do try to reply and help as much as we can but sometimes due to huge spikes in activity in the forums (due to beta or retail releases mostly) it's possible we miss a few threads/posts. In those cases just bump the thread to bring it back to the top as Alfred suggested.

 

As you may guess there's some types of questions that are not directly related with Affinity software or that refer to an interaction between Affinity Photo and third party software or hardware that are more tricky to reply immediately without us installing and testing the third party programs or acquiring the hardware to test and check it ourselves here but we do try to cover these situations whenever possible. Generic or vague questions covering a lot of subjects or a lengthy workflow processes are sometimes also complicated to address in a simple forum post. The increasing number of video tutorials covering typical processes/workflows should help in these cases. If you have trouble understanding something, please link to the video/timestamp so we can check it and we will try to explain what's going on/specific steps. If there's some subject you would like to see addressed through a video tutorial please post it in the Official Affinity Photo Video Tutorials thread. James Ritson does pick suggestions from there frequently.

 

A few years ago printed manuals where the norm but nowadays most software houses only provide electronic documentation. There's a few reasons for this: it's a considerably cheaper to provide electronic documentation (no printing costs), deliver it (no shipping costs) and it's also easier to keep it updated which is not possible with printed manuals. So the "official" manual for the program is the Help file which cover (or should cover) everything about the program. If you find some parts lacking, poorly described/misleading or missing please let us know so we can improve it. I've not used its search function that much to comment on how it's working regarding key words but I'm sure it can also be improved in some way. The workbook we are preparing may also cover some of the functionality of the program (similar to what we did for Designer) but it's mostly a project based book, not a traditional manual and as such should work more as a complement/advanced learning resource than an exhaustive description of each feature.

[Alfred]

I've not used its search function that much to comment on how it's working regarding key words but I'm sure it can also be improved in some way.

 

The main problem with the search function is the lack of alternative keywords, which means that you have to know the right term to use in your search. A prime example that comes up quite often is "skew": the Help refers to it as "shear", and the term "skew" isn't linked to it, so if you type skew into the Help search box the only result you get is about 2.5D parallel projections.

[PhotoNewbie]

Hi PhotoNewbie,

I'm sorry you are having trouble using the program. We do try to reply and help as much as we can but sometimes due to huge spikes in activity in the forums (due to beta or retail releases mostly) it's possible we miss a few threads/posts. In those cases just bump the thread to bring it back to the top as Alfred suggested.

 

As you may guess there's some types of questions that are not directly related with Affinity software or that refer to an interaction between Affinity Photo and third party software or hardware that are more tricky to reply immediately without us installing and testing the third party programs or acquiring the hardware to test and check it ourselves here but we do try to cover these situations whenever possible. Generic or vague questions covering a lot of subjects or a lengthy workflow processes are sometimes also complicated to address in a simple forum post. The increasing number of video tutorials covering typical processes/workflows should help in these cases. If you have trouble understanding something, please link to the video/timestamp so we can check it and we will try to explain what's going on/specific steps. If there's some subject you would like to see addressed through a video tutorial please post it in the Official Affinity Photo Video Tutorials thread. James Ritson does pick suggestions from there frequently.

 

A few years ago printed manuals where the norm but nowadays most software houses only provide electronic documentation. There's a few reasons for this: it's a considerably cheaper to provide electronic documentation (no printing costs), deliver it (no shipping costs) and it's also easier to keep it updated which is not possible with printed manuals. So the "official" manual for the program is the Help file which cover (or should cover) everything about the program. If you find some parts lacking, poorly described/misleading or missing please let us know so we can improve it. I've not used its search function that much to comment on how it's working regarding key words but I'm sure it can also be improved in some way. The workbook we are preparing may also cover some of the functionality of the program (similar to what we did for Designer) but it's mostly a project based book, not a traditional manual and as such should work more as a complement/advanced learning resource than an exhaustive description of each feature.

Thank you for your response including your info regarding the direction the AP Workbook will go. And as I said I am sticking with AP and in fact, have just recently watched the tutorial on Regular Tone Mapping and Installing the Nik Collection. Both of those videos were easy to learn from and have made a big difference in my photos.

[toltec]

The main problem with the search function is the lack of alternative keywords, which means that you have to know the right term to use in your search. A prime example that comes up quite often is "skew": the Help refers to it as "shear", and the term "skew" isn't linked to it, so if you type skew into the Help search box the only result you get is about 2.5D parallel projections.

 

Yeah I have found that too or NO WORDS AT ALL. 

[MikeW]

 

A few years ago printed manuals where the norm but nowadays most software houses only provide electronic documentation. There's a few reasons for this: it's a considerably cheaper to provide electronic documentation (no printing costs), deliver it (no shipping costs) and it's also easier to keep it updated which is not possible with printed manuals. ...

Most everything I use professionally provides a real manual via PDF. And that pdf is fuller, searchable and better indexed than the built-in help system. Except the Affinity products. Others have well written books by various authors, albeit at an added expenditure. But when they weigh in at 700 pages or above, they are worth it.

[MikeW]

The main problem with the search function is the lack of alternative keywords, which means that you have to know the right term to use in your search. A prime example that comes up quite often is "skew": the Help refers to it as "shear", and the term "skew" isn't linked to it, so if you type skew into the Help search box the only result you get is about 2.5D parallel projections.

That's solvable with most help authoring systems by fleshing out the glossary and individual search terms embedded in the topics.

[toltec]

A few years ago printed manuals where the norm but nowadays most software houses only provide electronic documentation. 

 

 

The trouble is the trend towards help files was OK a few years ago and for a time, because most people were upgrading and could simply find the newest features in the help file or learn from someone. 

 

THAT DOES NOT WORK WITH NEW USERS FOR A NEW PROGRAM !!!!!!!!!!

 

I have lived and worked through it from Photoshop 3 to now. I was a full time user and could build on my knowledge over the years. It was my job. There are also plenty of training courses in the trade for Photoshop or absolutely anywhere for something like MS office.

 

I once ran a Photoshop training course at a college and asked why businesses always bought Microsoft when there were free or cheap alternatives. The answer was that they could send them to a college and get an "instant expert". That was not an option with Open Office. Still isn't 20 years later which is why most businesses still buy MS Office.

 

Something like Affinity is so sophisticated (read COMPLEX) that even I had a lot of problems, just migrating, despite decades of experience.

 

What the Affinity team seems to have totally failed to grasp is that most users are keen amateurs (which is good) and/or NEW TO IMAGE EDITING. They might have bought a digital camera for the first time or are taking pictures on a mobile and have seen clever stuff done online but that is no good. Most wouldn't know the difference between DPI,  PPi or LPI like the poor chap who designed a fantastic pineapple for screen printing but didn't know what resolution to start with.

 

Your help files are virtually useless and the trouble is, there is no Google backup. I wanted to cut out a difficult image using the pen. Clipping path?, cutting out?, pen selections ? Try and find how to do that in either the help files on the videos or on Google (I dare you), yet Affinity is brilliant at that. And who would look for vignetting under Gaussian blur? Yet that sort of compositing thing is such a common task.

 

My local night college gives classes in Photoshop. There are loads of books, reference tombs and "how to" books, Classroom in a book, etc. Yet, unlike Affinity, because Photoshop has been around so long you can also Google anything (pretty much) and find a how to. But Affinity ? How do you Google the contents of a video?

 

The help files should be about three times the size and backed up with a PDF manual and ideally a project book. Maybe in version 3 you could go back to a PDF manual. Look at Xara studio. A great PDF manual with an option to buy a printed copy.

 

I have seen it written by a member of staff it that Affinity is not designed to be a direct competitor for Photoshop. So what's it for? It's far too complex and hard to learn for most average users, despite its incredible value for money. So you are left with us Internet geeks and very keen enthusiasts fed up with Adobe pricing. Simply read this forum.

 

Many Photoshop users will find it too hard to migrate without documentation and as professionals it would be too expensive in time and fraught with difficulties if it doesn't do what they expect in Photoshop, of they can't find it. I saw someone complaining that Affinity couldn't do channel masks, yet there is great way to do that in Affinity. It's NOT called channel masking.. No ability to select a colour range within a selected area. Easy enough to do but a new from Photoshop user wouldn't know how, and if he had to do it under commercial pressure (and there is lots of that in the trade) he would simply revert to Photoshop. It's not that expensive.

 

Fantastic software, I can't praise the software team enough but invest some money and pay someone to write a manual. 

 

Sorry. Rant over :)

[toltec]

As an example, this is only fun stuff, but where are the instructions on cutting out with text or shapes? And don't get me started on Channel Masking.

 

 

Cutting out and vignetting shapes?

 

 

 

or using an SVG path

 

 

 

And note. Every one of these images is completely editable later down to path nodes, including the text!

 

 

Not important for fun but clipping paths, or whatever you call them, are important, sometimes. I had to put images into text or shapes several times during my career but it's not that easy to find out how in Affinity. Or at least, not easy to find the instructions.

[R C-R]

For the reasons MEB mentioned, I do not think printed manuals would help much. What I think would is publicly accessible online versions of the built-in help files. Since they are already in html format, this would not be overly hard for Serif to do. They would be relatively easy to update as the apps gain new features, & this would cost much less than providing printed manuals, particularly versions for each supported language.

 

This would leverage the power of 'smart' search engine algorithms like Google or Bing use, which would help when searching for a term or technique users know by a different name & even more when they don't know exactly what to search for. There is no way a manual could include all the terms or references users might be looking for -- some of them are unique to a particular industry or craft, or refer to technologies that have evolved over as much as several centuries & will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

 

Apart from that, this would enable forum users to link to specific help topics in posts instead of trying to explain where other users can find them & make it easier to identify any that need to be improved.