So...what's happening?

[Mike Sibley]

What's happening? A LOT but not anything you'd notice

Three things coincided:

1. WINDOWS updated
2. INTEL Graphics updated
3. Combined... they prevented Photoshop from opening, which is where I prepare all the animations.

So, after using it for 20 years I've finally dumped Photoshop for AFFINITY PHOTO - and I'm devouring how-to videos daily.

Coupled with that, I'm also about to stop using Premiere Pro for video editing in favour of DaVinci Resolve. I've been devouring videos on that too for the past couple of months.

And now seems like the ideal time to make all the major changes at the same time.... so I'm awaiting delivery of my new super-computer! Well, it's super to me : an i9, twin SSD, 2070 GPU, and... it promises to be super fast and efficient, especially with DaVinci Resolve.

Apologies for the delay and thanks for your patience. In the meantime I'm busy writing scripts.

COMING SOON:
DWM: Introduction to Negative Drawing
YOUTUBE: Fixing Pencil Drawings and Removing Shine

[LindasPencils]

Wow! You got the Turbo-Charged Brain! Congratulations. Let us know how it goes.
And a review on Affinity Photo would be really great when you have a spare (Ha) five minutes.
Linda.

[Mike Sibley]

And a review on Affinity Photo would be really great when you have a spare (Ha) five minutes.

I'll be very happy to do that. I've been looking at Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer for a while. Then Bill Gates' boys made the decision for me by breaking Photoshop (my old version). So far, Affinity Photo is everything I thought it was and more! Of course, I'm comparing it to my 20-year-old Photoshop 6.0 (I also have CS6 but rarely use it).

There are a couple of things I can't do, such as copying an image from here to the copyboard and dropping it straight into the app. Photoshop would always open it immediately as a new and correctly sized file. Affinity Photo needs you to create a file to drop it into.

But then it has other features that I really like. Such as the Clarify filter. I used that on Carol's dog Kayah. It's fantastic at enhancing detail.

And, crucially for me, Affinity Photo can open, edit, and save Photoshop PSD files with the layers intact. I think there are a couple of layers it can't handle - some text layers spring to mind - but it simply rasterises them. So, they're there but not directly editable.

Other than that, I'm very impressed.

I'm also very busy because I'm trying to learn how to use Affinity Photo and DaVinci Resolve at the same time

As soon as I've got everything up and running and beginning to feel comfortable with it I'd love to make a few Affinity Photo videos. Enhancing detail would be a good start. Building composite compositions would be good too.

[Laurene]

When computers turn on their human masters....the stuff of nightmares!!! As usual, you seem to have it all under control and you’ve discovered new software too. I don’t know anyone who uses Affinity Photo so I’ll be interested to hear how you like it.

[Mike Sibley]

I don’t know anyone who uses Affinity Photo, so I’ll be interested to hear how you like it.

Plusses and minuses, Laurene. Overall, it's a good Photoshop alternative. Importantly, for me, it can open edit and save existing PSD files.

Some things take an extra step or two. Other things are an improvement. I sometimes get frustrated but usually find it's because I'm expecting to do things Photoshop's way and AP uses a different method. There are one or two quirks at present - even the YouTube tutorials refer to them as quirks - but AP is still evolving. That said, it's evolving from a very stable and sound base.

I'll keep you updated and hopefully find time to make a video or two later.

Today I've been spending waaaay too much time preparing a single animation for the next YouTube video... but it's been excellent practice. And I only had to look up "how to use the distort/deform filter". I worked out how to do everything else, which I much prefer. I always learn more by NOT reading the instructions