Some recent articles indicating that Adobe might raise the price of their Photography Program made me decide to look at Affinity Photo as a pixel editor and, in particular, its ability to run both Sharpen AI and Denoise AI. The first thing I found is that Affinity Photo does not even display either AI plugin as a plugin and I could not even find either the Denoise AI or Sharpen AI plugins anywhere on my Mac.The apps, yes. The plugins, no.
My backup method for calling those would be to use Topaz Studio, which Affinity Photo can successfully call as a plugin, but when I did that I realized that the “Plug-ins” dropdown menus when called by Photoshop or Affinity Photo differ. The Photoshop call displays 10 command pulldowns, including “Plug-in”. The Affinity Photo call displays 9command pulldowns, and does not include “Plug-in” even though both Studio plugins are the same version (1.14.4).
Here is a screen shot of the Studio when loaded by Photoshop:
You can see that there are 9 pulldown commands listed, and that “Plug-in” is not displayed, so some questions.
Why the difference? Does Studio know, when it is being loaded, that it can not call the plugins and hence not display the Plug-ins pulldown? Or is something else going on here?
Where are the Sharpen AI and Denoise AI plugins on my Mac? I can not find it anywhere. Perhaps if I can point Affinity Photo directly to them it will display and call them.
Not sure about a Mac, maybe someone else will step in and tell you where they are, this link will tell you where the general locations are, I suspect you need to choose the System Library/Application Support/Topaz Labs/ location and point to that in the preferences. See this article:
Studio, when called as a plugin, can and does call other Topaz plugins. I have done that many times using Photoshop, but the Studio plugin, when called from Affinity Photo, does not even display the Plug-in command. Why the difference between how it operates when called by Photoshop and when called by Affinity Photo?
> you need to choose the System Library/Application Support/Topaz Labs/ location
That is the first place I looked, and the TopazLabs folder is there, but no plugins for either Sharpen AI or Denoise AI. At the least there are no binaries that have the “plugin” suffix.
> On windows simply point to the locations through the Preferences, Plugins and they become available in the Affinity, Filters, Plugins menu:
Sure, but I am working on a Mac and those entries are not visible on the Mac at the expected location.
In fact if you click on the “Open Default Folder in Finder” button in AP you are taken to an obscure folder in the AP container for plugins and presumably if you copy the plugins to that folder they will be recognized, but I can not find either the Sharpen AI or Denoise AI plugins anywhere on the system. Of course they are somewhere, but perhaps they do not have the .plugin suffix. Photoshop knows where they are since they can be called, but I have not found them.
Just to be completely clear, here is a screen shot of the TopazLabs folder contents in the system Library, which is where your post indicating things should be, and where I looked before I posted:
As for the other apps such as Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI on Win (I know you are on Mac) you need to run as a standalone first to have the plugins installed.
The other option, if a Mac user doesn’t step in, is to raise a support request at the Topaz Labs web site.
> As for the other apps such as Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI on Win (I know you are on Mac) you need to run as a standalone first to have the plugins installed.
I believe that is true on the Mac as well, but both Sharpen AI and Denoise AI have been run as apps. Both plugins are available in Photoshop but not in Affinity Photo and I can not find them on the system to add them manually. That is really the issue here. I can not find the plugins anywhere on my Mac.
> The other option, if a Mac user doesn’t step in, is to raise a support request at the Topaz Labs web site.
If I do not see a response indicating where the plugins are I will do that. Thank you for the suggestion.
Before I opened a support ticket I decided to look in the container contents of the app itself. On a Mac an app consists of multiple folders, some of which contain other apps, and I found the Sharpen AI plugin in the app container. I expect I will be able to copy it out of the container and to a plugin location, and thus should be able to make it available to other pixel editors. Presumably Denoise is the same.
I can not be sure if the plugin alone, when copied from the app container, will be sufficient to allow other editors to use it as a plugin, but it is a start.
I got out of using Adobe at the beginning of the year. I have Affinity but I do not use it as my main editor, I use ON1. I found that ON1 can organise my files and access all the Topaz plugins plus lots of others. It depends on how you organise your own workflow but it might be worth a shot.
I have ON1, although I am not on the continuing program so my version is a couple of months old, and it works OK for me, but it does not have the pixel editing functionality that I use Photoshop and/or Affinity Photo for. But I don’t think it will take care of some of the more complex pixel editing functionality I use the pixel editors for. If I want to use the puppet-warp or distortion tools in PS/AP or do some context-sensitive resizing I don’t think ON1 will help me.
I have found the Sharpen AI and Denoise AI plugins inside the respective apps on my Mac and now have them working with Affinity Photo. I am still trying to understand why Topaz Studio does not allow me to use the Topaz plugins if I call it from Affinity Photo. If I can not get that worked out on my own, or if someone does not post on what the issue is, I will file a support request. It just seems odd.
Right. But on your copy of Studio you have the Plug-ins dropdown visible. That is not showing when I call Studio from Affinity Photo on my Mac. You can see the photo earlier in this thread.
The thing that really puzzles me is that if I call Studio from Photoshop or from Photo Line I have the Plug-ins dropdown visible. If I call it from Affinity Photo I do not.
Perhaps, but I suspect that they will just say that it is Topaz’s plugin and all they do is call it, and I suspect that is right. I will file a support request with Topaz and see what they say.
I would do two things here 1) Ask on the Affinity Forum as I do know that there is a difference between the behaviour of PS Plugins on Mac and Windows; and, 2) check through the Topaz Labs support as you have already done.
As a matter of fact, it’s the Affinity Photo Beta, that just updated this morning, when I went to “fire it up”… While up to the last version of the Beta (haven’t had enough time to use this one) DOES seem to call up a full version of TS (plug-ins, and all), from the AP plug-in menu, It STILL won’t work properly, with with some of the other plug-ins out there.
Thank you.I have downloaded and installed it, and TS does show the plugins link when called, so I guess it was AP that was the issue and not TS itself. It does seem very odd.
I had stopped using AP some months ago when it became clear that it was never going to be able to properly call some of the PS plugins I regularly use but this talk of an increase in the Adobe Photography program fee (if it happens) will send me back to it again. Thank you again for the information.
