Using Xara and Affinity Photo

While Xara has some very good photo tools it is not a dedicated photo editing program, and if you want more than just the basics that Xara offers you have to look at something else.

There is a very handy way to set Designer Pro to use Affinity Photo as an external editor and this will allow quick and easy transfer of a photo or even a bitmap copy of a drawing into Affinity photo and back to Designer Pro again.

Under the utilities menu select options and then the photo editing tab on the options panel on this tab you can browse to the location of your affinity photo.exe and set it as an external photo editor.

one this is done then after a photo is selected and active in Xara you can double click to open your photo in Aff.Photo once you are finished you can save your changes back to Xara.

This works well but it doesn't transfer a layered work flow. You can however save the layered in Photo as an affinity photo document as well.

Thanks for posting this tip, I’ll give that a go. I bought a copy of Affinity Photo when it first came out but haven’t used it much yet!

Wholy Cow!
I think this is awesome. but it didn't work for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by angelize

While Xara has some very good photo tools it is not a dedicated photo editing program, and if you want more than just the basics that Xara offers you have to look at something else.

There is a very handy way to set Designer Pro to use Affinity Photo as an external editor and this will allow quick and easy transfer of a photo or even a bitmap copy of a drawing into Affinity photo and back to Designer Pro again.

Under the utilities menu select options and then the photo editing tab on the options panel on this tab you can browse to the location of your affinity photo.exe and set it as an external photo editor.

one this is done then after a photo is selected and active in Xara you can double click to open your photo in Aff.Photo once you are finished you can save your changes back to Xara.

This works well but it doesn't transfer a layered work flow. You can however save the layered in Photo as an affinity photo document as well.

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Exactly what I've been doing since the day I bought Affinity Photo... it's a GREAT marriage... especially for more detailed/integrate photo work... but still use XARA's very helpful quickfix
photo tools... i.e. adding/subtracting a bit of brightness, contrast, saturation, some 'level' adjustments etc. They work well and are very handy... very useful... so many types of photo
adjustments just do not need the full power of Aff. Photo... but as I said AP is great when you need that 'something' extra.

Cliff