Importing Layered PSD file

I am trying to import a layered psd file I created in Affinity Designer into the Fusion tab. However, for some reason I can't see the layers for that file in DaVinci Resolve. Can someone explain to me what I'm doing wrong. All I'm supposed to is Fusion>Import>PSD file and then drag it in the fusion tab right? I do that and all I get is a MediaIn node instead of a node that has layers. Please help!

They are all in inspector, Im not at my pc, but I remember you have to select layers in the drop down menu in inspector.

I see the confusion here, especially if you're doing this in an existing comp which already has a bunch of nodes.

Fusion -> Import PSD will add the file to your Media Pool, but you don't then drag it to the comp from there; if you do, you get just a single layer as you've seen.

As soon as you do Fusion -> Import PSD, Fusion will add a bunch of nodes to your existing composition. One per layer, with Merge nodes connecting them, set to the appropriate blend modes.

Here's what that looks like:


Unfortunately, Fusion puts this at some seemingly random position in your existing comp. And possibly even connects it up to other nodes in that area, which is really dumb. And it does this even if you click somewhere else in the comp first, which in other situations works to set where new nodes will be added, but not in this case.

So, after doing the Import PSD, look around in your comp for where the nodes got added, then move them where you want them. And double check to see if Fusion 'helpfully' connected them up to some of your existing nodes first, and undo that as necessary. And don't drag the Media Pool file in at any point.

Well my problem is that I have a file that I want to import but I'm not seeing any nodes for that file inside the fusion tab it only adds it to the media pool.

Well my problem is that I have a file that I want to import but I'm not seeing any nodes for that file inside the fusion tab it only adds it to the media pool.

So you do Fusion menu -> Import PSD and you're certain no nodes are added anywhere in the Fusion comp?

Have you scrolled around the comp a bit to be sure they're not going somewhere weird? Or you can double check what nodes are in the comp by hitting Control-A / Cmd-A to select all nodes, and then looking in the Inspector to see what node names appear.

If there's definitely no nodes added then I wonder if it's because it was created in Affinity - they're meant to be PSD compatible but maybe there's some small difference there that Fusion doesn't like.

Are you able to open it in Photoshop and re-save it from there? If not, is the file something you're able to share? If you upload it somewhere then I could see what happens for me, including after re-saving in Photoshop. And that would also give some info to BMD in case it does turn out to be an issue with Fusion not supporting Affinity-written PSDs.

I don't think Affinity is the problem because I made a mock vector drawing with more layers then my original file, the one attached in the link, and I can import it as psd with all the layers. Although it doesn't render all the layers in the preview window, but I think that's due to my weak GPU and I'm upgrading really soon anyways so I can deal with that issue later. However, the psd that you see attached is more complicated then the mock one I made in the sense that it has visibility and some gradient aspects inside the layers, even though it has only 5 layers. I opened the file in an online photo editor to make sure the layers are being exported correctly and saw that psd file is exactly as it should be. If you could try and test it yourself and see if I'm doing something wrong that would be nice. Thank you.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UoZE-x ... sp=sharing

Wow OK, I see what you mean! At first I thought it might be something trivial - the '7' at the end confusing Resolve into thinking it was a sequence. But I removed that and the results were unchanged.

As you found, I cannot get Resolve Studio to import this PSD, or any PSD based on it, including saved from Photoshop. It adds to the Media Pool, but no nodes are created. A dead end.

Over in Fusion Studio, things are slightly improved, but still no good:

1. You original file: Imports 7 layers. The first four and the last one are completely empty (transparent). The fifth contains a single black line, the sixth a black square, This is the result of the composite of those:


2. Your original file, re-saved in Photoshop 2020: First four and last layers blank. Layer five is correct, matching PSD layer 5; layer six is correct, matching PSD layer 6. Composite:


3. I created a new PS file, in which I created two gradient layers, one colour fill, and two shape layers:


Result: colour and gradient layers came in black. Shape layers came in as solid black squares on transparent background. Here's the two shape layers merged together:


So yeah, it seems these layer types are just not supported by Fusion Studio. And Resolve is even worse, not even attempting to import the file.

If possible I guess you will have to rasterise these layers, which should work OK.

Not good.

I'm sorry I'm still new to the new graphic design industry. So I'm trying pick things up as I go. Can you explain to me what it is to rasterize a vector, how it would look rasterize and/or what the steps to do it in Photoshop so that I can find the alternative in Affinity Designer? I've tried export as a SVG and there is a raster DPI but that one is just as bad as the using a PSD file because I found out that because it's a more complex SVG chrome just loads it as an img wrapped inside of an svg element instead of a complex series of coordinates. I really don't know if I'll be able to edit vector graphics in DaVinci Resolve and I was getting excited that I can maybe start YouTube with a free featured software that's all in one. I'd rather not fork out the money for after effects because despite fusion not working as well as I thought it would be I still like using DaVinci for video editing and I feel like if I was gonna buy after effects I would buy the entire designer suite package (Illustrator, AE, and Premiere Pro). I don't mind putting in the effort to learn Resolve so that's why I'm looking for maybe a better solution to making animated graphics that I can use alongside Affinity if using Fusion is going to be more trouble then it's worth. I attached some files that might help. I appreciate the time your taking to help guide me.

Ah right of course, this is Affinity Designer. More equivalent to Adobe Illustrator than to Photoshop.

Rasterisation means to convert to pixels. It's kind of the opposite of a vector, which is an image defined of instructions, like "Draw a line X long from point A to point B", where a pixel-based image just contains the data for each pixel, ie how much red, green and blue it contains.

The big advantage of vectors is that they can be scaled infinitely up or down without loss of quality. Also the tools that are used to create them tend to operate differently, ie working primarily with paths and path-based tools, rather than pixel-based tools like brushes.

I downloaded the free trial of Affinity Designer and had a play around. You can right-click on any layer and choose "Rasterize", which converts it to a Pixel layer. Actually you already had two pixel layers in your Feather7.psd, which were the two layers which imported OK in Fusion Studio.

I got some good news when I created a basic image in Designer consisting of a red and blue square, then rasterized them and exported as PSD and imported into Resolve's Fusion. The import worked, and the two layers were visible and usable.

The bad news came when I tried to rasterize the Feather7.psd you sent. I had to delete the group with mask because that can't be rasterized. But even with that gone, the resulting PSD would not import into Resolve: the same issue of it appearing in the Media Pool, but no nodes being created.

EDIT: I've worked out what was causing the problem and have a workaround; see next post.

I tried the same thing in Fusion Studio and it worked fine. At least it did on my second attempt; the first time I got black squares again. But second time I got a working PSD with each pixel layer displaying as you would expect; not sure what happened there.

So the problem appears to be specific to Resolve.

I checked the Resolve manual and it states "Photoshop (.psd) files appear as a single clip displaying only the bitmapped layers within the Edit page and Color page of DaVinci Resolve. Photoshop text layers and layer effects are not supported at the time of this writing." It goes on to say that Fusion supports layered PSDs, but I assume the 'bitmapped layers' part still applies - ie only supporting pixel/raster layers. That seems to confirm it won't support vectors. It doesn't explain why even rasterized layers are not working.

I even tried opening the PSD in Photoshop, after layers had been rasterized in Affinity Designer, and then manually copying the contents of each layer to a new layer, then saving to a new PSD. In case there was some flag or something on the layers or something. It still wouldn't import.

I tested some PSDs of my own and they worked absolutely fine, importing every layer correctly into Resolve.

Sorry, I'm quite confused. Something is clearly wonky in Resolve's Fusion page regarding the handling of PSDs, even beyond the fact that it doesn't support layers that aren't simple pixel-based. I can't figure out what's special or different about that Feather document that means it still won't load even when it's been rasterized, when my own PSDs do seem to load OK.

As a workaround you could try creating a new document, and rasterize the layers before you first export it as PSD. You could also try separately exporting each layer to its own PNG file, then importing each of those individually into Resolve. Hardly ideal, but it would work.

Perhaps someone else will chime in with their own experiences or other ideas for working workflows. I don't have very much vector experience at all, and none in Resolve/Fusion before today.

Oh I figured it out! I've got your PSD working in Resolve - when rasterized, anyway. It's a stupid problem..

The fix: add a background under it, so it doesn't sit on transparency. It's the transparent background that's breaking Resolve for some reason. No doubt something to do with how Resolve has its own media handling which includes alpha channel processing, or something like that.

So, with your Feather7.psd:
1. In Affinity Designer, rasterize each layer.
2. Now add a blank white background as the bottom layer, and Rasterize that too.
3. Export as PSD, import into Resolve as usual.
4. Result:

5. Now delete the white background layer, and the extra merge node that is no longer needed, so it looks like this:

6. Result of viewing the last merge node in viewer:

7. And each individual layer can now be accessed and manipulated in Resolve's Fusion.

So here's a workflow you can use that's maybe not TOO terrible:
A. Do your drawing/designing in Affinity Designer as normal.

B. Make sure your Document Setup has a large pixel size, larger than you would normally have. Eg 2000x2000 instead of 1000x1000. This is to ensure that when you rasterize and export a pixel-based image, you won't lose any quality if you later find in Resolve that you need the design to be bigger. Unlike with vector images, we can't just scale up any time if we find we want it bigger. So choose a size guaranteed to be big enough, erring on the side of too big. Scaling a pixel image down is fine, just don't scale up if you can avoid it.

C. When you're done with the design, save the document as usual.

D. Now also save a separate copy of it.

E. If you are using any masks, they need to be removed. For example in Feather7 you had a group mask that clipped the layers to a rectangular shape. You would need to bake that change into the layers, ie permanently clip them to the shape of the mask so you can then remove the mask.

F. In the copy, Rasterize each layer.

G. Add a white background as the bottom layer, under the rest of the layers.

H. Export as PSD.

I. Import into Resolve, delete the white background layer, and proceed with whatever you want to do.

If you later need to update the Designer document, you'll need to reload the original document (saved in step C) and then repeat steps D - I. I believe that if you save it with the same filename, you won't have to repeat step I as Resolve will pick up the changes to the file automatically.

There might be a nicer workflow than this, like some way for Affinity Designer to automatically rasterize on export so you don't need to maintain two copies, but I couldn't immediately find such an option.

For some odd reason I'm still getting the same problem with the psd file still only being added to the media pool. I've added the new files that I created in google drive because for some reason the forum isn't letting me upload anymore files. The files should be the same in terms of content but I wasn't sure which one would be more convenient to use. Could it be that I currently using a weak GPU and that's why it's not generating nodes. I thought that GPU would only be an issue whenever I'm scrubbing or previewing images in the windows.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AZD5r3 ... sp=sharing - psd file
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LMPgRq ... sp=sharing - afdesign file

Firstly, I couldn't download the afdesign file because it's not set to public. The PSD worked OK. And FYI you wouldn't ever be able to upload either here, as the forum has a 1MB file upload limit. It's just meant for logs.

So I tried to import your new PSD in Resolve and had the same issue as you: no import.

Then I opened in Photoshop and re-saved it, without changing anything, and now it worked in Resolve.

So this suggests there's still something about the Affinity-created PSD that Resolve does not like. I then tried playing around with various settings in Affinity Designer, like different PSD export types (Accurate vs Editable vs Final Cut Pro), and toggling the "Transparent Background" option in Document Setup. No change.

I went back to the document from yesterday and tried to rasterize it and add the white BG in Affinity Designer, but again it would not work in Resolve. Until I resaved it in Photoshop, at least. All I had to do was open it in PS, hit Save, and then it worked in Resolve.

Finally I tried playing with some more Document Setup options in Designer:
* Lowering DPI to 300 didn't help.
* Lowering the colour depth to RGB8 (was RGB16) DID seem to help. I got the PSD imported into Resolve.

But it's no good. It imports two layers correctly, but the others are all duplicates:


So it's missing some of the details from the PSD.

I then tried opening the Designer PSD and re-saving it in Affinity Photo, which had the same result. Not surprising as the Export dialogue is identical and it almost certainly uses the identical file handling code as Designer.

I then tried Krita, a free image editing application. This was interesting: when I opened the Designer PSD, it showed the image correctly, but it was all on one layer, so that was useless. And when I tried saving that PSD anyway, it wouldn't import into Resolve.

Then I tried Krita with the RGB8 version saved from Designer, and this showed the layers correctly. But then when I saved it in Krita and imported into Resolve, I got the same result as without Krita: imported OK, but several of the layers are duplicates.

I tested opening one of my own PSDs (saved in Photoshop) in Krita, and the layers appeared in Krita just fine, and when I saved it, it appeared in Resolve no problem. This seems some further indication that something is different about the Designer-created PSDs, something related to the colour depth perhaps (given RGB8 results in usable layers in Krita, and RGB16 does not).

So we're dealing with multiple issues here. Resolve sometimes fails to import a PSD with a transparent background (though not always - I got that working on a Krita-saved PSD today). It will generally import from Photoshop, but not from Designer when Designer is set to RGB16. When set to RGB8 it will import from Designer and Krita, but several of the layers import as exact duplicates.

I don't know if the fault is entirely Resolve's, or partly Resolve's and Designer's - I suspect the latter, given what I saw in Krita.

You always have the option of saving every individual layer as its own PNG from Designer. I'm sure that will work. But of course not very convenient.

Otherwise, the only option that seems to work reliably is for you to get Photoshop (about $10/month on its own) and then re-save your Designer PSDs. It's also a fantastic image editing application which I myself would prefer to use over the competition, but I realise the ongoing cost is not cheap.

In the meantime you could try contacting the Affinity support and/or forums and explaining the situation. I imagine they'll bounce you back here and say "Our PSDs work everywhere else, it's Resolve's fault" - though you could point them to Krita as another example of where their PSDs don't seem to work right in other apps. Even if they do blame Resolve, someone there might know some other export option or trick to try.

Go to edit tab > Open Effects on top left > Click on Toolbox below > Click on Effects > Drag Fusion Composition to Timeline > Then go to Fusion tab > Click on Fusion at the top > Import > PSD > Choose the file.

This post was really helpful to me as I was hitting a stump when trying to imports my layered PSD file. But thanks to the trial of those in the post, I got lucky.

My situation: working from a layered Affinity Photo file, stuffed to the gills with JPG imports for a massive wallpaper effect. I had nothing that needed rasterizing. Finally, I tried using another photo editor.

I opened my Affinity Photo (saved as a PSD) in Pixelmator Pro. Just to be safe, I saved the new file as a Pixelmator Pro file. I exported the Pixelmator file as a PSD; imported that file into Fusion and done!

Yay! Thank you both for you hard work.

Lesson for the day: I dunno, except Fusion likes Pixelmator Pro exports to PSD, better than Affinity Photo PDS.

Tom

Which version of Affinity Photo? 1.x or 2.x?

I ask because I just tried a quick test with both Affinity Designer 2.1 and Affinity Photo 2.1 and at least for a couple of coloured squares and an imported jpeg, the PSD layers appeared to come in correctly using Affinity's 'preserve accuracy' mode (the only one I tried).