Editor › Workflows
What kind of professional work is PhotoAIA built for?
PhotoAIA is built for professional image editing: retouching, layer-based compositing and colour-managed print preparation. It is explicitly not a page-layout tool, not a vector illustration tool and not desktop-publishing software — those are different jobs with different tools.
What PhotoAIA is
PhotoAIA edits raster images — photographs, scans, and flattened or layered artwork. Its core strengths are a full layer model, ICC-driven CMYK colour management, and print-oriented export: the same job a professional would do in Photoshop or Affinity Photo for image work specifically.
What PhotoAIA explicitly is not
- Not page layout — no master pages, no multi-page document flow, no threaded text across frames. A PhotoAIA document is one canvas.
- Not vector illustration — shape and pen tools exist to build and clip paths inside an image, not to design standalone vector artwork; shapes rasterize on PSD export.
- Not desktop publishing — there is no book- or brochure-assembly workflow. That is a deliberate scope decision, not an oversight.
Where it sits in a print pipeline
- Bring artwork in as .paia, .psd, .tif/.tiff, .png, .jpg/.jpeg, .webp, .svg, .gif or .bmp — PSD import preserves pixels, groups, masks and blend modes, though text, shapes and Smart Objects arrive as pixels.
- Retouch and composite using layers, masks, adjustment layers and Smart Objects.
- Colour-manage the result — load an ICC profile, separate to CMYK with a chosen rendering intent and black point compensation, and soft-proof before committing.
- Export for print — a CMYK TIFF (ICC embedded, independently validated) or a print PDF (bleed, crop and registration marks, ICC OutputIntent; artwork is flattened, and it is not labelled or certified PDF/X).
Format support at a glance
| Format | In | Out |
|---|---|---|
| .paia (native) | Yes — the only fully editable round trip | Yes |
| PSD | Yes, with limitations (text/shapes/Smart Objects rasterize) | Yes, with a compatibility report before writing |
| TIFF | Yes — strips/tiles, common compressions, RGB/gray/palette/CMYK, ICC preserved (not BigTIFF or planar) | Yes — 8-bit RGB or CMYK, plus 16-bit passthrough, ICC embedded |
| Not an input format | Yes — flattened, bleed and marks, ICC OutputIntent | |
| PNG / JPEG / WebP | Yes | Yes — flattened RGB |
| SVG | Yes | Yes — four export modes |
Questions
- Can PhotoAIA lay out a multi-page document?
- No. Each PhotoAIA document is a single canvas; there is no page-layout or master-page system.
- Can I open a TIFF file in PhotoAIA?
- Yes. Strips or tiles, no compression, LZW, Deflate or PackBits, and RGB, grayscale, palette or CMYK all open, with the embedded ICC profile preserved byte-exact. BigTIFF and planar (non-chunky) layout are not supported and fail with a clear error; a multipage file opens a page-selection dialog.