Trade secret I'm afraid!

Predominantly for performance if you have older hardware such as a weak or unsupported GPU-virtually all operations in Photo are hardware accelerated, but if it has to fall back to CPU (software) compositing you will find that having multiple live filters in a layer stack can be quite slow. A destructive version is less flexible, but once the filter is rendered it no longer has any effect on performance.

No clue it they even know how to program AI

@@toolazytobeoriginal4587 AI isn't programmed. It's trained. They know how to do it. The question is, is that feature on their roadmap? Another question is, is the time spent on one single feature worth the sacrifice of development time on other features or bugs? You may want generative fill, others may want something else. What do they pick?

I'm sure they will add it at some point, but I'm OK if they never do. With plenty of free tools for this, it's not a priority for those who value this solid and affordable alternative to RENTING software.

@@LV4EVR I have to applaud them for sticking with,buy and forget when the industry is leaning toward subscription based model. As far as pushing the product forward I think adding some sort of generative AI would be beneficial if implemented correctly but the cost of adding it to the current iteration of Affinity world undoubtedly come at a cost. AI features like what Topaz have on offer might be a better fit, their upscaling is quite good, or some of Adobe's other tricks like adding colour to black and white images or expanding the image canvas.

@@LeBurkaTron I think it's important to call Adobe's "subscription model" what it is: software RENTAL. As soon as you stop renting, you can no longer edit your own files. You are essentially paying to be held hostage. I refuse to ever participate in this evil model, from any company, regardless of features or functionality.