For iPad apps, look up Astropad or Duet Display. They work best with the Apple Pencil but you can still use a passive (cheap) stylus or your finger to draw on the iPad inside of the Affinity apps.
For iPad apps, look up Astropad or Duet Display. They work best with the Apple Pencil but you can still use a passive (cheap) stylus or your finger to draw on the iPad inside of the Affinity apps.
Status: Beta Release
Purpose: New features, fixes, improvements
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not Submitted
Download: 1.5 Beta 1 Here
This is an early beta of a substantial change to our codebase and as much as we have tried to ensure the quality of the code, it should be considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that you may be adversely affected by the application failing. In addition it is definitely worth noting that files created in Affinity 1.5 cannot be opened in 1.4 so always make a copy of your important documents before opening them in 1.5 to ensure you do not accidentally overwrite them and are unable to open them in your 1.4 version.
To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it.
With all that said, here is a list of all the new things we can do with 1.5. This will be a fairly short beta (approx. 6 weeks) and things will likely be bad / broken for the the first week or two. After that, we expect the beta to become more stable and usable.
Please understand that all betas must start somewhere - and that they are beta for a reason!
Thanks once again for taking the time to download and use our beta :) - here's the list:
Focus Merge Support
Focus merging allows you to generate a detailed composite image from a number of images focussed at differing lengths. Use File -> New Focus Merge to get started.
HDR Merge Support
HDR merging lets you create a deep, unbounded 32-bit image from a number of exposure bracketed source images. Use File -> New HDR Merge to get started.
New 32bit RGB Editing Mode
Photo now offers a full compositing / editing environment for 32bit unbounded images. It correctly deals with 0-alpha cases (as per the OpenEXR spec) and generally operates in linear space.
Known Issues: Whilst most filters will work out of the box, we still have significant work to do to make all adjustments / blend modes work correctly in 32bit. Don't be surprised if you get weird result sometimes.
Known Issues: Our renderer will seem very slow when dealing with 32bit documents - it's because we are (at the moment) falling back to CPU where we should be able to use the GPU. This will get faster soon :)
Tone Mapping Persona
Full tone mapping Persona for both HDR and LDR images. This is obviously best used with an image merged by HDR merge - although you can use it on any image.
Known Issues: The UI still requires refinement and eventually there may be more sliders!
OpenEXR / HDR (Radiance) Import / Export
Photo can now import and export .hdr (Radiance, RGBE) and .exr (OpenEXR) images.
Known Issues: We know that people need lots of export options - mainly for OpenEXR - these will drop in in the next few weeks.
Macros
Using the View -> Studio -> Macro and View -> Studio -> Library menu items, you can access new panels which will allow you to record actions, save them, then play them back later. You can also store them in a handy gallery which will offer you live previews of what each stored macro would do to your document if you applied it.
Known Issues: You will find that you can not record some actions which seem natural / obvious (eg. selecting layers). This will be fixed soon.
Batch Processing
Using File -> New Batch job, you can queue up processing on a large number of files. You can resize, convert format and apply any number of macros to each file. The batch processing happens in the background - so you can continue working whilst the jobs are processed.
Live Projections
Photo 1.5 contains a new mechanism which allows you to edit an image in different spatial domains - we currently support the “Equirectangular” domain (360 pano - Ricoh Theta, etc.). You can use all tools when editing - and you can convert back once you have edited. This is especially useful for cleaning up stitching artefacts, or artefacts at the zenith / nadir of the image. Use the options in Layer -> Live Projection to get started.
Known Issues: Perspective projection is disabled. Will be introduced soon.
Improved Pixel Tool
The pixel tool is improved in 1.5 - you can hold shift when dragging to constrain the direction of painting (sorry we did not get this working sooner!). You can also select what happens when you hold Alt and drag - erase to transparent, erase to background colour, or erase to whatever the nominated snapshot / history location is (like in the Clone tool).
New “Pixel Art” Document Resizing
Photo now contains an alternative way to resize a document - using well known pixel-art resampling algorithms. If you work with pixel art and want to use this feature, it’s located under the Document menu.
Known Issues: This can crash if your document is huge - we will fix this.
New “Accumulation” Brush Dynamics
Many users have asked for “Opacity Jitter”. For us, opacity is a constant thing and will remain constant. However, we have added a new property to brushes - “Accumulation” - which should allow you to get what you need :) Please let us know how this works out for you..
Text Styles
Affinity Photo now has the same Text Styles support as Designer - it’s all shared code so it should work right out of the box :) Let us know if you find anything odd about it.
New Marquee Modes (Polygonal, Magnetic) [NOT AVAILABLE YET]
We are committed to adding these modes in 1.5. There are already icons / modes for them in the context toolbar of the Freehand Marquee tool. At the moment, it won’t let you enter these modes - but it will in a subsequent beta build :)
Even more RAW cameras supported
We have upgraded our RAW support again! I’m sorry I can’t give a full list of supported hardware right now, but I aim to do so tomorrow :)
Improved Metadata Mining
Our detection of RAW / JPEG / etc. metadata has been upgraded - after reports of certain lenses not being properly recognised - hopefully this update will fix the missing ones, but if not, please let us know!
Massive Improvements to Export Persona
Our Export Persona has seen huge upgrades in this cycle - you now have total control of exactly what resolution sets get exported. You can also use our handy batch export builders to quickly generate content for external consumption - ie. Xcode .assets - even Spline compatible metadata can be generated!
Layered TIFF Interop
Users have constantly asked us to support “Layered TIFF”. Layered TIFF is not a thing. TIFF with embedded data is a thing - and I’m happy to report that we now import embedded PSD / Affinity data and can write TIFF with embedded Affinity data.
Halftone Filter
We have a marvellous new halftone pattern filter in 1.5 - it can approximate monochrome, colour, circular and line halftones and can even be applied as a “Live Filter”.
Known Issues: This filter can be a bit funky in "Live Filter" mode - and if you have a retina screen, you will see some jittering even in non-live.
Dust & Scratches Filter
Many user have asked us for a “Dust & Scratches” filter - so we have made one. It’s extremely useful for removing sporadic small defects in images. Please let us know if it works for you.
Layer Linking [NOT IMPLEMENTED YET]
Layer linking will happen in 1.5 - at the moment it is currently not exposed in this beta. Look out for it soon though - it should set the benchmark for how linked layers should work in a raster editor.. More on this soon!
“Edit in Affinity Photo” Photos extension
This is something which we didn’t think we could do - a Photos extension for Mac OS 10.9 and above which simply allows you to use the full Photo app to edit your images - and stores the changes you have made as a layered document.
New Colour Picker Tool
After literally thousands of requests, we have implemented a dedicated picker tool for colours. It requires little explanation - so let us know if it works for you :)
New Clone Sources Panel
We now have a new studio panel which allows you to store up an unlimited number of global sources for the Clone / Healing brush - it even works across multiple documents.
Direct PSD Write-Back
One of the most requested features - direct write-back to PSD. A number of 3rd party DAM applications will happily deal in PSD - but until now, Photo required you to File -> Export for PSD. No longer! You can now just hit File -> Save! You will need to turn this on - in File -> Preferences - please read the warning there carefully!
No Thumbnails Option
This is more a Designer feature, but I promised it some time ago so here it is - you can choose (in Preferences) not to write out a thumbnail with your documents. This has the advantage of making your documents use less space - but obviously you won’t get Finder thumbnails, etc.
Improved Vectorscope
Our old HSL vectorscope is no more - replaced by a vastly more appropriate Rec.709 YUV scope with an improved graticule :)
Improved Photoshop Plugin Support
We have found a significant bug with our plugin code - it has been fixed :) That said - please don’t expect all your plugins to now work. This fix primarily puts us in a position to work properly with plugin makers to move forward. That said, some plugins will now spring into life - “Focus Magic” being a notable example.
Multi-monitor Colour Profile Support
Sorry it took so long to get this fixed - we now can profile different on different monitors.
Adjustment Performance Improvements
Found and fixed a simple issue which made changing adjustment parameters appear to be slow. Fixed.
This update also includes literally hundreds of fixes and small improvements, some of which are listed below:
- User control over two pass rendering on Retina devices.
- PSD import / export improvements.
- PDF import / export improvements.
- Snapping improvements - candidate-free snapping, gaps-and-spans (Alt key in Move Tool), so much more!
- Performance and stability improvements for macOS Sierra.
Thanks again for taking the time to use this beta!
Affinity Photo Team :ph34r:
Just another voice for this. There is a big gap and having a suitable alternative to Lightroom will make an awful lot of people very happy indeed. I still use Aperture as my DAM and will continue until someone releases something of a similar ilk. I won't touch Adobe products and Capture One is in many ways overkill and not as intuitive.
1) Please make the DAM application, as well as its utilization of Affinity Photo as an "external" editor, as non-destructive as possible. At its best, AP would not even be considered "external" at all, but just another editing instruction set that doesn't touch or duplicate the original file. This is a top priority for me.
2) Those of you who cite Bridge as the superior due to its "in-place" approach to file management, both Aperture and Lightroom (and Capture One) can do the same type of "referenced" management. Bridge is a god awful mess of an application. I hope nothing is modeled after it where DAM is concerned. Libraries/Catalogs have come a long way since iPhoto started hiding originals years ago. They're not a bad idea anymore. But it's always nice and necessary to allow files to remain unmanaged (just not the way Bridge does it).