LilleG

Status: Release Candidate
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not Submitted
 
Download: 1.5 RC1
 
We are pleased to announce that Affinity Photo 1.5 has transitioned into the "Release Candidate" phase. This late stage of the beta process is used to shake out any final bugs with the new features added to 1.5. Please find a brief list of the new features below:
 
Focus Merge Support   Focus merging allows you to generate a detailed composite image from a number of images focused at differing lengths. Use File -> New Focus Merge to get started.   Video tutorials: Focus Merging Focus Merge Retouching Focus Merging Bracketed Images   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.   Video tutorials: HDR: Merging and Tone Mapping HDR: Tone Map Presets HDR: Panoramas HDR: Preprocessing HDR: Advanced Editing HDR: Ghosts Removal   New 32bit RGB Editing Mode   Photo now offers a full compositing / editing environment for 32bit unbounded images.   Video tutorials: HDR: 32-bit Editing   32bit Develop   Photo can now Develop RAW files directly into a 32bit document - so all highlights / shadows are preserved and recoverable at any time.   Video tutorials: 32-bit Raw Development   OCIO (OpenColorIO) Support   Photo now support end-to-end OCIO colour workflows.   Video tutorials: OpenColorIO Setup OpenColorIO Adjustment   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.   Video tutorials: Regular Tone Mapping   OpenEXR / HDR (Radiance) / 32bit TIFF Import / Export   Photo can now import and export .hdr (Radiance, RGBE) and .exr (OpenEXR) images. It correctly deals with 0-alpha cases (as per the OpenEXR spec) and generally operates in linear space. It support multi-layer EXR files and offers control (through Preferences) over alpha association and premultiplication.   Video tutorials: OpenEXR Multichannel Import/Export OpenEXR Import Options   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.   Video tutorials: Macros Macros: Equations   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.   Video tutorials: Batch Processing   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.   Video tutorials: 360 Live Editing 360 Advanced Editing 360 Retouching 360 Multiple Views Live Perspective Projection    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.   Video tutorials: Pixel Art Resize    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 :)   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 :)   New Marquee Modes (Polygonal, Magnetic)   Photo now has 3 modes for the freehand selection tool - Freehand, Polygonal and Magnetic.   Even more RAW cameras supported   Over 70 new RAW cameras are supported.   Improved Metadata Mining   Our detection of RAW / JPEG / etc. metadata has been upgraded and some serious bugs have been fixed.   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.   Video tutorials: Halftone Scanlines Effect   Improved Apply Image Filter   Users can how use the current layer as the source for Apply Image - or drag any layer from the layers tab into the dialog to use that as thr source. We also offer handy equations in the filter to control how channels are transferred - in an arbitrary colour source.   Video tutorials: Apply Image Apply Image: Equations   Improved Select Sampled Colour Filter   You can now select by intensity in the select sampled colour tool.   Equations Filter   A new Equations Distortion filter allows users to create custom spatial filters.   Video tutorials: Equations filter Macros: Equations   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.   Video tutorials: Dust & Scratches Filter    “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.   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.   Video tutorials: Clone Sources Clone Sources: Texture Creation   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 :) We are now finding the majority of plugins work properly.   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:   Download: 1.5 RC1

Oh, this wish is over two years old... I really like the dark UI, especially when I work at the evening in low light situations. But I must also admit, that in bright daylight condition a light grey UI is far better and homogenic to the eyes. It would be really helpful if the gamma could be set to a much brighter UI, where the caption goes from white to black. This is just a color reversal snapshot, only to show how 'smooth' black text on light grey is. It should be easy to implement this feature. +1 from me too :)        

Or you can create custom Shortcuts in Preferences to Toggle almost every panel in the Studio if you want to really free up screen space.  

I do really like Photo and Designer and expect to keep them as my go-to apps but unless there is an option for a lighter UI in version 2, I don't expect to upgrade either one.  Instead I'll just muddle along with the final version of V1.  I'm hoping that's not a choice I have to make but I'm really, really tired of struggling with this dark, low-contrast interface.

Andi, I am very much looking forward to using the iOS versions of AD and AP. Actually, as of now, I am very much looking forward to anything You guys will publish in the near future. Fine work so far :)
 
RD

Mike,
 
I think we have it! Looks like we are writing two EXIF tags:
 
<aux:Lens>24-105mm f/4L IS USM</aux:Lens>
 
and
 
<exif:Lens>Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM</exif:Lens>
 
Some apps will read one, some the other...
 
I've changed our code to write the more complete lens description into both tags - this will be in the next beta (12).
 
Thanks for your help with this!
 
Andy.

Just starting with Beta 11 and noticed the crop tool has the darken border option. Thanks for that. Any chance both that and the constraints could be sticky? It's a nuisance to have to reset with every image.

Hey Fist of the mighty Bob,
 
Plugin support is an ongoing task for the development team. We do tend to download the plugins to check for compatibility and log issues where they do not work.
 
If you have listed them elsewhere, we should eventually get around to looking into it. I think we should ideally have a location where our users can post general plugin issues.
Thanks.

Thanks.  That will be quite handy for reading through the Help files in spare moments.  I've been trying to just work my way through start to finish since I've discovered several things that I didn't even know I wanted to do.  And this will make it much easier to do. 

I do really like Photo and Designer and expect to keep them as my go-to apps but unless there is an option for a lighter UI in version 2, I don't expect to upgrade either one.  Instead I'll just muddle along with the final version of V1.  I'm hoping that's not a choice I have to make but I'm really, really tired of struggling with this dark, low-contrast interface.

I like what Apple did to the workflow of their pro apps I know (Logic Pro X, Final Cut Pro X). They are more logical, keep all the tools you use the most in the main window, and let you configure everything in a snap.
 
What I don't like is the dark UI. While it may make sense for the preview mode of a photo or movie app, since it would simulate the dark room or the movie theatre, I find it doesn't work with music, where you usually work in the light, to see scores (white paper) or the face of the other musicians. And I find it doesn't work for illustration/page layout, where you work on white paper.
 
Paolo

Indeed, Paolo, that is exactly my opinion. The Apple developers made great advances with respect to workflow and functionality in the Pro apps, however much of that progress is spoiled by the decision for the dark, low-, or rather no-, contrast interfaces. And the Logic Pro interface is still more readable and more structured than the interfaces of Motion, Final Cut Pro, even iMovie. I am already afraid of the day, when the new, “streamlined” version of Logic hits the App Store …  :( :blink:

Very easy: Imagine you make a screenshot from any site and you only want one detail of it. Why is it useful to hold the complete picture in memory? For me the Crop-function is irritating - in Photoshop Elements it's so that this function erase permanently everything outside its bounds so how DavidMac wrote at first.

I own a copy of iDraw (now called Graphic) from Autodesk for the sole purpose of using its dimension tags on its paths (it's not actually a tool, but rather a stroke style that automatically adds a label showing the length dimension and arrow heads at either end. It even has a document scale so you can draw something 10mm wide, and the label can automatically display 10m if you've applied a 1:1000 scale.
 
It's an absolute joy to use (it's just a pity that the rest of the application is so horrid) so pleeeeeeeaaaaaase add a dimension tool. Your awesome scaling, snapping and massive zooming has already set the groundwork for it. It seems like a natural progression.

MEB, would you also request that Shortcuts for the Macro and Library Panels be added in Affinity Photo Preferences as well?

As someone with a completely satisfactory DAM (Media Pro) I'm much more eager for iPad Photo, which I will definitely buy.

Embedded videos don't seem to be working as they should, but when I pressed the 'Quote' button at the bottom of Callum's post I could see the URL for this YouTube tutorial: Affinity Photo - Sketch Effekt (English Subtitles).
 
Here's one in English: Transform any Photo into a Pencil Drawing (Affinity Photo Tutorial).

In Line Mode, you can get a perfectly horizontal line (or a perfectly vertical one, or a line sloping at exactly 45 degrees) by holding down the Shift key on your keyboard as you draw.

Let's go easy on Serif, guys. They are but a small team compared to Adobe behemoth. The fact that they decided to go with releasing Windows apps means that they have a very good strategy to expand brand awareness and user base, which should help to improve the quality of the existing apps we love.
 
A solid requirements process, amongst other things, is crucial to ensure that chances of screwing up big-time in the future are minimised. Time is needed to ideate, prototype and test. Serif is doing all this in our interest. With the work they've released this far, we are indefinitely grateful to them.

As someone with a completely satisfactory DAM (Media Pro) I'm much more eager for iPad Photo, which I will definitely buy.

There are times when it useful to permanently and completely get rid of all surplus material outside the image border. In other words a destructive crop.

Could we have an option on the Crop tool property bar to do this please?

I'm looking for something similar, although I've used the cropping successfully to make a circle into a witch's cauldron, there are times when I would like to use the knife version in other Serif products to cut an item into two- with a freehand cut, not always a straight line cut - and to separate the cut parts and use them independently.

One of the most important things that I think that it should be added as soon as possible is a way to save expressions so that a user could create an expression library.

I have a Huion 610 Pro, which is far from the newest model, that I am very happy with.  Very responsive and a great price.

ronnyb,
 
I disagree there - if I have N contiguous layers which I need to toggle visibility of all at once, I group them (Photo will know if they are all adjustments, masks, etc. and do the right thing when they are grouped)..
 
Multi-selecting any non-contiguous set of layers then toggling visibility by clicking the eye icon on any one of them makes more sense to me..
 
Andy.