altae

Well said

You're welcome. And each of needs a second pair of eyes, or someone to spot something "obvious", every once in awhile

Oh silly me, thank you for enlightening me Of course the thread can be closed.

Sounds like you have turned on the Stabilizer:

 

It's a shame that this simple feature still does not exist in Affinty Photo. Please Serif, implement this as it is indeed a very handy feature. Not only for drawing straight lines, it's also useful for (manual) selections and/ or masks. Without such a feature it's a pain in the a... to draw along a straight line/ edge.

We are pleased to announce a major update for the Windows release of Affinity Photo, version 1.7.2
Changes in this build
The changes in Affinity Photo for Windows 1.7.2 (over the last release Affinity Photo 1.7.1) are as follows:
New Features and Improvements:
Tweaks to Crop tool. 'Absolute Size' has been renamed to 'Resample', and the 'Unconstrained' units defaults to the document units, as well as allowing the user to change the units for the crop creation. Added more lens correction data. Added TGA export support Improved Photoshop plugin support (more to come in the future). Re-added support for CRW metadata  Improved font matching of unknown fonts when importing PDF Allow .icm profiles, as well as *.icc Enabled import of ICC profiles when there is no document Improved performance of adjusting sliders in Develop Persona Added Remove White Matte and Remove Black Matte to the Filters menu Added an option to use the version 1.6 shadows/highlights filter Improved performance of editing live filters Simplified crop tool drag-to-crop behaviour Improved Healing brush. Changed selection refinement to be the same as in version 1.6. Added Select menu to Export Persona. Added JXR file associations. Fixes
Fixed Develop White Balance with linear profiles Fixed rasterising groups with live filters inside Fixed flood select to work on placed images Fixed import of ABR brush files to skip any corrupt brushes Fixed text in shapes ignoring bounds when exporting selection Fixed incorrect rendering of text when exporting a PDF with embedded PSD Fixed PDF export of non-breaking hyphens Changed selection of first letter in bulleted list to not include the bullet Fixed failure to apply 'liga' near end of line Fixed text justification failing to split ligatures Fixed PDF export of text with ligatures to embed the font (as many browsers don't support ligatures unless the font is embedded) Fixed bullet and number lists not allowing single characters Fixed export settings not getting saved Fixed occasional crash when printing Fixed soft hyphen in a word prevents it from being added to the spelling dictionary  Fixed DNG imports with severe chromatic aberration Changed PSD import of background layers to correctly render blend modes Fixed sporadic crash in Batch processing Fixed rendering issues with Live Filters Fixed possibility of Develop Crop resulting in non-whole pixels Fixed certain CMYK JPEG opening at 72 DPI Fixed Drag and Drop of a file twice causing the file to remain locked Restored TIFF 'fff' support Fixed crashes when attempting to load truncated files Fixed failure to connect to Unsplash on Windows 7 and 8.1 Fixed Resize Document Prevent macros from recording Tone Mapping or Develop Cancelling the Crop Tool remembers the initial "drag to crop" state Fixed crash with Clone Brush (current layer and below) Fixed Image not clipping correctly when Reveal is enabled Fixed Lightroom data being stripped from Capture One XMP output Fixed saving a Jpeg replacing the Subject field EXIF Property with the Title Fixed EXIF Color Space property not matching new ICC Profile when exporting Fixed 32-bit images (and RAWs in Develop) appearing darker for people with HDR monitors Fixed Procedural Texture Up/Down onscreen modifier arrows next to the value field do not apply the value Fixed changing DPI using Anchor to Page resizes document Fixed pressing Esc during a colour pick operation hides the cursor over menu items Fixed Effects panel negatively affecting performance Fixed wrong document dimensions when switching document units Fixed 360 images losing their 360 functionality after being exported. Fixed crash when installing a new font. Fixed new fonts failing to appear when several thousand fonts have been installed. Fixed yellow colour cast opening some DNGs, such as converted Canon EOS 6D CR2 files. Fixed hang when pressing ESC to cancel Navigator panel Movement. Fixed Styles missing labels when using grid view. Fixed inability to assign Backspace key as a shortcut. Fixed Studio panel group gets disconnected after switching Personas. Fixed import of JXR 16-bit half float documents properly. Fixed Crop tool Reveal. Fixed help errors Earlier changes and fixes in 1.7.x since 1.6 (including the new 1.7 features) are listed in some detail in this earlier update announcement.
This thread is for commenting on this announcement. Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Photo Bugs on Windows section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in Help > About Affinity Photo).
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the Affinity Store software it will check for updates and offer any available update. The latest update will install over the top of any earlier version, with no need to uninstall. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "Download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Photo for Windows) can be downloaded from this link. (that installer is NOT for Windows Store purchases and needs a product key).
If you’ve purchased from the Microsoft Store— Microsoft Store updates are done automatically by the operating system (each time you start the application). If this does not happen for you, open the Windows Store app and click the three dots in the top right corner of the app and then go to Downloads and Updates. Click Get Updates. This should hopefully force the update to show.

This beta has been superseded by the release of Affinity Photo for Windows 1.7.2 to the public. Check back on this forum for future betas.
Click here to download the latest beta  Download link removed as 1.7.2 is now live
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is 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 may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Fixed Develop White Balance with linear profiles Fixed rasterising groups with live filters inside Simplified crop tool drag-to-crop behaviour Fixed flood select to work on placed images Fixed import of ABR brush files to skip any corrupt brushes Fixed text in shapes ignoring bounds when exporting selection Fixed incorrect rendering of text when exporting a PDF with embedded PSD Fixed PDF export of non-breaking hyphens Improvements to hyphenation rules Changed selection of first letter in bulleted list to not include the bullet Fixed failure to apply 'liga' near end of line Fixed text justification failing to split ligatures Fixed PDF export of text with ligatures to embed the font (as many browsers don't support ligatures unless the font is embedded) Improved font matching of unknown fonts when importing PDF Fixed bullet and number lists not allowing single characters 1.7.2.445 release notes

Yes, it's not quite as straight forward as "the old one is better than the new one". They both work differently in different scenarios. Try with both versions and see what works best for your image.

I don't think it's a good idea to call it 1.6 or legacy as it isn't actually outdated. I'd vote for something like simple (new version) and complex (old version). Or standard vs. advanced, or...

I might be overkill to open a topic just for this but I sincerely want to thank you guys for bringing back the old Shadows/ Highlights (Live) Filter in Photo Persona with the latest beta (1.7.2.424). In my opinion the old version (1.6) is so much better than the new implementation introduced with 1.7.

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is 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 may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Fixed EXIF Color Space property not matching new ICC Profile when exporting Fixed 32-bit images (and RAWs in Develop) appearing darker for people with HDR monitors Added an option to use the version 1.6 shadows/highlights filter Improved performance of editing live filters Fixed Procedural Texture Up/Down onscreen modifier arrows next to the value field do not apply the value Fixed changing DPI using Anchor to Page resizes document Fixed pressing Esc during a colour pick operation hides the cursor over menu items Fixed Effects panel negatively affecting performance Fixed wrong document dimensions when switching document units 1.7.2.414 release notes

Now that's dedication

No, it means the final version that is shipped to the customer, regardless of version number. Anyway, that's enough discussion around versioning and naming, I have bugs to fix and features to write ;-).

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is 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 may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback. 

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Fixed slow develop speeds Fixed sporadic crash with HSL range control Removed limits to shadows highlights effects Avoid over saturated shadows and washed out highlights New curve for highlights filter applied to bounded pixel formats Remap shadows and highlights slider ranges Avoid weird white balance for some old Sony cameras 1.7.1.390 release notes

Hi all, just to let you know, I'm now in contact with DxO. Hopefully between us we can sort some of these issues out.

This build has been superseded by the release of 1.7.1 announced here
We are pleased to announce a major update for the Windows release of Affinity Photo, version 1.7.0
The changes in Affinity Photo for Windows 1.7.0 over the last Affinity Photo patch 1.6.5 (1.6.5 PK) are as follows:
CHANGES SINCE LAST VERSION
EDR
Added support for EDR displays to Photo. When editing a 32bit document. Brushes
Photo 1.7 introduces a new “sub-brush” mechanism, developed in conjunction with Paolo Limoncelli (DAUB® Brushes). This exciting feature allows any brush to have a list of other brushes attached which will draw at the same time. Each sub-brush has a fully separate and customisable set of dynamics. You can control when the sub-brushes are drawn and how they blend with the main brush. The brush engine in Photo has been improved. Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. Wet edges and accumulation are now available on colour brushes and brushes with HSL variance. Brushes with multiple nozzle textures have always chosen the nozzle at random. In 1.7, the nozzle choice has a dynamic controller and ramp for greater control. All brush tools now support left and right arrow keys for rotation - a common feature request. Fixed ABR brush import (would ignore "random" controllers). RAW
The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. RAW files now load much more quickly. Reimplemented support for XTrans sensors. The denoise algorithm has been rewritten. It produces better results and takes advantage of the new GPU architecture. Hot pixel removal is now automatically performed by the Serif Labs engine. Profiled lens correction are more stable, apply more quickly, and can be toggled in the Develop UI. The histogram in the Develop persona is now presented in the output colour space - as opposed to always being linear. Develop now respects the output profile when previewing. Show which autofocus rectangles were in focus and which were selected by the camera (yellow, green respectively). A large number of new cameras are supported for RAW development (we will provide a list of the new supported cameras as soon as possible!). Filters
New “Procedural Texture” filter with advanced presets support. New “Voronoi” filter. Denoise, Clarity and Shadows / Highlights filters have been rewritten (using technology from the Develop Persona). More filters are now available as Live Filters - including the new Procedural Texture filter. Live filters have been rewritten to improve performance - especially when multiple filters are used in a document. Improved Polar to Rectangular and Rectangular to Polar filters. Added round dot type to the halftone filter. New “Lens Correction” filter - apply lens correction from the built-in lens database. Bilateral blur accuracy improvements. Adjustments
The HSL adjustment layer has been rewritten. It now supports custom hue ranges, a new algorithm, new UI and picker controls. The Levels adjustment layer now supports output levels - a common feature request. The White Balance adjustment layer has been rewritten. The Selective Colour adjustment layer has been rewritten. PSD import / export of adjustments has been improved. The Vibrance adjustment layer has been rewritten. The Recolour adjustment layer has gained a lightness slider. Layers
Layers Panel - added option for transparent background for thumbnails. Layers Panel - added multiple thumbnail size options. Layers Panel- added ability to tag layers with a colour - including PSD round-trip. Allow adding an empty group from the Layer menu. New “Duplicate Selection” item in Layer menu (old behaviour). Duplicate now duplicate the whole layer ignoring pixel selection. Alt / Option is now used to make a pixel selection from layer luminance. You can now also hold shift to add the result to the current selection. Hide / Show / Show All Layers options in layers menu. Ability to either rasterise or rasterise and trim a layer. Previously recorded macros will trim. Selections
Significant improvements to selection refinement. When using selection tools with no pixel selection, default to New / Add as appropriate. Added “Alpha Similarity” to Select Sampled Colour tool. Tools
Grouped tool shortcuts now default to needing the shift key held to cycle (option in preferences). The Crop tool has been rewritten - it now supports resolution changes, absolute pixel size and has a much improved preset mechanism. The Sponge Brush tool now gives more correct / pleasant results. Allow brush rotate / size key changes while dragging. Added a “Reveal Canvas” checkbox to the crop tool - defaults to off. Added new “Transform object separately” mode into Move tool. A general tools overhaul has been performed - providing editing of grids, guides, page origin, across multiple tools (not just in the Move tool) Patch tool now supports arrow keys for rotate / scale. All brush tools can now be axis constrained once brush has started - not just the pixel tool. History
“Alternate futures” for document history have been added. Traditionally, if you roll back the undo history then do something else all your changes after that point are lost. Photo will now display a small branch icon in the history tab when you do this. Pressing that button will cycle between all the different “futures” after that history entry - meaning you will never lose work you have done. The History page now has an “advanced” mode - which shows thumbnails and time info. I/O
HEIF images can now be loaded directly into Photo. If they contain a depth map, this will also be loaded as a second layer. Because depth maps are typically lower resolution than the main image, optional “smart” upsampling will be performed. TIFF export now has user selectable compression method. Added support for 12bit TIFF files. Introduced new metadata mining - completely rewritten to improve performance, flexibility and correctness. Metadata is now dynamically synchronised with your document - so if you resize then export, the values will be correct. Added Focal Length to metadata summary view. Added a button in general preferences to open a folder from which Photo will read LensFun-style XML files - if users wish to add / experiment with their own lens profiles. Support 16bit CMYK TIFF import. General
New ability to control how macros are scaled / aligned when playing back. Added an “Assets” panel to Photo. New cube setup mode for grids. Add “Fill with Primary / Secondary” to the Edit menu for fast access. The batch process dialog now fully supports expressions for height and width - available constants are “w”, “h” and “dpi”. “Lock guides” added to menus. Support for drag dropping .afstyles into Photo. Support for drag dropping .afpalette into Photo. Photo now supports custom document presets - a popular feature request. A new blend mode - Linear Burn - has been added. New “Move inside / outside” commands have been added - useful for quick operations on clipping masks etc. The Hard Mix blend mode has been improved. New provider options have been added to the stock panel - support for Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay. All of these providers offer full-resolution stock imagery which is free to use. Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features. Significant stability improvements when working on non-local files (network shares, USB drives, etc.). Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes. Huge macro and batch processing improvements. New welcome screen layout and all new samples.  Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list! This thread is for commenting on this announcement. Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Photo Bugs on Windows section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
For purchases from the Affinity Store the software: Each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer any available update, or it can be downloaded from here. The new build will install over the top of any earlier version, with no need to uninstall. Alternatively you can log into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the download button in there.
For purchases from the Microsoft Store: These are done automatically by the operating system (next time you start the application)

I've contacted DxO via their support channels. I'll update the thread when I know more.

Dirty? Why? You don't lose anything. It's inconvenient, yes I already wrote that. But it works perfectly and the color space stays consistent throughout the whole processing chain. And to be honest it also does not take up too much extra time because starting the plugin from within Affinity, making the desired adjustments and handing the result back to Affinity also takes up some time. But I agree, Serif should definitely fix this issue, in fact they claim their software is compatible to Photoshop plugins when in reality this compatibility is somewhat crippled as we can see in this thread.

I agree that it's very disappointing that these issues still have not been fixed. But there is a workaround: Export the image as 16 bit Tif in the desired color space, use the standalone version of the plugin (the Nik tools have them and most Topaz plugins too), process the image as desired and export again to 16 bit Tif. After this you can continue in Affinity Photo. Certainly not very convenient but it works.

I agree that it's very disappointing that these issues still have not been fixed. But there is a workaround: Export the image as 16 bit Tif in the desired color space, use the standalone version of the plugin (the Nik tools have them and most Topaz plugins too), process the image as desired and export again to 16 bit Tif. After this you can continue in Affinity Photo. Certainly not very convenient but it works.

A new beta has just been released. I hardly use the stable version anymore since betas are usually stable enough to work with. So a new beta now and then really is enough progress for me.

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is 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 may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 

We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post a new thread in this forum and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Fixed lens profile distortion checkbox label being empty instead of "(none)" Fixed reset button on Develop Lens page setting the 'use profile' option even if it's disabled Fixed clone brush from "Layers beneath" or "Current layer and below" when the destination layer is transformed  Fixed scrolling in the Crop Preset dialog not being smooth Resizing document now scales filters properly Added missing keyboard shortcut for 'Toggle Assets Panel' Added lens correction import directory for overriding/augmenting lens database Added lens profile name in Develop Added support for resetting adjustment sliders via double click Documents are no longer closed when a network drive disconnects (prevents loss of work on transient connection errors)  Fixed rendering error with compound curve nodes with multiple lines/fills  Added 'Touch for Gestures Only' option in Preferences  Fixed sporadic hang (and 100% CPU usage) Fixed assistant manager being disabled with no documents open Added Paint Mixer Brush tool setting serialisation  Fixed closing application during Customise Toolbar, resulting in application being stuck in Customise Toolbar mode  Added missing shortcuts for move inside/move outside  Fixed sporadically being unable to add Styles to the Styles panel Added Asset panel drag and drop from Explorer Fixed Layer Blend Modes failing to display after deselecting a Group or Layer object  Fixed Appearance Panel unable to use Cap, Join, Align and Mitre stroke options Fixed Layers panel mask thumbnails to draw without checkerboard  Fixed sporadic crash when viewing history panel Tweaked layout of some Preferences options Layers control has now been re-written to improve performance and stability Fixed some crashes due to parsing image metadata Added 'Image Info' drop down for placed images (allows DPI/scaling to be changed) Fixed Advanced History showing timestamps in UTC Disabled Swatches panel when a document isn't open Fixed asset search Added option for TIFF export compression 1.7.0.258 release notes

The feature to draw straight horizontal and vertical lines got added in a few builds ago in the 1.7 Beta by holding down shift when drawing (at least I know it works on Windows). It works just like it does in Photoshop. Should probably put this topic to rest now.

I think this was mentioned in passing. We ought to add a checkbox in the More export dialog to allow for LZW compression. I found some other apps that don't work with the new Adobe compression (Epson Print Layout to name one of them) so we need to make sure we don't break compatibility for anything or anyone else on release. 
Unfortunately, it sounds like this is also affecting Topaz 

It's a shame that this simple feature still does not exist in Affinty Photo. Please Serif, implement this as it is indeed a very handy feature. Not only for drawing straight lines, it's also useful for (manual) selections and/ or masks. Without such a feature it's a pain in the a... to draw along a straight line/ edge.