Andy Somerfield

antonkudin, Thanks - this appears to already have been logged recently. It will get sorted out soon I hope. Andy.

Frozen Death Knight, Thanks. I could not think of a reasonable need for the "from centre" when using rectangular marquee (given as there is only a "creation" mode, not a "resize" mode) - if there is one, I will happily add it! The ability to resize crops from the centre is already in the reported list of bugs I think - so will get sorted out sooner or later Andy.

smadell, Thanks for the heads up re. the localisation bug. It's more nefarious than it seems and is likely causing some of the preset crashes (in any language other than UK English). At the moment, selecting a preset then moving panels actually updates that preset on the fly. That might be counter-intuitive and if so will be changed. I agree also about the confirmation dialog. Thanks, Andy.

Artsketch, As I said in the release notes, this beta has started early in order to maximise time spent testing the new GPU abstraction. More features will be added before 1.9 ships, and many more bugs will be fixed (we haven't really started fixing historical bugs for this release yet). Andy.

evtonic3, Thanks - the next build will enable most filters on masks to further improve things. Andy

Dazmondo77, Would I be right in assuming you have no Metal compatible GPU? Edit: Yes, I see that that is the case. Thanks for the report - will be fixed for the next build. Thanks, Andy.

DM1, The statement about not all features being present yet means there are more things coming than listed - all the listed things are available right now Thanks, A

Yep - thanks Pauls - it's in Assistant Options (which in the next build, will also be accessible from preferences).

Status: Beta Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo for iPad From App Store App Store: Not submitted Download link: Download Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first build of Affinity Photo 1.9.0 for iPad. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. This beta is significantly different from the 1.8.4 version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous / future versions of Affinity Photo. Furthermore, massive behind the scenes work has been done to enable GPU acceleration for the Windows version of Affinity Photo in 1.9. In theory this should have no consequences for macOS / iOS users - but it’s likely that a couple of things will have become broken along the way. We are giving ourselves a longer beta period with 1.9 in order to find and fix those things. This also means that the full complement of new features is not available yet in this 1.9 beta - more will be added over the coming weeks. Thanks again for your continued support! Affinity Photo Team  Changes Since 1.9.0 - The “Serif Labs” RAW engine is now available on iPad. - Added external display support for iPad (in the navigator panel, once the external display is connected). - You can now single tap a spare channel in the Channels panel to edit it like a layer. - A benchmarking tool has been added in the preferences dialog. - Blend modes now work on “alpha only” layers (masks, adjustments, live filters, etc.). - Added a new “Divide” blend mode. - Added “Create from centre” for the elliptical marquee tool. - Allowed snapping to the bounds of the pixel selection. - Added ability to create brushes from the current pixel selection with one click.

Status: Beta Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo Mac App Store: Not submitted Download ZIP: Download Auto-update: Pending Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first build of Affinity Photo 1.9.0 for macOS. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. This beta is significantly different from the 1.8.4 version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous / future versions of Affinity Photo. Furthermore, massive behind the scenes work has been done to enable GPU acceleration for the Windows version of Affinity Photo in 1.9. In theory this should have no consequences for macOS / iOS users - but it’s likely that a couple of things will have become broken along the way. We are giving ourselves a longer beta period with 1.9 in order to find and fix those things. This also means that the full complement of new features is not available yet in this 1.9 beta - more will be added over the coming weeks. Thanks again for your continued support! Affinity Photo Team  Changes Since 1.9.0 - Improved “Serif Labs” RAW engine. - You can now single click a spare channel in the Channels panel to edit it like a layer. - The Curves adjustment now has numeric field controls for precise positioning. - Studio presets are now available. - A benchmarking tool has been added in the help menu. It will only become available when no documents are open. - Blend modes now work on “alpha only” layers (masks, adjustments, live filters, etc.). - Added a new “Divide” blend mode. - Added “Create from centre” for the elliptical marquee tool. - Allowed snapping to the bounds of the pixel selection. - Added ability to create brushes from the current pixel selection with one click. To be notified about all future macOS beta updates, please follow this notification thread To be notified when this Photo update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo on macOS customers, please follow this thread

Status: GM Seed Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo for iPad From App Store App Store: Submitted Download link: Download Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the final build of Affinity Photo 1.8.4 for iPad. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. This beta is an incremental update to the 1.8.3 version recently released to all customers. We recommend that you use this beta in preference to the store version if you are affected by any of the issues listed below. Please note that there is no longer a requirement to email photoipadbeta@seriflabs.com to join this beta - anyone can use the beta using the link above, provided you have the App Store version of Photo installed. Affinity Photo Team  Changes This Build - Mitigate blurring when converting to / from equirectangular projection. - Visual improvements for font flyout etc. - PSD export will no longer clip layers to the page. - Fixed Sigma 50-100mm F1.8 DC HSM Art lens identification. - Fixes for iOS14 scribble mode. - Fixed corruption with certain batch jobs. - Fixed corruption in EPS export. - Fixed issue where pixel selection is not initially visible when loading a document. - Help improvements. - Localisation improvements. Changes Since 1.8.3 - Trackpad support for new Magic Keyboard. - Supported X3F RAW loading. - Added ability to only render retina resolution. - Improved performance on new 6GB devices. - Custom user font support. - Improvements to Canon EOS-1D Mk. III metadata import. - PDF import performance improvements. - Document save performance improvements. - Detect edges improved on 32bit documents. - Placing RAW files now produces Pixel layers, as opposed to Image layers. - Text performance improvements. - Provide localised history timestamp text. - Improved support for .fff RAW files. - “Save document with history” will now show up as a recorded macro step. - Mask thumbnails now look more correct. - Resetting the Voronoi filter now resets to the correct values. - Improved selective viewing of LAB document channels in the Channels panel. - Fixed reading of XP metadata under certain conditions. - Fixed high pass filter when using LAB colour. - Fixed issue where having Photo installed would stop Luma Fusion importing LUTs. [*] - Fixed issue where selecting a brush from the brush could select the wrong brush. - Fixed a crash when refining selection. - Fixed an issue where the history page could get out of step in Develop. - Fixed crash when inferring LUT. - Fixed erroneous blend mode imports for PSD files. - Fixed a crash in red-eye removal. - Assorted small fixes. - Localisation improvements. - Help improvements. [*] This will likely not work until 1.8.4 is released - because you need the retail Photo installed to use the beta and it will continue to steal the LUT associations.

Status: GM Seed Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo Mac App Store: Submitted Download ZIP: Download Auto-update: Available Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the final build of Affinity Photo 1.8.4 for macOS. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. This beta is an incremental update to the 1.8.3 version recently released to all customers (though it installs parallel to the release, as described above). We recommend that you use this beta in preference to the store version if you are affected by any of the issues listed below. Affinity Photo Team  Changes Since Last Build - Mitigate blurring when converting to / from equirectangular projection. - Assorted Big Sur improvements. - PSD export will no longer clip layers to the page. - Fixed Sigma 50-100mm F1.8 DC HSM Art lens identification. - Fixed corruption with certain batch jobs when Metal compute is enabled. - Fixed corruption in EPS export when Metal compute is enabled. - Fixed issue where pixel selection is not initially visible when loading a document. - Help improvements. - Localisation improvements. Changes Since 1.8.3 - Improved selective viewing of LAB document channels in the Channels panel. - Improvements for Force Touch Trackpad users. - Improved layers panel representation of empty groups. - Improvements to Canon EOS-1D Mk. III metadata import. - Improved reliability of Canon CR3 RAW loading. - Improved support for .fff RAW files. - Right click in the Move Tool will offer a tree of layers to select from. - Honour the monochrome flag in X3F files. - “Save document with history” will now show up as a recorded macro step. - Resetting the Voronoi filter now resets to the correct values. - Mask thumbnails now look the same in dark / light UI mode. - General layers panel tidying & drag improvements. - Fixed a crash when refining selection. - Fixed an issue where the history page could get out of step in Develop. - Fixed erroneous blend mode imports for PSD files. - Fixed potential hang when using “Move inside”. - Fixed issue with the Colour panel when switching away from a mask. - Fixed a crash in red-eye removal. - Fixed loading of X3F files with non-square pixels. - Integrated x3f-tools project, significantly improving support for X3F RAW. - Added ability to show folders as icons in the layers panel. - Added option to always show folders as “small” in the layers panel. - Improved dragging behaviour in the layers panel. - PDF import performance improvements. - Document save performance improvements. - Detect Edges improved on 32bit documents. - Lens profile popup might report incorrect state. - RW2 files can cause a crash. - Text performance improvements. - Selection brush width is not remember after being changed using modifier keys. - Placing RAW files now produces Pixel layers, as opposed to Image layers. - Fixed reading of XP metadata under certain conditions. - Fix for Nikon D90 RAW loading issues. - Fixed High Pass filter when using LAB colour. - Assorted small bug fixes. - Help improvements. - Localisation improvements. To be notified about all future macOS beta updates, please follow this notification thread To be notified when this Photo update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo on macOS customers, please follow this thread

The value is *distance from mouse down* - not simply *horizontal difference*.

Thanks p_mac, We will try to reproduce and fix it. Andy.

@Wumpus, Thanks for the response. As Mark said, we had some bugs on the Windows builds which meant you weren't seeing what we are seeing here. Those bugs have been resolved in the most recent beta. We have also made the develop persona automatically enable the default B/W conversion based on the X3F metadata tag. If you have chance, could you please repeat your tests in that latest build. A

pixelcoder, Thanks - there will be a few places we need to tidy up but we think it works well A

Status: Beta Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo for iPad From App Store App Store: Not submitted Download link: Download Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first build of Affinity Photo 1.8.4 for iPad. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. This beta is an incremental update to the 1.8.3 version recently released to all customers. We recommend that you use this beta in preference to the store version if you are affected by any of the issues listed below. Please note that there is no longer a requirement to email photoipadbeta@seriflabs.com to join this beta - anyone can use the beta using the link above, provided you have the App Store version of Photo installed. Affinity Photo Team  Changes Since 1.8.3 - Trackpad support for new Magic Keyboard. - Supported X3F RAW loading. - Added ability to only render retina resolution. - Improved performance on new 6GB devices. - Custom user font support. - Improvements to Canon EOS-1D Mk. III metadata import. - PDF import performance improvements. - Document save performance improvements. - Detect edges improved on 32bit documents. - Placing RAW files now produces Pixel layers, as opposed to Image layers. - Text performance improvements. - Provide localised history timestamp text. - Improved support for .fff RAW files. - “Save document with history” will now show up as a recorded macro step. - Mask thumbnails now look more correct. - Resetting the Voronoi filter now resets to the correct values. - Improved selective viewing of LAB document channels in the Channels panel. - Fixed reading of XP metadata under certain conditions. - Fixed high pass filter when using LAB colour. - Fixed issue where having Photo installed would stop Luma Fusion importing LUTs. [*] - Fixed issue where selecting a brush from the brush could select the wrong brush. - Fixed a crash when refining selection. - Fixed an issue where the history page could get out of step in Develop. - Fixed crash when inferring LUT. - Fixed erroneous blend mode imports for PSD files. - Fixed a crash in red-eye removal. - Assorted small fixes. - Localisation improvements. - Help improvements. [*] This will likely not work until 1.8.4 is released - because you need the retail Photo installed to use the beta and it will continue to steal the LUT associations.

Status: Beta Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo Mac App Store: Not submitted Download ZIP: Download Auto-update: Available Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the second build of Affinity Photo 1.8.4 for macOS. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. This beta is an incremental update to the 1.8.3 version recently released to all customers (though it installs parallel to the release, as described above). We recommend that you use this beta in preference to the store version if you are affected by any of the issues listed below. Affinity Photo Team  Changes Since Last Build - Improved selective viewing of LAB document channels in the Channels panel. - Improvements for Force Touch Trackpad users. - Improved layers panel representation of empty groups. - Improvements to Canon EOS-1D Mk. III metadata import. - Improved reliability of Canon CR3 RAW loading. - Improved support for .fff RAW files. - Right click in the Move Tool will offer a tree of layers to select from. - Honour the monochrome flag in X3F files. - “Save document with history” will now show up as a recorded macro step. - Resetting the Voronoi filter now resets to the correct values. - Mask thumbnails now look the same in dark / light UI mode. - General layers panel tidying & drag improvements. - Fixed a crash when refining selection. - Fixed an issue where the history page could get out of step in Develop. - Fixed erroneous blend mode imports for PSD files. - Fixed potential hang when using “Move inside”. - Fixed issue with the Colour panel when switching away from a mask. - Fixed a crash in red-eye removal. - Fixed loading of X3F files with non-square pixels. - Localisation improvements. - Help improvements. Changes Since 1.8.3 - Integrated x3f-tools project, significantly improving support for X3F RAW. - Added ability to show folders as icons in the layers panel. - Added option to always show folders as “small” in the layers panel. - Improved dragging behaviour in the layers panel. - PDF import performance improvements. - Document save performance improvements. - Detect Edges improved on 32bit documents. - Lens profile popup might report incorrect state. - RW2 files can cause a crash. - Text performance improvements. - Selection brush width is not remember after being changed using modifier keys. - Placing RAW files now produces Pixel layers, as opposed to Image layers. - Fixed reading of XP metadata under certain conditions. - Fix for Nikon D90 RAW loading issues. - Fixed High Pass filter when using LAB colour. - Assorted small bug fixes. - Help improvements. - Localisation improvements. To be notified about all future macOS beta updates, please follow this notification thread To be notified when this Photo update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo on macOS customers, please follow this thread

To clarify the B/W issue: a.) The B/W issue is nothing to do with our use of libraw (we use x3ftools now for X3F anyway - hence the improvements in 1.8.4 quality). b.) The image is not B/W. It is a perfectly normal, 3 channel RGB image. A metadata item in the files indicates the user preference for B/W processing. c.) The RGB -> B/W algorithm used by the proprietary processing software is not available to us. d.) We have a B/W conversion facility in the develop persona which can be used to manually mix the RGB channels to mono. Aside from automatically enabling the B/W conversion, with default settings, in the develop persona (which we are considering doing as we speak) - what else is expected here? Thanks, A

"To support the winner of a race only after the race is quite opportunistic. Innovation and progress comes from belief in something." Opportunistic it certainly is - and I make no apology for it! I don't consider Photo to be a driving force for adoption of 3rd party file formats - otherwise I would have been pushing JPEG-XR for the last 10 years (in my opinion, it is clearly the best general purpose image storage format which supports HDR and can do CMYK etc. - sadly nobody else in the world cares about it!). "Since the formats rarely (typically never) change, it is a question of implementation. Since it is basically just import and export, these are just entries in a drop-down list, which - in a modular concept - is self-maintaining." I agree that updating the 3rd party library code is not a big deal - they rarely update unless some vulnerability is found. The problem is more with UI - each format has a cost (for each platform) in that respect for initial implementation, and a cost for ongoing maintenance as we expand to other platforms or adopt new UI technology on existing platforms. To be honest, this is likely to become a moot point in future (as we hope to introduce support for 3rd party plugins for file I/O at some stage). We aren't there yet, but until we are we are likely to continue to apply the same loose "rules" I describe above. Thanks again, Andy.

Morning, We have decided to implement WebP export for (hopefully) 1.9. The decision is not solely because it is now supported in Safari - although that doesn't hurt. In the time I have been working here at Serif (15+ years), there have been hundreds of "JPEG / PNG killer" file formats announced - not a single one has succeeded. If we had supported each one, we would now have a massive amount of export code to maintain which was used by either 1 or 2 people, or more likely nobody. We don't like to remove features which we have added - so we would be stuck with the problem forever. We generally don't implement new export formats unless a.) They are old but have some unique technical feature which is genuinely useful or b.) They are new and have either a good chance of achieving widespread adoption or have some unique technical feature which we think has merit. WebP is being implemented because we think it has a high chance of widespread adoption. Hope this helps, Andy.

Morning all, Further to the comments made by Dan, I'm pleased to report that the transition to Apple Silicon has been completed. We will, of course, use the time between now and any Apple hardware release to test what we have internally - but I see no reason why we will not be available on day one with all three apps. To address questions regarding ongoing support for Intel based Macs: We will support Intel based Macs as long as they are supported by Apple (ie. until the last Intel based Mac is considered "obsolete" by Apple). This will be years after the last Intel Mac has shipped - and will only mean that we stop providing updates - not that the app will stop working. Hope this helps, Andy.

Status: Beta Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo Mac App Store: Not submitted Download ZIP: Download Auto-update: Available Hello, We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the first build of Affinity Photo 1.8.4 for macOS. If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry. This beta is an incremental update to the 1.8.3 version recently released to all customers (though it installs parallel to the release, as described above). We recommend that you use this beta in preference to the store version if you are affected by any of the issues listed below. Affinity Photo Team  Changes Since 1.8.3 - Integrated x3f-tools project, significantly improving support for X3F RAW. - Added ability to show folders as icons in the layers panel. - Added option to always show folders as “small” in the layers panel. - Improved dragging behaviour in the layers panel. - PDF import performance improvements. - Document save performance improvements. - Detect Edges improved on 32bit documents. - Lens profile popup might report incorrect state. - RW2 files can cause a crash. - Text performance improvements. - Selection brush width is not remember after being changed using modifier keys. - Placing RAW files now produces Pixel layers, as opposed to Image layers. - Fixed reading of XP metadata under certain conditions. - Fix for Nikon D90 RAW loading issues. - Fixed High Pass filter when using LAB colour. - Assorted small bug fixes. - Help improvements. - Localisation improvements. To be notified about all future macOS beta updates, please follow this notification thread To be notified when this Photo update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo on macOS customers, please follow this thread

Thanks Bones, Early days for sure - we will be looking to the beta user community to help us make sure we get this right, when we are in a position to release a build which supports it. Andy.

Hi again, Further to the other things, we are looking to add more support for game art users - can't promise this for 1.9 but we are working on it.. (I have two documents open here - you can see the texture itself, the other document is the normal map - both are being edited and a realtime preview is being rendered on a .obj model in the new Model panel). Thanks, Andy.