Polygonius

Hi,
Thanks for this - fixed in 151.
Andy.

You say there are 
- Numerous fixes for live filter rendering - especially when grouped.
Maybe, but there is still a big bug like this.
1. open the file
2. create a duplicate of the group
3. render this group (rasterize to trim)
4. make the group below invisible!
 
 
Filetr bug.afphoto.zip

You say there are 
- Numerous fixes for live filter rendering - especially when grouped.
Maybe, but there is still a big bug like this.
1. open the file
2. create a duplicate of the group
3. render this group (rasterize to trim)
4. make the group below invisible!
 
 
Filetr bug.afphoto.zip

You say there are 
- Numerous fixes for live filter rendering - especially when grouped.
Maybe, but there is still a big bug like this.
1. open the file
2. create a duplicate of the group
3. render this group (rasterize to trim)
4. make the group below invisible!
 
 
Filetr bug.afphoto.zip

Status: Release candidate
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 release candidate build of Affinity Photo 1.7.2 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 1.7.1 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.
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- Resize document fixes.
- Notarised for Catalina.
- Improved SVG loading.
- “D” key resets fills to black & white.
- Brush barrel rotation is no longer inverted when using Wacom stylus.
- Make Apple Sidecar work properly.
- Develop performance tweaks.
- Numerous small bug fixes.
- Localisation tweaks.
- Help tweaks.
 
Changes Since 1.7.1
 
- Added TGA export.
- Added “Remove Black Matte” and “Remove White Matte” filters.
- Shadows and highlights filter can now use either the 1.6 or 1.7 method.
- Flood fill too can now sample from layers beneath etc. Also supports blend modes.
- Flood select tool can now sample from all layers.
- Added keyboard nudge support to the crop tool.
- Added align and distribute toolbar button groups to Photo.
- Different icon for beta builds.
- Cancelling a crop will now preserve the “drag to set crop” state properly.
- Added a warning when deleting a global colour.
- Improvements to compositing performance with Metal compute enabled.
- General improvement to filter responsiveness.
- Improved clone brush responsiveness and fixed a couple of crashes.
- Assorted metadata improvements.
- Saving a JPEG will now replace the EXIF::Subject field with the document title.
- Restore support for .fff files.
- Prevent access to tone mapping / develop when recording a macro (the result would never be recorded).
- Improved the performance of median, blur brush with Metal compute.
- Fixed broken Japanese keyboard input (sorry!).
- Fixed printing CMYK documents on older versions of macOS.
- Fixed sporadic tile issues when painting with Metal compute enabled.
- Fixed crash when reentering export dialog under certain conditions.
- Fixed crashes when pasting screenshots into the app.
- Fixed some crashes on GPUs with 32GB of VRAM (!).
- Fixed vibrance slider in tone mapping.
- Fixed Lightroom data being stripped from Capture One XMP output.
- Fixed loss of legacy HSL adjustment HSV state after a save.
- Fixed batch job crashes when saving to .afphoto.
- Assorted small fixes and improvements.
- Help improvements.
- Localisation improvements.
 
- Selection refinement - performance and stability improvements.
- Fixed clone brush issues when sampling from current layer & below.
- Inpainting performance improvements.
- Import 16bit half float JPEG-XR files properly.
- Allow .jxr files to be dragged in.
- Text performance improvements.
- Improved LAB colour conversions.
- Fixed healing brush bugs.
- Fixed badly placed stepper buttons in tone mapping UI.
- Pantone palettes are now sorted alphabetically.
- Fixed crash when starting app in a folder containing weird characters.
- Fixed yellow colour cast on certain DNG files.
- Fixed 360 degree images losing metadata on export.
- 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

Yes, those are the two folders you must keep with their contents exactly where they are. i.e Applications > Affinity Photo > Contents
Whether there’s anything else also required for the beta to run that’s shown in your first screenshot ,that AppCleaner found, I’m not sure but I don’t think so.
As a precaution though, before starting this experiment make sure you have no problems accessing your previous purchases on your Mac App Store account so if needed you can re-download Photo should this all go wrong.
Like I say, it’s at your own risk!

I was speculating on how Equations could be used to create a ripple-like effect in a reflection. I used an image of a Mill on the River Avon at Tewkesbury. I flipped the image vertically and then applied Filter > Distort > Equations as follows.
The main effect is to vary the position of each pixel on the y-axis in a sinusoidal fashion, so I began with:
y=y+100*sin(2*360*y/h)
The 100 is just a scaling factor for now. This had the right effect but was the same right across the image, so I added a cosine function which would vary the magnitude across the x-axis:
y=y+100*cos(10*x/w)*sin(2*360*y/h)
Again the 10 here is a scaling factor. The result was:
 
I should be able to tweak this into a macro where the user could vary the amplitude of the ripple, and the amplitude of the horizontal variation.
A further tweak could be to add a perspective effect so that the ripples nearer the observer look larger than those further away.
What do possible users think. Would this be a useful macro or are there easier ways to get the same effect?
John

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 beta of Affinity Photo 1.7.2 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 1.7.1 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.
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- Added TGA export.
- Added “Remove Black Matte” and “Remove White Matte” filters.
- Shadows and highlights filter can now use either the 1.6 or 1.7 method.
- Flood fill too can now sample from layers beneath etc. Also supports blend modes.
- Flood select tool can now sample from all layers.
- Added keyboard nudge support to the crop tool.
- Added align and distribute toolbar button groups to Photo.
- Different icon for beta builds.
- Cancelling a crop will now preserve the “drag to set crop” state properly.
- Added a warning when deleting a global colour.
- Improvements to compositing performance with Metal compute enabled.
- General improvement to filter responsiveness.
- Improved clone brush responsiveness and fixed a couple of crashes.
- Assorted metadata improvements.
- Saving a JPEG will now replace the EXIF::Subject field with the document title.
- Restore support for .fff files.
- Prevent access to tone mapping / develop when recording a macro (the result would never be recorded).
- Improved the performance of median, blur brush with Metal compute.
- Fixed broken Japanese keyboard input (sorry!).
- Fixed printing CMYK documents on older versions of macOS.
- Fixed sporadic tile issues when painting with Metal compute enabled.
- Fixed crash when reentering export dialog under certain conditions.
- Fixed crashes when pasting screenshots into the app.
- Fixed some crashes on GPUs with 32GB of VRAM (!).
- Fixed vibrance slider in tone mapping.
- Fixed Lightroom data being stripped from Capture One XMP output.
- Fixed loss of legacy HSL adjustment HSV state after a save.
- Fixed batch job crashes when saving to .afphoto.
- Assorted small fixes and improvements.
- Help improvements.
- Localisation improvements.
 
Changes Since 1.7.1
 
- Selection refinement - performance and stability improvements.
- Fixed clone brush issues when sampling from current layer & below.
- Inpainting performance improvements.
- Import 16bit half float JPEG-XR files properly.
- Allow .jxr files to be dragged in.
- Text performance improvements.
- Improved LAB colour conversions.
- Fixed healing brush bugs.
- Fixed badly placed stepper buttons in tone mapping UI.
- Pantone palettes are now sorted alphabetically.
- Fixed crash when starting app in a folder containing weird characters.
- Fixed yellow colour cast on certain DNG files.
- Fixed 360 degree images losing metadata on export.
- 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

For me a Media-Persona just for show and organize all relevant files would be enough. Like Bridge vs LR.
LR should be a separate App, the Media-Persona belongs to AP. For me Serif could improve the price moderat. Or we can buy "personas" which are not included in the standard apps. Eg i would extra buy a designer-persona with vector-brushes and so on. 
However as long as the DAM is not ready, i would like to have an Interim-Media-Solution like describes here 
 

In other words a "fix- or just nerd-subupdate" to the "main"- update??? Exactly what nerds like me want

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download DMG: Download
Auto-update: Available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the latest beta of Affinity Photo 1.7 for macOS.
Photo 1.7 is a (very) significant change to the currently shipping 1.6 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.7 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.7 - we will release more builds before 1.7 ships. Things will be broken in this build - please use it to explore the new features and not for real work.
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.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7. To be notified when there is a new beta please press follow on this announcment thread
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks (as always),
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- Fixed horrible Metal compute crashes with pixel layers with masks layers inside, when doing any sort of filter (sorry!).
- Fixed PS plugin crash on launch.
- Attempted fix for crashing PS plugins.
- Initial attempt to improve performance of multi-brushes when Metal compute is not enabled - more to come.
- Fixed Linear Burn blend mode in non-Metal.
- CMYK shadows / highlights filter improvements.
- Leica Monochrom / All mono cameras RAW - load fixes & improvements.
- Localisation tweaks.
 
Changes Since 1.6 Release
 
EDR
- Added support for EDR displays to Photo. When editing a 32bit document, enabling EDR will switch macOS into a mode whereby it will increase the backlight intensity and darken screen content - increasing the dynamic range available when rendering content.
Performance
- The core processing engine in Affinity Photo has been rewritten to take advantage of the powerful discrete AMD GPUs in modern Mac hardware. It will now automatically use any compatible discrete GPU, alongside the Intel GPU support present in 1.6. Typically this improves compositing / editing performance by at least 1000%. Performance when using integrated Intel GPUs has also been massively improved.
- External GPUs (eGPU) are also supported - including hot-plug-and-unplug support.
- Multiple GPUs are supported - if you have more than 1 GPU (ie. Intel + AMD in MacBook Pro, or Intel + eGPU in other Macs) Photo will use them all, at the same time, to improve performance. There is no limit to the number of GPUs which can be used.
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 rewritten to use the new GPU architecture described above. With GPU support, even huge brushes with 1% spacing will perform well. All brushes / brush tools are accelerated.
- Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. We have more symmetry features on the way - so stay tuned during the beta process.
- 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.
- Allow Ctrl key to be held when typing numbers in a brush tool (will change flow instead of opacity).
- Fixed ABR brush import (would ignore "random" controllers).
RAW
- The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. It also takes advantage of the GPU architecture changes described above.
- RAW files now load much more quickly - especially if you have a compatible GPU.
- 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.
- Added support for CR3 RAW when using the Core Image engine.
- 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!).
- Automatically fall back to Core Image for cameras which are not supported by Serif Labs.
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 page - added option for transparent background for thumbnails.
- Layers page - added multiple thumbnail size options.
- Layers page - 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.
- New welcome screen layout and all new samples.
- Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download DMG: Download
Auto-update: Available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the latest beta of Affinity Photo 1.7 for macOS.
Photo 1.7 is a (very) significant change to the currently shipping 1.6 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.7 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.7 - we will release more builds before 1.7 ships. Things will be broken in this build - please use it to explore the new features and not for real work.
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.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7. To be notified when there is a new beta please press follow on this announcment thread
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks (as always),
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- Provided an upgrade path for adjustment layers created in 1.6 documents which now look wrong in 1.7. When you load those documents, they will now look correct - until you attempt to change their settings - at which point a message will be shown explaining that they have been upgraded.
- Fixed issues with Unsharp mask looking different at small radii with Metal compute enabled.
- Fixed HSL adjustment clamping 32bit values > 1.0.
- Fixed Vibrance adjustment clamping 32bit values > 1.0.
- Noise reduction improvements.
- Brightness / Contrast now work properly in 32bit mode and the Linear checkbox works again.
- Mitigated screen corruption with AMD Vega GPUs.
- Photoshop plugins which are ICC aware can now query Photo for the document profile.
- Fix Colour Balance adjustment on older GPUs.
- Improved Colour Balance mid-tone adjustments.
- Improved lens correction detection rate for Panasonic Lens IDs.
- General stability and performance tweaks.
 
Changes Since 1.6 Release
 
EDR
- Added support for EDR displays to Photo. When editing a 32bit document, enabling EDR will switch macOS into a mode whereby it will increase the backlight intensity and darken screen content - increasing the dynamic range available when rendering content.
Performance
- The core processing engine in Affinity Photo has been rewritten to take advantage of the powerful discrete AMD GPUs in modern Mac hardware. It will now automatically use any compatible discrete GPU, alongside the Intel GPU support present in 1.6. Typically this improves compositing / editing performance by at least 1000%. Performance when using integrated Intel GPUs has also been massively improved.
- External GPUs (eGPU) are also supported - including hot-plug-and-unplug support.
- Multiple GPUs are supported - if you have more than 1 GPU (ie. Intel + AMD in MacBook Pro, or Intel + eGPU in other Macs) Photo will use them all, at the same time, to improve performance. There is no limit to the number of GPUs which can be used.
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 rewritten to use the new GPU architecture described above. With GPU support, even huge brushes with 1% spacing will perform well. All brushes / brush tools are accelerated.
- Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. We have more symmetry features on the way - so stay tuned during the beta process.
- 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.
- Allow Ctrl key to be held when typing numbers in a brush tool (will change flow instead of opacity).
- Fixed ABR brush import (would ignore "random" controllers).
RAW
- The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. It also takes advantage of the GPU architecture changes described above.
- RAW files now load much more quickly - especially if you have a compatible GPU.
- 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.
- Added support for CR3 RAW when using the Core Image engine.
- 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!).
- Automatically fall back to Core Image for cameras which are not supported by Serif Labs.
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 page - added option for transparent background for thumbnails.
- Layers page - added multiple thumbnail size options.
- Layers page - 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.
- New welcome screen layout and all new samples.
- Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

For me a Media-Persona just for show and organize all relevant files would be enough. Like Bridge vs LR.
LR should be a separate App, the Media-Persona belongs to AP. For me Serif could improve the price moderat. Or we can buy "personas" which are not included in the standard apps. Eg i would extra buy a designer-persona with vector-brushes and so on. 
However as long as the DAM is not ready, i would like to have an Interim-Media-Solution like describes here 
 

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download DMG: Download
Auto-update: Available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the latest beta of Affinity Photo 1.7 for macOS.
Photo 1.7 is a (very) significant change to the currently shipping 1.6 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.7 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.7 - we will release more builds before 1.7 ships. Things will be broken in this build - please use it to explore the new features and not for real work.
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.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7. To be notified when there is a new beta please press follow on this announcment thread
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks (as always),
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- General Metal performance improvements on discreet GPUs.
- Added an option to Tone Mapping to clamp to SDR values.
- Further metadata mining improvements.
- Fixed some EDR clamping bugs.
- Improved accuracy of LAB colour sliders.
- Improved EDR headroom / maximum readout.
- Improved Metal compute performance on complicated documents.
- Inserting fill stops in 32bit documents now correctly interpolates intensity.
- Added preferences option to allow automatic enabling of EDR in 32bit views.
- Fixed lighting filter in 32bit documents.
- Improved colour picking in 32bit documents.
- Stock panel improvements.
- Fixed Core Image RAW crash on older version of macOS.
- Support TIFF files with old-style JPEG compression.
- Fixed channels preview when Metal is enabled.
- Improve rendering performance with multi-GPU systems containing a mixture of integrated and discreet GPUs.
- Fixed missing macro arguments on recorded adjustment commands.
- Fixed occasional flickering when using Metal view.
- Fixed crop tool “Reveal” mode.
- Fixed numerous masking issues.
- Assorted other small fixes.
- Localisation improvements. 
- Help improvements.
 
Changes Since 1.6 Release
 
EDR
- Added support for EDR displays to Photo. When editing a 32bit document, enabling EDR will switch macOS into a mode whereby it will increase the backlight intensity and darken screen content - increasing the dynamic range available when rendering content.
Performance
- The core processing engine in Affinity Photo has been rewritten to take advantage of the powerful discrete AMD GPUs in modern Mac hardware. It will now automatically use any compatible discrete GPU, alongside the Intel GPU support present in 1.6. Typically this improves compositing / editing performance by at least 1000%. Performance when using integrated Intel GPUs has also been massively improved.
- External GPUs (eGPU) are also supported - including hot-plug-and-unplug support.
- Multiple GPUs are supported - if you have more than 1 GPU (ie. Intel + AMD in MacBook Pro, or Intel + eGPU in other Macs) Photo will use them all, at the same time, to improve performance. There is no limit to the number of GPUs which can be used.
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 rewritten to use the new GPU architecture described above. With GPU support, even huge brushes with 1% spacing will perform well. All brushes / brush tools are accelerated.
- Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. We have more symmetry features on the way - so stay tuned during the beta process.
- 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.
- Allow Ctrl key to be held when typing numbers in a brush tool (will change flow instead of opacity).
RAW
- The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. It also takes advantage of the GPU architecture changes described above.
- RAW files now load much more quickly - especially if you have a compatible GPU.
- 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.
- Added support for CR3 RAW when using the Core Image engine.
- 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!).
- Automatically fall back to Core Image for cameras which are not supported by Serif Labs.
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.
- 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 page - added option for transparent background for thumbnails.
- Layers page - added multiple thumbnail size options.
- Layers page - 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.
 - Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

The WHOLE brush-concept is suboptimal. The functionality is almost great, but all aspects of access and the handling is... could be much more better
 
1. View of brushes
With hundreds of brushes in dozens of categories... you will become some problems to find which you want. The only possible preview-view is this stroke-view. This view is complete useless if you search for eg. a texture, or if the size is set to a small or extra-big value... There is absolute no option to show/order the brush just as big quader-view, showing the "texture", sort by size, sort by name.. BTW: when doing any other action, and going back to brush-panel... the highlight is disappeared, so what brush im currently use???
2. Fast access to standard or similar brushes overall
However in which category i am, which tool i use...  There a lot of situations i need a standard-brush during the situation i use other ones. Same by changing the tool. Its nice that last brsuh for this tool is remembered... in maybe 60% thats a good choice.  But as said often i need a standard-one. The way to panal-brush, hamburger to simple, choose one is very very long windowed, the way back is even more complicated, if do not remember, which category, which item...
The solution: Right-click: Besides other context-options, each brush-like-tool offers a right-context and here are in the first divide-area some entries like this "use standard 1,2,3..."  (i have defined 5 standard brushes); "go to favorite" (here i have maybe 7 favorite brushes... in maybe different categorys, the brsuh-panel will automatically react to this); and "go back"...here are my last 5 brushes (except the standard ones). 
Another right-menu- (better context-bar) should be: "Use current size" and "do not use tool"  Each brush has its own size, and some ones special tools.This is often a big advantage, but often not. If i just searching for TEMPORALLY POSSIBLE brush... i almost want the candidates in a equal chosen size, with same opacity... and of course i do not want wet edges or another tool, when just searhing for this job. This checkboxes, will narcotic the special UNIQUE brush-settings and call them in the most familiar way as the current one. This is only valid as long the check is active!
3. Edit a brush TEMPORALLY or as automic "OVER-WRITTEN"
There is absolutely no way to temporally change a brush, when using the brush panel. ALL settings there will immediately "stored" without asking. But in 90% i just want this changes just temporally...  There should be a "Save/Overwrite" button, if i want this changes PERMANENTLY,  otherwise all done settings are just temporally, just for this current job and only valid as soon i change to another brush! If i want this settings PERMANENT., i have several options: Overwrite, Save as (= duplicate+++, below the original), Save as in category....  save as VARIATION (later more)
As said before: A context-right for brush-tools would be great. Here could also be the entry "open further settings". This will popup  the brsuh-setting-panel  from above, but directly here. And this panel gets automatically closed if the mouse get outside the panel. EXCEPT: i hit the button: Stay in front, or so. Otherwise its a one or maybe 3 edit window, as long visible as the mouse is inside. 
As said before, all settings here are just temporally, if i change the brush, all is forgotten, except i EXPLICIT save as/overwrite... 
4. Do we need so much brushes? The Power of VARIATIONS!
What is a brush? Except the standard ones, a brush is just a HOLDER of a single- or several images... with special settings, how to repeat this images. I would say all "brushes" which use the same image(s) are one brush, but different variotions. Well the settings can be so extrem different, i would not say its a family, even if the definition above is valid. But for lot of brushes we could put them together as just "variation". Grunge-Edgy-brushes for example. We need this brushes as top, left, above, right... edges in maybe different sizes... Or texture brushes with the same images in different sizes/rotations/opacity/flow...This will grow up our librarys, lot of SAME brushes will appear as single-ones. With VARIATIONS that would be much more easy, faster, smarter... 
If i right-click of on a VARITION-brush i get all its "Variations" (size, rotation, flow, opacity... dynamics... and combinings)... as one-click-selection! This would, save lot of same brsuhes with just different soizes...rotations... organize all brushes in a significant better, very fast and really smart way. A piano-sound keeps a piano sound, even with different play-wise and lot of FX. Well, if i do a lot work, it maybe can sound like a contrabass... but why not use the contrabass as first element???? And if my piano-fx sounds like a saxophon... i will take this sample as new "parent" for new variations... The "family-idea" keeps under all circumtances the same. 
And yeah, normaly 0-1 sets the opacity for a brush... if i option, why not use this numbers instead for my dedicated, more precise VARIATIONS???? (i can use normal behavior or say: for this BRUSH use the fisrt 10 variations...)
5. Creating new brushes/behaviors/dynamics...
Why can i not rightclick a layer and say "create new brush from it"?  This longwindow via save and search in the brush dialog... ist sooooo unsmart!
Why not "repeating" part of the image but in front and end there will be take other parts of the images, like an audio- sample, its repeats just only the "middle" but will fade in/out... 
Why not using special-keys for special dynamics? With shift all dynamics will pressured and with command all dynamics will multiply by 2..... or control will change the size, even if sizedynamic = zero.... and so on...
6. Presets
Well ALL of the AP-Preset-SystemS (yes plural) in AP lacks of lot things. Some are rename, but not moveable, some one  can organzied inside a category, but the categorys not moved... and so on... It seems, dozens of single-people, without any ideas of concept and "anticipate user wishes; unslave them from lot of long-windowed" could try their luck! ALL this systems are inconsistent, each other, and long-windowed and i would say Semi-semi-semi-professionell. My 7 years old daughter would this better "concept", cause she knows, its better to have ALL colored pencils in separate boxes , not in the whole flat, room, garden... AND she knows sometimes its better to reorganize ALL pencils to project-ones... But even than, after each projekt, she is going back to her normally order... she likes most lexibility WITH basic-structure and she is very, very lazy... maybe thats the reason, she does not like to do things twice or long-windowed, or over-complicated... she is FLEXIBLE-PRAGMATIC, before doing anything, lets get an overview... is this the best way? who says???? what would be, if...!!!  

Hi both,
Sorry for the delayed reply. 
I've logged this with our developers. 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

You should see ‘Options’ at the bottom of the message box: click on it and choose ‘Hide’. Once a post has been hidden, only the moderators will be able to see it.

smadell,
 
Thanks - this is indeed an oversight - I will look into it on Monday..
 
Thanks,
A

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download DMG: Download
Auto-update: Available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the latest beta of Affinity Photo 1.7 for macOS.
Photo 1.7 is a (very) significant change to the currently shipping 1.6 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.7 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.7 - we will release more builds before 1.7 ships. Things will be broken in this build - please use it to explore the new features and not for real work.
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.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7.
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks (as always),
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes This Build
 
- Significant Metal compute performance improvements (>100%).
- Re-introduced ability to select display technology (OpenGL, Metal, etc.) from preferences - unless Metal Compute is enabled.
- EXIF modified date is now updated correctly.
- OpenGL view fixes.
- Denoise tweaks.
- Updated RAW supported cameras.
- Automatically fall back to Core Image for cameras which are not supported by Serif Labs.
- Bilateral blur accuracy improvements.
- Photo will now close properly after prompting to save on close.
- PDF import improvements.
- Fixed adjustments on blend modes (again).
- White balance doesn’t clip in 32bit anymore.
- Fixed intensity slider in colour panel when using fill tools.
- Support 16bit CMYK TIFF import.
- Soft Proof adjustment is now implemented in Metal compute.
- Added Focal Length to metadata summary view, cleaned things up a little.
- Localisation improvements.
- Help improvements.
 
Changes Since 1.6 Release
Performance
- The core processing engine in Affinity Photo has been rewritten to take advantage of the powerful discrete AMD GPUs in modern Mac hardware. It will now automatically use any compatible discrete GPU, alongside the Intel GPU support present in 1.6. Typically this improves compositing / editing performance by at least 1000%. Performance when using integrated Intel GPUs has also been massively improved.
- External GPUs (eGPU) are also supported - including hot-plug-and-unplug support.
- Multiple GPUs are supported - if you have more than 1 GPU (ie. Intel + AMD in MacBook Pro, or Intel + eGPU in other Macs) Photo will use them all, at the same time, to improve performance. There is no limit to the number of GPUs which can be used.
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 rewritten to use the new GPU architecture described above. With GPU support, even huge brushes with 1% spacing will perform well. All brushes / brush tools are accelerated.
- Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. We have more symmetry features on the way - so stay tuned during the beta process.
- 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.
- Allow Ctrl key to be held when typing numbers in a brush tool (will change flow instead of opacity).
RAW
- The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. It also takes advantage of the GPU architecture changes described above.
- RAW files now load much more quickly - especially if you have a compatible GPU.
- 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.
- Added support for CR3 RAW when using the Core Image engine.
- 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.
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 page - added option for transparent background for thumbnails.
- Layers page - added multiple thumbnail size options.
- Layers page - 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 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.
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.
 - Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

I have created lot of high-complex, but very smart macros which gives you same (or even better) results than PS-Filtergallery (oilpaint, watercolor, cutout, plastic....). Also nice generators and backgrounds, textures-FX... Text-FX... and so on. In lot of variations and with 2-5 sliders for finetuning....
You do not have to worry about something, you will always get a FX-copy of the choosen layer, or of just the quick-mask! 
Most of them are running in "realtime", some needs some power/time, especially with really high resolutions.... (or full of RAM)... But most of them are running in "realtime" (at least with moderate resolutions and some free RAM) ...There are also very unique FX you miss in PS-gallery.... and the behavior is more smart/intelligent... Believe me, this stuff is amazing, funny, fresh, easy to use....! 
---
These packages will be not free, but available just for a pocket-money. I have first to do some other jobs (creating website, videos, become a trader....) but i think in a month or so, you can buy my stuff (for pocket-money). In a week or so (as soon as the site is standing) i will publish some videos. All really "early birds" can then buy before release for the half-price (of the regular, always cheap-price)! 
If anyone is interested, PM me your email and you will get informed!
Yeah, ist advertising-speech, but i´m not steve jobs or any other show-man-boaster... which sell 40% as the ultimate ratio....  I´m more this own-world-engineer-typ -  it took very long if i am happy with my own stuff!  So, most of the macros a at least a year or even more old (and reworked), NOW i am happy with it, NOW i can give them my name! 
 
However: Give me your mail or look here from day to day (in a week) ... i will announce the first show-wheel also here!

If you use the voronoi as live-filter and open its window (again), the second parameter, line-strengt???, will reset to default, instead keeping its given user value!
BTW: An option would be fine, that the filter/adjusment-window will dynamically, automatically follow to the current filter/adjusment layer by change. And of course only,  if one window is already open. The needed double-click on the thumbnail is not really user-friendly.

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download DMG: Download
Auto-update: Available.
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the latest beta of Affinity Photo 1.7 for macOS.
Photo 1.7 is a (very) significant change to the currently shipping 1.6 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.7 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.7 - we will release more builds before 1.7 ships. Things will be broken in this build - please use it to explore the new features and not for real work.
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.
It’s also worth noting that we aren’t done yet - we are still working through reported bugs from previous releases and hope to fix as many as possible before the final release of 1.7.
With all that said, we hope that you will enjoy the new capabilities introduced in this release and we look forward to any and all feedback you give to us.
Many thanks (as always),
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Ps. I promised to shorten this massive post but forgot, because I went skiing. I will sort it out soon!
 
Changes This Build
 
- Significant stability improvements when working on non-local files (network shares, USB drives, etc.).
- Added support for 12bit TIFF files.
- Resizing a document will treat Live Filters correctly.
- Tidied drawing of layer tag colours.
- Fixed some UI which was moving around when changing UI from light to dark (!).
- Drag & drop from browsers will now work properly again.
- Double clicking an asset will now switch to the place tool.
- Fixed some crashes caused by the new metadata library.
- Fixed some vector export issues (excessive rasterisation).
- Assorted Metal performance tweaks.
- Clone tool fixes (when using layers-beneath with transformed destination layer, etc.)
- Denoise improvements.
- Ability to drop things into the assets panel directly from Finder.
- Assorted vector tool improvements.
- Improved adjustments responsiveness.
- Patch tool now supports arrow keys for rotate / scale.
- Fixed live perspective tool drawing when resizing document.
- Fixed blend modes on adjustments when Metal is enabled.
- Paint mixer tool remembers settings.
- Fixed Export Persona sometimes rendering a black surface.
- Faster rendering of Styles panel previews.
- Fixed some double-click-on-slider-to-reset bugs in adjustments.
- Fixed inpainting preview not showing if you have a pixel selection.
- Fixed liquify not prompting for save sometimes.
- Fixed rasterise command sometimes moving layers.
- Fixed lock-children bugs.
- Fixed Brightness / Contrast in 32bit RGB mode.
- Assorted other small fixes.
- Improved help.
- Localisation improvements.
 
Changes In Previous 1.7 Beta Builds
 
- All ICC transforms are now performed using Metal, hence many times faster.
- Introduced new metadata mining - completely rewritten to improve performance, flexibility and correctness.
- TIFF export now has user selectable compression method.
- When using selection tools with no pixel selection, default to New / Add as appropriate.
- Add 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.
- Compatibility with latest Designer / Publisher builds.
- Missing icon for Procedural Texture tool.
- Can assign keyboard shortcut to new Assets panel.
- Light UI improvement for advanced history view.
- Toggling “Apply tone curve” in develop assistant will correctly update the histogram.
- Improved rendering of mask thumbnails when layers panel is set to checkerboard previews.
- Can now drag .afassets into Photo.
- Fixed loading of monochrome RAW.
- Fixed some select tool issues (mainly bounding boxes, duplicate issues, undo issues).
- Pen tool / node tool improvements.
- “Lock guides” added to menus.
- New look for persona icons.
- Fix issues with bitmap fills when Metal is enabled.
- Fixed long standing issues with TIFF / RAW files opening in the wrong persona.
- Tidied up the colour tagging UI for layers.
- Implemented layer colour tagging PSD import / export.
- Fixed issues when trying to paste images copied from Safari.
- Fixed issue when toggling rulers in Develop persona.
- Assorted other small fixes.
- Localisation improvements.
- Help improvements.
 
- Added an “Assets” panel to Photo.
- Ability to lock brush symmetry.
- Layers page - removed the glow around thumbnails.
- Layers page - added option for transparent background for thumbnails.
- Layers page - added multiple thumbnail size options.
- Layers page - added ability to tag layers with a colour.
- New ability to control how macros are scaled / aligned when playing back.
- The History page now has an “advanced” mode - which shows thumbnails and time info.
- Metal rendering performance improvements.
- Fixed issues when dragging the HSL adjustment wheel with no range selected.
- Added “Rasterise & Trim” into right-click menus.
- Tool shortcut improvements.
- Prevent Frequency Separation from being “faded”.
- Fixed bugs with mask rendering.
- Fixed lazy update of opacity / blend mode on adjustment dialogs.
- Added ellipsis to adjustments flyout in layers page.
- Improved macro recording of paint mixer (again).
- Dragging the crop tool frame will always pan.
- Crop tool - pressing “reset” will revert to “initial-drag-to-set” mode.
- Tone map white balance sliders should reset on double click.
- Fixed “Colour dodge” blend mode in 32bit RGB.
- Fixed import of PSD documents with groups containing only masks.
- Improved support for CR3 RAW in the Core Image engine.
- Fixed issues when live filters were placed inside vector layers.
- In the Develop persona, the state of the clipping toggles is now correctly updates when switching documents.
- Portrait images now work properly with the undo brush.
- Fixed inability to manipulate the lighting filter inner cone if it has been moved too far.
- Fixed issues where red inpainting previews could linger.
- Reduced memory footprint when developing RAW.
- Noise reduction slider range improvements.
- Improved stack alignment.
- Numerous other small fixes.
- Localisation improvements.
- Help improvements.
 

- Fixed some mask rendering issues.
- Fixed 32bit vibrance / saturation issues.
- Added a “Reveal Canvas” checkbox to the crop tool - defaults to off.
- Shorted the length of some crop tool context bar items.
- Crop tool remembers settings for darken, reveal, overlay. More to follow.
- Develop tool remembers the state of clipped shadows / highlights / tones.
- Metal stability fixes when under extreme memory pressure.
- Support for drag dropping .afstyles into Photo.
- Support for drag dropping .afpalette into Photo.
- Added new “Transform object separately” mode into Move tool.
- Sub-brushes can now added by dragging from the main Brush panel.
- Sub-brushes can now be drag-reordered.
- Fixed some dark mode UI issues.
- Potentially fixed some colour rendering issues (reported by ronnyb).
- Live field blur control handle fixes.
- Voronoi filter Metal implementation optimised - hopefully fixes issue where only part of it would apply on some GPUs.
- Tool cycling will now start with the last remembered tool in the group.
- Fixed Linear Burn blend mode issues.
- Improved speed of painting with Wet Edges in 16bit mode with Metal enabled.
- Removed extraneous “Filter” from live filters menu, added ellipsis.
- Implemented subtract blend mode for LAB.
- Fixed issue whereby setting clone brush to “Current Layer & Below” would produce hard edges.
- Clone brush origin now follows cursor properly when using Aligned mode.
- Fixed various issues with resizing documents - mainly to do with masks or filter effects.
- Fixed copying areas on rotated documents not copying the correct area.
- Frequency separation can no longer be “faded”.
- Numerous other small fixes.
- Help improvements.
 
- Fixed occasional temporary corruption when using brush tools.
- Fixed crashes with Apple Photos extensions.
- Added round dot type to the halftone filter.
- Grouped tool shortcuts now default to needing the shift key held to cycle (option in preferences).
- Fixed orientation issues with tone mapping preset thumbnails.
- Improved inpainting stability.
- Add “Fill with Primary / Secondary” to the Edit menu for fast access.
- Allow adding an empty group from the Layer menu.
- Made more commands show a meaningful progress bar.
- Fixed erratic behaviour when continuing to drag after shift-clicking for a straight line in brush tools.
- Fixed failure to apply blend mode to Levels adjustment if Metal compute is enabled.
- Improved UI colour controls when working in RGB/32.
- Levels histogram how shows more visible black / white lines in light UI mode.
- Blend mode flyouts are now ordered and grouped.
- Fixed brushes with a “Final” texture looking different when used inside a pixel selection.
- Switch to next view now works in separated mode.
- Switch to previous view can now be assigned a shortcut.
- Fixed issue with White Balance rectangle becoming detached from mouse position in Develop.
- Fixed “New Stack” creating a blank document when “Align Images” is not checked.
- Fixed issue whereby freehand selection tool can get stuck when using polygonal mode.
- Fixed issue where rotating RAW can result in it getting clipped after developing.
- Fixed issue where the move tool can report incorrect boxes for pixel selections.
- The crop tool now obeys the global snapping enable state.
- New “Duplicate Selection” item in Layer menu (old behaviour). Duplicate now duplicate the whole layer ignoring pixel selection.
- Straightening in the Develop Persona now creates an undo entry.
- Spacebar-pan now works properly in Develop Persona.
- Numerous other small fixes.
 
- Fixed gamut clipping issues in develop.
- Develop now respects the output profile when previewing.
- Fixed CMYK render issues when using Metal.
- Fixed PSD import / export of 32bit masks.
- Fixed some PSD path import issues.
- Further Soft Light blend mode fixes.
- Fixed Diffuse Glow when Metal is enabled.
- Fixed blur issues with Mesh Warp.
- Histogram accuracy improvements.
- Made auto-rasterisation more consistent across tools / filters.
- Fixed HSL adjustment failing to clamp saturation and lightness properly.
- Adding a Live Denoise layer from the layers panel now uses the improved new algorithm.
- Added support for CR3 RAW when using the Core Image engine.
- All brush tools can now be axis constrained once brush has started - not just the pixel tool.
- The flood select tool now has a refine button.
- The symmetry lines number is now more correct / meaningful.
- Attempted to fix crashes with mixer brush etc.
- Small Touch Bar improvements.
- Fixed macro recording of brush commands (again).
- Fixed issue which occasionally produced blank panoramas.
- Improved selection refinement in 32bit RGB.
- Improve healing brush performance.
- New cube setup mode for grids.
- Focus merge now correctly respects ICC profiles.
- Fixed potential infinite loop in inpainting.
- Better inpainting of transparent parts of a rotated image.
- Fixed artefacts in the Patch tool.
- 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.
- Fixed 16bit luminosity blend mode.
- Liquify now updates the UI properly and remembers settings on a per document basis.
- Inpainting now remembers the source mode properly.
- Fixed issues with the default “G” shortcut (gradient, fill).
- All brush tools now offer primary / secondary colours in the colour page.
- Fixed issues with some Fuji RAW files showing at the wrong size.
- Fixed colour picking issues in Edit -> Fill (mainly with CMYK).
- Attempted to fix some Core Image RAW loading issues.
- Attempted to fix slowness issues when doing a lot of painting.
- Try to fall back more gracefully if Metal fails for a particular operation.
- Numerous other small fixes.
- Help improvements and search fixes.
 
- Significant improvements to selection refinement.
- More tools will now rasterise non-pixel layers on use.
- Fixed histogram statistics (was including alpha channel in calculations incorrectly).
- Improved TIFF import support.
- Fixed some localisation issues on the Glyph Browser panel.
- Small UI alignment tweaks.
- Fallback to 96dpi for imported JPEG, PNG - not 72.
- Fixed mesh warp blurry issues when Metal disabled.
- Fixed Metal implementation of Diffuse Glow.
- Fixed some PSDs which would not import due to path issues.
- Fixed CMYK rendering (again) when Metal is enabled (blacks would go weird).
- Attempt to fix the odd black square appearing in the view.
- Further improved Scale / Rotate stacking alignment.
- Fixed orientation issues with some panoramas (upside down).
- Reduce file sizes by discarding old snapshots properly.
- Fixed recording of resize document sampler method in macros.
- Fixed recording of paint mixer brush in macros.
- We now use Ctrl+number to change flow in the brush tools - not Cmd. This fixes Cmd-0 zoom etc.
- Fixed resize document issues with layer effect scales.
- Fixed liquify tool auto-commit issue when switching persona.
- Crop tool Touch Bar fixes.
- Assorted small fixes.
- Help improvements.
 
- Hide / Show / Show All Layers options in layers menu.
- Remove new destructive modes from crop tool (for now - will revisit).
- Fixed crash when RAW contains malformed GPS data.
- Fixed levels adjustment alerts.
- Fixed 32bit issues with Soft Light blend mode.
- Fixed flood fill bugs when colour is not opaque.
- Fixed various TIFF files which tried to load into develop persona.
- Fixed Voronoi bug if image has alpha channel.
- Allow Cmd key to be held when typing numbers in a brush tool (will change flow instead of opacity).
- Fixed remaining LUT export bugs.
- Small memory management improvements.
- Fixed red-eye correction in develop.
- Develop noise reduction performance improvements.
- Improved visibility of selected hue range in HSL UI in light mode.
- Fixed issues where sub-brushes could get reset.
- Sub-brush spacing / size sync buttons work properly.
- Dark / light UI improvements in brush editor panel.
- Fixed more Radeon R9 issues.
- Fixed more CMYK issues.
- Fixed some PDF import bugs.
- Numerous other small fixes.
- Help improvements.
 
- The crop tool now defaults to the old behaviour (destructive).
- Added lens correction data for more cameras.
- More double click support for resetting adjustment sliders.
- Further HSL improvements in 32bit mode.
- Fixed issues when using Edit -> Fill with a transparent colour.
- Fixed issues exporting HDR files when some pixels have negative values.
- Fixed TIFF ZIP compression issues.
- Fixed a sporadic crash when exporting PSD.
- Fixed lens correction for Panasonic DMC-TZ60.
- Fixed orientation of RAW images during HDR merge.
- Fixed noise reduction in non-RGB documents.
- Fixed scale + rotate alignment mode in stacking.
- Reduce develop memory usage and further improve loading speed.
- Fixed recolour adjustment slider colour issue.
- Fixed displacement map “load from beneath” sometimes including the current layer.
- Fixed CMYK rendering on Radeon R9 GPUs.
- Fixed motion blur etc. disappearing in 16bit documents with Metal enabled.
- Fixed equation transforms not working in macros.
 
- Fixed incorrect RGB / BGR / Red-major-order export of LUTS.
- Ability to either rasterise or rasterise and trim a layer. Previously recorded macros will trim.
- Fixed issues when parsing autofocus rectangles in RAW develop.
- Show which autofocus rectangles were in focus and which were selected by the camera (yellow, green respectively).
- Fixed inability to open photos from Apple Photos from file -> open. Now correctly asks for permission.
- Threshold adjustment will always present an intensity histogram.
- Improved histograms on curves and levels adjustments.
- Fixed LAB issues with edge detection filters.
- Switching between adjustments and filters will close any existing panels accordingly.
- Fixed incorrect ability to drag a locked layer when there is no layer selection.
- Fixed loading of 8/16bit images with linear RGB profiles.
- Can now double-click most sliders in adjustments UI to reset the individual parameter.
- Make it obvious which nozzle is selected in the brush editor UI.
- Other small fixes.
 
- Improved Metal stability / performance with large documents.
- Fixed a number of dark mode issues.
- Fixed preview glitches in split preview mode for filters / develop.
- Fixed batch processor not obeying dimensions correctly.
- Improved Procedural Texture UI in light mode.
- Allow brush rotate / size key changes while dragging.
- Numerous text engine improvements.
- Fixed cursor issues with HSL and other adjustments.
- Fixed issues with some menu shortcut keys.
- Improved PDF export.
- Improved localisations.
- Numerous other small fixes.
 
- Fixed CMYK rendering when using Metal.
- Fixed loading of huge JPEG files.
- Added “Alpha Similarity” to Select Sampled Colour tool.
- Fixed a number of crash bugs in the adjustment panel.
- Fixed issues with some existing user documents crashing in 1.7.
- Assorted other fixes.
 
- Show the Curves / Levels histogram in the correct colour space.
- Fixed some GPU memory management issues.
- A further attempt to fix the HSL UI crash.
- Improve performance on Intel Iris Pro GPUs.
- Improved help.

- Numerous other small fixes.

- Fixed hardware acceleration issues on certain iMac devices.
- Fixed a number of brush bugs.
- Fixed hang in HDR merge with GPU enabled.
- Fixed HSL adjustment UI crash,
- Fixed Procedural Texture UI issues when switching from dark to light UI.
- Fixed Curves adjustment clamping issue when GPU is enabled.
- Fixed 3DLUT adjustments when GPU is enabled.
- Fixed issues with sub-brush UI.
- Numerous other small fixes.
- Added pixabay.com to Stock panel.
- New welcome screen graphics.
- New persona icon graphics.
- New splash screen.

Changes Since 1.6 Release

Performance
- The core processing engine in Affinity Photo has been rewritten to take advantage of the powerful discrete AMD GPUs in modern Mac hardware. It will now automatically use any compatible discrete GPU, alongside the Intel GPU support present in 1.6. Typically this improves compositing / editing performance by at least 1000%. Performance when using integrated Intel GPUs has also been massively improved.
- External GPUs (eGPU) are also supported - including hot-plug-and-unplug support.
- Multiple GPUs are supported - if you have more than 1 GPU (ie. Intel + AMD in MacBook Pro, or Intel + eGPU in other Macs) Photo will use them all, at the same time, to improve performance. There is no limit to the number of GPUs which can be used.

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 rewritten to use the new GPU architecture described above. With GPU support, even huge brushes with 1% spacing will perform well. All brushes / brush tools are accelerated.
- Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. We have more symmetry features on the way - so stay tuned during the beta process.
- 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 

RAW
- The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. It also takes advantage of the GPU architecture changes described above.
- RAW files now load much more quickly - especially if you have a compatible GPU.
- 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.

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.

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.

Tools
- 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.
- A general tools overhaul has been performed - providing editing of grids, guides, page origin, across multiple tools (not just in the Move tool)

General
- “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.
- 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.
- 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!).
- The batch process dialog now fully supports expressions for height and width - available constants are “w”, “h” and “dpi”.
- 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 and Pexels. Both of these providers offer full-resolution stock imagery which is free to use.
- Metadata is now dynamically synchronised with your document - so if you resize then export, the values will be correct.
- Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features.
- Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes.
 - Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

Tested sometimes, it ALLWAYS crashes (Metal on).
Make a quick-mask, brush something in and try to start a macro - 112 will ALLWAYS crash. 
Well it does not happen if the quickmask is deactivated - you have just the selection (not the quickmask anymore), but sometimes you maybe forget to do this. Have send the report to apple, do you need it extra? 

The WHOLE brush-concept is suboptimal. The functionality is almost great, but all aspects of access and the handling is... could be much more better
 
1. View of brushes
With hundreds of brushes in dozens of categories... you will become some problems to find which you want. The only possible preview-view is this stroke-view. This view is complete useless if you search for eg. a texture, or if the size is set to a small or extra-big value... There is absolute no option to show/order the brush just as big quader-view, showing the "texture", sort by size, sort by name.. BTW: when doing any other action, and going back to brush-panel... the highlight is disappeared, so what brush im currently use???
2. Fast access to standard or similar brushes overall
However in which category i am, which tool i use...  There a lot of situations i need a standard-brush during the situation i use other ones. Same by changing the tool. Its nice that last brsuh for this tool is remembered... in maybe 60% thats a good choice.  But as said often i need a standard-one. The way to panal-brush, hamburger to simple, choose one is very very long windowed, the way back is even more complicated, if do not remember, which category, which item...
The solution: Right-click: Besides other context-options, each brush-like-tool offers a right-context and here are in the first divide-area some entries like this "use standard 1,2,3..."  (i have defined 5 standard brushes); "go to favorite" (here i have maybe 7 favorite brushes... in maybe different categorys, the brsuh-panel will automatically react to this); and "go back"...here are my last 5 brushes (except the standard ones). 
Another right-menu- (better context-bar) should be: "Use current size" and "do not use tool"  Each brush has its own size, and some ones special tools.This is often a big advantage, but often not. If i just searching for TEMPORALLY POSSIBLE brush... i almost want the candidates in a equal chosen size, with same opacity... and of course i do not want wet edges or another tool, when just searhing for this job. This checkboxes, will narcotic the special UNIQUE brush-settings and call them in the most familiar way as the current one. This is only valid as long the check is active!
3. Edit a brush TEMPORALLY or as automic "OVER-WRITTEN"
There is absolutely no way to temporally change a brush, when using the brush panel. ALL settings there will immediately "stored" without asking. But in 90% i just want this changes just temporally...  There should be a "Save/Overwrite" button, if i want this changes PERMANENTLY,  otherwise all done settings are just temporally, just for this current job and only valid as soon i change to another brush! If i want this settings PERMANENT., i have several options: Overwrite, Save as (= duplicate+++, below the original), Save as in category....  save as VARIATION (later more)
As said before: A context-right for brush-tools would be great. Here could also be the entry "open further settings". This will popup  the brsuh-setting-panel  from above, but directly here. And this panel gets automatically closed if the mouse get outside the panel. EXCEPT: i hit the button: Stay in front, or so. Otherwise its a one or maybe 3 edit window, as long visible as the mouse is inside. 
As said before, all settings here are just temporally, if i change the brush, all is forgotten, except i EXPLICIT save as/overwrite... 
4. Do we need so much brushes? The Power of VARIATIONS!
What is a brush? Except the standard ones, a brush is just a HOLDER of a single- or several images... with special settings, how to repeat this images. I would say all "brushes" which use the same image(s) are one brush, but different variotions. Well the settings can be so extrem different, i would not say its a family, even if the definition above is valid. But for lot of brushes we could put them together as just "variation". Grunge-Edgy-brushes for example. We need this brushes as top, left, above, right... edges in maybe different sizes... Or texture brushes with the same images in different sizes/rotations/opacity/flow...This will grow up our librarys, lot of SAME brushes will appear as single-ones. With VARIATIONS that would be much more easy, faster, smarter... 
If i right-click of on a VARITION-brush i get all its "Variations" (size, rotation, flow, opacity... dynamics... and combinings)... as one-click-selection! This would, save lot of same brsuhes with just different soizes...rotations... organize all brushes in a significant better, very fast and really smart way. A piano-sound keeps a piano sound, even with different play-wise and lot of FX. Well, if i do a lot work, it maybe can sound like a contrabass... but why not use the contrabass as first element???? And if my piano-fx sounds like a saxophon... i will take this sample as new "parent" for new variations... The "family-idea" keeps under all circumtances the same. 
And yeah, normaly 0-1 sets the opacity for a brush... if i option, why not use this numbers instead for my dedicated, more precise VARIATIONS???? (i can use normal behavior or say: for this BRUSH use the fisrt 10 variations...)
5. Creating new brushes/behaviors/dynamics...
Why can i not rightclick a layer and say "create new brush from it"?  This longwindow via save and search in the brush dialog... ist sooooo unsmart!
Why not "repeating" part of the image but in front and end there will be take other parts of the images, like an audio- sample, its repeats just only the "middle" but will fade in/out... 
Why not using special-keys for special dynamics? With shift all dynamics will pressured and with command all dynamics will multiply by 2..... or control will change the size, even if sizedynamic = zero.... and so on...
6. Presets
Well ALL of the AP-Preset-SystemS (yes plural) in AP lacks of lot things. Some are rename, but not moveable, some one  can organzied inside a category, but the categorys not moved... and so on... It seems, dozens of single-people, without any ideas of concept and "anticipate user wishes; unslave them from lot of long-windowed" could try their luck! ALL this systems are inconsistent, each other, and long-windowed and i would say Semi-semi-semi-professionell. My 7 years old daughter would this better "concept", cause she knows, its better to have ALL colored pencils in separate boxes , not in the whole flat, room, garden... AND she knows sometimes its better to reorganize ALL pencils to project-ones... But even than, after each projekt, she is going back to her normally order... she likes most lexibility WITH basic-structure and she is very, very lazy... maybe thats the reason, she does not like to do things twice or long-windowed, or over-complicated... she is FLEXIBLE-PRAGMATIC, before doing anything, lets get an overview... is this the best way? who says???? what would be, if...!!!  

The magicmouse-"swipes" does exactly what the hand-tool does. How can i disable, i want a "static canvas" no moving by mouse-mistake?