Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.8.0.164)

[Andy Somerfield]

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 1.8 for macOS.

Photo 1.8 is a significant change to the currently shipping 1.7 version, so, as ever, I would strongly urge users to avoid the 1.8 beta for critical work. This is a pre-release build of 1.8 - we will release more builds before 1.8 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 1.8. 

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

 

- PSD smart object import support (enable in preferences).
- Reference presets for the Pro Display XDR are now supported properly.
- Filter effects now support high intensity colours in 32bit mode.
- Embedded document fixes.
- New stock brushes (your custom brushes will not be lost).
- New document panel tweaks.
- Text field expression improvements.
- Improved RAW support (Serif Labs).
- Improved handling of RAW files when using batch processing.
- Improved channels panel behaviour when disabling alpha.
- Numerous other smaller fixes and improvements.

 

Changes Since 1.7

- Overhauled the “File -> New” dialog - user templates are now supported.
- Implemented unified toolbar for appropriately modern macOS versions.
- Updated PANTONE palettes to include new Solid and Bridge sets.
- Renamed EXIF panel to Metadata and added support for user-editable fields, including IPTC).
- Added ability to read metadata from an XMP sidecar file (enable in Preferences).
- Added native CR3 support to the SerifLabs RAW engine.
- Added a new lens profile selector to Develop.
- Reimplemented the HSL filter's HSV option.
- Improved quality & file size of results when exporting JPEG.
- Switching to a mask node will now automatically switch to the grey colour slider.

- Improved lens correction of RAW files coming from lenses with fixed focal length.
- Improved unsharp mask “threshold” slider.
- Improved selection refinement performance & quality.
- Improved the noise reduction filter result when applied to JPEGs.
- Improved precision of Gaussian algorithm (to reduce banding).
- Improved reporting of file load errors (could previously report file corruption incorrectly).
- Improved performance of operations with large selections.
- Improved memory use with alternate futures and when replacing image layers.
- Improvements to Photoshop plugin support, notably for DxO plugins (but also for many others).

- Fixed Styles to show styles that would normally be invisible.
- Fixed crash when loading some corrupt JPEGs (valid image data, but corrupt following data).
- Fixed deletion of brushes / styles / etc. not reducing disk usage correctly.
- Fixed PSD export of hidden layers.
- Fixed angle cursors when the view has been rotated.
- Fixed “Create Palette” from CMYK images resulting in RGB colours.
- Fixed Pixel Selection appears incorrectly when started near page edge.
- Fixed rasterising a fill layer goes wrong after changing document size.
- Fixed Marquee Selection not constraining to a square if you drag across the right diagonal.
- Fixed mis-identification of some Tamron lenses mounted to Canon bodies.
- Fixed failure to load some PSB files (and failing to report errors).
- Fixed missing EXIF data for CRWs.
- Fixed crash importing PSD files containing embedded colour profiles with unicode characters in their names.

- Assorted other small fixes and improvements.
- Localisation improvements.

To be notified about all future Mac beta updates, please follow this beta notification thread 

To be notified when this update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo customers, please follow this release notification thread

[ronnyb]

On 2/12/2020 at 2:40 AM, Andy Somerfield said:

- PSD smart object import support (enable in preferences).

YES!!!!

[ronnyb]

On 2/12/2020 at 2:40 AM, Andy Somerfield said:

- Overhauled the “File -> New” dialog - user templates are now supported.

It would be great if the templates displayed were filtered by the Document Units selected in the Layout section of the Print and Print Ready templates panel... lots of seldom used choices for users on both sides of the pond

[Frozen Death Knight]

PSD smart object import support? Does that also mean that you can create smart objects in Affinity as well? : D

[Nero]

Many thanks for any updates!

Edited February 14, 2020 by Nero
(moved to bugs forum)

[fde101]

12 hours ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Does that also mean that you can create smart objects in Affinity as well?

No.  As explained on another thread, they are converted to embedded documents upon import, then flattened to simple layers if exported back to PSD format.

[Patrick Connor]

Please can all readers of this thread download the latest beta build (from the announcement post pinned to the top of this forum), currently 1.8.0.165