Affinity Photo for macOS - 1.8.1 (was 1.8.0)

[Patrick Connor]

<EDITED> Please note, Affinity Photo 1.8.2 for Mac is now live so this thread is locked </EDITED>

We are pleased to announce a major update for the MacOS release of Affinity Photo, version 1.8.1

Changes in this build

The changes in Affinity Photo for MacOS 1.8.1 over the release build Affinity Photo for macOS 1.7.3 are as follows:

New Features & Improvements:

• Template support – save documents as template files to re-use time and time again, share templates across all apps and even access files on multiple devices through cloud storage.
• New document dialog – it’s now simpler than ever to find, create and manage document presets with customised, saveable presets and thumbnail previews.
• Unified toolbar – thanks to the integration of window controls and the app’s main toolbar, Mac users (Mojave and above) can now enjoy more usable document space.
• Updated PANTONE© library – work with a seemingly endless range of colours, including updated PANTONE© Color Bridge and PANTONE© Formula Guide solid palettes (coated and uncoated).
• Lens correction improvements – benefit from manual lens correction override in the Develop Persona, take advantage of the newly added ‘recently used’ and ‘favourites’ lists, and enjoy improved lens correction of RAW files coming from fixed focal length lenses.
• Big plugin support improvements – experience the power of a range of plugins in the app, including improved support for Nik collection 2.5 by DxO.
• Better metadata handling – new support for user-editable fields in image metadata, including the IPTC standard for copyright and other information, plus, save and import metadata files (XMP) [enable in preferences], batch whole folders of images and tag with appropriate ownership info, and more.
• PSD smart object support – any smart objects included in PSD files can now be imported into Affinity Photo as embedded documents [enable in preferences], letting you easily edit layers within any smart object and maintain a non-destructive workflow into Affinity – even on iPad!.
• Canon CR3 RAW support – open and edit your highest quality photographs in Affinity Photo.
• Apple keyboard shortcuts for text editing —use Apple default keyboard shortcuts for text editing and entry for an even more streamlined workflow.
• Improved handling of RAW files when using batch processing.
• Improved channels panel behaviour when disabling alpha.
• New samples
• New stock brushes (your custom brushes will not be lost).
• Many other improvements.

Fixes

• Develop stability improvements.
• Fixed issues when printing/exporting live filters.
• Fixed customised shortcut save issues.
• Fixed various Live Filter rendering issues.
• Fixed crash loading certain JPEG files.
• Double click to edit embedded docs from layers panel.
• CMYK TIFF import improvements.
• Reference presets for the Pro Display XDR are now supported properly.
• Filter effects now support high intensity colours in 32-bit mode.
• Text field expression improvements.
• 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.
• 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 crash importing PSD files containing embedded colour profiles with unicode characters in their names.
• Memory management improvements.
• Assorted other small fixes and improvements.
• Localisation improvements.

UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)

The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in application menu, Affinity Photo > About).

If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store— updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.

If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update, or in the application main menu there is an option Check for Updates. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Photo for macOS) can be downloaded from this link (that installer is NOT for Mac app store purchases and needs a product key).

NOTE: This was originally released as 1.8.0 on the Affinity Store and the Mac App Store. Affinity Photo 1.8.0 on the Mac App Store had a permission missing that caused a problem with plugins. That build has been replaced with an otherwise identical 1.8.1 build. The Affinity Store version did not have this problem, but has been rebuilt to keep numbering systems in sync with the Mac App Store.

[Patrick Connor]

All Readers

This thread is only for commenting on this announcement.

Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Photo Bugs on MacOS section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.

[Cecil]

Disappointed AP did not fix Apple Photo problem.

[MichaelTheGeek]

Very nice update.

[systemedic]

Don't be like Adobe! We will continue to support you. Keep thinking of users. Thank you!

[curtj]

My apologies, I purchased Affinity Photo through the App Store, that's why I couldn't find the update on the Serif site. I updated Designer in the App Store too, and now I have Publisher updated through the Serif site. It's been one of those day for me. Thank you for posting about the purchase options, I had forgotten. 

[David Edge]

Somebody - re the inadvertent turning off of undo - is going to be buying the most ENORMOUS round of drinks tonight :)

[Murfee]

Thanks to the team for a great update and for fixing the initial problems so quickly...much appreciated

[Mick Brown]

I bought Publisher through you and have downloaded the update ok but Windows Store doesn't seem to offer the update for Photo and Designer

[Patrick Connor]

@Mick Brown

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

The latest Windows builds (on the Affinity Store and on the Microsoft Windows Store) are 1.8.0
and
The latest Mac builds (on the Affinity Store and on the Mac App Store) are 1.8.1, as explained here

 

If you are having problems getting from 1.7.3 to these versions please post in the questions forum explaining what you have and where from

[Christian S.]

Starting the App, loading a file and updates of the layer thumbnails works a lot faster now on my machine than with 1.7.3!

[emfx]

The weight of application start to be seriously problematic.

1.8 GB install for both photo and designer.

Could the dev team focus on reducing the installed package size please ?

[clarkj]

Still working great on my venerable old Mac Pro 3,1 running patched Catalina! Great stuff, thanks guys 👍

[Patrick Connor]

@clarkj, @emfx, 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

The larger download size is mainly due to a complete and comprehensive set of new brushes, the textures of which are high quality and have made this downloads larger. The mac updates have delta patches so should not be this large again. Reinstalling would still be large.

[emfx]

4 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

@clarkj, @emfx, 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

The larger download size is mainly due to a complete and comprehensive set of new brushes, the textures of which are high quality and have made this downloads larger. The mac updates have delta patches so should not be this large again. Reinstalling would still be large.

Thanks for the info. 
However I think that if the embedded image ressources are so large, they should be moved into a different place than the .app folder that is supposed to be mainly for binaries.

 That is exactly what the folder /Library/Application Support/editor_name/... is for actually.

Thanks for reporting the devs about that.

[AT.HA]

A bit out of this topic: Manual Lens Corrections

My Classic manual Zeiss Classic ZE 21/35/50/85mm lenses are not there ,-( Bad luck.

In the near future... ?

[mwunder]

I'm not seeing the updates.  Starting the programs does not force an update and the App Store says all my apps are up-to-date.  Even after a force reload page.  All apps are still 1.7.3. Do I have to be on Catalina?

[AT.HA]

Go to your shopping list and open the Affinity apps.

I use High Sierra; no problems.

[mwunder]

That did the trick.  Odd...I know in the past the App Store updated my Affinity builds.

Thanks.

[Gigiga]

Whatever nice stuff is in the updates, would you please make it possible to finally save an individual top bar or a whole workspace? Installed the updates (for all three apps, should not have done that) opened them and gone were my top bar setups. This ist so annoying. I can save shortcuts and studio windows, but why can't I just save my entire workspace as I set it up. Basic requirement, really.

Thanks for finally making IDML import happen, this really is a huge step forward.

[Marinela Madayag]

Re: PSD smart object support – any smart objects included in PSD files can now be imported into Affinity Photo as embedded documents [enable in preferences], letting you easily edit layers within any smart object and maintain a non-destructive workflow into Affinity – even on iPad!.

But how do I enable it?

[Dag Zimmer]

unfortunately, I cannot process my RAW-files anymore when using 1.8.1 on my Macbook Pro. I checked different SD-cards and readers. The are not the problem. The files look like paintings from Andy Warhol. Rainbow colours all over. Affinity Photo is of no use to me right now. I hope the problem will be fixed as as soon as possible.

[Patrick Connor]

@Dag Zimmer

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

Please post this in the Photo Macos bugs forum also so we can investigate for you, as this announcement post is not a good place to get support.

[Patrick Connor]

@Marinela Madayag

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  

12 hours ago, Marinela Madayag said:

But how do I enable it?

In Preferences > General there is a new option "Import PSD smart objects where possible" that is off by default

[DeepDesertPhoto]

I only updated my version of AP a few days ago, but I wanted to say thank you for addressing something that had been on my wish list since I first got the program over 2 years ago: full metadata control. In the older version I had I could only write descriptions into the metadata. Now I can also write a title, put in my author name, and most importantly for me, add keywords. I sell my photos through stock agencies and it was always a pain to manually type them in through the agency's website upload window because I had to do it with each website I uploaded to. Now I only need to add the keywords once using AP in the original file and those keywords will now be recognized at each site I upload to. This will save me a lot of time when uploading to multiple sites.

Another improvement I noticed is defringing. When I was editing my Nikon raws I always had a problem with high contrast images fringing heavily toward the edges. In the older version of AP I could never get that fringing completely removed without created weird color distortions elsewhere in the image. In the latest update that problem has been eliminated and the images come out near perfect with I apply the defringing preset I created.

Also, I had been inquiring in other threads about JPF support since had several hundred older JPF files. The older version of AP could not open those. The new update does seem to have the ability to open JPFs if they are in the RGB color mode, although the colors are little more saturated than I would like. However, color saturation is correctable. However, when I open JPFs in the LAB color mode the image opens with the colors all scrambled, but I have found a work around for that by using the Preview App in my Mac to convert those JPFs to RGB and then reopen them with AP for editing.

Perhaps the next version of AP will have full JPF support, at least for opening JPFs so that can be edited and saved in a more conventional format like TIF of PNG.