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Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.9.0.205/206)


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  • Staff

Status: Beta

Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo

Mac App Store: Not submitted

Download ZIP (Universal): Download

Auto-update: Available

 

Edit: Build 206 has replaced 205 (to fix a layer linking issue which made it difficult if not impossible to test the new feature).

 

Hello,

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the sixth build of Affinity Photo 1.9.0 for macOS.

If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.

This beta is significantly different from the 1.8 version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous / future versions of Affinity Photo.

Furthermore, massive behind the scenes work has been done to enable GPU acceleration for the Windows version of Affinity Photo in 1.9. In theory this should have no consequences for macOS / iOS users - but it’s likely that a couple of things will have become broken along the way. We are giving ourselves a longer beta period with 1.9 in order to find and fix those things.

This also means that the full complement of new features is not available yet in this 1.9 beta - more will be added over the coming weeks.

Thanks again for your continued support!

 

Affinity Photo Team  :ph34r:

 

Changes Since 1.9.0.204

 

- Linked Layers.

You can now select a layer and do Layer -> Duplicate Linked. Linked layers are denoted by a small link icon in the layers tab - clicking that icon will bring up a link editing panel (the UI here will change in subsequent beta builds - this is just so we can test the linking itself for now). You can “unlink” particular aspects of a layer using the buttons - for example, if you wanted a mask to share the same pixel content as another mask, but not the opacity settings, you can do that using this test UI.

For the brave, this panel also allows “relinking” - even between different layer types(!). Dragging a layer from the layer tab and dropping it onto one of the small target icons in the panel will link together that particular aspect of the two layers (again, the UI is all going to change). For example, you could make a mask layer which shares opacity settings with an adjustment layer somewhere else in the document, whilst also sharing blend mode with a circle shape layer somewhere else. 

It’s worth noting that this feature is quite raw at the moment - please feel free to experiment with it, but *do not* use it for any real work. There is a high chance any documents you make will stop working in a future beta.

- Default to black-to-white gradients in the gradient tool (more gradient tool improvements are coming for 1.9, at last).
- Content download service improvements.
- Assorted astrophotography stacking improvements.
- Allow placement policy for images to be changed using the menu.
- Added missing text baseline options to the menu.
- Added support for 12bit grayscale TIFF files.
- Added ability to create pattern layers from selections.

- Timelapse fixes and improvements, including ability to choose codec.
- Timelapse export performance improvements.

- Fixed incorrect attribute bits when writing 32bit TGA files.
- Fixed bugs when duplicating pattern layers.
- Fixed broken insertion target buttons on the toolbar.
- Fixed incorrect pattern sizes when committing the dialog without tabbing away from the height field.
- Fixed broken AANN sampling mode in pattern layers.
- Fixed filter effects on pattern layers.
- Fixed brush panel crashes.
- Fixed live filters initialising to RGB in (for example) CMYK documents.
- Fixed crazy behaviour when entering Liquify persona.
- Fixed issue whereby you would get more / different options depending where you right click on spare channels (!).
- Assorted other small bug fixes.

- Localisation improvements.
- Help improvements.
 

Cumulative Changes Since 1.8

 

- Pattern improvements - brushes now wrap around the edges of the pattern.
- Timelapse improvements - progress bar, abortable, crossfade.
- Improved colours for Canon EOS R5 camera RAW.
- Filter effects now work properly with global colours.

- Fixed white balance issues.

- Added a new “Astrophotography Stack” persona which allows you to combine dark frames, light frames, bias frames, flat frames and dark flat frames then stack them. FITS images are also supported. Lots of photographers have been experimenting with astro during lockdown - hopefully these new tools will help users to get better results. I'm sure James Ritson will be providing some tutorial guidance in short order :)

- Added “Pattern Layers” - a fixed size bitmap layer which repeats across the entire document. You can paint on pattern layers and use all filters to manipulate them and see the resulting pattern in real time. They can be transformed non-destructively. After a pattern is added and a tool selected, a faint grey box indicates the "real" area of the pattern which can be edited.

- Added “Export Timelapse” - the ability to export a document which has undo steps as a video. Numerous options exist to control how the video is generated (and more will come later!).

- Added “Live Liquify” layers - as the name suggests, they allow you to have non-destructive liquify layers in your stack which can be edited and masked just like all other live filter layers. At the moment, a hard limit of 512 pixels offset in either X or Y is enforced - we hope to eventually lift this restriction.

- Reworked “Studio Presets” from the earlier 1.9 betas. They now work in a more predictable way and store tool / toolbar configuration. A manager dialog is also now provided.

- Added a new “Combined” result to the benchmark - to test performance contexts where vector and raster content is used together. The benchmark version is still 1900 - so existing vector and raster scores from previous builds are still valid and comparable.

- Added a registration page to the app - this allows users to login and auto-install brushes (so far).

- Added the “Resource Manager” functionality from Publisher for managing image placement.

- Added ability to open package files from Designer and Publisher.

- Photo is now a universal binary, supporting both Intel and Apple silicon processors.

- Path text improvements.


- Added “Duplicate spare channel” to right click menu.
- Added missing “Convert to Path Text” menu item.
- Small improvements to the benchmark UI.
- Update app icon for Big Sur.
- Fixed numerous bugs with brushes, introduced in the 1.9.0 betas.
- Fixed issues when opening multiple RAW files at once.
- Fixed significant memory leak introduced in 1.9.0 betas.
- Fixed UI issues with Big Sur.
- Fixed assorted other GPU acceleration issues introduced in the 1.9.0 betas.

 

- Text on a path is now available in Photo.
- More filters now work on masks / adjustments / spare channels (Add Noise, Perlin Noise, etc.).
- Improved Metal rendering performance (over 195).
- Improved experience when editing a spare channel (view artefacts, histogram and navigator).
- Setting a blend mode on a sub-brush will now work properly - paving the way for import of PSD dual-brushes in a future build.
- Attempted to fix startup crash on machines with no compatible Metal GPU.
- Fixed localisation issues affecting non-UK users.
- Fixed issues when attempting to add layers to a spare channel (!).


- Improved “Serif Labs” RAW engine.
- You can now single click a spare channel in the Channels panel to edit it like a layer.
- The Curves adjustment now has numeric field controls for precise positioning.
- Studio presets are now available.
- A benchmarking tool has been added in the help menu. It will only become available when no documents are open.
- Blend modes now work on “alpha only” layers (masks, adjustments, live filters, etc.).
- Added a new “Divide” blend mode.
- Added “Create from centre” for the elliptical marquee tool.
- Allowed snapping to the bounds of the pixel selection.
- Added ability to create brushes from the current pixel selection with one click.

 

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

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1 hour ago, Andy Somerfield said:

Dragging a layer from the layer tab and dropping it onto one of the small target icons in the panel will link together that particular aspect of the two layers

It also unlinks anything that is already linked there.

If I have a layer and use Duplicate Linked, then use that command again on one of the ones that is already linked, I wind up with three layers that are linked together.

If I then drag some other layer onto one of the targets it will replace the existing links and I don't see any way to get more than two "relinked" together in the current UI - seems like something that should be fixed when you come up with the longer-term UI for this.

Attributes can be relinked to groups (by dragging the group onto the target) but changes (such as to line styles) are ignored - seems like this should either link to the individual layers within the group or be prevented if it is not going to work.

 

How do you see this feature interfacing with the existing Symbols technology?  It seems like this functionality could have been merged into that existing mechanism; the "linked" layers would simply be symbols which are not necessarily in the symbols panel (in Designer) and the relink/unlink functionality for individual attributes should really be available for symbols and for master page elements also...

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4 hours ago, Andy Somerfield said:

- Added support for 12bit mono TIFF files.

?

I admit I am not up on all the various formats but I am unaware of this one. 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

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53 minutes ago, Seneca said:

Thanks for the next beta.

I would suggest to add the Duplicate Link command to the contextual Layer menu as well.

Yes! Also don't forget other missing operators like Merge Selected and New Fill Layer not being in that contextual menu. Always bothered me since I bought Affinity that it is missing those since I used them a lot in Photoshop, especially the former.

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You are still not brave enough.
node mode ui needs a true brave there.
You can realize their one-way conversion: layer to node(compatibility)
The best way to solve a problem is to solve the root cause of the problem.

The more restricted you put on the program, the closer you program is to idiot.

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Linked Layers
Such workarounds will increase complexity.
I don't think this is a good plan.
Pure layers and pure nodes keep the architecture simple.
Combine any two unrelated things together and you will gain complexity, I hate that.

The more restricted you put on the program, the closer you program is to idiot.

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4 hours ago, Aftemplate said:

You are still not brave enough.
node mode ui needs a true brave there.
You can realize their one-way conversion: layer to node(compatibility)
The best way to solve a problem is to solve the root cause of the problem.

Completely "redo" whole application with nodes in mind is not viable option, imho. Its not about braveness, many simple tasks does not need nodes and this is the most frequent use case (simple tasks). Many artists dont need even layers, many users want one simple button "Make this image beautiful and dont f*** my mind". This is reality

Also: AP is directly competing with photoshop, which is industry standart. This is really much more important then implementing completely different ideas with many drawbacks (to be honest). Focusing AP on nodes will immediately turn this artists back to Photoshop since nobody will dive into completely new concept when there is simple standart, that is already proved to be powerful

Nodes is not a silver bullet. For example i use Blender, where nodes is the heart of material building. And you know what? i switched to OSL instead of nodes. because for complex things plain structure much much more readable and managable then acres of scrolling areas full of wires and connections. Nodes are good while stuff is simple, after some complexity limit this is nightmare with infinite scrolls, zooms and attempts to remember "what this bunch of nodes expected to do". They are really hard to debug, too

Nodes are good when you need them. Would be much better to make additional "Node adjustment" or add them to Live procedure adjustment. So they are not mandatory for 99% of cases where they are not needed in the first place. imho

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  • Staff

Linked layers aren't a substitute for any potential future "node mode" - they are a useful feature in layer-based documents which we have been hoping to add for some time.

I do agree about node-based image editing being useful for only a subset of jobs - we have no intention of making the default layer-based editing mode go away :)

Also, why make the assumption that going from layer-based to node-based is a "one way" conversion? I don't believe that is the case..

A

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53 minutes ago, Andy Somerfield said:

Linked layers aren't a substitute for any potential future "node mode" - they are a useful feature in layer-based documents which we have been hoping to add for some time.

I do agree about node-based image editing being useful for only a subset of jobs - we have no intention of making the default layer-based editing mode go away :)

Also, why make the assumption that going from layer-based to node-based is a "one way" conversion? I don't believe that is the case..

A

In order to enter fewer words, I didn't make it clear. Now I will make my intentions clear.
You may have heard of Autodesk Maya. It allows traditional "layers" while also allowing users to manipulate nodes. Maya is built entirely on a node, and each property has a corresponding node. Which one to use. Depends on what the user likes.
I don't want to remove layers.
I want layers and nodes to coexist. Nodes are used at this time when the layer is unable to do something.
If you can do a two-way conversion between them, that's definitely the best! (But it may make it more difficult for you to write code for it)
I just think that having a layer with a small number of nodes can upset things. This is what node patterns should do, and I want to maintain the purity of both, while they can interact freely with each other.
Problems of this class due to layer limitations. Implement the node pattern as early as possible. is a way to address the root cause of the problem.
By then, you can focus more on engine writing. Instead of writing hacks for the limitations of such layers.

I really appreciate you work. @Andy Somerfield 

The more restricted you put on the program, the closer you program is to idiot.

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1 hour ago, Aftemplate said:

You misunderstood what I meant.
Could you please re-edit it?
I'll respond to it. @IPv6 

Oh, sorry! I just saw so many heated conversations regarding nodes vs anything else, that just reacted in advance. Regarding re-edit - don`t want to be involved to another one... Points mentioned does not correspond to your message, but they are still valid (imho)

Imho this is totally up to AP team to decide how to improve AP, they already proved to be quite reasonable for a product of such complexity
 

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12 minutes ago, IPv6 said:

Oh, sorry! I just saw so many heated conversations regarding nodes vs anything else, that just reacted in advance.
 

No need to apologize. (I don’t want to spend my time saying I’m sorry. I’m not a rude person, I just want to type the most useful words.
After listening to your explanation, everything is now clear.
(I hope you edit the previous reply and correct it. I want to respond to that.

The more restricted you put on the program, the closer you program is to idiot.

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1 hour ago, IPv6 said:

Oh, sorry! I just saw so many heated conversations regarding nodes vs anything else, that just reacted in advance. Regarding re-edit - don`t want to be involved to another one... Points mentioned does not correspond to your message, but they are still valid (imho)

Imho this is totally up to AP team to decide how to improve AP, they already proved to be quite reasonable for a product of such complexity
 

I like imho.
For you previous "another one" comment, I agree with part of it and oppose part of it.
But, as you said, it's up to the AP team. So there is no point in arguing between us.
Layers are timelines, Low complexity. It is changing at this moment..

The more restricted you put on the program, the closer you program is to idiot.

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now:

Thanks to @Chris B

who pointed out I had not right setting for Retina rendering, I'm not sure now what's the default - imho for digital drawing/painting slow works better but It's superfine to choose.

before:

I'm still waiting for retina half-res to full-res flickering while painting bug to be fixed.

I've post it many times and every beta that's the first fix I am looking for and the first thing I test... still not correct.

Please, please fix it - it's so annoying...

Thank you 🖤

Edited by Nero
solved
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On 11/26/2020 at 12:29 PM, Andy Somerfield said:

For the brave, this panel also allows “relinking” - even between different layer types(!). Dragging a layer from the layer tab and dropping it onto one of the small target icons in the panel will link together that particular aspect of the two layers (again, the UI is all going to change).

I am trying to be brave 😀, I have only managed to drag a layer ... and get it to link ... over the target icon twice....despite numerous attempts....what is the knack to getting it to work every time 

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21 hours ago, Murfee said:

what is the knack to getting it to work every time 

From what I can tell, you need to have only layer A selected, and without deselecting it, drag layer B over the target icon (without selecting B).  The mouse pointer should turn into a curved arrow when over the target icon.

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3 hours ago, fde101 said:

From what I can tell, you need to have only layer A selected, and without deselecting it, drag layer B over the target icon (without selecting B).  The mouse pointer should turn into a curved arrow when over the target icon.

Hi fde101, I was dragging the selected layer, the pointer changes to a curved arrow... not near Mac but will try again later. Thanks for the help.

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13 minutes ago, Murfee said:

I was dragging the selected layer,

That was basically asking it to link the layer to itself.  The panel changes with the selection.

 

13 minutes ago, Murfee said:

the pointer changes to a curved arrow

Yes, it does that for group and adjustment layers too, even though they won't actually link to the properties being pointed to.  That needs to be fixed, but I am taking it to be part of what Serif already said will be changed, hopefully before any official release...

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I just had to force quit a file because the flood fill tool was taking forever (waited over 5 minutes) but it did not show the flood fill progress bar (which in itself is rather useless since it shows a full bar for the duration of the fill calculation). I restarted affinity and it did not offer me a recovery. Meaning 2 hours of work were gone (I know, don't do work in beta, but the time saving of other fuctions make up for that).

In general the flood fill tool is super slow (when the area you click turns up not te be closed so it fills all over the drawing) and very unstable. 

OSX mojave

Macbook pro 2018

beta 206

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When I have a layer selected and press "v" (move tool) while the move tool is already selected affinity photo jumps to a layer which starts with the name "v". 

Beta. 1.9.0.206 . 

It does not occur in 1.8. To reproduce, It's simple. Just create a new file and create e.g. 3 layers. Name 2 of them and leave one blank. Then type any of the characters  that the layers begin with (twice often if it's a shortcut) and it will select the layer.

In this example I select the lower layer and then press "b" twice and "v" twice. You can see it switches tools first and then selects the layer. 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s8mk329bdchnoe4/Affinity Shortcut Bug.mov?dl=0

Mac OSX Mojave 

Macbook pro 2018

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