Affinity Photo Customer Beta - 1.6.4 (Beta 4)

[Andy Somerfield]

Status: Beta Release

Purpose: New features, fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo

Mac App Store: Not Submitted

Download: Here

 

This is the fourth beta of a substantial change to our codebase and as much as we have tried to ensure the quality of the code, it should be considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing. In addition it is definitely worth noting that files created in Affinity 1.6 may not open in 1.5 so always make a copy of your important documents before opening them in 1.6 to ensure you do not accidentally overwrite them and are unable to open them in your 1.5 version.

 

To use this beta, simply download the file from the link given above and double-click on the file to open the installer. Follow the instructions to install the beta version. The beta sits alongside the Mac App Store version and will not interfere with it.

 

Thanks,

 

Affinity Photo Team 

 

Changes this release

 

• New “Live Halftone” filter.
• Added noise reduction slider to “New HDR Merge” panel.
• Added menu to layers panel with an “Auto-scroll” item (to quickly enable / disable).
• Importing ASE files now supports spot colours.
• Increased performance of Metal compute mode.
• Increased the maximum size of the liquify brush tools.
• Fixed some grid drag / drop issues.
• Improved Metal compute acceleration of HDR merge.
• Small SVG import improvements.
• Further TIFF import improvements / fixes.
• Better quality equirectangular projection previews if Metal compute enabled.
• Fixed Diffuse Glow opacity slider.
• “Always show brush crosshair” is more completely obeyed.
• Fixed vignette artefacts.
• Colour correction fixes for Metal view on AMD cards.
• Fixed issues with the quick mask toolbar dropdown.
• Fixed crashing on export / save.
• Numerous other small fixes.
• Improved localisation.

 

Changes since last App Store release

 

• Selection refinement performance improvements.
• Show progress when committing a refined selection.
• Handle layers with 0 width / height more correctly.
• Improved PDF / vector export.
• Remember Align To settings between sessions.
• Opening and saving document will now support macOS filesystem tags correctly.
• Export panel also support tags correctly.
• Improved RAW support - more cameras etc.
• Further efforts to reduce the size of the application binary.
• Improved TIFF loading correctness.
• Fixed some “Effects” brushes looking wrong on masks / adjustments.
• Prevent Tone Map being macro recorded (proper support for it will be reintroduced later).
• The “Undo” brush should do nothing on masks / adjustments.
• Fixed crash when using File -> New Batch Job in light UI mode.
• Fixed crash when loading a document with an OCIO space which is no longer available.
• Support malformed 8bit grayscale TIFFs (which were loading as sRGB).
• Fixed some scroll bar panel issues in light UI.
• Fixed Ctrl-reset startup crash in light UI.
• Fixed some flickering issues with sliders.
• Removed “Set as Default” for Pantone palettes.
• Improved drag & drop in the Library page.
• Numerous other small fixes.
• Localisation improvements (especially Russian).

 

• Metal compute acceleration.
• Significant improvements to light UI.
• Metal display acceleration.
• Custom brush wet edges.
• Outlier stacking mode.
• Fixed Export LUT Red/Blue swapping bug.
• Fixed inability to hold shift and click in brush tools to create a straight line.
• Improved Photoshop Plugin support.
• Fixed bad / crashing macros cause by recording a 32bit preview mode change.
• Fixed B&C macro arguments issues.
• Fixed info panel samplers not being drawn.
• Fixed artefacts with Live Filters.
• Improved Live Filters performance
• Pasting pixel data should always past pixel-aligned.
• Fixed inability to load Procreate PSD files.
• Localisation improvements.
• Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements

 

• First and foremost, the 1.6 version is mainly about: Light UI! (go to Preferences->User Interface)
• Improved view pan/zoom performance and new pixel-differencing pixel shader
• Improved performance with large documents
• New font chooser dropdown with recents, used fonts and favourites
• New Glyph browser
• Stroke stabiliser for all pencil and brush tools
• Align to key items (first/last selected)
• Text frame vertical alignment options
• Fit frame to text (double-click on bottom centre handle).
• Transform panel uses the rotation centre
• Scale/shear can now be performed about rotation centre
• Double-click now resets shape handles and rotate/shear handles
• Many PDF export improvements including vector export of multi-stop gradients
• Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements

[anon1]

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[anon1]

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[markw]

So latest beta out today and still finding the same problems for me as always;

Live Shadows & Highlights Filter generates thin vertical line artefacts.
 
No realtime screen response using a Wacom tablet with the following Adjustment Layers and Filter Layers;

New Adjustment Layers:
Curves Adjustment.
Gradient Map.
Threshold Adjustment > Blend Options Ranges.

Live Filters Layer:
Motion Blur > Angular adjustment wheel doesn’t respond in real time.
Halftone > Angular adjustment wheel doesn’t respond in real time.

[abarkalo]

3 hours ago, MBd said:

using the shadows and highlights filter I get artifacts (using metal on Sierra on 2016 13 touch)

and the alignment of the text in the buttons...

 

+ if I click the options arrow of the snapping options I get some flickering 

...this does not happen on the dropdown of the quick mask button 

 

the quick mask settings arrow button stays pressed while the snapping one does not, there is some inconsistency, both in light and dark UI

 

cheers 

Yes have exactly the same issue.  Same lines.

 

 

[RNKLN]

The release notes don't indicate that the shadows/highlights issue as reported is fixed in this release. Therefore, it shouldn't come as a surprise.

[Puck]

a small inaccuracy in localization (layers panel). Should be "Halftone Filter"

 

 

 

Best regards :-) 

[antonkudin]

Encountering random crashes. No particular pattern, I'd be doing some pixel art with small canvas, and app just goes poof, when i haven't event taken any action: could be stationary mouse even. Cant pinpoint any particular pattern.

Affinity Photo Beta_2017-08-04-230451_iMac.crash

Affinity Photo Beta_2017-08-04-225918_iMac.crash

 

Happened before beta 2,3,4, but still isn't fixed.

[Frank Jonen]

Do you think it's possible to add a Slope, Offset, Power, Saturation control layer (CDL) that also allows .cc XML file input?

Attached you an example for an exchange file here for reference. 

match transfer.cc.zip

[Frank Jonen]

"Lock children" gets forgotten upon save. Just accidentally distorted an image because I set the container to 'lock children'.

You open the file again later and all checkboxes have reset.

[Andy Somerfield]

@antonkudin 

 

Thanks for the crash dumps - it's crashing during autosave (hence why it appears random).

 

Would be nice to get that fixed - any chance you get a copy of the offending document over to me so I can find out which history item is causing the crash on autosave?

 

Thanks,

 

A

[demimaderek]

Having trouble loading files (including "recent") after successfully using beta a few times - not actually loading and a re-boot required.. Ay ideas here?

Thanks 

Derek

[kaffeeundsalz]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I'm experiencing significant lags with Display Performance set to Metal, especially noticeable when using the View Tool and panning across an image fast. This has been a problem in all 1.6 betas so far and has not improved in beta 4. I'm running Affinity Photo on a 15-Inch Retina MacBook Pro (Mid 2014), 2,5 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM and dual graphics (NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB, Intel Iris Pro).

[Tommiferdi]

Hi Guys, you´re doing a great job

Found a bug in Affinity Photo 1.6.4 (Beta 4) running on MacBook Pro Late 2011, 16GB RAM

On my Mac batch processing is finishing only a few images (normaly 3-4, tested with different macros). Then it will stop like shown on the screenshot.
Problem out of this. I´m not able to stop the batch process or close affinity photo. Have to use "Force Quit Applications" from Mac OS.

Same batches running on 1.5.2 are fine.

Kind regards, Thomas

[Chris_K]

Hi Tommiferdi

 

I'm getting this as well,the image that complete seem to vary each time but it never completely finishes. Thanks for letting us know about this

[m43]

I hope the Photo beta is being tested on the High Sierra Betas.    I would assume that High Sierra in September is the MacOS  target release environment.

 

I have found a couple of other photo apps that have serious problems with the High Sierra betas.  

[mac_heibu]

Do you think, the Affinity team will say: „No! Never! We aren’t going to support High Sierra!"?

As we know and see, the team already has a look at compatibility with High Sierra, but it would be a waste of time, man power and money to run behind a system in development and follow every single step, an unfinished os is going to do. Even the „hearts" of the new macOS, the file system "APFS" and the graphic engine „Metal 2“ aren’t ready and fully implemented.

[JGD]

17 hours ago, mac_heibu said:

Even the „hearts" of the new macOS, the file system "APFS" and the graphic engine „Metal 2“ aren’t ready and fully implemented.

 

I don't really think APFS will seriously mess with most apps… Stuff that deals directly with the file system, like file recovery (Disk Drill, Disk Warrior, File Salvage) and backup apps (SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner), will most definitely break and require an update, but the rest? Apple would never pull off a smooth transition like the one from iOS 10.2 to iOS 10.3 if apps were really influenced by the change in the file system.

 

As for the rest of what you said, well… No, it is not a waste of man power or money; allowing your users to upgrade to the latest major OS release if not on day one, at least shortly thereafter is part of any developer's job. That's why the really early-access builds are called *developer* builds… If anything, the latest stable release of Affinity apps, currently sold and distributed in the MAS, could and should run at least on the latest macOS *Public* beta or at least an attempt to make it run should be made. Public beta builds are always a bit behind closed developer-bound builds for a reason, you know?

 

If you meant that these Affinity Customer Beta builds do not really have to run on macOS Public Beta or even the GM release on day one, well… I do agree with that. We are warned time and time again that these aren't intended for production purposes, only for testing, so we can't reasonably demand that. As for said MAS releases, as far as I can remember, Serif devs have made compatibility fixes to the current stable branch in the past, independently of the beta branch. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if we saw High Sierra-specific Affinity Photo 1.5.3 and Affinity Designer 1.5.6 builds hit the MAS on or around day one of the new OS release…

[VisualNotes]

Feature request: Option to define the default interpolation method

Even in Beta 1.6.4 (Beta 4) I'm still missing a very basic option in the settings: the ability to define the default interpolation method, or at least, it would be fine if AF would remember the last selected method. Currently the default one is always "Biliniear", which may not be the desired one in most cases.

[Lojza]

This beta often hang when opening a file or multiple files (ordinary JPEGs) with drag and drop from Finder. There was the same problem with the previous beta.

The app remains responsive, but refuses to quit as "the files are opening"... The MAS version is OK and does not suffer from this behavior.

[Nana]

Are the Affinity Photo team still on holidays after releasing the iPad version update?? Too much holiday is not good for you, AndyS .  Please come back!!!