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Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.7.0.104)


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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 especially true as this is only an early build of 1.7 - we will release many 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  :ph34r:

 

Changes This Build

 

- 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.
 

Changes In Previous 1.7 Beta Builds

 

- 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!

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Hey @Andy Somerfield this is great news !
Doing the download as soon as i can and will surely revert here.

Never be the Same Again !
---
Dell Optiplex 5090 SFF
Intel Core i5-10500T @2.30GHz with 12GiB 2666MHz DDR4
Intel UHD Graphics 630 for 10th Generation
M.2 2280, 512 GB, PCIe NVMe Gen3 x4, Class 40 SSD

Windows 11 Pro x64 22H2 + LibreOffice 7.5.3

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1 minute ago, kai2 said:

I have expressed myself misleadingly. I have moved AP to a subfolder in the programs folder. This is in line with apple's guidelines for organizing programs.

This is normally just fine, as "good" Mac apps can generally cope with this, but the Affinity beta versions look for the normal apps in this specific location and if they do not find them there with the default names they assume they don't exist without looking elsewhere.

 

53 minutes ago, mac_heibu said:

On a Mac, the applications have to reside within the application folder. Otherwise you will run into issues.

Not usually, and there can be more than one application folder on a Mac...  this is an issue with the way these specific apps are handling registration.

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Hi, this is the error I am always getting when trying to save the file for the first time after modification that I open from NAS server. This applies to all apps, Photo, Designer and Publisher both in final 1.6 versions as well as in betas. Files opened from hard drive of my laptop work just fine without error. Can you please check the issue?  

Zrzut ekranu 2018-12-7 o 15.42.13.png

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  • Staff

Hi Dedario,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
We do not recommend working directly from files saved on external drives/NAS (and cloud services) because if the connection is lost we are not able to save/write to the file anymore nor save it (using Save As) to anywhere else. Affinity doesn't load all file data to memory (for performance reasons) and keeps adding/loading data to the file while you work on it. If that file becomes unavailable we have no way to keep writing to it and since the file wasn't totally loaded in memory we also can't save it as a new file.

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Thanks for your response. This makes sens though makes my life  more difficult. I work on a big number of files stored on NAS and the need to copy them to hard drive all the time I want to make some changes is not convenient.

When I reopen the file after receiving this message it then works normally, I can edit and save until I close it. 

If I remember correctly version 1.5 did work in a bit different way as I never seen such message. 

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40 minutes ago, MEB said:

We are still looking into this and try to find ways to make it reliable.

Suggest trying to identify when a document being opened is on such a drive and copying it to a temporary location on a local drive before opening it when this situation is encountered.

It can be synced back when saving and the temp file deleted when the document is closed.

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Is everyone else still unable to change/set the Display rendering method in this (or previous) betas because the 'use only GPU' preference setting covers it up, or is it just me?

562503764_APhotobetadisplayprefs.thumb.jpg.e7a02cc49b1c6881f16d0a121f8c21e6.jpg

I included the Designer beta window for comparison but both the 1.6 retail apps & the Affinity Publisher beta also allow changing the Display setting, so I don't think it is anything related to my GPU or anything like that.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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6 hours ago, R C-R said:

Is everyone else still unable to change/set the Display rendering method in this (or previous) betas because the 'use only GPU' preference setting covers it up, or is it just me?

Nope, the check/unckeck works fine, but i cannot remark any difference??? So what it is doing and what should i set with the GPU from my signature?

Only sounds like there will be just used one part of all available???? (BTW: i have metal on and yeah, this makes a big difference :-)

OSX 12.5  / iMac Retina 27" / Radeon Pro 580X / Metall: on! --- WWG1WGA WW!

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5 hours ago, fde101 said:

It looks more to me like the control was removed, possibly replaced by the "Hardware Acceleration" option at the bottom of the window?

I am reasonably sure they are (or at least should be) two different things. As I understand it (& as the name suggests) the "Display" option is for rendering to the display. In both Affinity retail apps, as well as the Publisher & Designer betas, this is a popup menu with four choices: MetalOpenGLOpenGL (Basic), or Software.

"Use only integrated GPU" is a checkbox (available in all the Mac apps, retail or beta). For Macs that have both discrete & integrated GPU's (like some Mac laptops), checking it prevents access to the discrete GPU. Since integrated GPU's use less power than discrete ones, that option is useful extending battery run time on the laptops at the expense of lower performance.

"Hardware Acceleration" is for Metal-assisted acceleration of computations for tools, filters & such. It appears only in Affinity Photo (beta or retail). From the beta help topic:

  • Hardware Acceleration—checking Enable Metal compute acceleration enables hardware acceleration on supported GPU devices (integrated Intel and any discrete graphics card, plus any external eGPUs connected via Thunderbolt 3 ports). Tools, adjustments, filters and other operations including RAW development will use GPU resources to achieve faster performance. The benefits are especially noticeable when stacking several Live Filter Layers together—export times are significantly quicker and canvas previewing is snappier. As a trade off, memory requirements are increased and performance may be dependent on the amount of VRAM available to the GPU devices. On systems with both integrated and discrete GPUs, both devices will be utilised for hardware acceleration. The make and type of all available GPUs will be reported directly under this option.

I do not have a Mac with a supported GPU, so for me (in both the beta & retail versions of Affinity Photo) that checkbox is always greyed out, & "(No compatible GPU)" appears below the greyed out option. That is part of the reason why I am asking about the Display option & its four choices -- I have the feeling that on my iMac, the display is not being rendered with the fastest available (Metal) option, which my iMac's GPU does support.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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3 hours ago, R C-R said:

I do not have a Mac with a supported GPU, so for me (in both the beta & retail versions of Affinity Photo) that checkbox is always greyed out, & "(No compatible GPU)" appears below the greyed out option.

I think my GPU might be supported, but my OS version is not.

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