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Affinity Photo Customer Beta (1.7.0.135 - Gold Master Seed)


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Status: Gold Master Seed

Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes

Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo

Mac App Store: Submitted

Download DMG: Download

Auto-update: Available.

 

Hello,

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the final beta of Affinity Photo 1.7 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.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all users in this forum who have helped us work on 1.7 - we couldn't do it without you :)

Barring any last minute catastrophe, this build will ship to customers sometime next week and we will soon be back in beta for 1.7.1 - with new features, improvements and fixes.

Many thanks (as always),

Affinity Photo Team  :ph34r:

 

Changes This Build

 

- Fixed bug where autosave files would not get cleaned up after a save & close.
- Improved HDR merge performance when Metal compute is enabled.
- Fixed inpainting brush when working on "Current layer and below".

 

Changes Since 1.6 Release

 

EDR

- Added support for EDR displays to Photo. When editing a 32bit document, enabling EDR will switch macOS into a mode whereby it will increase the backlight intensity and darken screen content - increasing the dynamic range available when rendering content.

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.
- Allow Ctrl key to be held when typing numbers in a brush tool (will change flow instead of opacity).
- Fixed ABR brush import (would ignore "random" controllers).

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.
- Develop now respects the output profile when previewing.
- Added support for CR3 RAW when using the Core Image engine.
- Show which autofocus rectangles were in focus and which were selected by the camera (yellow, green respectively).
- 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!).
- Automatically fall back to Core Image for cameras which are not supported by Serif Labs.

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.
- Added round dot type to the halftone filter.
- New “Lens Correction” filter - apply lens correction from the built-in lens database.
- Bilateral blur accuracy improvements.

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.

Layers

- Layers page - added option for transparent background for thumbnails.
- Layers page - added multiple thumbnail size options.
- Layers page - added ability to tag layers with a colour - including PSD round-trip.
- Allow adding an empty group from the Layer menu.
- New “Duplicate Selection” item in Layer menu (old behaviour). Duplicate now duplicate the whole layer ignoring pixel selection.
- Alt / Option is now used to make a pixel selection from layer luminance. You can now also hold shift to add the result to the current selection.
- Hide / Show / Show All Layers options in layers menu.
- Ability to either rasterise or rasterise and trim a layer. Previously recorded macros will trim.

 
Selections

- Significant improvements to selection refinement.
- When using selection tools with no pixel selection, default to New / Add as appropriate.
- Added “Alpha Similarity” to Select Sampled Colour tool.

Tools

- Grouped tool shortcuts now default to needing the shift key held to cycle (option in preferences).
- 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.
- Allow brush rotate / size key changes while dragging.
- Added a “Reveal Canvas” checkbox to the crop tool - defaults to off.
- Added new “Transform object separately” mode into Move tool.
- A general tools overhaul has been performed - providing editing of grids, guides, page origin, across multiple tools (not just in the Move tool)
- Patch tool now supports arrow keys for rotate / scale.
- All brush tools can now be axis constrained once brush has started - not just the pixel tool.

History

- “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.
- The History page now has an “advanced” mode - which shows thumbnails and time info.

I/O

- 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.
- TIFF export now has user selectable compression method.
- Added support for 12bit TIFF files.
- Introduced new metadata mining - completely rewritten to improve performance, flexibility and correctness.
- Metadata is now dynamically synchronised with your document - so if you resize then export, the values will be correct.
- Added Focal Length to metadata summary view.
- Added a button in general preferences to open a folder from which Photo will read LensFun-style XML files - if users wish to add / experiment with their own lens profiles.
- Support 16bit CMYK TIFF import.

General

- New ability to control how macros are scaled / aligned when playing back.
- Added an “Assets” panel to Photo.
- New cube setup mode for grids.
- Add “Fill with Primary / Secondary” to the Edit menu for fast access.
- The batch process dialog now fully supports expressions for height and width - available constants are “w”, “h” and “dpi”.
- “Lock guides” added to menus.
- Support for drag dropping .afstyles into Photo.
- Support for drag dropping .afpalette into Photo.
- 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, Pexels and Pixabay. All of these providers offer full-resolution stock imagery which is free to use.
- Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features.
- Significant stability improvements when working on non-local files (network shares, USB drives, etc.).
- Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes.
- New welcome screen layout and all new samples.
- Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!

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May I assume that the upcoming 1.7 App Store version will take the preferences from 1.6.X and not from the installed Beta?

Affinity Photo - Affinity Designer - Affinity Publisher | macOS Sonoma (14.2) on 16GB MBP14 2021 with 2.4 versions

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Congratulatons!! I'm really happy about the GM. Very well done, team!!

Best regards, Puck

iMac 2017, 16 GB RAM, Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640 1536 MB, MacOS Ventura 13.6.6 (22G630) - Affinity V2-Universallizenz 

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14 minutes ago, RNKLN said:

May I assume that the upcoming 1.7 App Store version will take the preferences from 1.6.X and not from the installed Beta?

Correct! Also, anything you have created (assets, brushes etc.) in the beta that you wish to keep, will need exporting so you can load it into the 1.7 App Store version when released. I would probably recommend doing this sooner than later. 

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against my decision to never post here again because all suggestions for a better usability are ignored anyway I want to let you know you still have a bug in your refine selection tool which is there since the very first beta !!! when you select output to new layer with mask  you get artefacts surrounding the cut out.  less with open gl more with metal. would be nice you fix this before the final release.

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Thanks for finally making a release available that has all the improved brush behaviour and performance improvements. I am so unable to use 1.6.7 for painting (nor anything else really) after being spoiled by the beta. :)

Is it possible to simply copy over all preferences manually - including window placement and so on and just have them work in the release (same for Windows)?

 

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37 minutes ago, thomasp said:

Is it possible to simply copy over all preferences manually - including window placement and so on and just have them work in the release (same for Windows)?

This should be possible yes. We will try to get round to writing a guide to moving settings across from beta to release builds.

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Congratulations @Andy Somerfield and team.  Great work, guys and Photo 1.7 is a much better product compared to 1.6.   When I saw Andy S release new beta version almost on a daily basis, I knew he was up to something and now we have a GM release.

Thank you so much.  You can have a well deserved break this weekend before WWDC.

I look forward to 1.7.1 beta with all the accessibility issues fixed (I am talking about adding up and down arrows buttons next to sliders for filters, adjustment layers, etc.  This has been done in the Tone Mapping persona but not other places).

In all, I am very pleased with 1.7 release and you and your team have achieved alot just looking at the change log.

Thanks again.

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Not a big issue, but I've noticed that the Freehand Selection Tool (and all other marquee selection tools) "Mode" resets to "New" every time you switch tools. 
For instance, in 1.6, when you choose the "Add" selection mode, it usually remembers that if, say, you switch to the brush, and then back to the selection tool again, but now it reverts back to the default of "New". Difficult to explain, but basically the selection tools don't remember any of the settings in the toolbar you set if you switch to another tool.

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ChristiduToit,

it defaults to "New" if you enter the tool with no selection at all - because "New" is the only useful option in that situation. If you enter the tool with a non-empty selection, you will be defaulted to what you last used - as in 1.6. This 1.7 change is by design, but if you find workflow issues with the new behaviour, please give us a recipe and will we log it and investigate :)

Thanks,

A

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2 hours ago, Andy Somerfield said:

ChristiduToit,

it defaults to "New" if you enter the tool with no selection at all - because "New" is the only useful option in that situation. If you enter the tool with a non-empty selection, you will be defaulted to what you last used - as in 1.6. This 1.7 change is by design.

Thanks,

A

This sounds good, thanks.

Can't wait to work with the new Version. Congratulations.

------------------------

Fernando Velarde

www.velarde.com

Instagram.com/soyfervelarde

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6 hours ago, Andy Somerfield said:

ChristiduToit,

it defaults to "New" if you enter the tool with no selection at all - because "New" is the only useful option in that situation. If you enter the tool with a non-empty selection, you will be defaulted to what you last used - as in 1.6. This 1.7 change is by design, but if you find workflow issues with the new behaviour, please give us a recipe and will we log it and investigate :)

Thanks,

A

The problem with having it always set to "New" is that you can't use a modifier to add new parts to the selection while using that mode. In Photoshop you add to your selection by pressing down shift, which is a kind of a big deal for us painters who use the selection tool to block out shapes, while using the shift and alt modifiers to fine adjust our selections.

My only workaround to this in previous versions of AP was to always set it to "Add", but now when that is no longer an option, I am stuck with having to go into the menu every time the tool resets to set it back to a setting that makes the tool functional for my type of work. This to me is a bit of a regression, which could all be fixed if you added a modifier key that will add to the selection. Right now shift switches to straight lines selection, which I think should be on ctrl instead, and "Add" should be on shift. Fix this and I will be more than happy.

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Congratulations! Been looking forward to this release quite a bit. Will this only launch for Mac users next week, or is it also for Windows?

Anyway, some pretty solid features were added in 1.7, and the software is going in the right direction. Still missing a few core features I need for painting, but this release does address quite a few of the issues I had with the program that will improve the painting experience immensely. Now, time to look ahead into the future. Very much looking forward to when GPU acceleration is coming to Windows as well (I am so envious of you Mac users right now).

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1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Congratulations! Been looking forward to this release quite a bit. Will this only launch for Mac users next week, or is it also for Windows?

Anyway, some pretty solid features were added in 1.7, and the software is going in the right direction. Still missing a few core features I need for painting, but this release does address quite a few of the issues I had with the program that will improve the painting experience immensely. Now, time to look ahead into the future. Very much looking forward to when GPU acceleration is coming to Windows as well (I am so envious of you Mac users right now).

I wish a painter like you can tell others, like what exactly you mean the painting experience is improved. I wish I could tell other than adding the sub brushes feature. Can you elaborate? Thanks!

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21 hours ago, csp said:

against my decision to never post here again because all suggestions for a better usability are ignored anyway I want to let you know you still have a bug in your refine selection tool which is there since the very first beta !!! when you select output to new layer with mask  you get artefacts surrounding the cut out.  less with open gl more with metal. would be nice you fix this before the final release.

csp,

This is by design. It does it so the partially transparent pixels on the new layer don't contain colours from the background. Other tools call it "decontaminating".

If you don't want it, duplicate your source layer before refining then set the output of the refine tool to be "Mask".

Hope this helps,

Andy.

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@Andy Somerfield

Thanks for the quick response!
I actually much prefer having it the way it was where you set your preferences/custom settings for the selection tools and it stays that way when switching tools.
I've definitely encountered massive workflow issues with it resetting every time, as I often select those custom settings for a reason and wish to keep them that way until I decide to change them (in which case I will). I'm much more likely to use the same selection settings for a project then changing them, so I think it would be better to have them stay the way that I set them up rather than having them default to 'New' every time - custom settings, by nature, are after all there for the user to set things up the way they want.

Of course, I'm just one of many users, but if you prefer to keep it this way then I absolutely think that @Frozen Death Knight's suggestion of having a modifier key to add the little "+" next to the selection to add to your current selection would be incredibly useful - much like in PS holding down the Shift key will allow you to add to your selection without having to manually change the setting in the toolbar to "Add". Shift in Affinity is obviously used to add a straight line to the selection, so perhaps holding down Cmd would be a better option. That way you can create a selection, add to it by holding down (what every modifier key you choose to use) and subtract from it holding down the Alt key, allowing the user to sculpt out the perfect selection quickly and easily.
 

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@Frozen Death Knight @evtonic3
The brush engine has been redesigned. Brushes feel smoother and more natural than in previous versions - especially when using a tablet. 
Can't wait to try some of those brushes for client projects, but I'm still a bit hesitant to use the Beta for client work - dying for 1.7 to come out! :D
This is a big step up as a lot of digital artists (myself included) have flocked to Affinity Photo as a painting tool alternative to PS. 
As it stands, Affinity Photo is a really good painting app, but it's definitely (obviously) geared towards photo editing, but I think 1.7 is going to be a huge leap forward for digital artists as well as photo editors. 

@Andy Somerfield All the suggestions I've made are really just a result of nitpicking, but you guys really outdid yourselves with 1.7 across the board!
The 1.7 Beta's have gotten me so exciting for the official release!

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Congrats for GM, this release really superior to 1.6! In some areas it clearly better than Photoshop now, which is big archivement imho :)

It`s a pity though, that PSD export still has problems with hidden layers (just checked with GM)... they are exported completely empty (no pixels in layer in PSD). Which is kinda looks like a bug - exporting hidden layer did not mean destroying its content (but this what really happen upon PSD export).

1.6 didn`t has such problems, all layers were properly exported "as is" with content, even hidden. Hoping this will be fixed later :)

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4 hours ago, Andy Somerfield said:

csp,

This is by design. It does it so the partially transparent pixels on the new layer don't contain colours from the background. Other tools call it "decontaminating".

If you don't want it, duplicate your source layer before refining then set the output of the refine tool to be "Mask".

Hope this helps,

Andy.

thanks Andy , but what is the value of this feature when the mask can not be altered because the masked image is corrupted ?  I understand that  contamination is removed when you do a simple cut out but this adds contend to the image and I´m sure I'm not the only one how will see this as a bug because it makes zero sense. 

 

 

Screen Shot 11 Kopie.jpg

Screen Shot 10 Kopie.jpg

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10 hours ago, evtonic3 said:

I wish a painter like you can tell others, like what exactly you mean the painting experience is improved. I wish I could tell other than adding the sub brushes feature. Can you elaborate? Thanks!

Here's a list in no particular order:

  • Straight horizontal and vertical lines can now be done using shift. A long requested feature that many artists use.
  • Mirroring tools, which help speed up workflow for symmetrical work, and allow you to create some interesting shapes for drawing.
  • (MAC ONLY) GPU acceleration, which speeds up the brush engine to allow painting on very large canvases with large brushes (1000px+ large) without much input delay if you have a strong graphics card (also speeds things up a bit on lower end machines). This also opens up possibilities to add features like rotating your canvas in 360 degrees down the line. On Windows we will have to wait for this feature (which is why I am so envious), but it is in the works, so hopefully it will be out sooner rather than later.
  • Brush settings now support "Sub Brushes", which in Photoshop is called "Dual Brushes". It allows you to add multiple brushes onto another brush, allowing for new types of brushes to exist.
  • Texture settings for brushes got some improvements too, like being able to sequence textures together instead of just randomly. You can do stuff like creating better looking chain brushes, complex texture sequences brushes, alphabetical order brushes, number brushes, and more.
  • The colour picker had a bug fixed that caused it to not reliably pick up the correct colour from the canvas while using alt on a brush. Now it simply works as it should.
  • Some minor quality of life improvements with context sensititve right click menus like in the "Layers" panel. It is still missing stuff, like "Merge Selected" and "New Fill Layer", but it's a bit more useful now, with less need to go to the header menu bar to find what you seek.
  • The Sponge tool was previously completely unusable because of how ugly the results looked. Now if you want to use it to increase/decrease saturation of your colours, you can.
  • A few adjustment layers got improved over the legacy versions, which help pretty much any artist who uses them to fine adjust stuff like contrast, saturation, hue, and more (I use them a lot, so I appreciate these improvements quite a bit).
  • They also did general performance improvements of the brushes, but I haven't really compared and contrasted with how it used to be in 1.6, so it's a bit hard to say at the moment.

There are probably stuff I missed, but these improvements are fairly substantial. AP is still missing stuff that it needs before I would consider it a proper replacement of Photoshop for artists, but many significant steps were taken during this Beta to get it in that direction. Hopefully the developers will keep checking off stuff on my list of improvements I made during the course of 1.7 testing in the coming Betas.

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