Affinity Photo 1.7.0.231 Beta

Affinity Photo

Affinity Photo is a professional photo editing tool with all the power you’ll ever need. Live retouch tools work in real time and its speed means there’s no waiting to see your results. Non-destructive editing, raw processing and end-to-end color management are standard, so Affinity Photo has all the features required to make beautiful photographs spring to life.

Affinity Photo comes with a huge range of high-end filters including lighting, blurs, distortions, tilt-shift, shadows, glows and many more. Correct and enhance images with Levels, Curves, Black and White, White Balance, HSL, Shadows and Highlights and over a dozen other adjustments that are previewed instantly and can be edited any time.

Other features include raw image processing, PSD import and export, colour management, accurate adjustments, high-end controls for channels and masks, advanced layer handling, batch processing, focus stacking, and much more.

What's new in Affinity Photo 1.7.0 Beta:

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.
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.
RAW files now load much more quickly.
Re-implemented support for XTrans sensors.
The denoise algorithm has been rewritten (to produce better results).
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.
Added support for per-monitor ICC profiles (previously we only used the primary monitor's ICC profile) in the document view (controls still use the primary monitor's ICC profile, which will hopefully be fixed in the future).

Affinity Photo 1.7.0.231 Beta fixes:

Changed tool shortcuts (optionally, default is off) to allow SHIFT to loop through grouped shortcuts (e.g. SHIFT+B to loop through brush tools)
Fixed copied colour name being incorrect when source was a named colour
Fixed shortcuts not working when a previewable combo box had focus
Fixed cursor keys not working on Blend Mode combo box
Added ability to include an identifier (normally email address) in crash reports so we can more easily locate crashes (users of the beta with Microsoft Store licences can't access this yet)
Fixed being unable to resize Procedural Texture UI by dragging
Fixed Procedural Texture UI extending when filling the Equations field
Fixed crash when closing the application with the Character panel open
Fixed Jpeg2000 loading bug
Always show primary and secondary colours in the colour page when using brush tools
Fixed PSDLoading creating incompatible masks
Fixed 16-bit luminosity blend mode rendering issues
Renamed "PNG-24" preset name to just "PNG" as it's misleading
Added K-only option for Grayscale images
Fixed Insert Text from File Right Click Menu
Fixed Tool's information label to use the correct decimal separator
Added missing rotate icons in Develop Persona
Fixed Inpainting issues when using RGB32
Tweaked Rasterise menu item order
Added missing extend modes in Edit > Inpaint
Make tone mapping preset thumbnails have the correct orientation
Added a new dot type to the Halftone filter
Fixed Inpainting with transparency applied causing the application to hang
Fixed crash when using fill inpainting mode, and respect opacity and blend mode again
Improved reading of Fuji X-T3 RAW
Changed Liquify tool to remember brush settings per document
Fixed previews not clearing when switching to / from Quickmask mode
Fixed Patch tool displaying temporary artifacts on cropped and rotated images
Fixed Inpainting Panorama with no missing areas results in a blank image
Fixed Focus Merge ignoring colour profile when using JPEGs
Fixed crash when Refining Edges on merged HDR
Fixed rendering a Panorama then using Inpainting resulting in a transparent canvas
Changed Develop to preview the output profile
Stopped clipping to sRGB gamut on developing to ProPhoto RGBA16