Affinity Photo 1.7.0.243 Beta [Update]

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 1.7.0.240 Beta fixes:

Significant performance improvements
Hopefully fixes issues related to performance degradation over time
Tone Mapping a 20MP image is now 10x faster
Opening ten 20MP CR2 files is now 3x faster
Developing a 20MP image is now 2x faster
Complicated documents are much more responsive
Fixed RGBA-32bit colour dodge
Fixed Colour Wheel pointer rendering
Fixed Linear Burn
Added subtract blend mode in LAB
Fixed export of PDF after Inpainting continuing to use old data
Fixed application hang when using Noise slider in Layer Effects
Added ability to drag and drop palette files into the application
Added ability to drag brushes into sub-brushes list during brush editing
Fixed dragging raster crop tool
Fixed paint mixer brush failing to macro record
Added Duplicate Selection menu item (with the old behaviour), and Duplicate now ignores pixel selection so it is the same as Duplicate in Layers panel
Added persistence to Develop Tool settings Clipped Shadows, Highlights, and Tones
Fixed Levels histogram showing black lines in light UI mode
Fixed setting clone brush to Current Layer & Below will cause hard edges if the paint brush is over source point
Fixed Clone Origin fails to follow cursor when using Aligned
Fixed Layer Mask resize and Filter Effect scaling undo / redo
Fixed copying a selection on a rotated document doesn't paste the selected area
Changed Crop tool to use global snapping status
Fixed moving selections with Move tool not showing correct bounding box
Fixed rotating a raw image cuts part of the image off when you Develop
Fixed switching from polygonal selection to freehand gets stuck on mouse down
Allow custom crop tool history initial state for use in Develop
Fixed New Stack creating a blank document with align images disabled
Fixed Develop Persona spacebar panning doesn't change cursor
Fixed White balance sample rectangle is detached from cursor on cropped or rotated images
Added deterministic progress Flatten, Merge Down, Rasterise
Allow creation of empty groups in Layers panel
Fixed Raster Flood Fill tool to add a raster layer when the selection is empty
Added Fill Primary / Fill Secondary to Edit menu