Serif, creator of Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo, have released version 1.7 of its popular illustration and photo editing apps on Mac. The updates are headlined by enhanced GPU compute acceleration, HDR monitor support, and a new memory management system. Both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer 1.7 are available are shipping for Mac and Winnows now
Affinity Photo
The Affinity Photo 1.7 update concentrates on speed, power and some new editing features to tempt photographers away from Photoshop. It’s a lot cheaper than Photoshop, with a single low-cost one-off payment rather than a subscription, yet it’s designed for the same high-end professional/expert photography and illustration market and matches or beats Photoshop in many key areas.
Already one of the best photo-editing programs on the market, Affinity Photo 1.7 is clearly going all-out for speed and performance, but with improvements in raw processing too.
Support for HDR & EDR displays has been added, including support for the new Apple Pro Display XDR.
“This allows photographers to see new levels of the detail captured in RAW files,” Serif claims “Designers can push color intensity in graphics far further than was possible before.”
“Using Affinity Photo with an HDR monitor offers a simply stunning experience,” says Serif Managing Director Ashley Hewson. “It’s amazing the detail and dynamic range the latest SLR cameras capture when shooting in RAW, and Affinity Photo now offers the opportunity to actually see all that depth while editing on an HDR monitor.”
Other improvements in Affinity Photo 1.7 include improved batch processing, a completely overhauled Layers panel and (for designers and illustrators) a new Assets panel for commonly used elements and a rewritten brush engine with new multi-brushes, a symmetry mode (up to 32-way) and on-the-fly nozzle rotation.
iPad
iPad users also receive a noteworthy update in the form of a refreshed, compact UI that provides more working real estate and a better experience on smaller iPad hardware. Serif specifically notes that the iPad mini, with its support for Apple Pencil, results in a great experience with the refreshed UI. In addition, the iPad apps receive further performance optimizations.
Affinity Designer
- New isometric controls allowing you to work directly on any isometric plane – or fit existing elements to a plane with a single click.
- Vector shapes can now possess an unlimited number of strokes and fills, with complete freedom to interleave different attributes and control how they are blended together. Arrowheads have been added to the stroke panel too.
- Improvements to almost all vector tools, including lasso selection of modes, the pencil tool adding a sculpt mode, a new point transform tool as well as huge improvements to guides, grids and snapping.
The new 1.7 versions of both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer are currently on sale in both the Windows and Apple App Store and on Affinity’s store, with a 20% discount ($39.99 for desktop, $15.99 for iPad) with no subscription fees. Existing users can download updated versions for free.
