Features of Affinity Photo

Power, performance and compatibility:

• Optimised for:
  • Grand Central Dispatch (GCD)
  • OpenGL
  • Core Graphics
  • Direct3D
  • 64-bit engine
  • GPU hardware acceleration (Metal) for integrated, discrete and external GPUs (macOS 10.13 High Sierra and above)
  • Hardware GPU acceleration (OpenCL) for integrated, discrete and external GPUs
• GPU rendering improvements (from v1.10)
• Create massive gigapixel-sized documents
• 16-bits per channel editing
• Sub-pixel accuracy
• Mac with Apple M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max chip or Intel processor
• OS X Mavericks 10.9 or later (Supported up to macOS Big Sur 11.0)
• 64-bit plug-in support
• Photoshop plugin support (includes DxO Nik Collection 2 plugins)
• Embedded Photoshop PSD Smart Objects retain editability
• Up to date Tablet support
• Multi-touch support
• Surface Studio with Surface Pen and Surface Dial support
• Force Touch support (Magic Trackpad 2/MacBook/MacBookPro)
• Touch Bar support (MacBook Pro)
• End-to-end EXIF preservation
• Benchmark testing
• Improved performance (from v1.10) with:
  • Panorama stitching
  • Defringing and increased maximum radius
  • Multiple placed Info page samplers
  • Adjustment layers when hardware acceleration is disabled
  • Heavily layered documents (faster rendering during panning and text reflow)
  • Placed images
  • Embedded documents
  • Low-memory conditions
  • Converting documents between ICC profiles / pixel formats
  • Documents which contain flattened, opaque layers (usually the result of merge visible)

Raw development:

• Choice of SerifLabs or Apple Core Image RAW engines
• SerifLabs Raw Engine
• GPU-accelerated raw development
• Remove automatic tone curve and apply your own
• Automatic (and manual) lens correction and noise reduction
• Lens Correction improvements for Canon, Tamron and Sigma lenses (from v1.10)
• Develop assistant for setting default tone, lens correction, noise reduction, and exposure control behaviour
• Adobe Lens Correction Profile (LCP) support
• ACM lens profile support (from v1.10)
• Dedicated tones, lens, noise reduction and sharpening panels
• Support for the latest cameras
• Split view with syncing
• Solid and gradient overlays for restricting adjustments
• Show clipped highlights, shadows, and tones (in output colour space)
• Hot pixel removal (SerifLabs RAW Engine only)
• Update to supported Raw Camera list (SerifLabs RAW Engine)
• Apple ProRAW DNG support (iPhone12 Pro)
• Raw CR3 support (for Canon EOS 850D) (from v1.10)
• Improved Serif Labs RAW engine (from v1.10)

Professional colour support:

• CMYK, Lab, Greyscale and RGB colour modes
• Colour panel (RGB, HSL, LAB, CMYK, Greyscale)
• Swatches panel (Apple, System, Web Safe colours, Crayons)
• Swatches panel
• Generate palette from image
• Global colours
• Colour tints
• Colour Picker Tool (colour mode aware, pick from anywhere on screen, colour averaging, layer selection)
• Colour Replacement Brush
• Paint Mixer Brush
• Gradient Tool (Linear, Elliptical, Radial, Conical, Bitmap)
• Professional colour support
• Spot colours and overprint
• PANTONE® colour support
• ICC colour profiling
• Import Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) colour palettes (including spot colours)
• Drag-and-drop colours from Chroma app (SoftPress)

Solid photo-editing power:

• Sizing and transforming:
  • Resize images and canvas
  • Crop to original/custom ratios, absolute dimensions or print sizes
  • Straighten photos
  • Mesh Warp Tool
  • Non-destructive perspective filter
  • Liquify tools in dedicated Persona workspace
  • Pixel art resizing
• Channels:
  • View and isolate colour channels
  • Work on channels for document, layer, adjustment, filter, selection or mask
  • Save pixel selections as spare channels
  • Isolate and edit spare channels as layers
  • Duplicate spare channel for backup
• HDR/32-bit
  • Merge bracketed exposures together to create 32-bit images
  • Unique Persona for Advanced Tone Mapping
  • Edit effortlessly in 32-bit unbounded colour format
  • Maintain a true 32-bit lossless workflow and preview full tonal range
  • Multichannel OpenEXR and Radiance import and export
  • Full OpenColorIO Integration
  • Colour managed workflow: choose between display transform, linear light and OpenColorIO transforms
  • HDR and EDR display support (for 32-bit unbounded HDR documents)
• Panorama Persona for powerful auto-stitched panoramas
• Live projections (equirectangular and perspective)
• Stacking
  • For noise reduction
  • For exposure merging
  • For moving object removal
  • Auto-alignment
  • Non-destructive behaviour
• Focus merging with source cloning
• Astrophotography
  • Dedicated Persona for stacking
  • RAW and FITS image support
  • Stack light and calibration frames (dark/dark flat/flat/bias)
  • Stack, tone stretch and retouch entirely in 32-bit
  • Create full colour, composite (HaRGB, SHO), greyscale or false colour images
  • Edit stacked image names for better organisation (from v1.10)
  • Stack images for different filters simultaneously using file groups (auto-alignment avoids resampling) (from v1.10)
  • Open FITS files directly in Photo Persona (control over demosaicing) (from v1.10)
  • Support for FUJIFILM X-Trans sensor images (from v1.10)
• Selection tools:
  • Shaped selections
  • Elliptical Marquee Tool draws from centre
  • Intelligent Selection Brush Tool
  • Freehand Selection Tool with Polygonal and Magnetic modes
  • Refine selections to capture fine detail
  • Store and save selections
  • Quick masks
• Comprehensive metadata editing
• Assets for storing layer content
• Sort assets by date in Assets panel

Powerful layer management:

• Drag-and-drop layers
• Non-destructive adjustment layers with clipping previews
• Precise node control in Curves adjustment
• Use global colours in Gradient Map adjustments
• Gradient Map adjustments use hardware acceleration (from v1.10)
• Shareable LUTs
• Non-destructive live filter layers with 'live' before/after split views
• Non-destructive Live Liquify filter layers
• More filters work on masks, adjustments and spare channels
• Apply adjustments, filters and blend modes at the stack, layer, group, selection or object level
• Fill layers
• Linking layers
• Pattern layers
• High-quality layer effects
• Layer effects work with global colours
• Clipping within layers
• Blend modes
• Blend modes work on 'alpha only' layers (masks, adjustments, live filters)
• Divide blend mode
• Blend ranges (linear and non-linear) and blend gamma control
• Blend ranges use GPU acceleration (from v1.10)
• Per-object hierarchical antialiasing
• Lock child layer positions
• Layer masks (brush-based and gradient)
• Coloured layer entry tagging for easy identification
• Image control:
  • Place images on dedicated layers
  • Resampling: Nearest Neighbour, Bilinear, Bicubic and Lanczos 3 pixel scaling

External resource management:

• Linked resources
• Set embedded/linked resource policy on new document creation
• Resource Manager
• Resource Manager improvements (from v1.10):
  • Relink multiple missing 'same folder' images in one operation
  • Switch on/off columns
  • New File Type column
  • EPS files can be linked
• Collect linked resources for project portability

Brushes:

• Painting:
  • High-quality brush galleries
  • Change brush size, hardness, and opacity on the fly
  • Undo Brush with 'paintback' to saved snapshot
  • Import/export brushes, including ABR file import
  • Custom brushes (including image-based brushes)
  • Create image brushes from any pixel selection
  • Create intensity brushes from any mask's pixel selection
  • Assign tools to brushes selectively
  • Optimised for graphics tablets
  • Multi-controller support including pressure and velocity
  • Controller-specific brush dynamics
  • Customisable controller ramps
  • Wet Edges support with customisable ramps
  • Sub-brushes (combined brushes)
  • Brush symmetry and mirroring
  • Choice of brush and nozzle controllers/ramps
  • Stroke stabilisation for smooth strokes
  • Nozzle rotation using left and right arrow keys
  • Sort brushes by date in Brushes panel
• Retouching:
  • Retouching tools:
    • Red-eye removal
    • Inpainting for object removal
    • Clone Brush/Healing Brush
    • Blemish Removal/Patching
  • Retouching brushes:
    • Dodge, Burn and Sponge brushes
    • Blur, Sharpen, Median and Smudge brushes
  • Frequency separation
  • Choice of blur methods for Frequency separation (from v1.10)

Macros and batch processing:

• Record and save actions as macros
• Edit individual recorded steps and their parameters
• Customise macro settings post recording
• Import, export, and maintain a macro library
• Run batch jobs for bulk processing and conversion of images
• Apply macros in batch jobs for a seamless custom workflow

Supporting vector design tools and concepts:

• Precise Pen Tool
• Precision straight line length and rotation angle via Transform panel
• Intuitive Move Tool (moves, scales and transforms)
• Rotate from movable origin
• Customisable nudge distances
• Node Tool for fine tuning vectors
• Customisable geometric shapes
• Full range of non-destructive Boolean geometry operations
• Duplicate and transform objects with precision
• Add noise to fills and strokes as a solid or graduated attribute
• Customisable stroke styles
• Styles presets with import/export
• Artistic and frame text
• Text on a path
• Character and Paragraph panels
• Advanced typography including ligatures
  • Flowing text
  • Spellchecking
  • OpenType font features
• Improved IME text editing for Japanese and Simplified Chinese languages (from v1.10)
• Added support for emojis (from v1.10)
• Convert shapes and text to fully editable curves
• Save and synchronise defaults
• Expressions

User interface:

• Persona task-orientated workspaces
• Customisable tabbed workspace
• High DPI (retina) support
• Multiple document views
• Windowed, Full Screen, and Separated modes
• Docked or floating panels
• Comprehensive keyboard shortcuts and modifiers
• Customisable keyboard shortcuts
• Customisable toolbars
• Saveable Studio panel presets

Design Aids:

• Rotate document view
• Rotate document view (canvas) with mouse scroll wheel
• Incredible zoom range
• Intuitive panning
• Saveable zoom viewpoints
• Powerful snapping control
• Snap to pixel selection bounds
• Dynamic snapping guides
• Pixel-accurate alignment for web graphics and website mockups
• Managers for Brushes, Grids, Snapping and other operations
• Automatic, fixed and projection grids
• Context toolbar and hintline
• Fluid document History <8192 steps with branching control
• Save history with document (multi-session)
• Snapshots
• Keyboard modifiers for on-the-fly tool changes
• Mixed-mode assistant for layer creation behaviour according to the user’s preferences

Interoperability:

• Affinity Photo files can be opened in other Affinity products and vice versa
• iCloud sync and merge
• In-app registration
• Content sync of Affinity Store purchases

Document control, Import, Export and Printing

• Easy Document Setup with preset thumbnails and template support
• Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher file placement
• High-quality Adobe® Photoshop® PSD import, place and export
• Adobe Illustrator (.ai) import and place
• PDF import
• PDF import/export improvements (from v1.10)
• PDF passthrough for absolute display/output fidelity
• Place images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, SVG, EPS, EXR, HDR)
• Alt/Option-dragging files gives placement options via Place Images panel (v1.10)
• SVG import and export, including Inkscape extended SVG support
• Scaling control for placed documents (PDFs, PSDs and Affinity documents)
• Stock panel for free and royalty-free image resources
• JPEG-XR 101010 import
• Export layers, groups and pages to PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, EPS, SVG and PDF
• Preserve layers in exported TIFF images
• Draw custom-sized slices at export time
• Use slice presets for popular image formats
• Multiple export setups, formats and resolutions per slice
• Output all slices at once, just one slice, or selected slices
• Export automatically to retina (@2x, @3x)
• Export automatically to high DPI
• Set export areas and file formats during or after photo editing
• Export document or current selection(s) to many raster image formats, PSD, PDF, EPS and more
• Export Preview which updates to changed settings
• Export as template
• Deliver UI design assets (iOS)
• Desktop printing with Layout, Paper Handling, Feed, and Duplexing control
• Web-ready PDFs (Acrobat) with presets
• Professional hi-res PDF/X printing (CMYK) with presets
• Spot colours and overprint control