Features
Here's an overview of the features of Affinity Photo. Choose a category from the menu below, which includes options to view all features, or only those that are new in this version—marked with a red bullet (▪ ).
All features
New in this version
Power, performance and compatibility
Raw development
Professional color support
Solid photo-editing tools
Powerful layer management
Brushes
Macros and batch processing
Supporting Vector design tools and concepts
User interface
Design aids
Interoperability
Document control, Import, Export and Printing
Power, performance and compatibility:
Optimized for:
Grand Central Dispatch (GCD)
OpenGL
Metal view acceleration (macOS Sierra and above; optimized for Mojave)
Mac with Apple M1 chip or Intel processor
OS X Mavericks 10.9 or later (Supported up to macOS Big Sur 11.0)
Core Graphics
Direct3D
Metal compute acceleration for integrated, discrete and external GPUs (eGPU enclosures supported)
GPU compute hardware acceleration (macOS 10.13 High Sierra or later)
64-bit engine
Create massive gigapixel-sized documents
16-bits per channel editing
Sub-pixel accuracy
For all Intel 64-bit Macs (Core 2 Duo onwards)
For OS X 10.7 (and above) and up to macOS Mojave 10.14.0 (and above)
64-bit plug-in support
Improved 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
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 lens correction and noise reduction
Develop assistant for setting default tone, lens correction, noise reduction, and exposure control behavior
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 color space)
Hot pixel removal (SerifLabs RAW Engine only)
Manual lens correction override in Develop Persona with advisory icons and messages, plus recently used and favorites lists
Updated Supported Raw Camera list
Canon CR3 RAW support (via SerifLabs Raw engine)
Professional color support:
CMYK, Lab, Grayscale and RGB color modes
Color panel (RGB, HSL, LAB, CMYK, Grayscale)
Swatches panel (Apple, System, Web Safe colors, Crayons)
Swatches panel
Generate palette from image
Global colors
Color tints
Color Picker Tool (color mode aware, pick from anywhere on screen, color averaging, layer selection)
Color Replacement Brush
Paint Mixer Brush
Gradient tool (Linear, Elliptical, Radial, Conical, Bitmap)
Professional color support
Spot colors and overprint
PANTONE® color support
ICC color profiling
Rendering Intent and Black Point Compensation controls when converting document (global default and document override)
Import Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) color palettes (including spot colors)
Drag-and-drop colors from Chroma app (SoftPress)
Updated PANTONE© Color Bridge and PANTONE© Formula Guide Solid palettes (coated and uncoated); all to V4
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
HDR/32-bit
Merge bracketed exposures together to create 32-bit images
Unique Persona for Advanced Tone Mapping
Edit effortlessly in 32-bit unbounded color format
Maintain a true 32-bit lossless workflow and preview full tonal range
Multichannel OpenEXR and Radiance import and export
Full OpenColorIO Integration
Color 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 behavior
Focus merging with source cloning
Selection tools:
Shaped selections
Intelligent Selection Brush Tool
Better selection edge fidelity with Soft Edges
Freehand Selection Tool with Polygonal and Magnetic modes
Refine selections to capture fine detail
Store and save selections
Quick masks
Comprehensive metadata editing with IPTC Core 1.2 support and import/export XMP; read metadata from XMP sidecar file
Powerful layer management:
Drag-and-drop layers
Drag and drop layers from one document to another
Non-destructive adjustment layers with clipping previews
Non-destructive Live Filter layers with 'live' before/after split views
Apply adjustments, filters and blend modes at the stack, layer, group, selection or object level
Clipping within layers
Blend modes
Blend ranges (linear and non-linear) and blend gamma control
Lock child layer positions
High-quality layer effects
Layer masks (brush-based and gradient)
Improved mask editing (uses grayscale mask)
Colored layer entry tagging for easy identification
Image control:
Place images on dedicated layers
Resampling: Nearest Neighbor, Bilinear, Bicubic and Lanczos 3 pixel scaling
Brushes:
Painting:
New pixel brush sets
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)
Assign tools to brushes selectively
Optimized for graphics tablets
Multi-controller support including pressure and velocity
Controller-specific brush dynamics
Customizable controller ramps
Wet Edges support with customizable ramps
Sub-brushes (combined brushes)
Brush symmetry and mirroring
Choice of brush and nozzle controllers/ramps
Stroke stabilization for smooth strokes
Nozzle rotation using left and right arrow keys
On-page brush preview's width/hardness controls now includes nozzle Spacing and Rotation adjustment
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
Macros and batch processing:
Record and save actions as macros
Edit individual recorded steps and their parameters
Customize 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
Intuitive Move tool (moves, scales and transforms)
Rotate from movable origin
Customizable nudge distances
Node tool for fine tuning vectors
Customizable 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
Customizable stroke styles
Styles presets with import/export
Artistic and frame text
Character and Paragraph panels
Advanced typography including ligatures
Flowing text
Spellchecking
OpenType font features
Convert shapes and text to fully editable curves
Save and synchronize defaults
Expressions
User interface:
Persona task-orientated workspaces
Customizable tabbed workspace
High DPI (retina) support
Multiple document views
Windowed, Full Screen, and Separated modes
Docked or floating panels
Comprehensive keyboard shortcuts and modifiers
Customizable keyboard shortcuts
Customizable toolbars
Unified Application Toolbar (MacOS Mojave and above)
Design Aids:
Rotate canvas
Incredible zoom range
Intuitive panning
Saveable zoom viewpoints
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 behavior according to the user’s preferences
Interoperability:
Affinity Photo files can be opened in other Affinity products and vice versa
iCloud sync and merge
Import, Export and Printing
New Document Setup now has thumbnail-driven presets and supports templates
High-quality Adobe® Photoshop® PSD import and export
SVG import and export, including Inkscape extended SVG support
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
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 colors and overprint control
Bleed and printer marks
JBIG2-encoded PDF import