Serif Affinity Photo

About this release

Affinity Photo arrived as a direct answer to the subscription model and turned out to be a genuinely excellent editor on its own terms. Layers, masks, adjustments, blend modes, selections, brushes, retouching, compositing and colour work are all here at professional depth, and the whole thing runs on a canvas engine that stays responsive at magnifications and file sizes where older editors begin to stall.

The persona system is its structural idea. The application switches between focused workspaces for photo editing, liquify, developing raw files, tone mapping, panorama assembly and export, each with only the tools that stage needs. Moving between them keeps the same document, so a raw file can be developed, retouched, warped and exported without ever leaving the window or flattening anything.

Everything stays non destructive as far as it can. Live filter layers apply blur, sharpen, distortion and lighting as adjustable layers rather than baked pixels, adjustment layers stack with masks and blend ranges, and any layer can be turned into a smart object equivalent that keeps its source intact. The undo history is unlimited within a session and persists into the saved document, so yesterday's decisions are still reversible.

The technical work it supports goes deeper than most people expect. Full 32 bit float editing for high dynamic range, unbounded colour values, focus stacking and exposure merging with alignment, frequency separation for retouching, channel level editing, colour management with soft proofing, and file compatibility that reads and writes the layered formats the rest of the industry uses.

What it does

Persona workspaces

Focused tool sets for editing, developing raw, liquify, tone mapping, panorama and export within one document.

Live filter layers

Blur, sharpen, distortion and lighting applied as adjustable layers that never bake into the pixels.

High dynamic range editing

Full 32 bit float pipeline with unbounded values, exposure merging and tone mapping.

Focus stacking and panorama

Automatic alignment and blending for stacked focus and stitched wide scenes.

Frequency separation

Built in retouching workflow that separates tone from texture for skin and product work.

Layered file compatibility

Reads and writes the layered formats used elsewhere in the industry so files move between applications.

Changed in this version

• Canvas engine faster at high magnification on very large documents.
• Raw development gains improved lens correction profiles.
• Selection refinement improved around hair and fine detail.
• Additional live filters added to the layer set.
• Export persona handles large batch output more efficiently.

System requirements

Install order

1. Unpack the archive and run the installer.
2. Set the scratch folder to a fast drive in preferences before opening large files.
3. Enable hardware acceleration in preferences if the graphics card supports it.
4. Import brushes and presets from an earlier version if you have them.

Worth knowing before you start

File details