Affinity Photo Receives Its First Major Update

Serif released a new update today to its photo editing software Affinity Photo. It is the first major update, and it includes quite a few exciting features. To celebrate these welcome changes, Serif also announce a discount on the Mac App Store.

A couple of months ago we shared with you the release of Affinity Photo, a competitor to Adobe Photoshop for Mac OS. Since then, the software has convinced some photographers to make the switch, or at least, the number of 5-star ratings they received from the Mac App Store let me believe so. As if it wasn't enough, Apple even made Affinity Photo app of the year 2015.

Affinity Photo had received a couple minor fixes and updates since the public release, but nothing as major as this new 1.4 version.

Thanks to the app advanced memory management and accurate image alignment, we can now build huge panoramas and image stacks very easily, precisely, and quickly. From the quick test I ran, it seems to work much better than Photoshop. In fact, I'm writing the article while the app is building the panorama and unlike Photoshop, I can still work on my laptop.

Another addition that might be welcome for those of you that have to teach photography to beginners or family members is the possibility of using some of Affinity Photo modules within the Apple Photos App. Six extensions are currently available:

• Develop (raw processing)
• Liquify
• Haze removal
• Miniature (depth of field and tilt-shift adjustments)
• Monochrome
• Retouch

Serif's managing director, Ashley Hewson, said, "Opening up the ability for developers to produce extensions for Photos was a big part of the El Capitan update and it's been fun writing for it. While Affinity Photo is a very robust professional product and will always stay that way, extensions allow us to expose some of that power in a more use-case focused way for quick and easy editing."

The app also makes full use of the extended gamut DCI-P3 found in the latest iMacs and made significant improvements to PSD compatibility. Other exciting new features or updates include canvas rotation, PDF/X and spot color support, additions to filters, adjustment layers, and blend modes.

One last features that probably many Photoshop switchers are going to appreciate is the very welcomed addition of customizable keyboard shortcuts.

The update is available for free to owners of the app. For those of you that are interested by Affinity Photo, the app is available at the special price of $39.99 (20 percent off) until December 15 on the Mac App Store.

For more information head over to Affinity Photo's website.