Affinity 1.7.2 updates available now

Since the release of our 1.7 updates in June we’ve been hard at work making lots of little tweaks and improvements as well as fixing many of the issues reported to us on our forums.

Further to this we have added TGA export across all apps and have put some work in to ensure Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher are optimised for macOS Catalina and iPadOS that are due for release in the Autumn.

1.7.2 updates for Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher are available (and free!) for existing customers on the platform you have purchased a license for. You can read our article about How to install Affinity updates if you need some help to get them installed.

What’s new in 1.7.2?

Affinity Designer (desktop versions)

• We’ve improved usability with Apple’s Sidecar for macOS Catalina and iPadOS 13. (NOTE: This build is still not notarised, so requires user action to allow it to run)
• Grid gutters have been reinstated
• Edit all layers can now be used to allow/disable Artboard object reparenting during translation drag/object creation
• We’ve implemented a fix for bleed export options
• We’ve issued a fix for issues with constraints on children of constrained objects which are used as clips
• Failure to load SVG colour ‘none’ causing import to stop is now fixed
• Fix for pen tablet barrel rotation input turning the wrong way
• General performance improvements
• Text performance improvements
• Added ‘d’ default keystroke to restore objects to black and white colours
• PDF export improvements
• We’ve added TGA export
• There’s now a different icon for beta builds
• A warning has been added when deleting a global colour
• Broken Japanese keyboard input has been fixed
• Printing CMYK documents on older versions of macOS has been fixed
• We’ve fixed the crash when re-entering export dialog under certain conditions
• We’ve fixed crashes when pasting screenshots into the app
• Loss of legacy HSL adjustment HSV state after a save has been fixed
• Help improvements
• Localisation improvements
• 16-bit half float JPEG-XR files now import properly
• Improved LAB colour conversions
• Pantone palettes are now sorted alphabetically
• We’ve fixed the crash when starting app in a folder containing weird characters
• Other small fixes and improvements.

Affinity Designer for iPad

Changes in 1.7.2

• We’ve added Previous tool option for 2nd generation Apple Pencil double-tap gesture
• We’ve issued a fix for issues with constraints on children of constrained objects which are used as clips
• Failure to load SVG colour ‘none’ causing import to stop is now fixed
• Fix for ‘Opacity’ acting strangely on Vector Brush Tool’s context bar.

Changes since 1.7.1

• We’ve implemented a fix for bleed export options
• Issues with setting line properties when in the Vector Brush Tool have been fixed
• Improved detection of pinch, pan and rotate gestures
• Fix for Corner Tool’s context bar limiting radius to 50px
• General performance improvements
• 16-bit half float JPEG-XR files now import properly
• Text performance improvements
• Improved LAB colour conversions
• QuickLook and Thumbnail providers included in package
• Localisation improvements.

Affinity Photo (desktop versions)

Changes in 1.7.2

• There’s Resize document fixes
• Notarised for Catalina
• We’ve improved SVG loading
• ‘D’ key now resets fills to black & white
• Brush barrel rotation is no longer inverted when using Wacom stylus
• Improved usability with Apple’s Sidecar
• Develop performance improvements
• Numerous small bug fixes
• Localisation improvements
• Help improvements.

Changes since 1.7.1

• We’ve added TGA export support
• We’ve added Remove Black Matte and Remove White Matte filters
• Shadows and highlights filter can now use either the 1.6 or 1.7 method
• Flood Fill Tool can now sample from layers beneath etc. and also supports blend modes
• Flood Select tool can now sample from all layers
• We’ve added keyboard nudge support to the Crop Tool
• Added align and distribute toolbar button groups
• There’s now a different icon for beta builds
• Cancelling a crop will now preserve the drag to set crop state properly
• A warning will now appear when deleting a global colour
• Improvements to compositing performance with Metal compute enabled
• General improvement to filter responsiveness
• We’ve improved Clone Brush responsiveness and fixed a couple of crashes
• Assorted metadata improvements
• Saving a JPEG will now replace the EXIF::Subject field with the document title
• Restore support for .fff files
• We’ve now prevented access to tone mapping / develop when recording a macro (the result would never be recorded)
• Improved the performance of median, Blur Brush with Metal compute
• Broken Japanese keyboard input now fixed
• Printing CMYK documents on older versions of macOS has been fixed
• Fixed sporadic tile issues when painting with Metal compute enabled
• Fixed crash when reentering export dialog under certain conditions
• Crashes when pasting screenshots into the app have been fixed
• Fixed some crashes on GPUs with 32GB of VRAM (!)
• Fixed Vibrance slider in tone mapping
• Fixed Lightroom data being stripped from Capture One XMP output
• We’ve fixed the loss of legacy HSL adjustment HSV state after a save
• Fixed batch job crashes when saving to .afphoto
• Assorted small fixes and improvements
• Help improvements
• Localisation improvements
• Selection refinement performance and stability improvements
• Clone Brush issues when sampling from current layer & below is now fixed
• Inpainting performance improvements
• Import 16-bit half float JPEG-XR files properly
• Allow .jxr files to be dragged in
• Text performance improvements
• Improved LAB colour conversions
• Fixed Healing Brush bugs
• Fixed badly placed stepper buttons in Tone Mapping UI
• Pantone palettes are now sorted alphabetically
• Fixed crash when starting app in a folder containing weird characters
• Fixed yellow colour cast on certain DNG files
• Fixed 360 degree images losing metadata on export
• Localisation improvements.

Affinity Photo for iPad

Changes This Build

• Added Previous tool as a pencil double tap shortcut
• Virtual trackpad support has been reinstated
• Added orientation toggle for spiral in Crop Tool
• Improved SVG loading
• Expose recent document on home screen
• Improved usability with Apple’s Sidecar
• Develop performance improvements
• Numerous small bug fixes
• Localisation improvements
• Help improvements.

Changes Since 1.7.1

• We’ve added TGA export support
• The Move Tool has been added to Selections persona
• We’ve added Remove Black Matte and Remove White Matte filters
• Shadows and highlights filter can now use either the 1.6 or 1.7 method
• Flood Fill Tool can now sample from layers beneath etc. and also supports blend modes
• Flood Select tool can now sample from all layers
• We’ve added keyboard nudge support to the Crop Tool
• Improved LUT infer performance and added progress
• There’s now a different icon for beta builds
• Cancelling a crop will now preserve the ‘drag to set crop’ state properly
• Stock Panel now doesn’t get too large in portrait mode
• General improvement to filter responsiveness
• We’ve improved Clone Brush responsiveness and fixed a couple of crashes
• Assorted metadata improvements
• Saving a JPEG will now replace the EXIF::Subject field with the document title
• Restore support for .fff files
• Improved the performance of median, Blur Brush with Metal compute
• Fixed sporadic tile issues when painting with Metal compute enabled
• Fixed crashes when pasting screenshots into the app
• Fixed Lightroom data being stripped from Capture One XMP output
• Fixed loss of legacy HSL adjustment HSV state after a save
• Fixed inability to choose .LUT files
• Fixed batch job crashes when saving to .afphoto
• Assorted small fixes and improvements
• Help improvements
• Localisation improvements
• General performance improvements
• Implemented Copy Merged
• Implemented Infer LUT
• Added a Refine Selection button to the Selection Brush
• Inpainting performance improvements
• Performance and stability improvements to Selection Refinement
• Import 16-bit half float JPEG-XR files properly
• Text performance improvements
• Improved LAB colour conversions
• Fixed Healing Brush bugs
• Clone Brush issues when sampling from current layer & below is now fixed
• Fixed 360 degree images losing metadata on export
• Improved detection of pinch gesture etc
• Localisation improvements.

Affinity Publisher (desktop only)

Fixes and Improvements

Spread Setup

• Grids can now be set up independently for different spreads or master spreads
• Spread grids now taken from applied master unless overridden
• Grid Gutters re-instated.

Tools

• Fixes issues reparenting when dragging selections between spreads
• Fixed issue with Vector Crop Tool creating multiple crops under some circumstances
• Fixed possible crash after cancelling multiple image placement
• Fixed performance issues with ‘Lock Children’ in some instances
• (Win) Fix for issue using drag/drop to open the same file twice.

Text

• Words with soft hyphens can now be added to the spelling dictionary correctly
• Fix for Hyperlinks not exporting if intersecting page bounds
• Fixed text entry issues with US International Keyboard
• (Win) Fix for changing font size if text selection contains a pinned image.

Tables

• Fixes issues resizing table cells from Table Panel
• Fixed layout issues in the Table Format Panel
• Fixed crash selecting tables on different pages.

Pages / Sections / TOC

• Fixed crash from two differing definitions of default TOC style name
• Fixed document sections drifting when the the document model was changed
• Master pages creation was incorrect after changing the document model to single pages—this is now fixed
• Fixed issue updating page thumbnails in some cases.

Resources

• Linked Image previews are now colour managed in the Resource Manager
• Replacing a linked image with an embedded document could move the object—this is now fixed
• Fix for failure to reload linked resources correctly under some circumstances
• Fix for slower performance with Resource Manager open
• (Win) We now allow .icm profiles as well as .icc, as they are the same thing

Import / Export

• Fix for failure to load colour in certain SVGs causing crash
• Export to PDF of a previously opened PDF could channel invert JPEG images—this is now fixed
• Fixed ‘Preview export when complete’—applicable for PDF only
• Added TGA export support
• (Win) Custom print profile not saving/restoring all settings is now fixed.

We hope you enjoy this latest update, and as always, if you spot any bugs or have any suggestions on how to improve Affinity Designer, Photo or Publisher, please post on our forums—we appreciate all your feedback.