Affinity Photo is a

raster graphics editor A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to create and edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics file formats (also known as bitmap images) such as JPEG, PNG, and GI ...

developed by Serif Ltd. for

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, alongside

Affinity Designer Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor developed by Serif Europe, Serif for macOS, iPadOS, and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the "Affinity trinity" alongside Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. Affinity Designer is available for purc ...

and

Affinity Publisher Affinity Publisher is a desktop publishing application developed by Serif for macOS and Microsoft Windows (with an iPadOS version being developed). It is a part of the Affinity product line along with Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Overvie ...

. Development of Affinity Photo started in 2009 as a raster graphics editor for macOS. Its first version reached

general availability A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

in 2015 with the Windows version launched a year later. It is a successor to PhotoPlus which Serif discontinued in 2017.

Functionality

Affinity Photo has been described as an

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...

alternative, and is compatible with common file formats such as Adobe's

PSD PSD may refer to: Educational bodies * Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, a Pre-K to 12th grade school for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania * Philippine School Doha, a Filipino scho ...

(including Photoshop Smart Objects). Functionality includes

RAW Raw is an adjective usually describing: * Raw materials, basic materials from which products are manufactured or made * Raw food, uncooked food Raw or RAW may also refer to: Computing and electronics * .RAW, a proprietary mass spectrometry dat ...

processing,

color space A color space is a specific organization of colors. In combination with color profiling supported by various physical devices, it supports reproducible representations of colorwhether such representation entails an analog or a digital represent ...

options, live preview of effects,

image stitching Image stitching or photo stitching is the process of combining multiple photographic images with overlapping fields of view to produce a segmented panorama or high-resolution image. Commonly performed through the use of computer software, most app ...

alpha compositing In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pas ...

, black point compensation, and

optical aberration In optics, aberration is a property of optical systems, such as lenses, that causes light to be spread out over some region of space rather than focused to a point. Aberrations cause the image formed by a lens to be blurred or distorted, with th ...

corrections. Working in Affinity Photo is always live, with pan and zoom at 60fps and

non-destructive editing Non-linear editing is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by specialized soft ...

. It supports unlimited layers and a dedicated workspace for developing RAW photos; as well as RGB, CMYK, LAB, Greyscale color spaces with ICC color management and 16-bit per channel editing. Affinity Photo is not an

image organizer An image organizer or image management application is application software focused on organising digital images. Image organizers represent one kind of desktop organizer software applications. Image organizer software is primarily focused on imp ...

Apple Aperture Aperture was an image organizer developed by Apple for the macOS operating system. It was first released in 2005 and was discontinued in 2015. The software handled a number of tasks common in post-production work such as importing and organiz ...

Adobe Lightroom Adobe Lightroom (officially Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) is a piece of image organization and image manipulation software developed by Adobe Inc. as part of the Creative Cloud subscription family. It is supported on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, ...

Development

Affinity Photo began as a raster graphics editor solely for

. It was Serif's second

app after

and, like that app, was built from the ground up to leverage core native technologies, including

Grand Central Dispatch Grand Central Dispatch (GCD or libdispatch), is a technology developed by Apple Inc. to optimize application support for systems with multi-core processors and other symmetric multiprocessing systems. It is an implementation of task paralleli ...

Core Graphics In Apple's macOS operating system, Quartz is the Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositor part of the Core Graphics framework. Quartz includes both a 2D renderer in Core Graphics and the composition engine that sends instructions to the graphics card. ...

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

and Metal 2 hardware acceleration. Serif established an R&D team for Affinity Photo in 2009, headed by lead designer Andy Somerfield. A free

beta test A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

version was released to the public on 9 February 2015. The initial stable release of Affinity Photo, version 1.3.1, launched on the Mac App Store on 9 July 2015 for macOS 10.7 and later. In August Version 1.3.5 was released providing numerous bug fixes and improvements. Version 1.4, in December 2015, added panorama photo stitching, support for macOS 10.11 El Capitan including six Affinity extensions for

Apple Photos Photos is a photo management and editing application developed by Apple. It was released as a bundled app in iOS 8 on September 17, 2014—replacing the Camera Roll—and released as a bundled app to OS X Yosemite users in the 10.10.3 update on ...

, and augmented the languages supported in previous versions (English (US and UK), German, French and Spanish) with Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Japanese. Versions 1.4.1 and 1.4.2 in January and June 2016 provided stability and bug fixes, and the app was optimized for macOS 10.12 Sierra with version 1.4.3 in September 2016. In December, 2016, Serif launched Affinity Photo for

and released version 1.5.1 for

at the same time, adding a 32-bit RGB editing mode with support for 32-bit file formats and more than 70 new camera RAW file formats, as well as the ability to develop RAW files directly into a 32-bit document. It also added support for the new MacBook Pro with Touchbar. Affinity Photo for iPad was launched during the keynote at Apple's

WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...

in San Jose on 5 June 2017. In September 2017, the iPad version was updated for compatibility with Apple's new iOS 11. Major updates to Affinity Photo, as well as to Affinity Designer, were released in November 2017. Affinity Photo 1.6.6 was optimized for macOS 10.13 High Sierra (and Metal 2 acceleration), better integration with Apple Photos, improved Photoshop Plugins support, and added an option to switch between a dark or light user interface. Serif discontinued PhotoPlus in 2017. In February 2020, version 1.8 added support for Photoshop smart objects in PSD files, and expanded plug-in compatibility, with focus on DxO's

Nik Collection Nik Software was a software development company established in 1995 and based in San Diego, California. The company developed multiple image editing plug-ins and tools (for digital image processing applications, such as Adobe Photoshop) and Snap ...

of plug-ins.

Reception

The

version of Affinity Photo was received favorably by professional photographers, and

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

named it as the best Mac app of 2015. In 2016, Affinity Photo was awarded the prize for ''Best Imaging Software'' by the

Technical Image Press Association The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA)Technical Image Press Association
is an international,

(TIPA) at

Photokina Photokina (rendered in the promoters' branding as "photokina") is a trade fair held in Europe for the photographic and imaging industries. It is the world's largest such trade fair. The first Photokina was held in Cologne, Germany, in 1950, a ...

. In November 2017, the iOS app was named by Apple as its best iPad app of the year, and Tom's Guide selected Affinity Photo for their first list of ''Best Tech Values''. In February 2019, Affinity Photo received ''Amateur Photographer'''s ''Software of the Year'' award, followed by Photography News' ''Best Software'' award in March 2019.

References

External links

* {{Raster graphics editors Raster graphics editors Photo software HDR tone mapping software MacOS graphics software Windows graphics-related software Proprietary cross-platform software 2015 software Raw image processing software

Functionality

Development

Reception

See also

References

Further reading

External links