Nottingham, UK—Serif’s Affinity Creativity apps were enhanced with the launch of version 1.9. The release brings new features and significant improvements. The creativity apps include fast photo-editing and graphic design software as well as the company’s most powerful publishing software.
“After another year which saw record numbers of people switching to Affinity, it’s exciting to start 2021 with yet another major free update,” said Ashley Hewson, managing director of Affinity’s developer Serif.
“We’re introducing more tools and functions ,which will enable artists, designers, photographers and editors with even the most complex workflows to take advantage of the speed and power of Affinity.”
Affinity Creativity Apps
Affinity Designer, the graphic design app, has a new contour tool. It offers an intuitive way to add contours and line offsets to any shape or path. Also added is the ability to place linked images and resources; this reduces file size and simplifies collaborative working.
Moreover, in Affinity Publisher, IDML import is faster. In addition, the new package feature lets users bundle all the image and font resources from a project into a folder they can transfer to another system to aid collaboration or for print production.
Furthermore, users can now set placed PDFs to “passthrough,” ensuring 100% fidelity on export. They can also integrate text and image links into a document from an external data source with the new data merge feature.
Affinity Photo also received upgrades. A key feature that sets this app apart is its nondestructive workflow. And that was taken to another level with the ability to add liquify adjustments as live, maskable layers.
On top of that, there are substantial improvements to its RAW engine; new linked layer functionality; and path text. In addition, there is a whole new mode to control the stacking of astrophotography images.
In addition, Windows users will benefit from the fact that the updates include GPU acceleration. Depending on the system, it can achieve up to 10x speed improvements on many pixel-based tasks. As a result, the Windows versions are now in line with the GPU acceleration in the macOS and iPad versions of the apps. Those versions were among the first professional creative suites optimized for the new Apple M1 chip.
Pricing
For existing users, the 1.9 update is available for free across all Affinity apps on macOS, Windows and iPad.
Furthermore, all Affinity apps purchased at affinity.serif.com are currently available at a 50% discount as an initiative to support the creative community during Covid-19.
