At the end of 2020 we launched an exciting update for the macOS versions of our apps, one that would allow users to tap straight into the potential of Apple’s next generation of Macs and, in turn, do more, faster. This is thanks to the update’s full compatibility with Apple’s latest macOS update, Big Sur, and optimisation for M1—Apple’s newly-launched chip, specifically designed for the Mac.

Testing conducted by Apple in October 2020 using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M1 chip, as well as production 1.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-based 13-inch MacBook Pro systems, all configured with 16GB RAM and 2TB SSD. Tested with prerelease Affinity Photo 1.9.0.199 using the built-in benchmark version 1900. Affinity Photo has become the first choice for photography and creative professionals around the world, who love its speed, power and precision. Born to work hand-in-hand with the latest powerful computer technology, it’s the only fully-loaded photo editor integrated across macOS, Windows and iOS. Tutorial for Affinity Photo brings you video tutorials and basic training for new Affinity Photo Users! If you're just a beginner with this powerful image processing and photo editing tool, this is the app for you. If you're already an expert its probably not what you need. Inside you will find video tutorials including: - How to open. Affinity Designer is an illustration tool, while Photo is an image editor, and Publisher is a layout app. Although the three work independently, when users have two or more of them on the same Mac. Affinity Photo The fastest, smoothest and most precise image editing software around, this essential app will revolutionise the way you work, whether you’re editing and retouching images, creating full-blown multi-layered compositions or making beautiful raster paintings. Was $49.99 Now only $24.99.

This is great news for our users because the architecture of the M1, particularly having such a high-performance GPU with unified memory with the CPU, is perfect for professional creative applications. The advantages are particularly noticeable when working on documents with thousands of pixel layers, vector objects and text. Edits to pixel layers are best handled on the GPU, while vector and text on the CPU, so when you have unified memory, it allows much faster handling of these complex documents.

Our fully-featured iPad apps already take advantage of very similar architecture on the A-series chips and ever since developing for iPad, we’d always hoped that chips with this architecture would eventually come to Mac—and now they have.

Our developers were lucky enough to receive the DTK from Apple so we could prime all our apps for M1 before launch and get them up and running natively on the new hardware, making Affinity apps the first professional creative applications to offer native M1 support.

With our apps now primed for this transition, Mac customers with M1 can expect a more responsive user experience with respect to painting, pixel editing, filter effects, document rendering and more. It also enables many more elements like adjustment layers and live filters to be maintained before performance suffers—allowing for a more non-destructive workflow, even on the most complex of documents.

To sum it up, M1 makes our apps run faster, smoother and feel more responsive than ever before (we’ve even seen speed increases of over 3x faster running on the new MacBook Air). It’s definitely a big step forward for Mac, and we can’t wait to see how the rest of the Mac range develops in the future.

If you own the apps already, make sure you download the latest update today for free, otherwise head over to our homepage to learn more about our professional creative software.

Apple is a company photographers and videographers follow with a mixture of excitement and dread. On the one hand, the Cupertino-based computer and software maker has given us the iPhone and a host of great hardware and applications for editing and sharing imagery. On the other hand, they have discontinued things dear to many, forcing inferior follow-up products on us. As is the case with the premature death of Aperture in favor of Photos. But by integrating Photos with Affinity Photo through extensions, you can restore some functionality to the program.

Before I go further, let me point out that what I'm suggesting here will only work for very specific use cases. I tend to avoid a lot of post processing. For some uses, such as quick online postings or Instagram, I need a program that will take my pictures from scans or raw files, apply some corrections in terms of shadows, highlights, exposure, brightness, and tonality, and then let me get on with life. Photos is not good enough for this yet, but it is the application in which all my iPhone snapshots automatically appear. If I use an Eye-Fi card or Apple's camera connection kit for iPads and iPhones, that's also true of photos I've taken on the go with more serious cameras. If you're looking for the path of least resistance from capture to finished product, sometimes saving extra steps in transferring images is worth the trade-off of putting up with a less-than-ideal software solution.

Affinity Develop adds much-needed functionality to Apple Photos's brightness and color editing options.

The Why

Affinity Photo Apple Store Near Me

The obvious question regarding this combination is likely some version of 'Yes, but… why?' Fair enough. Here's why I like this combination. I'll admit, I am not a Photoshop native. Although I've worked with some version of the grand master of editing programs – the one that became the default to the point where its name is now a verb – on and off for over a decade and a half, the two of us never clicked. I loved Lightroom when it first came out in a beta version, but stopped using it in favor of Apple's Aperture a few years later. While Aperture was a good program, this was a bad decision.

For me, the draw of Aperture when it was still current was not only its much lower price point than Lightroom, or its seamless integration with a Mac-based workflow. It was also the fact that you could easily switch between having a simple, quick interface that integrated with online image-sharing services, most prominently Apple's own photostream and iCloud, by using iPhoto, and one that let you do most of what I would typically need to do to an image by using Aperture. All you needed to do was open the library file you were working with in one or the other. Since Aperture was abandoned, I've been casting about for an alternative. Apple's Photos is nowhere near the level of usefulness. Enter Serif's Affinity Photo and its extensions for Apple Photo.

Affinity Miniature allows for a tilt-shift effect to be applied.

The How

There isn't much to set up once you have Affinity Photo on your machine. The software itself is $49 on the Mac App Store. If you haven't heard much about it: it's a very affordable Photoshop alternative certainly worth a look.

Once you have Affinity Photo installed, six plugins, or extensions, will show up in Apple Photos' extension rider: Affinity Develop, Haze Removal, Liquify, Miniature, Monochrome, and Retouch, as well as an option to edit the image in Affinity Photo proper. Click on any one extension and go edit your picture. Saving the edits will take you back into Photos, where you can then select to apply more of Affinity's plugins, or tweak your image further using Photos itself.

Affinity Monochrome lets you fine-tune a black-and-white conversion right from the Photos app.

What I Liked

Apple Photos and Affinity Photo make for a more powerful combination than I first thought. If you're looking to quickly retouch a photo taken on your iPhone that's in Apple's cloud already, it's a near-seamless solution. You wouldn't really expect me to recommend this combination for serious editing work, though. I won't. Lightroom's (and formerly, Aperture's) mere existence has proved that we want professional software to organize and quickly tweak our images. When more excessive processing is called for, Photoshop still beckons – or, depending on your needs, Affinity Photo as a standalone program.

What I Didn't Like

The most glaring drawback of using an application like Photos with a more serious, capable application by another software maker such as Serif's photo editing application is simply that it's a workaround. Lightroom, Aperture, Photoshop, and Affinity Photo as standalone programs are capable of using plugins by themselves. I have long used the excellent and free Nik Collection for a large range of filtering and editing tools.

Since there is no way to integrate this directly into Photos, in order to use it you would be forced to first go into Photos' editing mode, then open the extensions section, select 'Edit in Affinity Photo' to send the image from Apple Photos to Affinity, and then edit it there with your choice of plugin. If your eyes just glazed over reading this: it's not at all more straightforward actually doing it.

The final edit fixes the white balance, removes a blue color cast, and brightens the shadows.

Affinity Photo Apple Store Locations

The Takeaway

Affinity Photo Application

The combination of Photos and Affinity Photo's plugins is nowhere near a replacement for Lightroom or the defunct Aperture, but if you're looking to use Apple's free software to do some heavier-than-normal lifting, it may just be the ticket.

Affinity Photo Download

Apple's Photos App is a free download from the Mac App Store. Affinity Photos costs $49/€49, also downloadable from the App Store.