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Affinity Photo
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Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is a discontinued raster graphics editor developed by Serif for macOS, Microsoft Windows and iPadOS.
Developed as a successor to Serif’s PhotoPlus and first released in 2015, Affinity Photo was part of a suite alongside Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, respectively a vector graphics editor and a desktop publishing application.
Affinity used a perpetual license model. In 2025, following the purchase of Serif by Canva in 2024, it was replaced by the freemium Affinity application, bundling raster, vector and layout features together.
Affinity Photo has been described as an Adobe Photoshop alternative, and is compatible with common file formats such as Adobe’s PSD (including Photoshop smart objects). Functionality includes RAW processing, colour space options, live preview of effects, image stitching, alpha compositing, black point compensation, and optical aberration corrections. Working in Affinity Photo is always live, with pan and zoom at 60 fps and non-destructive editing. It supports unlimited layers and a dedicated workspace for developing RAW photos; as well as RGB, CMYK, LAB, Greyscale colourspaces with ICC colour management and 16-bit per channel editing.
Affinity Photo is not an image organiser like Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom.
Affinity Photo began as a raster graphics editor solely for macOS. It was Serif’s second macOS app after Affinity Designer and was similarly built from the ground up to leverage core native technologies, including Grand Central Dispatch, Core Graphics, OpenGL 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 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, 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 optimised for macOS 10.12 Sierra with version 1.4.3 in September 2016.
In December, 2016, Serif launched Affinity Photo for Windows and released version 1.5.1 for macOS 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.
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Affinity Photo AI simulator
(@Affinity Photo_simulator)
Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is a discontinued raster graphics editor developed by Serif for macOS, Microsoft Windows and iPadOS.
Developed as a successor to Serif’s PhotoPlus and first released in 2015, Affinity Photo was part of a suite alongside Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, respectively a vector graphics editor and a desktop publishing application.
Affinity used a perpetual license model. In 2025, following the purchase of Serif by Canva in 2024, it was replaced by the freemium Affinity application, bundling raster, vector and layout features together.
Affinity Photo has been described as an Adobe Photoshop alternative, and is compatible with common file formats such as Adobe’s PSD (including Photoshop smart objects). Functionality includes RAW processing, colour space options, live preview of effects, image stitching, alpha compositing, black point compensation, and optical aberration corrections. Working in Affinity Photo is always live, with pan and zoom at 60 fps and non-destructive editing. It supports unlimited layers and a dedicated workspace for developing RAW photos; as well as RGB, CMYK, LAB, Greyscale colourspaces with ICC colour management and 16-bit per channel editing.
Affinity Photo is not an image organiser like Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom.
Affinity Photo began as a raster graphics editor solely for macOS. It was Serif’s second macOS app after Affinity Designer and was similarly built from the ground up to leverage core native technologies, including Grand Central Dispatch, Core Graphics, OpenGL 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 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, 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 optimised for macOS 10.12 Sierra with version 1.4.3 in September 2016.
In December, 2016, Serif launched Affinity Photo for Windows and released version 1.5.1 for macOS 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.
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