The first fully-featured photo editing tool has arrived on Apple's tablet. Meet Affinity Photo for iPad.
On 5 June Apple revealed the launch of Affinity Photo for iPad during an exclusive presentation as part of its keynote event in San Jose, California. The hotly anticipated app brings Affinity Photo to Apple's tablet and delivers an ultra-fast, powerful photo editing experience at home, in the studio, or on the move.
The app is developed from the same foundations as Affinity Photo's desktop equivalent, but it has been specially tailored to make the most of the iPad's hardware and touch capabilities. The result is smooth tool that lets users pinch, drag and swipe their way through various photo editing options.
“Each tool, panel and control has been completely reimagined to optimise for touch – either with fingertip or Apple Pencil,” says Ashley Hewson, managing director of Affinity Photo developer Serif.
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“All rendering, adjustments and filter effects have been fully hardware-accelerated," Hewson adds. "The result is a genuinely unique new way to interact with your images and your iPad, with performance you’ll find hard to believe.”
The whole range of tools includes professional features never before seen on iPad, including:
Optimised for iPad capabilities: Multi-touch UI, Metal accelerated, intuitive Apple Pencil support and full iCloud drive integration.
Complete retouching tools: Including dodge, burn, clone, blemish, patch and red eye tools. You’ll also find an incredibly accurate inpainting brush along with full frequency separation capability.
Non-destructive adjustments: Correct and enhance images with Levels, Curves, Black and White, White Balance, HSL, Shadows and Highlights and over a dozen other adjustments that are previewed instantly and can be edited any time. Adjust, readjust, and drag and drop onto any layer, group, mask, or in any place in a stack to control how they’re applied.
Super accurate selections: Critical whether cutting out objects, creating masks or selectively applying adjustments. Affinity Photo’s selection refinement algorithm is one of the most advanced available, making selections—even down to individual strands of hair—easier than ever before.
Comprehensive Liquify Workspace: Push your images around with your fingertips or use brushes like turbulence, pinch, punch and twirl in a dedicated liquify persona. Alongside a real-time mesh warp tool, it’s perfect to reshape, sculpt and deform photos.
Real time effects: Affinity Photo comes with a huge range of high-end filters including lighting, blurs, distortions, tilt-shift, shadows, glows and many more. Full control is given over every aspect of a filter’s properties with incredibly precise controls—all the while seeing a real-time live preview of the result. Best of all, filters can be applied as live layers, enabling you to edit, erase away, or mask effects after they have been applied.
Comprehensive RAW editing: Develop camera RAW files in a dedicated built-in workspace with all the processing adjustments and corrections you need.
Unsurpassed file compatibility: Unrivalled PSD support plus all the standards including PNG, JPG, TIFF, EPS, PDF, and SVG.
Work in any colour space: RGB, CMYK, LAB, Greyscale. End-to-end CMYK workflow with ICC colour management, and 32-bit per channel editing.
HDR Merge with tone mapping: Allows you to merge multiple exposure brackets together into a single unbounded 32-bit image, with full tone mapping control for incredibly dramatic results.
Affinity Photo for iPad will be priced at £28.99/ $29.99/ €32.99. For more information, head over to the Affinity site.
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Dom Carter is a freelance writer who specialises in art and design. Formerly a staff writer for Creative Bloq, his work has also appeared on Creative Boom and in the pages of ImagineFX, Computer Arts, 3D World, and .net. He has been a D&AD New Blood judge, and has a particular interest in picture books.
