Sneak peek: Affinity Photo 1.6

Originally posted on 25 January 2017. Scroll down for updates.

Serif has posted a sneak peek at the new ‘light UI’ due in Affinity Photo 1.6, the next update to its sub-$50 professional-grade 2D image-editing software.

The same UI design will also be rolled out in Affinity Designer, Serif’s vector design tool.

Toggle between dark and light UI themes to suit the project you’re working on
The idea of going from a dark UI theme to a lighter one is interesting, as it’s the opposite of what most DCC tools have done over the past five to ten years.

Serif suggests that the dark UI may be better suited to photo editing and the light UI to layout work, but says that it will be possible to toggle between the two themes at will.

And that’s essentially it. The blog post announcing the new light UI only shows it in action in Affinity Designer, as does the demo video above, but we assume that Affinity Photo will look more or less similar.

Updated 31 May 2017: Affinity Photo 1.6 and Affinity Designer 1.6 are now available as public betas.

The other new features in Affinity Photo are mainly performance and workflow improvements, but there is a new glyph browser, plus stroke stabilisation when drawing freehand with any pencil or brush tool.

The current release, Affinity Photo 1.5, is available for Windows 7 and above and Mac OS X 10.7.5 and above. It costs $49.99.

See screenshots of the Affinity tools’ new light UI on Serif’s blog

Read a full list of new features in Affinity Photo 1.6 on Serif’s forum.