Thursday, May 18th, 2023 Posted by Jim Thacker

Serif ships Affinity Photo 2.1


Serif has released Affinity Photo 2.1, the latest version of its image editing and digital painting software.

The update features “hundreds of improvements and usability enhancements”, including updates to the Crop tool; the Brushes, Layers and Asset panels; and the Guides system.

In addition, the iPad edition gets more features from the desktop edition, including the Style Transfer tool and the Rulers system.

The update was released alongside version 2.1 of Serif’s other Affinity products, vector design software Affinity Designer 2.1 and page layout tool Affinity Publisher 2.1.


Workflow updates to the Brushes panel in Affinity Photo 2.1. You can see videos of more of the workflow improvements in the Shorts section of the Affinity YouTube channel.


Workflow improvements in the desktop edition of Affinity Photo 2.1
The desktop version Affinity Photo 2.1 features workflow improvements throughout the software, particularly to the Crop tool, the Brushes, Assets and Layers panels, and to Guides.

Changes to the Crop tool include the option to crop to the current selection, and to use a Phi grid as an overlay, for cropping images to proportions based on the Golden Ratio.

The Brushes panel now shows thumbnails of brushes, and shows brush names.

The Assets and Layers panels get new options for expanding or collapsing all sub-categories, and the Assets panel gets the option to sort assets by name.

The Guides system gets new keyboard shortcuts for cloning, snapping, nudging and deleting guides, and the distance a guide has been dragged is now shown in an on-screen readout.

Other changes include the option to display special characters, and to have the Paint Mixer brush automatically clean itself of stored colours.

On Windows and macOS, is also now possible to batch export images in WebP and JPEG-XL formats.

New features in the iPad edition of Affinity Photo 2.1
In addition, features added to the iPad edition from the desktop edition the Style Picker tool, for transferring attributes between objects or text, and the Rulers system.

There are also navigational changes intended to make the software easier to use on a tablet, including double-tap Quick Menu and Zoom options.

For a full list of changes to both editions, follow the link at the foot of the story.

Price and availability
Affinity Photo 2.1 is available for Windows 10+, macOS 10.15+ and iPadOS 15.0+. The update is free to registered users of version 2.0.

New perpetual licences of the desktop edition cost $69.99; the iPad edition costs $18.49. A Universal License, which includes all of the Affinity apps, costs $164.99.


Read a full list of new features in Affinity Photo 2.1 on the product website

Read a full list of new features in all the Affinity 2.1 product updates in the online release notes