Skip to main content

Let’s get technical

Mac display showing the beige and pink digital brochure of an Italian theatre company

Mac

Hardware

  • Mac Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini
  • Mac with Apple silicon (M1/M2/M3) chip or Intel processor
  • 8GB RAM recommended
  • Up to 2.8GB of available hard drive space; more during installation
  • 1280x768 display size or larger

Operating System

  • macOS Sonoma 14
  • macOS Ventura 13
  • macOS Monterey 12
  • macOS Big Sur 11
  • macOS Catalina 10.15
Windows display showing a magazine spread of a white-haired woman in black blazer, surrounded by black, white and blue text and designs

Windows

Hardware

  • Windows-based PC (64-bit) with mouse or equivalent input device
  • Intel, AMD or ARM64* processor
  • Hardware GPU acceleration**
  • DirectX 10-compatible graphics cards and above
  • 8GB RAM recommended
  • 1GB of available hard drive space; more during installation
  • 1280x768 display size or larger

Operating System

  • Windows® 11
  • Windows® 10 May 2020 Update (2004, 20H1, build 19041) or later

iPad

Hardware

  • Compatible with…
    • iPad Pro (all models)*
    • iPad Air (2, 3, 4 & 5)*
    • iPad (2017 onwards)
    • iPad mini (5 & 6)

* M1-equipped iPad models are recommended for more memory-intensive design

Operating System

  • iPadOS 15 or later

Full feature list

2.5 New Features

All Platforms

  • Variable fonts
    • Precise control of individual font attributes, such as weight, width and optical size
    • Many more attributes are supported depending on font design
    • Greater flexibility to adapt a design’s typography for different mediums
    • Font appearances are fully preserved in PDF output
    • Text in PDF remains as text for searchability
  • QR Code Tool
  • DWG polylines import improvements
  • Easier updating of modified text style
  • Visual indication of rescaled text frame

Desktop only

  • Native Windows ARM64 support
  • Set grid preset as default
  • Typography dialog becomes a dedicated Typography Panel
  • Transform by absolute sizes using Transform Objects Separately

iPad only

  • Mask to Below and Release now added to Layers Panel

2.4 New Features

  • Layer states for controlling layout variations (for desktop only):
    • Create show/hide queries based on layer tagging, type, name, lock status and/or visibility
    • Make layer selections based on current query
    • Capture current layer visibility states
    • Set a scope to be your document, selected spread or layer selections
    • Dedicated States Panel for states management
  • Set selection box for rotated multiple selections
  • Double-clicking (tap) an object switches from the Node Tool to Move Tool
  • Lock insertion targets
  • Use Spacebar as keyboard modifier for Lock Children
  • Space horizontally/vertically considers key object
  • Size or rotate objects to same
  • Import/export 32-bit HDR PNGs

2.3 New Features

All Platforms

  • Place and export password-protected PDFs, including the ability to individually allow:
    • Document printing
    • Content modification
    • Content copying
  • Export PDF files to PDF 2.0 (ISO 32000-2) standard, with optional password-protected AES-256 encryption
  • Image tagging for accessible PDFs
  • Independent formatting of cross-reference fields
  • Find and Replace panel uses inbuilt and custom fields in search terms and replacement text
  • Convert selected text to custom fields
  • Spiral Tool:
    • Choice of styles including Linear, Decaying, Fibonacci and Plotted
    • Optional straight-line edges
  • Pixel grid can be switched on/off and coloured
  • Change Assets Panel background colour

iPad only

  • Optionally deselect shapes after creation

Desktop only

  • Move data entry enhancements:
    • Scale option to resize by a given percentage
    • Insertion Mode options to insert duplicates in front of or behind the original object
    • Edit object properties as you transform
    • Improved Number of copies slider behaviour
  • Brush names show by default on the Brushes panel
  • Create new documents from assets by dragging from panel to title bar
  • Create shapes of same type and properties from an existing shape selection

2.2 New Features

All Platforms

  • Cross-references:
    • Use a paragraph, anchor or index mark as a cross-reference’s target
    • Phrase cross-reference text as you wish, including subfields that automatically describe targets, e.g. their page
    • Save cross-reference phrasings as presets for reuse in multiple documents
    • Limit quoted text by number of words or occurrence of a character
    • Automatically hyperlink cross-references to their targets when exporting interactive PDFs
  • Holding a tool shortcut temporarily activates the tool*
  • Change guide colour
  • Go to the previously viewed page
  • Open all supported image formats in all Personas
  • Customisable date & time formats
  • Custom text fields
  • Update table format from selection
  • Find and Replace can specify a scope
  • More separator control for presenting index entries
  • Add selections to new layer
  • Optionally prompt for group and layer names on creation

iPad only

  • New Settings (Preferences)
    • Decimal place control for measurement unit types
    • Keep or clear selection after delete
  • Shift-drag on RGB/CMYK sliders to change tint/intensity only**
  • Scrolling Studio panels and context toolbars (except 12.9" Pro)
  • *For iPad, use hardware keyboard
  • **For iPad, use Command Controller or hardware keyboard

Desktop only

  • Data merge fields can actively link to URLs, file locations, email addresses and anchors
  • Object data entry for creating precise shapes and picture frames
  • Move data entry for moving/duplicating objects
  • When editing curves, delete a node via right-click
  • When deleting node(s), optionally retain curve smoothness
  • Select All On Current Layer via the Select menu

2.1 New Features

Running headers

  • Easily provide readers with a sense of place in your publication
  • Automatically display text to which a text style was most recently applied across multiple pages’ headers/footers
  • Limit quoted text by number of words or occurrence of a character
  • Optionally transform text to all upper or lower case, title case or sentence case

Assets panel

  • Expand All/Collapse All subcategories (for desktop only)
  • Sort assets by name
  • Modifier-free reordering of asset subcategories (for desktop only)

Layers panel

  • Alt-click to Expand/Collapse All (child layers)*
  • Step-through renaming of layers and export slices with Tab key (for desktop only)
  • Rename layers via the Layers menu, with shortcut (for desktop only)
  • Hide layer type icons

Guides improvements

  • Double-click any guide to open Guides Settings
  • Drag distance (delta) shows in on-screen readout
  • Drag a guide from rulers will switch on guide visibility (if set to off)
  • Clone guides with -drag (Ctrl-drag)*
  • Delete guides with Alt-click*
  • Snap guides to ruler units based on the spread origin with Shift-drag*
  • Snap guides to drag distance (delta) based on ruler units with Shift-Alt-drag*
  • Snap to original guide position when moving guides
  • Snap to original guide when cloning guides
  • Nudge guide values with mouse wheel/arrow keys*
  • Link margin or X/Y spread origin values in Guides Settings

*For iPad, use Command Controller/hardware keyboard

  • Improved pasting inside picture frames
  • Affinity Designer’s Measure and Area tools come to Publisher (for desktop only)
  • Disable auto-selection with Move Tool, plus -click (Ctrl-click) override*
  • Keyboard shortcuts for layer blend modes
  • Adjust stroke width using Node Tool or shape tools using [ or ] keys
  • Balanced dashed lines plus more dash pattern sequences
  • Clear arrowhead settings
  • PDF document properties (metadata) are retained on import
  • Search Bar for searching add-on content in your Account
  • V5 PANTONE® Solid, Process Coated and Uncoated update
  • One-click bitmap fill creation from assets or stock images
  • Create bitmap fills by drag-and-drop from Finder/File Explorer to Colour or Swatches panel (for desktop only)
  • Close All to close multiple open documents plus Apply to All option (for desktop only)

Publisher iPad

  • Style Picker Tool offers a dropper-based transfer of object styles
  • Rulers
  • Reset canvas rotation in Navigator Panel with double-tap
  • Double-tap Zoom option to Zoom to 100% in Navigator Panel
  • PDF Options offered on opening PDF files
  • Create compounds via long press on Geometry menu options
  • More hardware keyboard shortcuts:
    • Select Next, Previous, Top and Bottom
    • Opacity
    • Zoom options and other design aids
  • More select options added to Quick Menu
  • Command controller modifiers/keyboard support for Select Object
  • Apple Pencil: double-tap to open Quick Menu
  • Show in Files on the Home screen (Live Docs) locates your saved file
  • Workflow improvements:
    • Drop-down menus with checkable options no longer auto-close
    • Less tapping needed for menu navigation
  • Lock or rename layers, plus swap compound type, via left-swipe
  • Double-tap to reset Opacity and Blend Mode to 100% and Normal, respectively (Layers panel)

2.0 New Features

General UI

  • Redeveloped UI, tool and button icons
  • New monochromatic iconography via Preferences (User Interface)
  • High-contrast UI settings
  • Drag document tabs to new windows (Mac)
  • Restyled Studio panels via the Window menu (for desktop only)
  • Redesigned Export dialog offers “always on” export preview
  • Command controller for improved workflow (iPad)
  • Quick Menu for context-sensitive access to commands (iPad)
  • Compact Mode for Layers and Brushes Studios (iPad)

New document dialog redesign

  • Easier preset management plus preset previews and favourites
  • In-dialog access to new document presets, templates, samples and your account details
  • Recent documents (grid or list) are searchable and support pinning (for desktop only)
  • “Always on” Document summary panel (for desktop only)

All new Layers panel

  • Much clearer drop zones for masking, clipping and reordering
  • Parent bar to easily collapse parent items and drop layers above/below current parent group
  • Unlimited levels of cropping/masking layers
  • Identify layer types by icon (curves, shapes, text, pixel, mask, adjustment)
  • Hide/show all other layers
  • Copy layer effects (FX) from one layer to another
  • Hover-over lock icon toggle (for desktop only)
  • Drag-down Visibility icon to turn on/off multiple selected layers (for desktop only)

Content link

  • All Affinity apps on a device can now share brushes, styles, assets, application palettes and more
  • Avoids unnecessary exporting/importing of content between apps on the same device
  • Migration of custom 1.x content on upgrade (for desktop only)
  • Link custom content to share with other apps

Book creation and management (for desktop only)

  • Pull together multiple Publisher files as chapters for a book
  • New Books panel lets you add, open and edit chapters directly from panel
  • Intelligent updating of page numbers, TOCs and indexes
  • Synchronise text styles, table formats, swatches and master pages

DTP essentials

  • Footnotes, sidenotes and endnotes via new Notes panel
  • Style Picker Tool offers a dropper-based transfer of object styles (for desktop only)

Placing content

  • Quick grid for text frame/picture frame layouts (for desktop only)
  • Autoflow of multiple images and multi-page PDFs
  • Layer visibility override for placed files (PDF/DWG/DXF)—turn off layers you don’t need
  • Place linked web images using their URLs via Ctrl+drag-and-drop (for desktop only)
  • Dropbox API integration to retain placed resource linkage across multiple devices

Import/export/packaging

  • WebP file import and export
  • JPEG XL file import and export
  • AutoCAD DWG/DXF import, place and edit (maintaining layer structure and scaling)
  • Drag/drop stock photos for new document (for desktop only)
  • PDF export will export hidden Affinity vector layers that have child layers as invisible layers
  • Resave packages with auto-update of resources (for desktop only)

Artistic and frame text

  • Paste Style support for copied text selections
  • Convert artistic text to frame text, and vice versa

Selections

  • Select Same / Select Object (picture frames, tables, groups, colour and many more) with modifier support for multi-object selections
  • Select Next/Previous/Top/Bottom/Parent via right-click menu (for desktop only)
  • Move Tool option for automatically selecting inside groups

Some important extras…

  • Import Affinity and Adobe® Swatch Exchange (.ase) palettes (iPad)
  • Scalable bitmap fills with drag-and-drop support
  • Force scale of stroke width, layer effect radii, corner radii and text frame content on object resize
  • Statistics (word, line, paragraph and character counts) for current selection or document
  • Create hyperlinks to section start pages
  • Improved memory management of multiply-placed large documents
  • Change stroke width with [ and ] keys; Shift key increases/decreases by an absolute amount
  • Scale multiple objects’ stroke widths using formula input (e.g., 200%)
  • Isolation (Solo) mode lets you better work within groups, adding and removing items
  • Rasterise selected layers simultaneously
  • Preference to Limit initial zoom to a maximum of 100%
  • Redeveloped Boolean operations
  • HSL Colour Wheel has box wheel type and offers recent colours and hex code readout/input
  • Multiple shadow, outline and overlay layer effects per object

Overview

It’s Fast—Really Fast

  • Pan and zoom at maximum refresh rate (with ProMotion support for latest Mac displays)
  • Stunning scroll speeds as you edit or preview
  • Objects respond immediately to transformation
  • Real-time gradients, effects, blend modes and adjustments
  • 64-bit multi-core optimisation and hardware acceleration

Display support

  • Regular, Retina and expanded gamut DCI-P3 (Mac)
  • Wide colour gamut (Display P3) (Windows)
  • HiDPI
  • EDR (Mac)
  • HDR (Windows; >400 nits recommended)

Beautiful By Design

  • Built from the ground up for page layout professionals
  • Stylish and uncluttered interface

Efficient Affinity File Format

  • Compact and fast native file format
  • Fully editable in Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo

Highly Customisable

  • Light or dark user interface (for desktop only)
  • Create and save your own custom keyboard shortcuts
  • Create your own toolbars and toolbar layouts
  • Reorganise on-screen panels, float or dock as preferred
  • Create and save Studio Panel (and toolbar) presets (for desktop only)
  • Tweak UI tool size and choose monochrome or coloured buttons
  • Search Preferences and set up Affinity Publisher to your taste

Rich History

  • Instantly undo/redo over 8,000 History steps
  • Save History so you can undo steps later even on different computers
  • Undo actions performed in other Affinity suite apps
  • Cycle Futures feature prevents history loss after editing from undos
  • A seamless AutoSave protects against unexpected shutdowns

Naturally Easy to Use

  • Follows Industry conventions for the most popular shortcuts
  • Context toolbar displays options for the active tool only
  • Quickly hide all tools and panels for a bigger design preview
  • Work with multiple publications and multiple displays
  • Document presets or save your own custom document setups
  • Tailor tool behaviours and UI settings in Preferences

Professional Samples

  • Explore professional samples to trigger your imagination

Learning Made Easy

  • Access our video tutorials on our YouTube channel - created by our dedicated Product Experts and inspirational pro users.
  • Comprehensive in-app product Help
  • ‘At hand’ Hint Line for help with current actions (for desktop only)

No Subscription

  • No subscription charge! Designed for pros, priced for everyone
  • Buy through Affinity.store website, Mac App Store or Windows Store
  • Updates available as we improve

Licence Activation, Registration and Account Access

  • Single licence or multi-app cross-platform Universal Licence
  • In-app activation of licensing using your Affinity Store’s Affinity ID*
  • Create Affinity ID and account during in-app purchase
  • In-app purchase and registration (optional) via Mac App Store, iPad App Store and Microsoft store
  • In-app access and viewing of your Affinity account
  • Affinity Store content synchronisation
  • Auto-install of free and purchased Affinity Store content (brushes, assets and more)

Languages

  • English (US and UK)
  • German
  • French
  • Spanish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Japanese
  • Italian
  • Chinese (Simplified)

Page Layout essentials

Import

  • Adobe® Indesign® IDML
  • PDF
  • Adobe® Photoshop® PSD
  • Adobe® Illustrator® AI (containing PDF stream)

Easy Setup with New Document dialog

  • Presets for different types of output, e.g. Press Ready
  • Create your own custom page presets
  • Choose number of pages, facing pages and bleed
  • Arrange facing pages vertically/horizontally
  • Access Publisher templates (.aftemplate)

Spread Setup

  • For current, specific or all spreads
  • Override document dimensions and margins
  • Scale content when resizing documents
  • Lanczos 3, Bicubic, Bilinear and Nearest Neighbour resampling methods
  • Mixed spread orientations

Master Pages

  • Share page elements across many pages
  • Editing master page elements updates all pages simultaneously
  • Created pages are auto-linked to default master page
  • Edit frame content independently of master page
  • Smart master pages preserve edited master frame content when replacing master pages
  • Detach text and picture frames from master to independently resize/format
  • Transform master page content to spread
  • Edit master page from any publication page
  • Hierarchical master-on-master page support
  • Multiple master pages per page

Sections

  • Split publications into logical ‘chapter’ sections
  • Create new sections from targeted pages
  • Different page numbering styles per section
  • Name sections for chapter identification on headers/footers
  • Control starting page number
  • Reference last page in section or at publication end

Page Navigation and Viewing

  • Ultra responsive page scrolling
  • Pages panel scrolls with page scrolling
  • Page locator
  • Instantly switch between favourite zoom levels
  • Zoom to Spread
  • Navigator Panel for pan/zoom control
  • Save favourite view settings in the Panel
  • Preview Mode

Text Frame Setup

  • Multi-column support with column rules
  • Dedicated Text Frame Panel for advanced frame setup
  • Control insets, gutter and vertical alignment
  • Variable column and gutter widths
  • Change column widths by dragging
  • Set same gutter values on ≥3-columns simultaneously
  • Link text frames to flow text through
  • Unlink/delete frames in frame sequence
  • Frame sequences intelligently reflow on frame deletion/detachment
  • Align to baseline grid
  • Initial baseline text advance (sets vertical distance on first line of frame text)

Placeholder Text

  • Autofit to frame (non-editable) or normal text behaviour
  • Use your own custom filler text
  • Language specific

Adding Text to Text Frames

  • Place external file directly into new or existing text frame
  • Import Word DOCX and RTF files
  • Copy/paste from InDesign, Word, RTF and most other text editors
  • Paste as unformatted text
  • Scale or reflow text directly from text frame
  • Vertically align frame text
  • AutoFlow creates new ‘framed’ pages from overflowing frame text
  • Fit text frame to contained text
  • Create text frames from shapes

Artistic Text

  • Perfect for a front page headline or chapter title
  • Text always scales
  • Takes layer effects (blurs, shadows and glows)

Text-on-a-Path

  • Type text along a custom curve
  • Control start and end points
  • Set text on both or either side of lines
  • Convert shapes to text paths
  • Control all the normal text attributes including baseline

Placing Content

  • Images (PNG, JPG, TIFF, SVG)
  • PDF
  • PDF passthrough for absolute output fidelity (for desktop only)
  • Microsoft® Word® DOCX, RTF and plain text
  • Spreadsheet data (XLSX) - Microsoft® Excel®, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice
  • Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher documents
  • Adobe® InDesign® IDML
  • Adobe® Photoshop® PSD
  • PSD flattened image representation
  • Import multiple images into Place Images panel then place click-by-click
  • Choose page to view for placed documents
  • Convert pixel layers to image layers
  • DPI/scaling control for placed images and documents

Preview and Place Stock Imagery

  • Search for Stock images within Affinity Publisher
  • Stock Panel to access free and royalty-free image resources

Picture Frames

  • Picture Frame Rectangle and Ellipse tools
  • Intelligent image fitting to frame (Scale to Max/Min Fit)
  • Create from shapes (geometric or pen drawn)
  • Use presets or customize your own frames
  • Size picture frame to content
  • On-page pan, zoom and rotate controls
  • Clear picture frame fills on population
  • Convert pixel layers to picture frames

Tables

  • Present data in tabular form
  • Add, remove and resize columns and rows directly from table
  • Autofit/distribute rows and columns
  • Comprehensive cell formatting and merging
  • Create custom table formats
  • Save any table for later use
  • Align to baseline grid

Pinned Objects

  • Pinned objects move as text reflows
  • Intelligent pinning to nearest text
  • Float or inline (as character)
  • Position by eye or via Pinning Panel (for precision)
  • Float in relation to pin, frame, column, margin or page edge

Text wrapping

  • Flow frame text around picture frames, text frames, images and tables
  • Change distance to text (separate directions or uniformly)
  • Edit the wrap outline to tailor wrapping

Interactive links for digital publishing

  • Hyperlinks (to page, web address, file or email)
  • Create in-document anchors for hyperlinks to target
  • Table of contents and Index entries automatically hyperlink
  • Anchors panel to create/manage anchors
  • Include PDF bookmarks for TOC entries and anchors

Fields

  • Insert document information (Author, Title, Date/Time)
  • Add document statistics
  • Section fields for headers and footers
  • Continued on/from text frame references

Merge Publisher documents

  • Import your choice of pages
  • Import sections
  • Choose page insertion point
  • Text style merging
  • Import master page(s)
  • Import index marks

Table of Contents

  • Dedicated Panel for TOC management
  • Multiple Tables of Contents
  • Create for document or section
  • Choose text styles to generate content
  • Create different text style sets
  • Ignore line breaks and Include inline images options

Index

  • Generate index from inserted index marks
  • Dedicated Panel for index management
  • Find and index additional matching words from panel
  • Create cross references

Data Merge (for desktop only)

  • Merge text and image links from external data sources
  • XLSX spreadsheet, TSV, CSV and JSON data sources
  • Merge direct to page (certificates, letters, greetings cards)
  • Merge into a repeating grid layout (business cards, mailing labels, badges, passes)
  • Data Merge Layout Tool for grid layouts
  • Repeat same data record or different record per grid cell
  • Filter data records

Professional Typography

Pro Font Support

  • Create elegant text with OpenType, True Type and Type 1 fonts
  • Use OpenType features (ligatures, swashes, stylistic alternates and sets)
  • Insert placeholder text while constructing designs
  • Insert special characters and symbols
  • Copy and paste style between objects
  • Font fallbacks

Live Font Previews

  • Fonts are previewed instantly while creating or customising text
  • Access fonts by collection for efficiency
  • Browse recent, used or favourite fonts (previously set as favourites)

Live OpenType Feature Previews

  • Typography Panel shows live feature previews
  • Easily select the right Stylistic Set every time
  • Preview Ligatures, Contextual Alternates, Swashes and more

Glyph Browser

  • Quickly insert special characters into your text
  • Display in glyph or Unicode order
  • Browser will track current font selection
  • Filter by font subset, e.g. Cyrillic
  • Search by glyph name, glyph index or Unicode value

Characters and Paragraphs

  • Style text with on-screen panels you can dock, move, and resize
  • Adjust kerning, tracking, shear, baseline and other character attributes
  • Easily set leading, indents, tab stops and justification
  • Multi-language auto-hyphenation
  • Optical character alignment (hanging punctuation)
  • Paragraph spacing
  • Bullets and numbering
  • Initial words formatting
  • Add decorations (paragraph rules)

Text Ruler

  • Visually set tabs and indents
  • Displays above any selected text frame
  • Use alongside Text Panel
  • Reposition ruler vertically onto ‘target’ paragraphs

Checking your work

  • Spell checking on the fly, or on demand, and customise the dictionary
  • Check against any dictionary installed
  • Autocorrect (uses replacement and abbreviation lists)

Text Styles

  • Ensure text appears consistent
  • Apply character and paragraph styles
  • Pre-supplied styles
  • Easily update styles cross-document
  • Design from scratch or from text selection
  • Style hierarchies
  • Style groups
  • Multi-level numbering schemas
  • Import styles from target document
  • Delete unused styles
  • Delete all styles and create your own

Find and Replace

  • Fonts, traits, attributes or text formatting
  • Character or paragraph styles
  • Search for ‘No style’
  • Special characters
  • Regular expressions support (Locale Aware)
  • Locate found text on page

Management

Resource Management

  • Missing resource alert on document load
  • Linked/embedded placed image policy at document setup
  • Dedicated Resource Manager for image/document management
  • Display placed image or document status
  • Convert resources from embedded to linked (and vice versa)
  • Linked image use offers much reduced file sizes
  • Relative resource links are honoured
  • Collect linked resources into a ‘sidecar‘ folder for project portability
  • Relink multiple missing ‘same folder’ images in one operation

Layer Management

  • Each page has its own layers
  • Organise using layers, groups and layer naming
  • Isolate, rename, lock and hide layers with easy shortcuts
  • Unlock all locked objects simultaneously
  • Show all hidden objects simultaneously
  • Limit the effect of adjustments by drag and drop
  • Drag and drop layers from one document to another (Windows only; floated and side by side)

Font Management

  • Missing font alert on document load
  • Dedicated Font Manager for your document’s fonts
  • Displays fonts used and font status
  • Show and replace missing fonts
  • Locate any fonts used

Packaging

  • Share projects easily
  • Original document remains unaffected
  • Include fonts and linked images
  • Show restricted fonts on package opening

Design Aids

Powerful Snapping

  • Snap text frames, picture frames, shapes and curves
  • Snap to grids, baseline grids, guides, column guides, canvas edges, margins, gaps and more
  • Snapping candidate control (last six selected or layer based)
  • Dynamic alignment works smoothly on snapping candidates
  • Save favourite snapping settings as new presets
  • Exclude objects from snapping

Ruler, Ruler Guides and Column Guides

  • Switch on vertical/horizontal rulers that use document measurement units (for desktop only)
  • Spread (ruler) origin repositioned from ruler intersection (for desktop only)
  • Create ruler guides in any measurement unit or by percentage
  • Reposition guides from ruler area when using multiple tools
  • Multi-column guides with gutter control
  • Customisable bleed and margin colours

Baseline Grids

  • Vertically align text baselines for more appealing layouts
  • For entire document or specific frames or tables
  • Control grid positioning relative to spread/page/margin
  • Precision object snapping to grid
  • Display grid only at a configurable zoom level
  • Set grid colour

Layout Grids

  • Create standard square and rectangular grids
  • Change grid colour and opacity
  • Snap to grid for accurate layout

Constraints

  • Scale and/or anchor objects in relation to the containing shape or picture frame
  • Select object edges to be constrained
  • Dedicated Constraints Panel for scale/anchor control
  • Max/min fit for fixed aspect ratios

Rotate Document View

  • Rotate the page for easier editing of rotated text and packaging designs
  • Maps to popular graphics tablet and keyboard controls

Misc Design Aids

  • Inter-object measurement guides
  • Switch on pasteboard for off-page storage

Assets for easy access to stored page elements

  • Dedicated panel for asset storage
  • Store text frames, picture frames, and tables
  • Store any object to a custom subcategory
  • Easy drag and drop onto the page
  • Import/export assets

Supporting Vector Design Tools and Operations

Pen and Node Tool

  • Instinctively and quickly create what you want in a few clicks
  • Change node types on the fly without interrupting your flow
  • Switch between Pen and Node tools with a key press
  • Multi-node selection, alignment and transform
  • Apply pressure, scaling, drawing, mitre and line end settings for organic strokes
  • Create custom saveable pressure profiles
  • Arrowheads

Tool and Mode Switching

  • One tool flexibly selects, moves, rotates, scales, and skews
  • Switch to the Move tool any time with a key press
  • Toggle between popular tools and temporarily change modes
  • Intuitively edit objects within groups without ungrouping
  • Optionally move parent objects without their child layers

Editable Shapes

  • Regular shapes are naturally smart with unique editing nodes
  • Easily customise shapes, achieve neat results with snapping geometry
  • Create perfect squares and circles by constraining primitives
  • Apply special and rounded corners as absolute or % values
  • Customise cogs, stars, arrows, pies, and 14 other smart shapes
  • Presets for shapes or save your own shapes

Live Gradient Fills and Transparencies

  • Draw gradients live in your design, instantly and smoothly
  • Apply colour and transparency gradients to fills and outlines
  • Easily adjust the nodes and rates of change for gradients
  • Use solid, linear, elliptical, radial, conical gradients and apply bitmaps
  • Aspect ratio control (bitmap fill/transparency only)
  • Linear and radial gradients respond to object scaling/shearing with skewed fill handle editing

Power Duplicate

  • Duplicate objects and repeat transforms all in one go
  • Create geometric patterns or repeating, scaling, rotating designs

Aligning and Distributing

  • Align to left, centre, right, top, middle, bottom
  • Works to selection bounds, spread (artboard), margins, first/last selected
  • Automatically distribute objects horizontally or vertically
  • Distribute to your choice of spacing
  • Alignment handles for precise alignment of a selection to a position on page
  • Change object Z-order

Transforms

  • Accurately position and scale objects to specific values
  • Use functions like +50% to scale objects relatively
  • Apply transforms about an anchor point selected in the Transform Panel
  • Rotate using dedicated lollipop or from outside corner handles
  • Transform Panel is aware of object’s custom transform origin (anchor point will override)
  • Set a custom centre of rotation
  • Reposition objects by their custom transform origin
  • Skew using on-screen controls or the Transform Panel
  • Flip objects with handy buttons

Boolean Geometry

  • Join, intersect, subtract, intersect, divide and combine shape outlines
  • Boolean operations are editable (Compound Shapes) without using Undo

Clipping

  • Add artwork within shapes and layers using Insert Inside and Paste Inside
  • Clip to object below with Move Inside and Move Outside
  • Also Insert Behind and Insert Above the current layer

Styles

  • Save combinations of fill, line and effects settings for reuse
  • Apply styles for design consistency, e.g. your favourite letterpress
  • Optionally scale styles with objects
  • Search for styles by style name

Textured Noise

  • Add noise to object fills and outlines, also as a gradient

Program Defaults

  • Apply your preferred object settings as defaults

StudioLink for Designer and Photo Interworking

With Designer Persona

Corner Tool
  • Neatly round and soften corners on shapes and lines
  • For single corners/nodes, a selection, or all nodes at once
Vector Paint Brushes
  • Access Texture and Image brush categories
  • Texture brushes include Pen, Paint, Watercolour and Pastel styles
  • Complete editability of an already applied stroke’s width, colour and opacity
  • Stroke stabilisation for perfectly smooth brush strokes
  • See a live preview at the brush tip before you apply your stroke
  • Create custom brushes using your own textures
Pencil Tool
  • Draw lines with an intuitive balance of accuracy and smoothing
  • Adjust weight automatically based on velocity, pressure, or use fixed width
  • Use stabiliser for super smooth pencil strokes
  • Sculpt mode for repeating and continuing strokes
Symbols
  • Simultaneous and automatic editing of repeating design elements
  • Create and store symbols in Symbols Panel
  • Replicate symbols as individual symbol instances
  • Synchronisation across instances by default
  • Switch off synchronisation for isolated edits
  • Edit distinct object properties independently of each other

With Photo Persona

Raster Paint Brushes
  • Introduce raster texture and shading to your page
  • Many brush categories (natural media, sprays, grunge and more)
  • Stroke stabilisation for perfectly smooth brush strokes
  • Retouch images with Dodge, Burn, Smudge and Sharpen brush tools
  • See a live preview at the brush tip before you apply your stroke
  • Control size, pressure, and speed interactivity with live brush settings
Pixel Selections
  • Confine edits to selected regions only
  • Adjustments and effects are masked to selection
  • Use regular shapes, pixel-width regions, freehand lasso, and selection brush
  • Select regions based on colour and tonal ranges
  • Grow, shrink, feather, smooth and outline selection
Refine Selections
  • Select fine detail like hair and fur with advanced refining
  • Set refinement border width, smoothness, mode, and feather size
  • Output refinement as a selection, mask, new layer, or new layer with mask
Professional image filters
  • Full access to non-destructive Live filters
  • Enhance your photos
  • Blur, sharpen, distort or add colour effects
Custom Brushes
  • Create completely custom vector and raster brushes using your own textures
  • Choose behaviour for pressure and velocity variance, corners, repeating areas and many other controls

Professional Colour, Compatibility, and Output

Professional Colour

  • CMYK professional workflows
  • RGB, RGB Hex, LAB, CMYK and Greyscale colour models
  • PANTONE® colour swatches
  • ICC colour management profiles supported
  • Seamlessly jump between colour modes
  • Lock to prevent colour mode switching

Pantone® Colour Matching

  • PANTONE® Goe
  • PANTONE® GoeBridge
  • PANTONE®+ Formula Guide Solid (V2)
  • PANTONE®+ CMYK
  • PANTONE®+ Color Bridge (V2)
  • PANTONE®+ Metallic, Neon, and Pastels
  • Coated and uncoated variants

Smart Colour Picker

  • Dedicated Tool for sampling colour in your Document View
  • Accurately pick colour using a magnifier over any part of your display
  • Point or colour averaged sampling
  • Sample from current or all layers
  • Grab in the source colour space including CMYK, RGB and LAB colour
  • Simple panel-based Colour Picker as alternative

Palettes and Swatches

  • Use colours and palettes based on all the available colour models
  • Automatically create palettes based on document colours
  • Import Adobe® Swatch Exchange (.ase) files
  • Display palettes created in other apps using Apple system Colour Palettes (for desktop only)
  • Create complementary, analogous and other colour chords (for desktop only)
  • Generate palette from any image (for desktop only)

Global Colours

  • Update objects when their base colour changes
  • Tint levels are retained when base colour updates
  • Use as solid colours or in gradients

16-bits per Channel Support

  • 16-bits per channel mode for accurate colour processing
  • Works on all supported hardware and operating systems without limits

Preflight checking

  • Live, manual or ‘at export‘ checking
  • Dedicated Preflight panel for centralised issue management
  • Configurable levels - warning or higher-priority error
  • Autofix available for many issues
  • Error/warning visual indicators (red/amber)
  • Save your own custom preflight profiles

Open

  • Affinity Photo (.afphoto)
  • Affinity Designer (.afdesign)

Import

  • Adobe® Indesign® IDML
  • PDF
  • Adobe® Photoshop® PSD
  • Adobe® Illustrator® AI (containing PDF stream)
  • EPS

Place

  • Adobe® Indesign® IDML
  • Microsoft® Word® DOCX, RTF or plain text
  • Spreadsheet data (XLSX) - Microsoft® Excel®, Apple Numbers, LibreOffice
  • Affinity Photo (.afphoto)
  • Affinity Designer (.afdesign)
  • Affinity Publisher (.afpub)
  • Adobe® Illustrator® AI (containing PDF stream)
  • PDF
  • Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe® FreeHand® (versions 9 to 11)
  • PNG
  • TIFF
  • JPG
  • GIF
  • SVG
  • EXR (Open EXR)
  • HDR (Radiance)
  • Extensive RAW import library (auto-process on import)
  • DNG
  • HEIF with depth map (as separate layer)
  • Optional Artboard conversion to spreads (from Affinity Designer)

Export

  • PDF
  • Affinity template (.aftemplate)
  • PNG
  • JPG
  • GIF
  • TIFF
  • Adobe® Photoshop® PSD
  • SVG
  • EPS
  • EXR (Open EXR)
  • HDR (Radiance)

PDF and PDF/X compatible

  • Save designs as PDF for sharing
  • Edit and save PDFs for round-trip app compatibility

Desktop Printing/Save as PDF

  • Tiled
  • N-up (ganged)
  • Book printing
  • Booklet printing

Professional Printing

  • Full CMYK handling and ICC profiles
  • Spot colours
  • Overprint controls
  • Trim, bleed and crop marks
  • Bleed preview with bleed setup directly from new document
  • K-only greyscale images on CMYK output
  • Create CMYK PDF/X files for pro printing
  • Compatible with PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, and PDF/X-4

Live Blend Modes, Adjustments and Effects

Non-Destructive Editing

  • Apply to any object, layer, group—whether vector or raster
  • See effects, blend modes and adjustments instantly with no lag
  • Completely finish designs without switching to another app
  • Edit any time—all effects, adjustments, and blend modes are non-destructive
  • Set blend modes for strokes, layers, objects and groups
  • Selectively recolour artwork and designs without laborious reworking

Live Adjustments

  • Levels
  • White Balance
  • HSL
  • Recolour
  • Black and White
  • Brightness and Contrast
  • Posterise
  • Vibrance
  • Exposure
  • Shadows/Highlights
  • Threshold
  • Curves
  • Channel Mixer
  • Gradient Map (with global colour support)
  • Selective Colour
  • Colour Balance
  • Invert
  • Soft Proof
  • 3D LUT (3D Look Up Table for complex adjustments)
  • Lens Filter
  • Split Toning

Live Effects

  • Gaussian Blur
  • Outer Shadow
  • Inner Shadow
  • Outer Glow
  • Inner Glow
  • Outline
  • 3D
  • Bevel/Emboss
  • Colour Overlay
  • Gradient Overlay
  • Layer Effects (with global colour support)

Live Blend Modes

  • Normal
  • Darken
  • Darker Colour
  • Multiply
  • Colour Burn
  • Linear Burn
  • Lighten
  • Lighter Colour
  • Screen
  • Colour Dodge
  • Add
  • Overlay
  • Soft Light
  • Hard Light
  • Vivid Light
  • Pin Light
  • Linear Light
  • Hard Mix
  • Difference
  • Exclusion
  • Subtract
  • Divide
  • Hue
  • Saturation
  • Luminosity
  • Colour
  • Average
  • Negation
  • Reflect
  • Glow
  • Contrast Negate
  • Erase

Input Devices

OS X/macOS

  • Pressure-sensitive graphics tablet and pen
  • Force Touch and regular Trackpad
  • Touch Bar
  • Mac keyboards
  • Magic Trackpad and Magic Trackpad 2
  • Magic Mouse and Magic Mouse 2
  • Generic multi-button and wheel mouse
  • Dictation offered by OS X

Windows

  • DirectX 11 and Direct 2D rendering with Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) fallback
  • Hardware accelerated for smooth panning/zooming and rendering
  • Optimised for Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book (including support for detachable screen)
  • Surface Studio with Surface Pen/Surface Dial
  • Generic multi-button and wheel mouse
  • Wacom (and other WinTab devices) support
  • Uses Microsoft Concurrency Runtime to fully utilise/scale across modern CPUs
  • High DPI support across multiple monitors
This browser is no longer supported. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience. Find out more.