Let’s get technical

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

• 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

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 colored
• Change Assets Panel background color

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 behavior
• 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

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 color
• Go to the previously viewed page
• Open all supported image formats in all Personas
• Customizable 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

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 Color 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)

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 favorites
• 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
• Synchronize 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, color 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
• Rasterize selected layers simultaneously
• Preference to Limit initial zoom to a maximum of 100%
• Redeveloped Boolean operations
• HSL Color Wheel has box wheel type and offers recent colors and hex code readout/input
• Multiple shadow, outline and overlay layer effects per object

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 optimization and hardware acceleration

Display support

• Regular, Retina and expanded gamut DCI-P3 (Mac)
• Wide color 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 Customizable

• Light or dark user interface (for desktop only)
• Create and save your own custom keyboard shortcuts
• Create your own toolbars and toolbar layouts
• Reorganize 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 colored 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 behaviors 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

License Activation, Registration and Account Access

• Single license or multi-app cross-platform Universal License
• 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 synchronization
• Auto-install of free and purchased Affinity Store content (brushes, assets and more)

^*An internet connection is required for license activation.

Languages

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

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 Neighbor 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 favorite zoom levels
• Zoom to Spread
• Navigator Panel for pan/zoom control
• Save favorite 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 behavior
• 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

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 customizing text
• Access fonts by collection for efficiency
• Browse recent, used or favorite fonts (previously set as favorites)

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 customize 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

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 honored
• 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
• Organize 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

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 favorite 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
• Customizable bleed and margin colors

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 color

Layout Grids

• Create standard square and rectangular grids
• Change grid color 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

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, miter 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 customize shapes, achieve neat results with snapping geometry
• Create perfect squares and circles by constraining primitives
• Apply special and rounded corners as absolute or % values
• Customize 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 color 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, center, 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 center 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 favorite 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

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, Watercolor and Pastel styles
• Complete editability of an already applied stroke’s width, color and opacity
• Stroke stabilization 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 stabilizer 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
• Synchronization across instances by default
• Switch off synchronization 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 stabilization 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 color 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 color effects

Custom Brushes

• Create completely custom vector and raster brushes using your own textures
• Choose behavior for pressure and velocity variance, corners, repeating areas and many other controls

Professional Color

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

Pantone^® Color 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 Color Picker

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

Palettes and Swatches

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

Global Colors

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

16-bits per Channel Support

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

Preflight checking

• Live, manual or ‘at export‘ checking
• Dedicated Preflight panel for centralized 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 colors
• Overprint controls
• Trim, bleed and crop marks
• Bleed preview with bleed setup directly from new document
• K-only grayscale images on CMYK output
• Create CMYK PDF/X files for pro printing
• Compatible with PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, and PDF/X-4

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 recolor artwork and designs without laborious reworking

Live Adjustments

• Levels
• White Balance
• HSL
• Recolor
• Black and White
• Brightness and Contrast
• Posterize
• Vibrance
• Exposure
• Shadows/Highlights
• Threshold
• Curves
• Channel Mixer
• Gradient Map (with global color support)
• Selective Color
• Color 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
• Color Overlay
• Gradient Overlay
• Layer Effects (with global color support)

Live Blend Modes

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

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
• Optimized 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 utilize/scale across modern CPUs
• High DPI support across multiple monitors