What’s new in Affinity?

Windows, macOS and iPad

This highly-requested, flexible new tool allows you to create different types of spirals, including:

Linear

Decaying

Semi-circular

Fibonacci

Plotted

Here are some creative examples of how you can incorporate these spirals into your designs:

Windows, macOS and iPad

The new Tags Panel in Affinity Publisher allows you to add alt text to any image or object when exported to PDF for accessibility purposes. To use, just open the Tags Panel from the Window menu, select the image or object you want to add alt text to, and add your description in the box.

Alt Text Source

As well as adding your own custom description to any object, you can also choose to scrape the alt text from the Title, Description or Headline meta data which may be embedded within the image in question.

Mark as Decoration

You also have the option to ‘Mark as Decoration’. This means no image description will be exported or used by screen readers as the item is purely there for decorative purposes rather than important to the understanding of the document. Marking as a decoration is primarily used to positively tag an image as not needing a description, so it’s not flagged in preflight.

Preflight

Options have also been added in preflight to make it easy to check your document for any missing alt text should you wish. When creating or editing a profile, you will see a new section for alt text. Here you can choose whether you want preflight to return a warning if images, placed documents or vector objects do not have alt text added (or marked as decoration).

Export

There is now a new ‘Tagged PDF’ option in the advanced section of PDF export. This is required to be checked if you wish to export your PDF, including any tags you have added.

Windows, macOS and iPad

In Find and Replace, fields are now available from the drop-down. This includes any custom text fields you have set up, making it easy to replace many instances of a text string within your document.

Windows, macOS and iPad

When using the Pencil Tool, the behavior has always been that after drawing any curve, that curve is then selected. After many requests for an option to change that behavior so the newly created curve is not selected, we’ve added a ‘Keep selected’ preference. This is particularly useful when you often want to change the color or stroke width of the curve you create next without changing the properties of the curve you have just created.

On desktop, you can find this option in the context toolbar of the Pencil Tool (‘Keep selected’ checkbox, default value is ‘on’ as per current behavior).

On iPad, the option is represented with the below icon (again it‘s toggled ‘on’ by default).

Windows, macOS and iPad

Great news for VFX, film and 3D artists – we have added support for OCIO v2 so config files including the more advanced features available in OCIO v2 can now be used.

Windows, macOS and iPad

Additional keyboard shortcuts have been added to all pixel-based brush tools (e.g. Paint Brush, Smudge, Sponge, Dodge, Burn, etc.):

• Shift + number key now changes flow percentage (in the same way that number key on its own adjusts opacity)
• Shift + square brackets now changes hardness in 10% increments
• Number key in Paint Mixer and Smudge Brush now adjusts strength percentage
• Fill with Primary color has now been set with a default shortcut of Alt/⌥ + Backspace
• Fill with Secondary color has now been set with a default shortcut of Ctrl/⌘ + Backspace

An updated list of core brush shortcuts are shown below (those highlighted in red are the new additions):

Windows, macOS and iPad

In the Layers Panel, if you Alt-click ‘Add new layer’ (⌥-click on macOS/iPad) when you have a selection, all items in that selection are moved to the new layer created. In other words, this behaves like grouping, but rather than creating a group, it puts your selection into a new layer.

Additionally, for desktop versions, you will find a new option in the right-click menu for ‘Move Selection to New Layer’ which achieves the same thing. This makes it far easier to organize your work into layers, without having to create an empty layer first and drag the items you want into it.

Windows, macOS and iPad

In Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, you can now choose to toggle your view to hide all layer effects or switch to grayscale. Being able to hide layer effects in this way is particularly important for those creating very complex designs with thousands of layers and effects – having a view mode where effects can be turned off greatly improves performance as you work.

Toggling to grayscale mode can also be useful to evaluate contrast and dynamic range more easily.

On desktop, you will find these new options in the View Mode options, and on iPad you can toggle them using the buttons next to the View Mode options in the navigator.

Additionally, on desktop we have created new buttons you can optionally add to your toolbar to make it more convenient for those who want to toggle between these views regularly. You can find these by right clicking on top toolbar and selecting “Customise Toolbar” and drag either of them on where you see fit.

Windows, macOS and iPad

There is now an option in the guide manager to change the color of your guides. On desktop, you can set this by going to guide manager (View -> Guides… or double-click on any guide) and find the color preference in the bottom left-hand side of the dialog.

On iPad, the color setting is available from the ring towards the top of the Guides Panel (available from the View drop-down menu or again by double tapping on a guide).

Windows, macOS and iPad

Holding onto any tool shortcut will now just put you in that tool temporarily until you release the shortcut key, at which point you will return to your previous tool. So for example, when you are using the Pen Tool, you could hold V to change to Move Tool to move your curve, and then on release be immediately back in Pen Tool. Another useful example would be when in Brush Tool, you could hold E to put you in Eraser and release to toggle back to Brush Tool.

Windows, macOS and iPad

You can now apply your own custom formats to any date fields. Simply right-click on the field / long press on iPad and choose ‘Edit Field’ for the option to switch between preset formats, or include your own custom format.

There is a lot of flexibility with this – see the full list of available format date field characters below:

Windows, macOS and iPad

Previously, Publisher only gave options to open document file types from File -> Open. There have been a number of requests to extend this to allow image files to be opened in that dialog, especially for those who now directly edit images and other graphics work using the StudioLink functionality in Publisher, so this has now been added.

Windows, macOS and iPad

There is now a new option to go to your previously viewed spread in Affinity Publisher. So, for example, if you are on page 30 and then go to page 400 to edit something, clicking on ‘Previously Viewed Spread’ in the Document menu will jump you back to page 30 (and hitting again will jump back to page 400 – so you can switch between the two pages quickly).

You can also set a keyboard shortcut for this using the new button with the rest of the page navigation options in the bottom left of the UI.

On the iPad version you can find this option at the bottom of the View menu.

Windows, macOS and iPad

Assign a shortcut^* with the new ‘Create Symbol’ option, now available from the Layer menu in Affinity Designer. In the case of the iPad version, this isn't a menu item, but is available to set as a shortcut. You can find it under Settings -> Shortcuts -> Commands.

^*default shortcut when in Designer Persona is Ctrl + Shift + K (Windows) / ⌘ + Shift + K (macOS and iPad)

Windows, macOS and iPad

On the Index Panel, you‘ll find new options that provide increased control over the presentation of index entries.

In addition to being able to customize the words that precede cross-references within an index, six new options are available: After Topic, Between Items, Between Ranges, Before References, After References, and After See (Also).

Inserting special characters

Commonly used special characters are easily inserted into your custom separator text. On desktop, click the arrow at the left of the box. On iPad, tap the Insert icon at the top left of the on-screen keyboard.

Special characters can also be inserted using your operating system's feature for typing emoji and symbols, or by copying and pasting.

Windows and macOS

In any of the shape tools, picture frame tools and artboard tools, you can now Ctrl+click (Windows) / ⌘+click (macOS) to bring up a dialog to manually specify the size and other properties of the object you want to create. The new object will be created in the position that you clicked, and you have the option in the dialog to change whether that position relates to a specific corner, side or the center of the shape being created.

Each tool will remember the settings of the last time you created that shape.

Some additional notes about this feature:

• When the dialog is up, you can commit by clicking OK, hitting Return / Enter or clicking anywhere else on the document
• You can cancel by clicking Cancel or hitting Esc
• You can click-drag on any of the labels in these dialogs to change the values (so here you could click-drag on the ‘Width:’ label for example)
• Hover + mouse roll over the values also changes them (along with Shift or Alt modifiers to increase / decrease steps made by a factor of 10)
• If you create a shape by dragging it out on your document, that will also set the W+H for the next time you Ctrl / ⌘ + click.

Windows and macOS

When in the Move Tool—as well as other object creation tools such as shapes, picture frames and artboard—pressing Return or Enter will now show a new dialog, which will allow you to specify the precise distance that you want to move your current selection.

You can also choose to duplicate an object to the new position and specify how many copies of it you want to make.

You will get a live preview of your result as you are adjusting any of the values. You can choose to cancel the operation with the Cancel button (or Esc), commit with the OK button (or Return / Enter) or simply click off the dialog.

The dialog will remember its previous values the next time you bring it up, meaning you can move multiple objects one by one by the same amount (for example, in a case where items are on different spreads / artboards or in other cases where achieving a multiple selection of them to begin with is difficult). A Reset button is also available to quickly zero all the values in the dialogs to start from scratch.

As well as manually typing the values in, you can also change them by click-drag on any of the labels or by using the mouse roller when hovering over any of the input boxes.

Rotation

We’ve also added the option of Rotation to this feature. This makes it easy to rotate an object by a specific amount and also opens up some useful options when used in combination with ‘duplicate’.

Tip: Try playing with rotation and distance steps on duplicates for various effects.

Windows and macOS

The right-click menu available when in Node Tool (or while holding ⌘ / Ctrl in Pen Tool) now has the additional option of deleting the node. Both delete methods (standard delete or ‘Fit to Curve’ delete) are available from this menu. The ‘Fit to Curve’ option gives you the same result as pressing Alt/⌥ + Delete.

Windows and macOS

From the Select menu, you will find a new option of ‘Select All on Current Layer’ with a default shortcut of Shift+Ctrl+A on Windows and Shift+⌘+A on macOS.

This was requested as a quick way to achieve the same result of unchecking ‘Edit all layers’ in Layers Panel and doing Select All. A good example would be if you want to select everything on an artboard, you can now just click on the artboard label and hit Shift+Ctrl / ⌘+A.

iPad

All iPad versions now have the preference available to keep selection after delete. This option (which was already available in the desktop versions) determines whether the next object in your layer stack is automatically selected or not after deleting an object.

Windows, macOS and iPad

Dashed lines can now be set to be ‘balanced’, meaning the pattern is automatically rescaled between any cusps in a curve. This gives a more desirable result for things such as corners of a box, or the start and end of a stroke. You can toggle balanced dashed lines on and off using the new button in the Stroke Panel.

Windows, macOS and iPad

This all-new tool allows you to easily fill areas created by intersecting objects and curves with a single click. The behavior is similar to what you may be used to with a pixel-based flood fill, but you get true vector results.

To use the tool:

1. Select all the items you want the tool to consider
2. Switch to Vector Flood Fill Tool – this will analyze your selection and work out all the areas available to fill
3. Choose your fill color – select what color you wish to fill your areas with from the Color or Swatch Panel
4. Click in any of the available areas to fill with your chosen colors

The other great thing with this tool is it allows for the simple creation of bitmap fill textures too – you can create a texture fill from any asset or stock item just by clicking on it. You can also choose to layer a texture fill on top of a color fill with the options available in the context toolbar.

Other tips when using this tool:

• If you don’t have any objects pre-selected you can just use the tool to fill any existing closed shape. It’s a way to quickly change the color of objects without having to select them first.
• While in the tool, if you wish to change your selection, you can hold ⌘ Command (macOS / iPad) or Ctrl (Windows) and click / drag marquee to select other objects.
• For an area to be recognized, any curves in your selection need to fully intersect, so it can sometimes be beneficial to expand strokes to bridge gaps in paths before using the tool.

There are lots of options available when using this tool. For more information, check out this tutorial.

Windows, macOS and iPad

Windows, macOS and iPad

Windows, macOS and iPad

All Affinity apps now have the ability to disable the Move Tool auto-selecting objects when you click on them (this option was previously only available in Affinity Photo). This can be very useful when you want to make sure you do not accidentally select a different object from the one you are working on. Having auto-select turned off means you can also drag anywhere on your document to move your selection, getting your cursor (or finger on iPad!) out of the way.

The auto-select toggle is available from the context toolbar when in the Move Tool. Additionally, when auto-select is turned on, you can also choose how you want selections to be made from the drop-down:

• Default – clicking on any objects or groups will select them
• Objects / Layers – ignores any groups and automatically drills to select any child object you click on
• Group – only selects groups, will ignore any objects not part of a group
• Under (iPad only) – if you have multiple objects stacked on top of each other, each tap will cycle through the z-order of the layer stack, allowing you to select items underneath the top item (this can also be achieved by holding Alt or ⌥).

Windows, macOS and iPad (requires keyboard)

Keyboard shortcuts have now been added so you can easily change the blend mode of the current layer(s), or the current brush if using the Paint Brush Tool.

Holding Shift with + or - will go to the next or previous blend mode in the list. Additionally, you can use any of the shortcuts in the accompanying table to change immediately to a specific blend mode. As well as assigning shortcuts to other blend modes (where a default shortcut hasn't been given), these can be customized within Settings.

The default shortcuts assigned to each blend mode are shown below:

Windows, macOS and iPad

Windows, macOS and iPad

Windows, macOS and iPad

Windows, macOS and iPad

A new option is now available in the context toolbar of the Paint Mixer Brush to auto-clean the brush after every stroke should you wish.

Windows, macOS and iPad

Dashed line settings have been expanded to allow three dashes and three gaps to be set, which enable more complex patterns to be created such as a two-dot chain.

Quick tip: on desktop you will also find the labels for dashes and gaps to be draggable to quickly adjust the values.

Windows, macOS and iPad

Windows, macOS and iPad

When editing a vector warp in Affinity Designer, any nodes in your mesh will now snap based on your general snapping preferences (when snapping is turned on). As with nearly all operations in Affinity, you can temporarily toggle snapping off while dragging a node by holding Alt / ⌥ Option.

Windows, macOS and iPad

A lot of customer feedback has been incorporated into the Brush Panel:

• Brush Panel now always highlights the current raster brush (in blue) and will now denote if the brush has been edited (by highlighting red).
• If you change brush tools (e.g., between paint brush and eraser) which have different brushes assigned, the panel will automatically scroll / switch category to always show the current brush. This is something which can be optionally switched off (‘Auto-Scroll’ in the panel’s burger menu).
• If you have changed any of the temporary properties of a brush, you can choose to update your brush preset to use that setting (from right click menu on desktop, left swipe menu on iPad).
• In Affinity Designer we have now made it possible to view your vector brushes in thumbnail view (Brush Panel burger menu -> uncheck ‘Show as list’). This was previously only available as an option with raster brushes.

Additionally, in the desktop versions you can now:

• Choose to show brush names in the panel (option in burger menu). The iPad versions already showed brush names in prior versions.
• Alt / ⌥ Option-drag a brush to quickly create a duplicate of the brush in the panel.

(Pixel Persona)

Windows, macOS and iPad

We have now added both the perspective and mesh warp live filters from Affinity Photo into the Pixel Persona of Affinity Designer. You can add one of these live filters from the Layer menu in Pixel Persona on desktop, or from the + button in the Layers Panel on iPad (again only when you are in Pixel Persona).

These filters are completely non-destructive, and particularly useful for distorting images and embedded documents you want to incorporate within your design.

Note: These are pixel-based warps so will rasterize any vector data warped by them at export time. If you just wish to warp vector outlines, you should be using the vector warp group functionality in the Designer Persona (added as a new feature to V2) which will always maintain a true vector result.

Windows, macOS and iPad

In ‘My Account’, from the burger menu within ‘My Add-ons’, you can now optionally expose a new search bar. This gives you the ability to search your content by a search term, or filter based on the type of content it is (brushes, assets, etc).

Windows, macOS and iPad

You can now rename an artboard by double-clicking / tapping on the artboard label in your document.

Windows, macOS and iPad

On desktop and iPad versions, ‘Rename Layer…’ is now available using the shortcut Command ⌘ Shift R (Ctrl Shift R on Windows). This can be customized in Settings should you wish.

Additionally, in the Mac version, after updating a layer name in the Layers Panel, you can now tab / Shift-tab to quickly edit the next / previous layer’s name. Note: this was already possible in the Windows version!

Windows, macOS and iPad

You can now choose both WebP and JPEG XL as export file types from the batch export dialog in Affinity Photo.

Windows and macOS

New options have been added to the File menu that allow you to close all currently open documents. The default shortcut is assigned as:

• macOS: ⌥ ⌘ W
• Windows: Alt Ctrl W

Windows and macOS

Windows and macOS

The ‘Mask to below’ function, previously only available from the right click menu in the Layers Panel, has now been added to the top Layer menu. This was requested primarily so that a shortcut could be assigned if desired.

Windows and macOS

The Measure Tool and Area Tool, which were both added to Affinity Designer in V2, are now available in both Photo and Publisher. This is not included in the default set of tools when you first run the app, but you will find it in the list if you go to View -> Customize Tools.

Windows and macOS

You can now find the Place Tool as a customization option in Affinity Photo (View -> Customize Tools) and add it to your main set of tools, making it more easily accessible than going to File -> Place.

(Develop Persona)

Windows and macOS

The Zoom Tool in Photo’s Develop Persona now includes the context toolbar options offered in the main Photo Persona (slider and drop-down of preset values).

iPad

As has been frequently requested, we have promoted the opacity and blend mode options that were previously only available from the Layer options (…) panel, at the top of the main Layers Panel. Double-tapping on opacity will reset the value to 100%, and double-tapping on blend mode will reset to ‘Normal’.

iPad

The left swipe menu in Layers has been expanded to include:

• Lock / Unlock
• Rename Layer…
• Change compound type (if the layer in question is a compound)

This makes these options much more easily accessible than having to go to the Layer options (…) panel.

iPad

iPad

When browsing your photos, either to open or place an image, all apps now use the inbuilt iPadOS Photos app rather than our own bespoke browser as before. This gives a much more familiar experience and will automatically take advantage of any new features the Photos app adds in the future.

iPad

iPad

The Style Picker Tool, which was added to the desktop versions in 2.0, is now available in the iPad versions. You will find this nested within the Color Picker Tool.

This tool allows you to quickly copy the style of any object or text in your document to other objects.

A few tips:

• In the context toolbar, you can see whether the tool is currently loaded with a style or not. If you wish to unload the tool, you can tap the Delete button in the context toolbar.
• When the picker is unloaded you can load it with a style from any object / text in your document with a single tap.
• Alternatively, when it is unloaded you can drag on the screen which will give you a loupe similar to the color picker to more accurately choose the style you want to pick.
• Once a style is loaded, you can then tap other objects or marquee around them to apply that style to other objects.
• In the case of applying the style to text, you can single tap to apply that style to a single word, or click drag to highlight sections of text you wish to apply the style to.
• To quickly reload with a new style, you can Alt / ⌥ Option-tap to copy a style from a different shape to the picker.
• From the Style Picker menu in the toolbar, you also get access to the additional options available on desktop to select which attributes you want the Style Picker to copy.

iPad (requires keyboard)

The following additional keyboard shortcuts are now available on iPad. They are pre-set with the default shortcuts as shown but can also be customized in Settings.

iPad

When using Apple Pencil, you can now configure ‘double-tap’ on your pencil to open the quick menu. You can choose what behavior ‘double-tap’ has by going to Settings -> Pencil -> Double-Tap Action.

iPad

You can now quickly create a compound (non-destructive Boolean operation) by long pressing any one of the geometry operations from the menu.

iPad

When opening a PDF in Affinity for iPad, you will now be able to choose from the same advanced options as are available on desktop. These options include how text is grouped, DPI and color space conversion.

iPad

Select Object modifiers which were previously only available in the desktop version are now available on iPad:

• Shift – this will add the selected object type to your current selection
• ⌥ Option – this will subtract the selected object type from your current selection
• Shift ⌥ Option – this will just select any of the selected object types from within your current selection

You can either use the Command Controller or a connected keyboard to access these modifiers.

iPad

iPad

In the Navigator Panel, a double-tap on canvas rotation value will now reset to zero degrees. While there are already quick buttons for different zoom levels available, we have also made it so that a double-tap on the zoom value resets to 100%.

iPad

If you tap the thumbnail of a warp group in the Layers Panel on iPad, it will now automatically select the Node Tool for you to edit the warp as it does on desktop.

iPad

On iPad, you now have the option to hide the layer type icon (the icon which denotes if a layer is pixel, image, curve, etc). It is available in the burger menu of the Layers Panel and the option to check on or off is within ‘Show Object Type’.