2.1 update – May 2023

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 (Mac / 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’.