I’ve enjoyed Affinity Photo on my iPad since I purchased it around Christmas time. It’s taken a bit to get used to the interface, but it’s amazing to think of how much I don’t need Photoshop to get some great edits and composites done.

I’ve also been eyeing Affinity Designer on my Mac for a while, but could never really justify the purchase because the venerable Autodesk Graphic ¹ handles my minimal needs well, and has an iPad version which works alongside the desktop application. As much as I love toys, curiosity wasn’t enough of a justification to jump to Affinity, even though the application is far more powerful.

That all changed this week with the introduction of Affinity Designer on iPad. When I saw that it had been released, and was on sale for a launch special, I opted to purchase the app and put it through its paces while I was on vacation. After watching several of the excellent tutorial videos, and played around with creating some simple projects, I decided to pick up the desktop application as well. It’s that good ².

Serif Labs has done a remarkable job tailoring Affinity Designer’s interface for the iPad. Touch modifiers are used to constrain transformations, assure drag operations stay on straight lines, and for duplicating elements. It’s easy to know if a modifier is in effect because Affinity Designer indicates where touch operations are being detected on screen.

I’ve had fun playing around this week, and I’ve already begun converting my old .idraw projects to SVG so I can make a full time jump to Affinity.

Examples