Power, performance and compatibility:
- Optimized for:
- Grand Central Dispatch (GCD)
- OpenGL
- Core Graphics
- Direct3D
- Metal hardware acceleration
- 64-bit engine
- Create massive gigapixel-sized documents
- 16-bits per channel editing
- Sub-pixel accuracy
- For all Intel 64-bit Macs (Core 2 Duo onwards)
- For OS X 10.7 (and above) or macOS Sierra 10.12.0 (and above)
- 64-bit plug-in support
- Up to date Tablet support
- Multi-touch support
- Force Touch support (Magic Trackpad 2/MacBook/MacBook Pro)
- Touch Bar support (MacBook Pro)
Solid graphic design tools:
- Artboards
- Accurate vector tools:
- Precise Pen tool
- Intuitive Move tool moves, scales, transforms
- Rotate from movable origin
- Customizable nudge distances
- Node tool for fine tuning vectors
- Freeform Pencil tool
- Raster finishing without switching apps
- Smooth gradients
- Add noise to fills and strokes as a solid or graduated attribute
- Powerful layers management
- Drag and drop layers
- Non-destructive adjustment layers
- Apply adjustments and blend modes at the stack, layer, group, selection or object level
- Clipping within layers
- Pixel adjustments and effects on vectors
- Blend modes
- Layer and object Blend ranges (linear and non-linear)
- Per object Blend gamma control
- Lock child layer positions
- Professional object control
- Symbols
- Corner Tool
- Compounds (live-preview non-destructive Boolean operations)
- Convert shapes and text to fully editable curves
- Duplicate and transform objects with precision
- Customizable geometric shapes
- Professional colour support
- 16-bits per pixel colour depth
- CMYK, Lab, Greyscale and RGB colour modes
- Colour panel (RGB, HSL, LAB, CMYK, Greyscale)
- Swatches panel (Apple, System, Web Safe colours, Crayons)
- Colour Picker Tool (colour mode aware, pick from anywhere on screen)
- Global colours
- Colour tints
- Professional colour support
- PANTONE® colour support
- ICC colour profiling
- Import Adobe ASE colour palettes
- Vector brushes with stretch and corner controls
- High quality brush galleries
- Change brush size, hardness, and opacity on the fly
- Import/export brushes, including ABR file import
- Custom brushes (including image-based brushes)
- Multi-controller support including pressure and velocity
- Controller-specific brush dynamics
- Customizable controller ramps
- Text and typography
- Artistic and frame text
- Character and Paragraph panels
- Text styles
- Text on a path
- Flowing text
- Spellchecking
- Advanced typography including ligatures
- OpenType font features
- Assets for object storage
- Customizable, saveable stroke styles
- Styles presets
User interface:
- Persona task-orientated workspaces
- Customizable tabbed workspace
- High DPI (retina) support
- Multiple document views
- Windowed, Full Screen, and Separated modes
- Docked or floating panels
- Comprehensive keyboard shortcuts and modifiers
- Customizable keyboard shortcuts
- Customizable toolbars
Design Aids:
- Pixel, Retina, and Outline view modes with Split View support
- Constraints for selective intelligent object scaling
- Rotate canvas
- Incredible zoom range
- Intuitive panning
- Saveable zoom viewpoints
- Dynamic snapping guides for precise alignment
- Multi-object alignment and distribution
- Pixel-accurate alignment for web graphics and website mockups
- Managers for Brushes, Grids, Snapping and other operations
- Automatic, fixed and projection grids (with colour/opacity control)
- Context toolbar and hintline
- Fluid document History <8192 steps
- Save history with document (multi-session)
- Snapshots
- Keyboard modifiers for on-the-fly tool changes
- Mixed-mode assistant eases vector and pixel mode switching according
to the user’s preferences
- Defaults (document and global)
- Media browser
Pixel-based designs:
- Seamlessly switch to and from pixel editing mode to apply finish
to vector artwork
- High quality layer effects
- Pixel brushes for high-quality textures
- Import/export brushes, including ABR file import
- Custom brushes
- Change brush size and colour on the fly
- Pixel selection tools
- Shaped selections
- Smart selection brush works over pixel and vector data
- Refine selections to capture fine detail
- Pixel adjustment brushes
- Dodge and Burn brushes
- Smudge, Blur and Sharpen brushes
- Masks
- Pixel flood fill tool
- Pixel and vector artwork exported in harmony
- Pixel artwork scaled if required on output
- Nearest Neighbour, Bilinear, Bicubic and Lanczos 3 pixel scaling available
- Set export areas and file formats during or after the design process
Interoperability:
- Retention of vector design elements when cutting and pasting between Affinity Designer and other applications
- Affinity Designer files can be opened in other Affinity products and vice versa
- iCloud sync and merge
Import, Export and Printing
- High-quality Adobe® Photoshop® PSD import and export
- SVG import and export, including Inkscape extended SVG support
- Export slices, layers, pages, and artboards to PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, EPS, SVG and PDF
- Preserve layers in exported TIFF images
- Export automatically to retina sizes (@2x and @3x)
- Set export areas and file formats during or after designing
- Desktop printing with Layout, Paper Handling, Feed, and Duplexing control
- Web-ready PDFs (Acrobat) with presets
- Professional hi-res PDF/X printing (CMYK) with presets
- Spot colours and overprint control
- Bleed and printer marks