Affinity Designer is a vector graphics editor developed by

Serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

for

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

iPadOS iPadOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. It was given a name distinct from iOS, the operating system used by Apple's iPhones to reflect the diverging features of the two product lines, suc ...

, and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It is part of the "Affinity trinity" alongside

Affinity Photo Affinity Photo is a raster graphics editor developed by Serif Ltd. for iPadOS, macOS, and Windows, alongside Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher. Development of Affinity Photo started in 2009 as a raster graphics editor for macOS. Its fir ...

and Affinity Publisher. Affinity Designer is available for purchase directly from the company website and in the

Mac App Store The Mac App Store (also known as the App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" eve ...

, iOS App Store, and the

Microsoft Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

Functionality

Affinity Designer serves as a successor to Serif's own DrawPlus software, which the company discontinued in August 2017 in order to focus on the Affinity product range. It has been described as an

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and Computer-aided design, design software developed and marketed by Adobe Inc., Adobe. Originally designed for the Apple Inc., Apple Mac (computer), Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began ...

alternative, and is compatible with common graphics file formats, including Adobe Illustrator (AI),

Scalable Vector Graphics Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is an XML-based vector graphics format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium sin ...

(SVG),

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

(PSD),

Portable Document Format Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating syste ...

(PDF), and Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) formats. The application can also import data from some

Adobe FreeHand Adobe FreeHand (formerly Macromedia FreeHand and Aldus FreeHand) is a discontinued computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the W ...

files (specifically versions 10 and MX). Affinity Designer's core functions include

vector Vector most often refers to: * Euclidean vector, a quantity with a magnitude and a direction * Disease vector, an agent that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism Vector may also refer to: Mathematics a ...

pen and shape-drawing tools, support for custom

and raster brushes (including the ability to import

(ABR) brushes), dynamic symbols, stroke stabilization, text style management, and vector/pixel export options. Affinity Designer provides non-destructive editing features across unlimited layers, with pan and zoom at 60 fps, and real-time views for effects and transformations. It supports the RGB, RGB Hex, LAB,

CMYK The CMYK color model (also known as process color, or four color) is a subtractive color model, based on the CMY color model, used in color printing, and is also used to describe the printing process itself. The abbreviation ''CMYK'' refers ...

and

Grayscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample (signal), s ...

color models, along with PANTONE color swatches and an end-to-end

workflow with ICC color management, and

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

per channel editing.

Development

Affinity Designer began as a vector graphics editor solely for

. It was developed entirely from scratch for this operating system, allowing it to leverage core native technologies such as

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

Grand Central Dispatch Grand Central Dispatch (GCD or libdispatch) is a technology developed by Apple Inc. to optimize application support for systems with multi-core processors and other symmetric multiprocessing systems. It is an implementation of task parallelism ...

, and Core Graphics. The first version was released in October 2014, making it the first of the Affinity apps to be released by

(and their first macOS release). At that time, Serif's vector graphics application for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

was DrawPlus; however, following the release of Affinity Designer for

, this product has now been discontinued. Version 1.2, released in April 2015, introduced new tools and features, such as a corner tool and a pixel-alignment mode for GUI design tasks. In December 2015, version 1.4 then introduced new features for managing artboards and printing. With version 1.5 in October 2016, the application received multiple new features, including symbols, constraints, asset management and text styles. The application began branching out to other platforms in November 2016, when it first launched for Microsoft Windows. Version 1.6 was released in November 2017, introducing performance improvements and alternative GUI display mode. The first release of a separate

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

version of Affinity Designer took place in July 2018. Version 1.7 was released in June 2019 adding some key features such as HDR support, unlimited strokes and fills to a single shape, new point transform tool, new transform mode in Node tool, Lasso selection of nodes, new sculpt mode added to pencil, and also some big performance improvements. Version 1.8, released in February 2020, added the ability for users to define their own document templates and keyboard shortcuts, and a built-in panel for adding stock images. Version 1.9 was released in February 2021, containing "substantial performance gains when working with complex vector documents" and hardware acceleration for Windows.

Version 2

In November 2022, Serif launched the second major version of Affinity Designer, incorporating shape builder and knife tools, vector warping, and an x-ray view. However, it received criticism online as some users felt the new feature set was not substantial enough to justify a new purchase. This was followed by version 2.1 in May 2023 and version 2.2 in September 2023, adding various UI improvements and support for

macOS Sonoma macOS Sonoma (version 14) is the twentieth Software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's operating system for Mac (computer), Mac computers. The successor to macOS Ventura, it was announced at WWDC 2023 on June 5, 2023, and ...

Reception

Affinity Designer was selected as a runner-up in Apple's "Best of 2014" list of

and iTunes Store content in the macOS app category. It also was one of the winners of the 2015 Apple Design Award. In 2018, the

version of Affinity Designer won 'Application Creator of the Year' at the Windows Developer Awards (part of

Microsoft Build Microsoft Build (often stylised as ) is an annual Business conference, conference event held by Microsoft, aimed at Software engineering, software engineers and web developers using Windows, Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. Fi ...

2018). Affinity Designer was selected as the winner of the "Best Software For Designers" Award in the 2022 Creative Bloq Awards.

References

External links

* {{Vector graphics editors Vector graphics editors MacOS graphics software Macintosh graphics software Windows graphics-related software 2014 software