Graphic Design App 'Affinity Designer' Launches for iPad With Apple Pencil Support

App developer Serif today launched Affinity Designer for iPad [Direct Link], a precise vector graphic design tool that aims to help users create marketing materials, websites, icons, user interface designs, concept art, and more, all without needing to be tied to a desktop computer.

The new app is based off the similarly titled Affinity Designer software available for Mac, and now optimized for iPad with Metal enhancements, full Apple Pencil support for drawing with pressure, tilt, and angle, and iCloud Drive integration for file storage and sharing.


When creating a design, Serif notes that panning and zooming is always live at 120 frames per second, and there are live gradients, transforms, effects, and adjustments available during the creation process. The app supports a split screen mode, wireframe view, and live pixel and retina view of vector artwork.

In terms of color and output features, Affinity Designer for iPad supports the professional CMYK, LAB, RGB, and Grayscale color models, as well as full 16-bit per channel editing and end-to-end ICC color management. Check out more of the app's features below:

- Seamless switching between tools and editing modes for frustration-free design.
- Advanced Lanczos 3 image resampling plus Bicubic, Bilinear and Nearest Neighbor methods.
- Live effects, blend modes, image adjustments, and raster and vector masks for any part of your design.
- Use the strengths of vector and raster behaviours for the best of both worlds.
- The best pen tool, pencil tool, corner tool, curve editing, geometry operations, and smart shape tools available.
- High quality raster tools for texturing, masking and finishing artwork. Create your own brushes too.
- Artboards, symbols, constraints and stored assets give the ultimate flexibility for UI and graphic design.

In February, Serif updated its Affinity Photo iPad app with a suite of powerful features, including the ability to shoot in RAW or HDR video directly within the app. At the end of last year, Apple awarded Affinity Photo as iPad App of the Year for 2017.

Affinity Designer is available for iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, and iPad (early 2017 and newer) for $13.99 [Direct Link], and requires iOS 11 or later.