Free alternatives like GIMP (and Krita) are sort of 'go to' apps you can always install and use for simple image editing or graphics on any computer. Affinity's support for Photoshop is great, but having support also for opening and editing GIMP and Krita files would make the versatility and use of this program absolutely superb. Affinity is compatible with iPad Air 2, iPad 2017, iPad 2018, iPad Pro 9.7-inch, 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch. Do you want to create surface designs for print on demand sites like Society 6? If yes, then you may need Affinity Designer if you want to be able to create images for all of their product sizes. 9000px x 6000px wall murals).

Just as feature-packed as the desktop version, Affinity Designer for iPad is a professional graphic design app with everything you need to create stunning illustrations, branding, icons, UI/UX designs, print projects, typography, concept art and much more — all completely free from the confines of your desk!

No subscription and 50% off

Affinity Designer for iPad does not require any subscription, it’s simply €21.99 – and right now available with 50% off!

Craft perfect vector curves or combine objects and shapes using complex Boolean operations. You can also create abstract shapes or an offset path with the powerful contour tool.

Easily combine vector and raster graphics. You can use raster paint brushes to add texture to vector work, edit single pixels on icons and more — it’s a whole new way of working.

Apply advanced grids and guides, draw directly on isometric planes, and use precise snapping controls including snap to pixel and pixel alignment.

CMYK, RGB8, RGB16, Greyscale, LAB and even RGB32. Work in any colour space, with full confidence that any documents taken from the Windows or macOS version will always render with 100% fidelity.

Affinity Photo Ipad App

Work with unlimited layers, including real-time blend modes with range adjustment and simple drop zones to mask, clip, reorder and group all layer types. Text layers, vector layers, pixel and image layers all fully supported.

Super smooth gradients, transparency, glows, shadows and more — gain full control over the appearance of all your strokes and shapes. Even add multiple fills and strokes to the same object.

Organise your work with artboards. You can have as many as you like, whatever size you like.

Include unlimited instances of the same object across your work. Edit one and the rest update instantly.

Get a live pixel preview of your work so you know exactly how your vectors will export in raster format. Or switch to outline view to see all those beautiful curves.

Enjoy full text capabilities, including OpenType and text styles. You can flow text along any curve too.

Directly output your work from iPad into professional formats, including EPS, SVG, PSD, and PDF X, ready for print.

Fully optimised for iPadOS, with the ability to drag and drop to import and export images from any location on iPad. You can even work directly on PSD files and save back to PSD.

Create your own shortcut keys using a keyboard attachment for an even more streamlined workflow.

No subscription and 50% off

Affinity Designer for iPad does not require any subscription, it’s simply €21.99 – and right now available with 50% off!

Nobody needed to convince me that Apple’s at the top of its game when it comes to designing iPad hardware. The 2018 iPad Pro was so fast that more than two years later, it can handle more or less anything that you can throw at it. The 2020 iPad Pro was essentially the same speed—and it didn’t matter.

So here comes the 2021 iPad Pro, which is an even more extreme dunk in terms of features. Adding an M1 processor isn’t going to add the same boost as it did on the Mac side, because the iPad Pro was always powered by an energy-efficient Apple processor. But it’s still an upgrade of two processor generations, and that matters. A new display on the larger model allows Apple to set a new standard for brightness and dynamic range. Thunderbolt accelerates the iPad’s connectivity with other devices.

And yet, in 2021, it feels like the same story: Apple killed it on the hardware side, and the software…well, the software lags behind, to put it nicely. Apple built a spectacular sports car, but where are the roads to drive it on?

A Pro display for what?

The new 12.9-inch iPad Pro has a Liquid Retina XDR display powered by new mini LED technology. Adding this tech has a physical cost (the iPad has gone from 5.9mm to 6.4mm thick, and increased from 1.4 to 1.5 pounds) as well as a monetary one (starting at $1,099, it’s $100 more expensive).

The result, though, is a display that is bright and offers extreme dynamic range, a great boon to pro-level photographers and videographers alike. (It’s probably also going to be great to watch movies on.)

But more than five years after Apple introduced the iPad Pro, it’s telling that Apple is still demonstrating its gorgeous pro-level displays by using third-party apps. As impressed and enthusiastic as I am about the Affinity Designer apps and the video-editing power of LumaFusion, it’s still perplexing to see Apple show off yet another iPad Pro, with yet another impressive hardware upgrade, and Final Cut Pro is nowhere to be seen.

How are we supposed to interpret this? That Apple’s hardware team thinks the iPad is a vehicle into which incredible, cutting-edge features should be built, but that the teams responsible for Apple’s own professional-focused apps don’t think the iPad is worth the effort?

Thunderbolt support for what?

With the announcement of USB 4/Thunderbolt support on these new iPad Pro models, I’m thrown back to the past. In 2018, when Apple released the first iPad Pro with a USB-C port on the bottom, it didn’t update the software to read the entire contents of a thumb drive when you plugged it in. The hardware was willing, but the software was weak.

And here we are again. Thunderbolt adds even speedier connectivity, but for what? Faster photo and video imports? Okay, though once again, I’m reminded that Apple’s bread-and-butter pro media apps won’t run on these iPads.

Apple

How about external display support? The new iPad Pros can drive even larger external displays, including Apple’s Pro Display XDR. Third-party video apps can take advantage of this to display high-resolution video and even some analytical displays. Which is great, but if you want to display the iPad interface itself, it’ll just be a pillarboxed mirror of what’s on the iPad’s own screen.

That’s because, despite Apple adding support for external pointing devices and an on-screen pointer to the iPad a year ago, iPadOS doesn’t actually support moving apps off to a larger external display. The device itself clearly supports it—after all, macOS devices with the same hardware can do it–but the software just can’t do it. All that power, and nowhere to go.

An M1 for what?

This is the crux of the issue: Apple’s decision to market the iPad Pro as being powered by an M1 processor. As a marketing move, it’s solid. There’s been so much positive press about the M1 that wrapping the iPad Pro in its halo makes sense. (In truth, the M1 is an evolution of the processors Apple has been building for the iPad Pro for years, so the real story is that the Mac has adopted the iPad Pro’s processor, not the reverse.)

Here’s the problem with this clever marketing, though: it draws a direct parallel between the iPad and the Mac. And while the Mac definitely lacks in some areas (no touchscreen or Apple Pencil support, for instance) you can basically do anything on your Mac, including run a bunch of apps that originated on the iPad.

The iPad Pro, in contrast, can’t do all sorts of “pro” things that a professional-level user buying a device starting at $1,099 might want to do. They can’t run Mac apps (though if you connect a keyboard and trackpad, you certainly could!), and Apple has failed to build iPad-optimized versions of its own professional apps.

Affinity Designer Ipad Pro

What makes the iPad Pro great is that while its core is a simple touch tablet, its users can transform it into whatever they want it to be. They can add just a keyboard, or just a mouse, or a combination keyboard and trackpad, or an Apple Pencil. With each combination, the iPad changes. Unless they want to use a Mac app, or Logic Pro, or Final Cut Pro, or Xcode.

Should Apple add some sort of macOS virtual machine that can run on an M1 iPad Pro when it’s attached to the Magic Keyboard or an external display? I don’t know, that’s a complicated question and things could get weird, fast. But now that I know the iPad Pro has an M1 inside, it seems like a natural question. And if the right answer is to build iPad apps that obviate the need for features that exist on the Mac and not the iPad, great—let’s see them.

Affinity Photo Ipad Pro

We know what the M1 and Thunderbolt are capable of. Now that the new iPad Pro has been announced, the spotlight is firmly on the next version of iPadOS, due to be announced in June at Apple’s developer conference. Maybe iPadOS 15 will finally fulfill the promise of the iPad Pro’s hardware. As someone who uses an iPad Pro every day, I sure hope it does.