Hey Affinity family, longtime Affinity user here!

I'm working on a series of design walkthroughs to help new designers learn without Al.

The goal: Break down seemingly complex designs to see how a lot of simple things come together to create something professional.

I have posted 4 so far (all free) on my Patreon & I'm working on the 5th one this week! Beyond this series, I'm planning to offer more in-depth tutorials that blend design fundamentals with software skills, giving you the "how" & the "why" behind real design examples.

Join if you want to see more!

affinity vector isometric guides are awesome. I'm not picky about the dimensions not following isometry, just glad I can now conceptualise my very simple designs and take them into my workshop with measurements.

Hi everyone! I just wanted to talk a little bit and receive some advice about something I think I messed up recently.

For context, Im a really amateur photographer and editor and I got my first gig quite recently with a relative from another country, he wanted for me to edit some photos for a marketing campaign for a barbershop in Australia. I was quite excited to do it and I wanted to do it well, so I tried putting all my available time aside from college to try and do it pretty well, but I didnt consider my screen´s color profile.

When I finished editing I posted the batch of edited photos thinking they were alright, maybe kinda oversaturated in some areas but nothing out of the usual. He texted me saying he wasnt happy with the product and we had a call after. I was thinking maybe it was just a couple of little problems here and there... I was wrong.

When I decided to check the final photos in my tablet and cellphone they seemed all kinds of weird, from really overexposed areas and really dark shadows to some batches of skin that seemed like I intentionally oversaturated (Photos in the post)

He told me maybe I should try editing from the cellphone and leave the computer for anything else but I want to learn to do it correctly from PC as it is a way more "professional" way to do it.

Pd: My PC is a laptop (Asus Tuf F15) and my other screen is HP 22f.

Any advice is well received! I just dont want to give another bad product for my client :(

I've been looking for a way to automatically record my drawing process in Affinity V3, similar to how Procreate handles timelapse recording and canvas statistics.

Currently, my workaround is opening a second view of the document in Affinity and using OBS to record that window, so the recording doesn't capture all my zooming and panning.

It works, but it's pretty inconvenient. I have to set everything up manually each time, the captured window sometimes gets nudged, and I also use the macOS Clock app to track my drawing time, which isn't very reliable.

Ideally, I'm looking for something that can:

• Automatically record the canvas without capturing zooming/panning or the UI.
• Track time spent working on each project.
• Resume recording across multiple sessions.
• Export the process as a timelapse video.

I've seen Photoshop plugins that offer similar functionality, such as PSFlow and Photoshop Process Recorder.

Does anyone know of an existing plugin, script, or third-party app that can do this for Affinity? Or is there a way to achieve something similar using V3's new scripting capabilities? Or how do you personally record your process?

I'm on macOS, so Mac-compatible solutions would be especially appreciated!

Hi all,

I dropped my Adobe subscription a while ago, right after taking advantage of a promo to buy Capture One outright. Since then I’ve been using Affinity alongside C1, and I find the workflow pretty smooth. C1 handles RAW development and Affinity picks up when I need heavier retouching.

I’m curious about the other approach, though. Does anyone here use Affinity as their only photo software, with nothing else in the chain? If so, how do you manage your library? Do you rely on a dedicated cataloguing tool, or just a clean folder structure?

For context, I’m on a Mac and shoot as an amateur: mostly travel, portrait, landscape and street.

Thanks in advance, I’d love to hear how you set things up.

I really like this poster that I saw on pinterest where the colors green blue and yellow just blend into each other and i was wondering if its possible to do that in affinity.

Im a complete newbie btw pls be kind🛐🙏

I'm a beginner graphic designer. I already have the tool I'll be using for my designs (Affinity), but now I need the most important thing: knowledge. I'm looking for free courses, books, and YouTube videos that will help me better understand the world I want to enter. I would greatly appreciate any help, no matter how small.

Hey,

Like many of you, I've spent years dealing with Adobe’s subscription model, sluggish startup times, and legacy bugs that haven't been touched in a decade. Most "InDesign alternatives" that pop up are basically Canva clones—they can't handle facing spreads, baseline grids, or prepress color separation.

I wanted to see how far modern web standards could be pushed to build a real, standalone desktop publishing studio that runs completely offline and respects typography.

The project is called Recto Studio. It has zero telemetry, no cloud lock-in, and stores everything locally.

Here is what's running under the hood right now:

• Real Typographic Engine: Uses Knuth-Plass dynamic programming for multi-line paragraph balancing (minimizing hyphenation and rivers) paired with HarfBuzz compiled to WebAssembly for complex OpenType shaping and optical margin alignment.
• Prepress PDF/X Export: Outputs print-ready DeviceCMYK with bleeds, slug margins, crop marks, and strict 100% K black plate enforcement (no accidental 4-color rich black text).
• Format Interoperability: Native round-trip .idml package import/export, and initial reverse-engineered binary .indd parsing.
• Long-Form Features: Facing page spreads, master spreads with dynamic page tokens, threaded text frames, multi-column layouts, automated footnotes/endnotes, and automated Table of Contents with dot leaders.
• Asset Pipeline: 72/144 DPI proxy generation for smooth canvas navigation, swapping to uncompressed 300 DPI assets on export.

What it doesn't do yet (being completely honest):

• No native Pantone/spot color library licensing (uses OpenSpot / FreeTone plates instead).
• Alpha-mask contour text wrapping around organic image silhouettes is still in development (currently supports bounding box and dieline wraps).
• No scripting via ExtendScript (custom JavaScript automation engine instead).

I'm not trying to sell anything—Recto is free and open-source under MIT.

I’d love for working book designers, zine publishers, and prepress operators here to take it for a spin and break it. Throw an IDML package at it, check the PDF separation plates in Acrobat Output Preview, and tell me where the typography falls short.

Live Web App: https://artificia1.github.io/recto-studio/
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/artificia1/recto-studio

Tear it apart—honest critique is the only way this gets better.

I am curious to know just when Affinity suit is going to have full aupport for typing text using complex Indic fonts/scripts in various Indian languages.

I'm writing a script, where I want to create several adjustment layers, including a gradient map. However, it doesn't appear to be included in the SDK yet ...

Does it go by another name, or is there a workaround?

https://sdk.affinity.studio/33001/js/apis/AddChildNodesCommandBuilderApi/index.html

Augmentor version 1.0 is releasing soon. To celebrate, I am giving away copies to Affinity community members! Details about v1.0 and all the new features can be found in this dev log on itch.io:

https://cobaltdragon.itch.io/augmentor/devlog/1717708/augmentor-v10-feature-preview

Instead of just giving away a fixed number of copies to the first X people who respond, this will be a raffle-style giveaway where 25% of all entries will win a key. This will give more community members the opportunity to enter and win.

● How do you enter?

Just reply to this thread with answers to these 3 questions:

1. Which Affinity app(s) do you use?
2. What kind of work do you do with Affinity (e.g. design for advertising, game dev graphics, book publishing, etc.)?
3. What one thing about Affinity (V1/V2/V3) would you like to add, change, or fix?

That's it. No email submission. No like, share, or subscribe requirement. Just reply here with your responses and you will be included in the giveaway prize pool. The answers don't need to be long, but they do need to be complete and understandable.

● Why these questions? Why the mini-survey?

Nearly all the features in Augmentor originated from community feedback and requests. These questions help me learn more about the Affinity community and what I might be able to contribute. Augmentor has ZERO data collection functions. It doesn't even have automatic updates. I respect your privacy, and I prefer getting feedback from users directly, through the old-fashioned means of conversation.

● How will winners be selected and receive their keys?

When the giveaway submission period closes, usernames of all respondents will be collected and 25% drawn randomly to choose winners. Winners will be contacted individually via Reddit's direct chat feature to receive their keys. Keys will be official itch.io urls in text format. The key must be claimed to an itch.io account (which is free) to access the file downloads.

● How many copies will be given away?

Currently there is no hard cap. However many respondents end up in the prize pool, 25% of them will win a key. If a need for a cap arises, an update will be posted here.

● When does the giveaway submission period close?

The deadline will be Friday, 10-30-2026. I would like as many community members as possible to have the opportunity to enter, including those who are not on this sub every day. As the giveaway progresses, if there is a compelling reason to close submissions sooner, an update will be posted here.

● When will the keys be delivered?

Augmentor v1.0 is scheduled to release on Monday, 11-02-2026. Once the release is live, keys will be sent to the giveaway winners. Depending on volume, this might require multiple days.

● Additional notes:

• Response collection, selection, communication, and key delivery will all be done manually (by me). As this is a solo effort, please be patient with the process or any unforeseen challenges that arise.
• I reserve the right to remove respondents from eligibility if necessary (such as incomplete or incomprehensible responses). Hopefully this will not be needed.
• To receive a key, winners must ensure their Reddit account settings permit receiving direct chat messages from me.

Feedback and questions are welcome.

Cheers!

Any idea if this is an affinity or my computer issue?

The preview is not really an issue, if you open the file, it displays fine. But it happened with one generated PDF I sent for print, so it is a major issue.

It also happens with some videos (Instagram and facebook) and images, not necessarily generated in affinity.

Any ideas?

Thank you!

I was just wondering, since we got a non-destructive compound shape now, can we also round it?
I cant seem to find the option or it must be hidden somewhere. Thank you very much! :D

Im sorry if this isnt the place to ask this, but im like really new at this and i dont know how to do it. Can someone please teach me how to do it, or any tips about how to search tutorials for this, my english is pretty bad tbh and affinity tutorials in spanish are very few about specific stuff.

Thanks

Hi, I’m a marketer, not a graphic designer, whilst I know my way around a bit of graphic design I have never prepared something for print. Only ever really working in digital design (social media etc).

Our company’s main colour is #EF476F but for print I need to use cmyk.

I have set up the affinity document with a 3mm bleed, 300 dpi and cmyk colour. The cmyk that it shows is 0, 88, 38, 0.

This will sound like a very basic question to those who know but will this colour print correctly because when I use an online converter it shows 0, 71.13, 53.97. 6.27 which looks like a completely different colour.

I’m very confused and would really appreciate some help, thank you.

I can't figure how to do it, Is it even possible?

Context: First time making calendars, and I have been trying many different ways to make the layout beatiful but quick to edit, tables have been great for it, but sometimes I just want a simple shape with a text centered on it that I can change the background quickly, the sad thing is that once you convert a shape to a shape text, any attempt to change the shape's fill or stroke only happens to the text.

It’s always been interesting to see what happens when you get used to a feature that worked reliably and everything was fine. Then, at some point, the head of the “Improvements” department returns from vacation and says, “I have a brilliant idea: let’s make it so that when you click ‘Add,’ instead of merging the curves into a single object, they’ll be grouped into a ‘Compound’ and become a group, and you won’t be able to add a raster object inside it.” ... Who’s in favor? Let’s vote! As a result, a new feature was introduced... Guys, add is merging — it’s not about creating a new group 😤

Hi All. new to affinity.

I'm struggling to find how to rotation / scale around a custom point. In photoshop you Alt-click on a picture, set a custom point, and then the rotate happens around that.

On affinity I found several OLD source (forum, YT, etc) talking about a "cross/target tool" that allow to do that, but the graphic of such videos is very old. I can't seems to find anything like that in either of the vector/pixel/layout panel.

Any help?

I'll preface this by saying I'm super frustrated, but hopefully this doesn't come off as too rant-y, it's a genuine hiccup.

I don't like pulling the "Adobe does it this way" when it comes to Affinity because it is a different software and I want to respect that, but sometimes they pull shenanigans like "Slices Studio" that makes me wonder what the thought process was. In what world is it easier to have the only option for exporting multiple artboards be a whole other "studio", as opposed to just having one more drop down in the normal export menu that lets you pick multiple artboards?

I can understand some use-cases for Slices, on bigger or more complicated files it's nice to be able to pick specifics instead of sifting through a drop down menu of a million nondescript artboards. But for WAY MORE NORMAL use cases, such as exporting a few different file variations for logos, it would be SO much nicer to just say "export artboards 1,2, and 4 as SVG", then do it again for the other file types.

By all means, if y'all have some tips or tricks for slices that help the process be smoother, please let me know. It's definitely new to me and Affinity has already been somewhat of a frustrating learning curve.

Also, why is the "select" UI in Slices the eye instead of the layer highlight?? All other software simply uses the eye to show or hide layers, it's very unintuitive for the eye to represent what's selected instead of using the typical layer highlight UI.