Affinity’s all-in-one creative app is finally here for iPad, and it costs nothing

You can now sketch, edit photos, and create vector artwork without switching between different apps.

By Sudhanshu Kumar Mangalam Published November 2, 2026 10:31 AM

Affinity UI on iPad — Apple App Store / Canva

Canva has finally released the new Affinity app for iPad, nearly a year after it brought the redesigned creative suite to Mac and Windows. To go with it, the company has also introduced a bunch of new tools that take advantage of Apple Pencil and the iPad’s touchscreen. And the good news is that the app is free, at least for the core creative tools.

As we reported last week, Affinity already offered separate Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps for iPad. The new version brings all those capabilities into a single app, allowing users to work on illustrations, photos, vectors, and page layouts without switching between different apps.

A few new tricks for Apple Pencil

Starting with Sketch Studio, the app gains a dedicated workspace for drawing with Apple Pencil, with support for pressure and tilt controls. There is also a new Sketch to Shapes feature that can turn rough hand-drawn shapes into editable vectors, without having to redraw everything.

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For more advanced drawing, users can take advantage of Apple Pencil Pro features like barrel roll, squeeze, and hover. There is also a new Mask Tool for selecting tricky edges in photos, such as hair and fur. You can also edit RAW photos, create multi-page documents, and keep all the edits in the same .af file.

Canva AI joins the mix

Next in line is Canva AI Studio, which adds some AI-powered editing tricks into the mix. The list includes Generative Expand for extending images, image upscaling, motion blur reduction, and noise reduction. Another tool called Decompose Layer can split a flattened image into separate editable layers.

Notably, Affinity’s core Sketch, Vector, Pixel, and Layout tools are free for individuals. However, the AI features require a premium Canva account. The app is now available on the iPad App Store, with a free Canva account required to get started.

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Sudhanshu Kumar Mangalam

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Sudhanshu Kumar Manglam is a tech journalist at Digital Trends, where he covers consumer technology, science, and games.

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Tablets

The iPad is finally getting the Affinity app creatives have been asking for

Affinity brings photo editing, vector design, page layout, and sketching together in one free iPad app.

Affinity UI on iPad

Affinity’s new all-in-one creative app is finally coming to the iPad, nearly a year after Canva launched the redesigned desktop version for Mac and Windows. Creatives have been asking for the iPad release ever since, especially because files created in the new Affinity app cannot be opened in the older V2 iPad apps.

Affinity already has Photo, Designer, and Publisher apps on iPad, but the new release combines those tools into the same unified app that Canva launched on desktop last year.

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