1. Variable font support
The ability to use variable fonts in all Affinity apps (Mac, Windows and iPad) opens up a new world of typographic design possibilities. As well as providing predefined font styles, such as light, bold and condensed, variable fonts give users fine control of text design. Learn more about working with variable fonts in this short tutorial:
2. Stroke Width Tool
Available alongside the Pencil Tool in Affinity Designer’s toolbar, the new Stroke Width Tool provides an on-document way of editing the pressure profile of any curve.
This video walks you through how to use the Stroke Width Tool to intuitively alter the pressure profile of vector curves on your designs.
3. Pencil Tool improvements
Further improvements to the Pencil Tool include a new curve-smoothing algorithm, which gives better, smoother results overall.
Additionally, following user feedback, we have now changed the ‘Auto-close’ method so that when you have that option checked in the context toolbar, the curve only closes when you are near to the start point of the curve being drawn. You will now get an indicator when you are in range of the start position of the curve so you know when a curve will be auto-closed.
4. QR Code Tool
In all apps, a new QR Code Tool is now available from the shapes flyout in the toolbar, making it easy to add a QR code to documents. These codes can then be scanned to perform actions such as visiting a web page of your choice.
Here are some examples of how to use the QR Code Tool in Affinity Publisher:
To be more creative with QR Codes, you can sample and apply colours within your document, change the blend mode and apply perspective transformations. Product expert James explains how to do this in Affinity Photo:
5. Native Windows ARM64 support
Since the inception of Affinity, we’ve been fixated on performance, wanting to produce the fastest, smoothest creative experience possible. So we’re thrilled to announce that the entire Affinity suite is now optimised for the latest Windows hardware thanks to full native optimisation for devices with ARM64 chips. In fact, Affinity is the first creative software with end-to-end native ARM support.
Affinity customers ordering machines with the new chip can expect a stunningly-responsive user experience with tasks like painting, pixel editing, filter effects, document rendering and more.
It also enables many more elements like adjustment layers and live filters to be active before performance suffers—allowing for a more non-destructive workflow, even on the most complex of documents.
Watch the developer testimonial video we made, which was played to guests at Microsoft Build in Seattle, US, to learn more.
Find out more about Affinity 2.5
For a full list of new features and improvements, go to affin.co/WhatsNew.
Don’t own Affinity V2?
If you’re a new customer or wish to upgrade from V1 to V2, check out our purchase options, V1 upgraders offer or sign up for a free trial of Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer or Affinity Publisher.