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Top learning articles for Affinity newcomers

With a record number of creatives signing up to our 90-day free trials of Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher, we thought now would be a good time to shine a spotlight on some of the top learning articles for Affinity newcomers.

In this post, we’ve collated 20 learning articles that will help you find your way around the apps, get to grips with what they have to offer and boost your creative skills in general.

Affinity Designer

Jump into Affinity Designer

In this beginner’s guide, we cover how to create a new document, Affinity Designer’s Personas, key tools and toolbars, creating artboards, working with layers, applying Adjustment Layers and more!

5 things you should know about Affinity Designer 1.8

Here we run through the top five features released in our 1.8 update including massive improvements to Expand Stroke and Boolean operations, the new Document Panel and updated PANTONE© Library.

Artboards explained

Artboards can be a little unfamiliar to beginners. In this article, Andy explains artboards in depth so you can make more use of them in your workflows.

Essential Designer modifiers

Taking advantage of Affinity Designer’s modifier keys allows you to save time, reduce tedious switching between tools and panels, and makes drawing so much easier. Here we highlight a few of our favourites for working faster and smarter in Affinity Designer.

How to vectorise lettering with the Pen Tool

Ivana Marić is a freelance lettering artist and designer, and the talent behind Le Punkt Noir. In this article, she talks us through the process of vectorising lettering in Affinity Designer.

Affinity Photo

Jump into Affinity Photo

Affinity Photo puts a large amount of image editing power at your fingertips, but it has a few notable differences to other image editing applications. To help you find your way around the app and get to grips with everything it has to offer, check out this handy beginner’s guide.

5 things you should know about Affinity Photo 1.8

The 1.8 update of Affinity Photo brought several quality-of-life improvements. We take you through our top five new features including PSD Smart Object import, manual lens corrections and enhanced plugin support.

Tonal adjustments: choosing the right ones for your image

Tonal adjustments are a brilliant way of improving your images, from subtle corrections that make tones easier on the eye, to more dramatic changes that redefine the image’s look entirely. Here, Product Expert James explains how to choose the right tonal adjustments for your image.

What is ‘stacking’?

In this article, James covers what ‘stacking’ actually means in terms of image editing and where you can find a great selection of video tutorials that cover stacking in Affinity Photo.

How to change and preserve colours with HSL adjustments

In this article, we cover how to change and preserve colours by masking HSL Adjustments in Affinity Photo. This technique can be used for many different scenarios and it’s so simple to achieve.

Affinity Publisher

Learn how to use Affinity Publisher, fast

Discover the vast range of video tutorials available to help you get up to speed with the newest app in our Affinity family, Affinity Publisher.

5 things you should know about Affinity Publisher 1.8

The 1.8 update of Affinity Publisher brought a raft of new features designed to power-up your workflow. Here we run through five of our favourites and more, including IDML import, the new Preflight Panel, Smart Master Pages and Document Merge.

Discover special characters that make your documents shine

Want to keep two words together on one line, type proper mathematical symbols, or cite another document? Here’s how to insert those and other invaluable characters to make pages look more professional.

Affinity Publisher: to embed or link files?

When you are placing a file or populating a picture frame in Affinity Publisher, you can choose whether to embed the file within your document or link it from its original disk location. In this article, we explore the differences between these two options and when it is best to choose one over the other.

Creating stylish frame designs for your images and text

The ability to convert shapes directly into frames makes it easier than ever to produce exciting new ways to showcase your creative content. In this article, we cover two key skills: creating shaped frame designs, and then converting them to text and picture frames in Affinity Publisher.

Tips and techniques for all apps

Focus on StudioLink

This revolutionary feature in Affinity Publisher allows you to instantly switch to the advanced photo editing features of Affinity Photo and precise vector tools of Affinity Designer without ever leaving the app. In this article, we demonstrate how StudioLink works and how it can speed up your workflow with the Affinity suite.

Downloadable Affinity keyboard shortcut cheat sheets

Keyboard shortcuts are one of the main ways you can boost your productivity and build a more fluid way of working. In this article, you’ll be able to download the very latest keyboard shortcuts for Affinity apps to view, print or customise.

How to install Affinity updates

We release updates to our software all the time, and what’s more, they’re free for existing customers. In this article, we tell you how to install these updates.

Understanding clipping in Affinity apps

Clipping is a fundamental design technique in Affinity apps. Here we explore the basics of clipping and the different ways it is used in Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher.

Blend modes explained

Here we explore how blend modes can be used to creatively alter how colours interact between your project’s layers.


Whether you’ve just started out with a free trial or you’ve been using the Affinity apps for some time, we hope you find these articles useful. There are many more to discover in our Learning category, including tutorials from top artists, designers and photographers who use Affinity, so don’t forget to check them out!


Spotlight editor

As editor of Affinity Spotlight Melanie oversees the stories, interviews and tutorials published on the site. Outside of work she enjoys travelling, reading crime thrillers, Pilates and dabbling in a spot of oil painting. Get in touch with Melanie if you would like to contribute or be featured on Affinity Spotlight.