Pro-grade publishing comes to the iPad
£19.99/$18.49 (for iPad; universal licence £169.99/$164.99) FROM affinity.serif.com NEEDS iPadOS 15 or later
HERE TO INSTALL
The More menu (‘…’) contains many common commands, which saves you hunting around for them.
A pro-grade DTP app on the iPad? It’s true. The release of the second version of the Affinity creative suite has seen Serif take a step it chose not to with the previous iteration, which saw the Affinity Designer vector illustration app and the Photo image-editing app move to touchscreen town, but not Affinity Publisher.
Affinity Publisher 2, therefore, has something to prove. Happily, it largely manages to show that having a full creative suite on an iPad is a good idea, and Apple’s introduction of Stage Manager into iPadOS couldn’t have come at a better time.
While it’s probably still best to work with the app using a mouse, keyboard and external monitor, Apple Pencil support means it’s possible to use Affinity Publisher 2 as if your iPad was a graphics tablet, as plenty of graphic designers do with desktop apps like InDesign.
Command learning curve
The new interface is nicely minimal, which makes the most of the limited screen space, although that does come at the expense of being able to find things if you’re not already aware of their location. It can also be completely removed at any time for a full-screen view of your work. If you’re more used to Adobe’s apps then gaining proficiency may take some time. Tooltips and generous help files, as well as online tutorials, certainly go a long way to easing the transition.
Adobe’s IDML files can be imported, and PSD files can be placed (including editable text), as can WebP, JPEG XL and even Raw images which can then be edited. And, of course, there’s full PDF export too. Save your documents to the cloud (there’s Dropbox integration in the app, with Files for everything else) and you can work on them on Macs or even Windows PCs seamlessly.
