Canva Ships Affinity for iPad: Core Photo, Vector and Layout Tools Free

Canva has released Affinity for iPad, and the core photo editing, vector design, page layout and sketching tools cost individuals nothing — the first iPad version of the app arrives roughly a year after Affinity pulled its standalone desktop applications from sale and replaced them with a single unified product. The app is available now through Apple's App Store; a free Canva account is the only requirement for the non-AI toolset.

For photographers, the pricing structure is the headline. Serif's old Affinity apps, acquired by Canva in 2024, once carried one-time perpetual licenses. Under Canva's model, the free tier covers sketch, vector, photo editing and layout functions, while the AI features sit behind a subscription: Canva Pro runs $18 per month or $144 per year in the US. That works out to $12 per month paid annually — a real recurring cost for working professionals who want the AI toolset, versus zero for everything else.

What's actually shipping?

Affinity says it built the app natively for iPad rather than porting the desktop interface, with touch and Apple Pencil input designed in from the start. Raw processing carries over from the desktop version, which matters for photographers who want to edit camera files directly on a tablet.

The feature list includes:

• Sketch Studio — hand-drawn design with Apple Pencil pressure and tilt support, plus a Sketch to Shapes tool that converts hand-drawn forms into vector shapes inside the same document.
• New Mask Tool — assists with boundary detection while tracing difficult edges such as hair, fur and foliage, using Apple Pencil.
• Non-destructive workflow — Canva states that masks, color adjustments and retouching remain editable even in documents with thousands of layers.
• Unified .af file format — sketches, vectors, photos and layouts live in one file, cutting app-to-app round trips during a project.
• Multi-page layout — master pages and grids support zines, lookbooks and photo books, with print-ready export and color management in the same app used for photo editing.

The AI tier, and its limits

Affinity for iPad gains AI tools for the first time through Canva AI Studio. Canva frames these as time-savers that handle tedious tasks so users can focus on creative decisions. The shipped set includes Generative Expand, image upscaling, motion blur reduction and noise reduction, plus a Decompose Layer tool that separates a flat image into editable layers.

Every one of those functions requires a premium Canva plan. The free tier delivers no AI. Noise reduction and upscaling in particular are workflow staples for many photographers, so the practical question is what $144 per year buys versus existing subscriptions — and Canva's answer is a consolidated iPad pipeline: shoot, Raw-edit, retouch, design and export print files in one application.

What does this change for working photographers?

The iPad becomes a viable single-app environment for photographers who also produce deliverables like lookbooks, zines or client layouts — work that previously meant juggling Lightroom, a design app and a layout tool. Sketch-over-photo planning, where users mark where a subject or prop should sit, adds pre-production capability Canva's competitors on iPad largely lack.

Claims like "thousands of layers" and boundary-detecting masks deserve hands-on testing before anyone rebuilds a production pipeline around them. But the free entry point removes the risk of finding out. Watch whether Canva keeps the non-AI tier free as the unified Affinity platform matures — that decision will define the product's value proposition for the professionals Serif originally courted.