Canva Ships Free Unified Affinity App for iPad with RAW Editing

Canva has released a unified Affinity app for iPad, free for individuals, consolidating photo editing, sketching and vector work into a single application available now on Apple's tablet.

The release closes a gap that dated back to Canva's acquisition of Affinity from Serif in March 2024. Under Serif, the suite shipped as three separate iPad apps — Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher — but those legacy tablet apps stalled after the unified desktop Affinity app launched last year. The old iPad titles remain compatible with the new desktop app's files, but had received little attention. The new iPad app replaces that fragmented lineup with one codebase carrying the current desktop feature set.

"Creative work doesn't stay in one discipline, so your tools shouldn't either," said Duncan Clark, CEO of Pro Design at Canva. "Since we brought Affinity together on desktop, our biggest user request has been the desire to bring it to iPad. Today we're delivering it: a fully-fledged, professional app built for touch."

What does the free tier actually include?

All core functionality is free for individual users. That covers:

• RAW processing and editing
• Selection tools, retouching and compositing
• Real-time motion blur and noise reduction
• Layer-based workflow with vector editing, layout and text tools
• Sketch Studio, a new freehand drawing space with AI-assisted sketch-to-vector conversion

The AI features layered throughout the app are the paid gate. They require a Canva premium subscription, which is the monetization lever Canva has attached to an otherwise zero-cost professional tool.

Built for touch, not shrunk to fit

Canva's positioning phrase — "built for touch, not shrunk to fit" — signals that the interface was designed for iPadOS from the ground up rather than ported from macOS, while keeping panel arrangement familiar to longtime Affinity users. The app supports all major file types, per Canva, which matters for studios round-tripping files between Mac and iPad workstations.

Apple Pencil integration is the hardware hook. The app supports pressure, tilt, barrel roll, squeeze and hover on the Apple Pencil Pro. The new Mask Tool uses the Pencil's pixel precision to trace difficult boundaries: "The Mask Tool finds the boundary as the Apple Pencil pixel precision runs along a challenging edge, so hair, fur and foliage take a stroke rather than an afternoon," Canva said. The company also claims every mask, grade and retouch stays live and undoable, "even thousands of layers deep." Sketch Studio adds a Sketch to Shapes feature, and users can sketch directly over a photo to plan subject and prop placement.

Who built it, and why that matters

Two executive quotes frame the product argument. Clark noted Affinity has shipped iPad tools for nearly a decade and that the community "shaped every step." Head of Product Design Neil Ladkin tied credibility to hands-on use: "Every development decision was made by people who create on iPad themselves, from how the Apple Pencil responds to where the tools sit. If you're the sort of person who rotates the canvas 40 times to get one line right, Affinity for iPad was made by people who've done exactly that."

What does this change for working photographers?

The practical calculus is straightforward. A full non-destructive RAW workflow, masking, retouching and layered compositing on iPad now costs nothing up front — a direct pricing pressure point against subscription-based tablet editors. The cost only enters when AI features are needed, redirecting spend to a Canva premium tier whose terms photographers should evaluate before committing. For anyone already inside the Canva ecosystem, the app extends an existing subscription at no additional licensing.

Independent performance testing on large RAW files and complex layered documents will determine whether the touch-first interface holds up under production deadlines. For now, the app is available immediately, and Canva has set the expectation that iPad users will no longer wait for feature parity with the desktop.