Affinity Photo blazes its way up the iPad charts

On June 5th, commercial desktop photo editor Affinity Photo was released for iPad. A long anticipated release, it brought with it the advanced features of the desktop version, easily accessed through iPad's intuitive touch-based interface and with full Apple Pencil support. It's been met with remarkable success both in the form of user reviews and through App Store sales charts as seen through stat pages like this one from App Annie .

The iPad version of the app has managed to provide a mobile photo editing experience that parallels the desktop, something that's been elusive in similar apps. For example, Adobe Photoshop Express and Adobe Sketch don't even attempt to provide a desktop-like experience but are designed for substantially simpler editing or drawing tasks. Similarly, apps like Procreate and ProtoSketch are more for sketching and drawing and don't approach the editing features found in Photo for iPad. Pixelmator definitely has a lot of desktop-like functionality though it still lacks all the layer styles and blend mode settings that Photo has as just a couple examples.

Given all the advanced functionality, Affinity Photo can feel a bit unwieldy at first but once learned, it's as comfortable as the desktop counterpart. It can be even more so with an Apple Pencil. It's also adept at more than typical photo editing, working great for drawing, painting and interacting with vectors, more features that can benefit from a Pencil as well. Incidentally, we've added it to our list of Great Apps Made Greater with Apple Pencil. It really is an exceptional release, one that propels the iPad further as a viable, work platform.

More about the iPad release: https://affinity.serif.com/blog/