Canva unveils Affinity app for iPad, challenging Adobe and Procreate's mobile dominance

Canva has officially launched Affinity for iPad, marking a significant shift in the professional creative software landscape. The newly acquired app brings together Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher into a single all-in-one mobile solution, offering feature parity with its desktop counterparts. Unlike its predecessor's traditional one-time purchase model, the iPad version launches completely free, a move that comes less than two years after Canva purchased Serif, Affinity's parent company, for approximately £300 million in March 2024. The app leverages touch controls, Apple Pencil integration with pressure sensitivity and tilt detection, and intuitive gestures to deliver professional-grade tools on a tablet platform traditionally dominated by consumer-focused apps like Procreate.

The release represents more than just a technical achievement; it signals a strategic pivot toward democratizing professional design tools. Affinity for iPad consolidates vector art creation, RAW photo editing, page layout design, and freeform sketching within a single file workflow, eliminating the need to hop between multiple applications. However, some desktop features remain absent at launch, including books, batch processing, and astrophotography studio, with Canva promising continued updates. While core editing capabilities remain free with a standard Canva account, AI-powered features are reserved for premium subscribers, a detail that has sparked mixed reactions among longtime Affinity users who previously valued the software's subscription-free philosophy. The app is available now through the iOS App Store.