Opening and importing

The choice of whether to open or import files is an important decision in Affinity iPad apps. Understanding the difference will help with file management and backup strategies.

Opening in place

You can open images and previously saved Affinity documents from local or cloud storage. When opening, the key point is that these files are kept in their original location and will be overwritten on saving. However, if you add layers to an opened 'flat' image, you can either flatten the document on saving (this overwrites the original image in its original location) or save the document to a new fixed location on local/cloud storage. The latter preserves all layer information.

Importing by copying

Unlike opening, importing always makes a copy of the original image or document and loads it as an 'internal' document; you cannot overwrite the original file once it has been imported. Imported documents must be saved as an .afdesign file. The imported file could be from your Apple Photos library or from local/cloud storage. On saving, the document can be saved to anywhere on your local or cloud storage.

Recent documents are shown as thumbnails at the top of the Home screen for your convenience. They are actually open minimised documents, so saving and closing a document will create a physical file and remove the document's thumbnail from the app's Home screen.

Open To open an image or document in place:
  1. From the Home screen, tap Open.
  2. On the pop-up menu, select Open Document to access your local or cloud storage (e.g., iCloud, Dropbox or other cloud storage).
  3. Navigate to, then tap the file to open.

Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop an image or document from the Files app directly onto the Home screen to open it.

Open To import a document or image:
  1. From the Home screen, tap Open.
  2. On the pop-up menu, select Import Document to access your local or cloud storage or Import From Photos to access your searchable Apple Photos picker.
  3. Navigate to and tap the file you want to import.
To display a document:

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