Preferences comprise a series of miscellaneous options that are applied across your application. They can be used to set up your own way of working.
General
Undo Limit—Set the number of steps to save as part of the document's undo history. Larger values may affect document file sizes and current memory use.
Autosave Interval—In seconds, determines how often to save a backup version of the current document. An autosaved version may be restored in the event of a crash or sudden loss of power (depleted battery).
Automatically update help—When enabled, automatically looks for an updated version of the help online and downloads it.
Automatically lock background layer on import—When importing an image and creating a new document, locks the initial Background (Pixel) layer to prevent it from being accidentally transformed.
Import PSD text as text (not pixel layers)—Attempts to import editable text from PSD documents instead of rasterizing it.
Import PSD smart objects where possible—Attempts to import Smart Objects in PSD documents as embedded documents.
Show tutorials and samples—Displays the three additional support categories below projects on the main menu.
Dither gradients—Adds dithering to gradients to reduce banding. Only applies to the canvas view and not the exported file.
Show touches—Displays a semi-transparent blue 'fingerprint' under your finger tips when touching the iPad screen. Useful for screencasting and screen recording (e.g. for video tutorials).
Retina rendering only—When disabled, the document view is rendered at half resolution and then at full resolution. While interacting with a complex document, the full-resolution pass is deferred until interaction ends to provide a smoother experience, which may momentarily exhibit as 'low quality' during brush work. Enabling this setting causes the view to be rendered only at full resolution.
Present on external displays—Determines whether Affinity Photo displays a second, independently controllable Document View on an external screen.
Language—Sets the UI language independently of the operating system. Select from the pop-up menu.
Default Save Location—Allows you to specify where documents are saved to:
On My iPad stores them locally on your device.
iCloud Drive stores them on your iCloud Drive in a directory named "Affinity Photo", and they will automatically sync and backup.
Assistant Options—Configure the feedback provided by the Assistant when painting, erasing, creating layers and developing raw photos. See Assistant for more information.
Interface
Background Grey Level—controls the greyscale level of the page background.
Left handed mode—reverses the layout so the Studios are on the left and the tools are on the right.
Automatically hide UI—when enabled, automatically hides the interface when brushing on the canvas near the sides for a clearer view.
Show selection in layers studio—updates the layer's thumbnail with the active selection.
On-screen modifier keys—additional buttons are made available on context toolbars (for Brush, Gradient and Selection tools) to act as on-screen modifier keys. See On-screen modifiers reference for more information.
Text in points—choose whether text is expressed in points or in the document's measurement units.
Lines in points—choose whether line width (thickness) displays in points or in the document's measurement units.
Show Undo and Redo buttons—choose whether to display Undo and Redo buttons in the bottom right corner of the screen.
Panning inertia—When enabled, the document view will gradually come to a halt after it is scrolled. When disabled, scrolling stops abruptly.
Monochromatic iconography—makes icons display in greyscale.
Colour
Import ICC Profile—Import your own ICC profiles from cloud storage to use in Photo.
You can set up your default RGB, RGB32 (HDR), Greyscale, CMYK and LAB colour profiles for use in future documents. Select from the pop-up menus.
Rendering intent—Choose the rendering intent for your images. Select from the pop-up menu.
Tap Choose OCIO Package to pick an OpenColorIO configuration file. See Using OpenColorIO for more information.
Perform OCIO conversions on filename—Photo converts exr documents from source colour space to scene_linear. The colour space can be inferred by the exr filename's suffix when this option is enabled, e.g. "render_acescg.exr".
Configure additional OpenEXR document import options. See 32-bit OpenEXR support for more information.
Choose whether to apply black point compensation when opening an image.
Choose whether to convert an opened file's colour space to the working colour space or retain the opened file's colour space.
Tools
Create Text with Blend Gamma—Determines the gamma value for text objects.
Nudge Distance—Spacing in pixels when nudging layers.
Modifier Nudge Distance—Spacing in pixels when nudging layers with an active modifier.
Select object when intersects selection marquee—Adds an object to the current selection if it is moved into the marquee area.
Synchronise tools between documents—Makes tool settings persistent between different documents.
Allow canvas rotation in all tools—When enabled, a two-finger-rotate gesture will rotate the canvas. This functions identically to the Rotation option on Navigator Studio.
Touch for gestures only—When enabled, only your connected Apple Pencil can use tools on the canvas but you can still use gestures. Useful for preventing accidental tool use when dragging your finger on the canvas. When disabled, you have full touch control plus gestures, with or without your Apple Pencil.
Move tool aspect constrain—Toggle constraining behaviour when using the Move Tool to transform and scale layers:
Automatic (based on selection)
Always constrain
Never constrain
Pencil
Enable double tap—Allows for the configuration of a double tap gesture when using an Apple Pencil (2nd-generation). When enabled, double tapping can result in a variety of actions depending on the way the Double tap action setting is configured for each tool.
Tool—Select the tool to be affected by the double tap gesture.
Double tap action—Determines what action is taken in response to a double tap when the tool selected in the Tool setting is active. Choose from the pop-up menu. All tools offer Undo, Zoom to fit and Previous tool actions. Some tools offer additional actions and tools that you are likely to need in conjunction with the selected tool.
Pressure—Use the spline graph to control pencil input pressure.
Fonts
Installed Fonts—a fonts list containing all imported fonts.
Remove Font—tap-select a custom font from the Fonts list, then tap this to remove it.
Import Font—launches a file browser window allowing you to import custom fonts from storage. You can also drag-drop fonts into the Fonts list from the Files Browser.
Shortcuts
Persona—select the Persona whose keyboard shortcuts you want to customise.
Apply to all Personas if available—while switched on, customising a keyboard shortcut for a tool/feature that is available in multiple Personas sets it to be the same in all of them. While switched off, customising a shortcut affects only the Persona selected from the pop-up menu above.
Shortcuts list—a list of keyboard shortcuts for many Affinity Photo tools and features. Tap an entry to select and customise it.
Reset—immediately resets the selected tool/feature's keyboard shortcut back to its factory setting.
Clear—removes the selected tool/feature's keyboard shortcut.
Reset All—after confirmation, resets all of the selected Persona's keyboard shortcuts to their factory settings.
Reset
Your Assets, Brushes, Object Styles, Fills and many more features can be reset to factory defaults. Set the switches as required, then select Reset.
Benchmark
Run Benchmark—assesses the capability of your device's processors. See the Benchmark topic for more information.
To set preferences:
From the main menu, select Preferences.
To customise a keyboard shortcut:
Connect a Smart Keyboard or another hardware keyboard to your iPad.
In Affinity Photo's preferences, select the Shortcuts tab.
Select a Persona and scroll the shortcuts list to the feature/tool whose shortcut you want to customise.
Tap the feature/tool's row.
Press the key or key combination you want to assign to the feature/tool.
To set preferences: