Ways to customize the workspace in Affinity Photo

Many programs allow you to customize their interface to suit your individual needs. Affinity Photo also has some options for you. Maybe you use some tools more than others. Maybe some panels are useless to you and just take up space. And what if you have a lower eyesight and need some adjustments? Let's look at how you can customize your program.

The panels

On the right side of your interface, you will see various "boxes" and tabs. Those are Panels and there are lots of them. Each panel has a purpose and includes additional tools and functions. If you are doing photo editing, you will likely need different panels than if you are doing digital scrapbooking.

In the example above, the default setting, there are a total of nine panels, grouped in three groups. Notice the tabs:

You can group the different panels however you want. Maybe you need 6 panels and you want them in 2 groups. Or maybe you rather have three groups to add even more panels. The choice is yours.

In the Scrapbook Campus, a lot of visitors will be creating scrapbook projects, so the panels that will be used the most often are the following:

  • Color: so you will be able to pick various colors to fill areas, create papers, add colored layers, etc.
  • Swatches: this panel is similar to the Color panel as it allows you to pick colors or gradients
  • Layers: this is an ESSENTIAL part of of layering papers and elements to compose scrapbook pages

There are other panels that you might find useful. It is up to you whether you want them available all the time, or only for some projects:

  • Brushes: if you draw or paint, or if you want to tweak various mask layers, you will likely want the Brushes panel
  • Transform: this panel will give you the tools to resize, reshape, skew, and rotate elements with precision

For all the other panels that you might not use, simply click on the hamburger, and choose Close.

At any point, if you need a panel that is not open, you can retrieve it through the Window menu and you will see the list of all the available panels.

The interface

By default, the interface is dark grey, but for some users, it is tiring on the eyes. There are various settings available to you. You can go to Edits > Settings... or you can click on the Assistant icon on the top.

Then, you will get a dialog window with a lot of settings you can tweak. If you choose the User Interface, you will get these options:

And if you change from Dark to Light, you would get this:

Whether you choose one or the other, you can still tweak the UI Brightness and Text Contrast for finer adjustments. Play with the sliders until the colors are comfortable for you.

The tools and toolbar

On the left, you have the Tools toolbar. The way they will display will depend on the size of your monitor. For example, if you are working on a laptop with a small monitor, you might not be able to see all the tools and you will have an arrow to open up the "missing" tools.

If you want to avoid this, you can display the tools in two columns instead of one. Go to View > Customize tools... and it will give you this window and you can choose, at the bottom, the number of columns you prefer.

You can also notice that, among the tools on the left, several of them have a little arrow. Each of those will open up a list of additional tools.

If there are some tools that you use more often, you can save yourself some clicks by dragging them from the previous window, into the toolbar. In the following example, I added the Elliptical Marquee Tool, the Freehand Selection Tool, the InPainting Brush Tool, the Ellipse Tool and the Frame Text Tool.

As I will work for different projects, I might end up changing my mind and adding new tools, or even removing others to leave some space. Your need might also differ and you might want a completely different set of tools. Go ahead, ajust that toolbar.

Remember that you might also change your mind. Maybe you don't think you will use a particular panel or tool too often only to find out the opposite. Don't worry. Adjust your workspace again.

For Photos That Matter

1 thought on “Ways to customize the workspace in Affinity Photo”

  1. I’m excited for you to be doing Affinity Photo tutorials. I have their set of programs and would LOVE to learn much more on how to be more proficient with using them. Thank you!

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