Affinity Photo Keyboard Shortcuts
Affinity Photo was built deliberately to feel familiar to Photoshop refugees while avoiding a subscription, and its shortcut layout reflects that decision plainly — many bindings are near-identical to Photoshop's defaults specifically so muscle memory transfers with minimal relearning. Where it diverges is mostly around Affinity's own Persona system (Photo, Liquify, Develop, Tune personas occupy the same window but behave like semi-distinct modes), and a handful of panel and view shortcuts that don't map directly onto anything in Adobe's products. Windows uses Ctrl as the primary modifier, Mac uses Cmd, and the two largely mirror each other apart from a few OS-reserved exceptions. The categories below cover selection and masking tools, layer management, and the view/zoom controls that matter most during detailed retouching work. Because Affinity Photo supports both raster and RAW photo editing within the same application via its Develop Persona, photographers can move from RAW processing straight into pixel-level retouching without exporting to a separate program partway through, a workflow advantage over needing two separate applications for those two stages. Frequency Separation, a popular retouching technique for separating texture detail from color/tone information onto different layers, is achievable in Affinity Photo through its standard layer and blend-mode tools rather than a single dedicated one-click shortcut, reflecting that some advanced techniques remain multi-step processes even in software built to streamline retouching generally. Non-destructive adjustment and Live Filter layers are central to how Affinity Photo encourages a flexible retouching workflow, since keeping color grading and effects like blur or sharpening on their own separate, always-editable layers means a client revision or a change of creative direction late in a project doesn't require redoing pixel-level work from scratch the way a purely destructive edit history would.
Tools
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Move tool | V | V | Activates the Move tool for repositioning, scaling, and rotating the active layer or selection directly on canvas. |
| Selection Brush tool | W | W | Switches to the Selection Brush, letting you paint a selection area freehand rather than tracing a geometric or lasso-based boundary. |
| Healing Brush tool | J | J | Activates the Healing Brush, which samples nearby texture to repair blemishes or unwanted detail while blending tone and lighting automatically. |
| Clone tool | S | S | Switches to the Clone tool for painting with pixels sampled from another defined source point, useful for duplicating texture or removing larger objects. |
| Inpainting Brush tool | J (cycle) | J (cycle) | Cycling through the J shortcut reaches the Inpainting Brush, which removes content and intelligently fills the gap using surrounding context, similar in goal to content-aware fill. |
| Switch to Develop Persona | Persona selector (top toolbar) | — | Switches into the Develop Persona for RAW photo processing, letting you move from RAW adjustment straight into pixel-level retouching within the same file rather than exporting to a separate application partway through. |
| Dodge tool | O | O | Activates the Dodge tool for selectively lightening areas of an image through repeated brushing, a classic photographic darkroom technique digitized into a brush-based tool. |
| Lasso Selection tool | L | L | Activates the freehand Lasso tool for drawing a custom selection boundary by hand, useful for irregular shapes that don't fit a rectangular or elliptical marquee. |
| Crop tool | C | C | Activates the Crop tool for trimming the canvas to a chosen area, with on-canvas handles for adjusting the crop boundary before confirming. |
Layers Masking
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Layer | Ctrl+Shift+N | Cmd+Shift+N | Inserts a blank pixel layer right above whichever layer is currently active, ready to paint on without disturbing anything below it. |
| Merge Down | Ctrl+Shift+E | Cmd+Shift+E | Collapses the active layer down into whatever sits directly beneath it, producing one flattened layer where two used to be. |
| Add layer mask | Ctrl+Shift+M | Cmd+Shift+M | Attaches a white (fully visible) pixel mask to the active layer, ready for painting black to hide areas non-destructively. |
| Clip layer to layer below | Ctrl+Alt+G | Cmd+Option+G | Constrains the active layer's visibility to only the pixel area occupied by the layer beneath it, the Affinity equivalent of Photoshop's clipping mask. |
| Flatten image | Ctrl+Shift+Alt+F (varies) | Cmd+Shift+Option+F | Collapses every visible layer down into one, usually reserved for right before export once the non-destructive edit history captured across those layers is no longer needed. |
| Add adjustment layer | Layer menu > New Adjustment Layer (no single default key) | — | Adds a non-destructive adjustment layer (curves, levels, hue/saturation) above the current layer, letting you apply and later tweak or remove a color or tonal adjustment without permanently altering the underlying pixel data. |
| Apply a Live Filter layer | Layer menu > New Live Filter Layer | — | Applies a non-destructive filter effect (like Gaussian blur or sharpen) as its own layer rather than baking it directly into pixel data, keeping the effect editable or removable later in the same way an adjustment layer works. |
View Zoom
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoom to 100% | Ctrl+1 | Cmd+1 | Snaps the canvas back to a true pixel-for-pixel zoom level, the one you can trust most when judging fine detail or the results of a sharpening pass. |
| Zoom to fit window | Ctrl+0 | Cmd+0 | Scales the canvas view so the entire image fits within the visible document window, regardless of the image's actual pixel dimensions. |
| Toggle Studio panels | Tab | Tab | Hides or shows all docked side panels at once, maximizing canvas space temporarily without manually closing each panel individually. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do some Affinity Photo shortcuts match Photoshop exactly and others don't?
Serif deliberately matched Photoshop's most universally known bindings (V for Move, zoom shortcuts, layer creation) to ease the transition for switching users, but built its own logic elsewhere — particularly around Personas and panel management — where there was no direct Photoshop equivalent to mirror.
What are Personas and do they affect shortcuts?
Personas (Photo, Liquify, Develop, Tone Mapping, Export) are distinct workspace modes within the same window, each with its own toolset and in some cases its own shortcut context. A key that does one thing in the Photo Persona may be unavailable or do something different in the Develop Persona, since the latter is built around RAW processing controls rather than pixel editing.
Is there a content-aware fill equivalent shortcut?
The Inpainting Brush, reached by cycling through the J key bindings or selecting it from the toolbar, serves a similar purpose to Photoshop's content-aware fill — painting over an area triggers Affinity's algorithm to reconstruct that region using surrounding image data.
Can I edit a RAW photo and then retouch it without switching applications?
Yes, because Affinity Photo supports both RAW processing (via the Develop Persona) and pixel-level retouching within the same application, photographers can move from RAW adjustment straight into detailed retouching in one continuous file rather than exporting to a separate program partway through the process.
Is there a one-click shortcut for frequency separation retouching?
No — you build it yourself out of ordinary layer duplication, blend modes, and Gaussian Blur, the same building blocks you'd use in any raster editor. It takes a handful of manual steps every time rather than a single keystroke, which is true even in a tool as retouching-focused as Affinity Photo, since frequency separation is inherently a multi-layer technique rather than something a single filter can replicate.
When would I flatten an image instead of keeping it as separate layers?
Flattening is typically a final step before export when the full non-destructive edit history captured in separate layers is no longer needed within the working file, producing a single simplified layer, though it's generally advisable to keep an unflattened backup copy in case further edits are needed later.
Can Affinity Photo open layered Photoshop PSD files?
Yes, Affinity Photo supports opening and saving PSD files with reasonable layer fidelity, though highly complex Photoshop-specific features like certain smart object configurations may not translate with perfect fidelity in every case.
What is the difference between an adjustment layer and just applying a filter directly to a pixel layer?
An adjustment layer or Live Filter layer sits as its own separate layer above the pixels it affects, staying fully editable or removable at any point down the line. Baking a filter straight into a pixel layer instead permanently rewrites that layer's actual pixel data on the spot — faster in the moment, but it closes the door on fine-tuning or undoing the effect later short of reverting to a saved earlier state.