Affinity Introduction 2 Day - Manchester
Key Course Details:
Level:
Introduction
Duration:
2
Days - 10am to 5pm
Price:
£395 + vat
Discover Affinity Studio in depth with our immersive two-day Introduction designed to take you from complete beginner to confident creator. You’ll explore the power of Affinity’s all-in-one photo editing, vector design and layout tools while building practical skills to produce polished graphics, striking visuals and professional documents.
As you progress, you’ll move beyond the essentials of the workspace to develop a fuller understanding of layout, colour, typography and visual consistency. Through hands-on projects, you’ll learn how to create multi-page documents, presentations and campaign-ready assets, and how to set up brand kits, collaborate effectively and optimise your exports.
Discover Affinity Studio in depth with our immersive two-day Introduction designed to take you from complete beginner to confident creator. You’ll explore the power of Affinity’s all-in-one photo editing, vector design and layout tools while building practical skills to produce polished graphics, striking visuals and professional documents.
As you progress, you’ll move beyond the essentials of the workspace to develop a fuller understanding of layout, colour, typography and visual consistency. Through hands-on projects, you’ll learn how to create multi-page documents, presentations and campaign-ready assets, and how to set up brand kits, collaborate effectively and optimise your exports.
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Affinity Introduction 2 Day
Course Details
This 2-day Affinity Studio Introduction provides a comprehensive, hands-on exploration of Affinity’s powerful unified creative suite. Across two days you'll build confidence working with Affinity’s workspaces for Photo, Design and Publish, learning how to edit images, create vector artwork, and design professional layouts—all within a single streamlined workflow. With extended guided practice, you'll develop the skills to produce polished graphics, documents, and visual assets suitable for print and digital use.
Ideal for beginners, designers, marketers, photographers, and anyone looking to elevate their creative capabilities, this masterclass introduces essential tools while expanding your understanding of design principles such as colour, typography, composition, and visual hierarchy. You’ll also explore features like non-destructive editing, artboards, master pages, styles, and advanced export options, helping you create consistent, professional-quality work across projects.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Navigate the Affinity Studio interface and move between workspaces with confidence
- Edit and enhance images using layers, adjustments and masking tools
- Create vector graphics, icons and illustrations with core drawing and shape tools
- Design multi-page documents and marketing materials using grids, guides and master pages
- Apply key design principles to improve clarity, layout and typography
- Build consistent branding using styles, colour palettes and reusable assets
- Export print-ready and digital files with Affinity’s flexible export options
By the end you’ll have the creative confidence and practical skills to produce high-quality work across photo editing, vector design and page layout—giving you a strong foundation to continue developing your projects independently in Affinity Studio.
Course Target Audience and delegate prerequisites:
This course is ideal for marketers, social media managers, small business owners, content creators, educators and anyone looking to create professional-quality designs quickly and efficiently without advanced design skills.
You will need basic PC or Mac skills, including a good understanding of your operating system. You should be able to launch applications, manage files and folders, and save or locate documents confidently.
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Full Course Outline
The following is a general outline. The range of topics covered during your training is dependent upon student level, time available and preferences of your course booking.
Introducing Affinity Studio- What Affinity Studio is and how the unified workflow works
- How Affinity compares to Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign
- A brief history of Affinity and its acquisition by Canva
- Affinity Studio installation and updates
- System requirements and recommended hardware
- Using Affinity on desktop devices
- Understanding the three core workspaces: Layout, Pixel and Vector
- Exploring toolbars, panels and workspace presets
- Managing documents, artboards and workspaces
- Working with Assets, Styles and Libraries
Layout Workspace
Layout & Document Setup- Creating documents, spreads and page presets
- Master pages and consistent layout structure
- Using grids, rulers and baseline grids
- Text frames, linked frames and text flow management
- Applying paragraph and character styles
- Creating columns, pull quotes and formatted sections
- Placing, fitting and updating linked images
- Embedding vs linking content
- Combining vector, pixel and layout assets in one document
- Working with long documents and multiple spreads
- Creating tables, charts and structured content
- Building brochures, reports and marketing materials
Pixel Workspace
Editing & Retouching Basics- Understanding raster editing and non-destructive workflows
- Using layers, adjustments and live filters
- Masking techniques: layer masks and selection refinement
- Healing, cloning and retouching tools
- Adjusting exposure, contrast, shadows and highlights
- Colour balance, HSL adjustments and vibrance
- Developing RAW images (where supported)
Compositing & Creative Techniques- Cut-outs, background removal and object isolation
- Blending modes and layer effects
- Creating composites from multiple images
- Using live filters for non-destructive editing
- Working with brushes and brush dynamics
- Organising layers, groups and masks for efficient editing
Vector Workspace
Vector Design Essentials- Understanding vector graphics vs raster imagery
- Using the Pen Tool, Pencil Tool and Shape Tools
- Boolean operations: add, subtract, intersect and divide
- Editing nodes, curves and paths
- Using colour palettes, swatches and global colours
- Applying gradients, strokes and effects
- Creating and using custom styles
- Working with text frames and artistic text
- Font pairing and typographic hierarchy
- Applying text styles and formatting presets
- Working with artboards and multiple design variations
- Using snapping, guides and grids
- Duplicating elements and creating reusable assets
Working Across Workspaces- Switching seamlessly between Layout, Pixel and Vector workspaces
- Combining tools from each workspace for hybrid projects
- Using Affinity’s unified approach for cross-discipline editing
- Understanding Affinity’s export tools and formats
- Exporting PNG, JPEG, SVG, PDF and print-ready files
- Choosing colour profiles, bleed, marks and print settings
- Keyboard shortcuts and workspace customisation
- Managing performance and resource settings
- Creating reusable templates and common design assets
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Location Details
This course is provided at the XChange Training Manchester training centre based at:
Piccadilly House
49 Piccadilly
Manchester
M1 2APPiccadilly House is located in the heart of Manchester directly next to the Piccadilly Gardens transport interchange with excellent bus and tram connections and is easily accessed from Piccadilly train Station (5 mins). Victoria station is also close by (around 10 mins).
Daily course times run between 10am and 5pm with an hour break for lunch and both mid morning and mid-afternoon refreshment breaks. We recommend arrival at 9.45am for registration on the first day of the course.
View Full details of our Manchester Training Venue and Course optionsView our Manchester Centre Location on Google Maps
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Affinity Introduction 2 Day - Upcoming Manchester Course Dates
16 Feb - 17 Feb £395 + vat 15 Apr - 16 Apr £395 + vat 08 Jun - 09 Jun £395 + vat -
Client Reviews
"I have used XChange Training many times and I have been very happy with the training sessions, information supplied and the instructor's knowledge. Thank you for all your help in organising the courses."
Margaret Nolan-Meddings, Miller Insurance Services LLP, Digital Publishing Suite - 1 Day Introduction
"The instructor was very knowledgeable and patient and went at just the right learning speed for my level. One to one tutorial has been very beneficial for my learning of HTML and CSS and a great introduction."
Dawn Irons, Imago Group plc, HTML and CSS - 2 Day Introduction
"The course was very helpful. As a complete novice I now feel I have enough knowledge to get started. I enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and small group. I would definitely recommend this course. "
Kerri McKenna, The Bead Shop, Photoshop Introduction - 2 Days
"The trainer's insights and experience proved extremely helpful to speeding up jobs and overall productivity. Very impressed, and have learnt more today than in other courses set over longer periods. i.e. weeks! Will recommend."
Chris Penn, Explore Worldwide, QuarkXPress - 2 Day Introduction
"It was great to learn this application - very user friendly and easy to learn. Cannot wait to start putting what I have learnt into practice."
Lorraine Raymen, Parkside, QuarkXPress - 2 Day Introduction
"A very engaging and extremely useful course. I will be able to take skills learnt today directly into my work environment immediately and will save a lot of time in doing so."
Nick Allen, Money SuperMarket, Edge - 1 Day Introduction
"Very informative course and thank you to the tutor for her clear and concise training day. She was very thorough in covering the points we needed to be trained up on."
Chris Cann, Perivan, Microsoft Word - 1 Day Intermediate
"Very enlightening and resolved the immediate issues I was having with WordPress. "
Gillian Bardsley, Ferranti Technologies, WordPress - 1 Day Advanced
"Great trainer who gave a fantastic insight in a short period of time. I'm looking forward to doing the advanced session!"
Nader Morsy, New College Manchester, InDesign Introduction - 2 Days
"It was very good, thoroughly worth it. The tutor was excellent and very efficient. "
William Slack, Student, Vectorworks - 2 Day Introduction