The recent release of Affinity 3 shook up the graphic-design world. Just like me, I imagine a lot of people stopped paying for Adobe Illustrator and can now enjoy a high-quality tool for free.

But after so many years using Illustrator, switching from one software to another brings its own challenges and demands some real adaptability from anyone willing to take that step.

That's exactly what's happening to me. I've been using Illustrator for almost 20 years. At that point, you don't even think about where a tool is anymore. The software becomes an extension of your body, letting you "forget" about the tool and focus entirely on the work in front of you.

My latest friction point with Affinity 3 was its zoom tool. It's not that it's hard to use — the shortcuts are the same ones you use in Illustrator: Z picks the zoom tool, Cmd+1 sets zoom to 100%, Cmd+2 sets 200%, and so on. The issue was what we call actual size.

If we were creating a web document, all we had to do was set the zoom to 100% and Illustrator automatically displayed it at actual size. In other words, 100% was always the document's actual size, no matter your screen's pixel density.

In Affinity, I noticed the zoom tool works differently. I created a document with the exact size of my screen (1512×982), and when I pressed Cmd+1, the document appeared considerably smaller than my display.

100% zoom does not display the document at actual size

So I figured maybe actual size had its own shortcut, since 100% clearly wasn't representing the real size. After unsuccessfully trying my luck with ChatGPT and YouTube, I realized the mismatch might be due to my screen having a higher pixel density than a standard one — mine has a pixel density of 2 instead of 1. Time to test the theory. If I was right, 200% zoom should be the actual size I was looking for.

To validate the idea, I created an HTML file and rendered a 300×300 pixel square in it. I placed the browser on the right side of the screen and Affinity on the left. If the height of the square in the browser matched the height of the square in Affinity, then 200% zoom would finally represent the document's actual size. To my delight, that's exactly what happened.

Document displayed at actual size with zoom set to 200%

If you're using a screen with a pixel density higher than 1, now you know how to view your document at actual size. And if you've found an even easier or more intuitive way to reach the same result, feel free to share it with me!