Mike S.

I like to switch contexts and work between my desktop big screen and my iPad to allow for a mental shift, but there's a good bit of friction that means I have to export/import things like assets, brushes, etc. 

I would like to be able to "sync" these and other application level saves so when I move from one to the other it is a seamless, frictionless experience. 

Hi guys!! Try this tutorial... Works fine for me. Best regards to you all.
 

Not to mention, (in more or less most requested order)
Crop page
Image tracing
Path offset
Perspective Moulding
On screen Measurement tool
Set ruler origin
And don't even get me started on Affinity Publisher 
Honestly, I don’t know what the dev' team do all day 
 
P.S. Only kidding guys, keep up the good work. 

I like to switch contexts and work between my desktop big screen and my iPad to allow for a mental shift, but there's a good bit of friction that means I have to export/import things like assets, brushes, etc. 

I would like to be able to "sync" these and other application level saves so when I move from one to the other it is a seamless, frictionless experience. 

I like to switch contexts and work between my desktop big screen and my iPad to allow for a mental shift, but there's a good bit of friction that means I have to export/import things like assets, brushes, etc. 

I would like to be able to "sync" these and other application level saves so when I move from one to the other it is a seamless, frictionless experience. 

Isn't the use case for Symbols, at all, one in which you need to have the various occurrences of the symbol within a document "linked" so that a change to one will occur to all the others?
That isn't possible with Assets.
So, I think, that would be a main determining factor in which should be used.
Another: I think that Assets are cross-document, but Symbols are for a single document.
Anyway, Designer can handle both. Another question may be "what context do you need to use them in?"
But personally, I will probably do everything in Publisher that is supported there by the various Publisher Personas. Anything that needs the other Personas from Designer (e.g., Export Persona, Pixel Persona) needs to be done directly in the Designer application. Photo will need more use of the standalone application than Designer, for me.
By the way: using the Designer Persona in Publisher you should be able to use Symbols in your Publisher documents, too.

@Ulysses
Forgive my rant, it comes from a place of frustration, but by *no* means am I giving up, I'm frustrated with spending hours trying to figure out how to get something done that was minutes for a neophyte in PS. First thing I want to do when I refine my workflow and figure out how to deal with the differences is to document it, share it and create a tutorial. Just wish there was more help in this particular space, but this *is* more like community support and I get that we don't really pay Affinity enough to expect consultative support.

Thank you. 

No one disagrees with any of your frustrations with Affinity Photo's current lack of support for Adobe Photoshop's Smart Objects. We ALL wish it was there. No one is pretending it's not a problem. But it's a completely different conclusion to say, "this is what we have... let's see how we can work the problem to find a solution for the overall goal of our projects." For me personally, once I abandoned Adobe (for a wide variety of reasons), I was prepared to make adjustments — even large ones — to my workflow to accommodate a new approach. But I well understand this is undesirable and even unworkable for some.
Additionally, the issue does not seem to be that Affinity Photo is unable to understand layers; it most definitely CAN. We can open and utilize .PSD files containing any number of layers created in Photoshop. But maybe you're working with projects that present problems that some of us simply aren't experiencing. If so, PLEASE pass these on to the developers in the Feature Requests area of this forum! 
As for similar functionality to Smart Objects, here's what I'm finding (at least in simple cases): If you create an .AFPHOTO or .AFDESIGN file (or even save an Affinity Photo project as a .PSD), which you then PLACE into a new project, it shows up as a new layer with the title "Embedded File" in your new project. Using the Move tool to double-click on this embedded file reveals the various layers of that embedded document, which you can then further edit. This is similar *enough* to Smart Objects for my usage, but it most definitely doesn't go as far as it could.
EDITED TO CORRECT MY UNDERSTANDING OF HANDLING TIFF FILES: I'm still trying to understand the differences between these various placement options. For example, if I save a .TIFF file with Affinity layers intact, and then PLACE that TIFF into a new Affinity Photo project, it's placed as an "IMAGE," and double-tapping that object does NOT give access to all the layers contained therein. However, if I open that TIFF file on its own, I have access to those layers. I'm unclear as to why this is any different than a .PSD file. 

@John Rostron and @Ulysses
Are you saying there is a functionality that allows you to accomplish the same thing? It seems utterly simplistic to just look at the import problem and not the underlying lack of functionality. The fact that people are dependent on a free SaaS app for this functionality is indicative of the lack of insight and understanding. 

Affinity Photo is not able to understand layers beyond being utterly flat. Distort is a far cry. Both in terms of reliable solution (it often just doesn't map well) and the amount of time it takes to do (15 minutes best, most simplistic case, and beating your head up against it and trying to do *something* to make it work for 3-4 hours).

Mind you, this is something that consistently takes no more than 5-10 minutes in photoshop to replace. There's even a robust third party marketplace of smart object based PSDs that are amazingly simply to edit and update.

The problem clearly isn't *that* tough, or an online free SaaS app wouldn't have it solved. Shucks, affinity could buy or license the tech and make the money back in new licenses in a few months. 

Affinity products are great, but they *do* lack some highly productive workflows for some difficult problems that Adobe has solved. Pretending that these are not problems, or even more amazing, that they are solved with some inferred solution and sayings like "we do it differently" without specifics is unproductive and creates frustration that causes people to just go back to what they know can actually solve the problem.

Admitting gaps keeps people from hitting their head against an invisible ceiling they're being told doesn't exist and leaving frustrated and angry instead of coming back when the problem actually *is* solved. 

@John Rostron and @Ulysses
Are you saying there is a functionality that allows you to accomplish the same thing? It seems utterly simplistic to just look at the import problem and not the underlying lack of functionality. The fact that people are dependent on a free SaaS app for this functionality is indicative of the lack of insight and understanding. 

Affinity Photo is not able to understand layers beyond being utterly flat. Distort is a far cry. Both in terms of reliable solution (it often just doesn't map well) and the amount of time it takes to do (15 minutes best, most simplistic case, and beating your head up against it and trying to do *something* to make it work for 3-4 hours).

Mind you, this is something that consistently takes no more than 5-10 minutes in photoshop to replace. There's even a robust third party marketplace of smart object based PSDs that are amazingly simply to edit and update.

The problem clearly isn't *that* tough, or an online free SaaS app wouldn't have it solved. Shucks, affinity could buy or license the tech and make the money back in new licenses in a few months. 

Affinity products are great, but they *do* lack some highly productive workflows for some difficult problems that Adobe has solved. Pretending that these are not problems, or even more amazing, that they are solved with some inferred solution and sayings like "we do it differently" without specifics is unproductive and creates frustration that causes people to just go back to what they know can actually solve the problem.

Admitting gaps keeps people from hitting their head against an invisible ceiling they're being told doesn't exist and leaving frustrated and angry instead of coming back when the problem actually *is* solved. 

Switching between the Designer and Photo personas in Publisher is even sweeter with a keyboard shortcut.
I've set mine to Control + D and Control + P (on the Mac), but you can set your own to whatever you like. Then change the shortcut set from Publisher to either Designer or Photo and add a shortcut for the Publisher persona. I chose Control + R.
Enjoy! 
 
 

See for example ...
Affinity Photo: Displacement Effect
Displacement Effect - Tutorial
Displace Filter Tutorial
... and so on ...

That text is a Pixel layer (no longer text or editable as text)
If you originally create it as text then somehow you converted it to a pixel layer