curtj

My apologies, I purchased Affinity Photo through the App Store, that's why I couldn't find the update on the Serif site. I updated Designer in the App Store too, and now I have Publisher updated through the Serif site. It's been one of those day for me. Thank you for posting about the purchase options, I had forgotten. 

<EDITED> Please note, Affinity Photo 1.8.2 for Mac is now live so this thread is locked </EDITED>
We are pleased to announce a major update for the MacOS release of Affinity Photo, version 1.8.1
Changes in this build
The changes in Affinity Photo for MacOS 1.8.1 over the release build Affinity Photo for macOS 1.7.3 are as follows:
New Features & Improvements:
Template support – save documents as template files to re-use time and time again, share templates across all apps and even access files on multiple devices through cloud storage. New document dialog – it’s now simpler than ever to find, create and manage document presets with customised, saveable presets and thumbnail previews. Unified toolbar – thanks to the integration of window controls and the app’s main toolbar, Mac users (Mojave and above) can now enjoy more usable document space. Updated PANTONE© library – work with a seemingly endless range of colours, including updated PANTONE© Color Bridge and PANTONE© Formula Guide solid palettes (coated and uncoated). Lens correction improvements – benefit from manual lens correction override in the Develop Persona, take advantage of the newly added ‘recently used’ and ‘favourites’ lists, and enjoy improved lens correction of RAW files coming from fixed focal length lenses. Big plugin support improvements – experience the power of a range of plugins in the app, including improved support for Nik collection 2.5 by DxO. Better metadata handling – new support for user-editable fields in image metadata, including the IPTC standard for copyright and other information, plus, save and import metadata files (XMP) [enable in preferences], batch whole folders of images and tag with appropriate ownership info, and more. PSD smart object support – any smart objects included in PSD files can now be imported into Affinity Photo as embedded documents [enable in preferences], letting you easily edit layers within any smart object and maintain a non-destructive workflow into Affinity – even on iPad!. Canon CR3 RAW support – open and edit your highest quality photographs in Affinity Photo. Apple keyboard shortcuts for text editing —use Apple default keyboard shortcuts for text editing and entry for an even more streamlined workflow. Improved handling of RAW files when using batch processing. Improved channels panel behaviour when disabling alpha. New samples New stock brushes (your custom brushes will not be lost). Many other improvements. Fixes
Develop stability improvements. Fixed issues when printing/exporting live filters. Fixed customised shortcut save issues. Fixed various Live Filter rendering issues. Fixed crash loading certain JPEG files. Double click to edit embedded docs from layers panel. CMYK TIFF import improvements. Reference presets for the Pro Display XDR are now supported properly. Filter effects now support high intensity colours in 32-bit mode. Text field expression improvements. Added a new lens profile selector to Develop. Reimplemented the HSL filter's HSV option. Improved quality & file size of results when exporting JPEG. Switching to a mask node will now automatically switch to the grey colour slider. Improved lens correction of RAW files coming from lenses with fixed focal length. Improved unsharp mask “threshold” slider. Improved selection refinement performance & quality. Improved the noise reduction filter result when applied to JPEGs. Improved precision of Gaussian algorithm (to reduce banding). Improved reporting of file load errors (could previously report file corruption incorrectly). Improved performance of operations with large selections. Improved memory use with alternate futures and when replacing image layers. Fixed Styles to show styles that would normally be invisible. Fixed crash when loading some corrupt JPEGs (valid image data, but corrupt following data). Fixed deletion of brushes / styles / etc. not reducing disk usage correctly. Fixed PSD export of hidden layers. Fixed angle cursors when the view has been rotated. Fixed “Create Palette” from CMYK images resulting in RGB colours. Fixed Pixel Selection appears incorrectly when started near page edge. Fixed rasterising a fill layer goes wrong after changing document size. Fixed Marquee Selection not constraining to a square if you drag across the right diagonal. Fixed mis-identification of some Tamron lenses mounted to Canon bodies. Fixed failure to load some PSB files (and failing to report errors). Fixed crash importing PSD files containing embedded colour profiles with unicode characters in their names. Memory management improvements. Assorted other small fixes and improvements. Localisation improvements. UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in application menu, Affinity Photo > About).
If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store— updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store— each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update, or in the application main menu there is an option Check for Updates. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Photo for macOS) can be downloaded from this link (that installer is NOT for Mac app store purchases and needs a product key).
NOTE: This was originally released as 1.8.0 on the Affinity Store and the Mac App Store. Affinity Photo 1.8.0 on the Mac App Store had a permission missing that caused a problem with plugins. That build has been replaced with an otherwise identical 1.8.1 build. The Affinity Store version did not have this problem, but has been rebuilt to keep numbering systems in sync with the Mac App Store.

I downloaded and installed the new release version and it is perfect! I will uninstall the beta version now. Thanks for the help all! I love Photo, and I haven't opened PS since I started using Photo. I have Designer too and it's a pleasure to use.