Jeff McFarland

So, the fix for the "replace image in picture frame" without messing up its position/scale will come next update, i hope?

My god! This argument has been going on for 3 years now and we still don't have a solution in APhoto. I get that they have been busy with Publisher, but this is a no brainer feature to add and it's still not there.
When I stumbled on to this issue I was sure I was just doing something wrong. Nope. Just simply can't be done in APhoto. Ridiculous.

There is no valid reason why all pixel adjustment tools should not be applicable to all pixel selections, be they ordinary image or just a separate channel.

Just to dog-pile on this already mature thread, I completely follow what rui_mac is saying. When you click on the layers mask, you are presented with what looks like a grayscale layer, the black (obviously) being the mask. Of course, the black is usually not uniformly black, especially if you've created the mask via Select Sample Color to mask out, say, a green-screen background. With dodge and burn, you can simply select your desired tonal range (say, affecting the shadows only) and it is breathtakingly simply to tighten your task: you don't have to worry about brushing black onto your white cutout, because you're burning only shadows which in this case is nothing more than your imperfect mask.
 
If you use a regular brush with black color, you are reduced to the painstaking work of brushing just up to the fine edge of your cutout while not cutting in on detail.
 
So, two votes for dodge/burn on Masks!
 
If there's a different way to do this I would love to hear it!

Hi rui_mac,
You're not alone. I'm also hoping this will get implemented. I know you've requested it a few times and i still hope it will be added at some point, however i don't have much details about this yet :(

When you are dodging/burning you are just adding more contrast to the textures that are already present in the image, since they are derived from the color channels.
So, imagine a wool sweater. It has a distinct edge, that results from the coarse wool. It even has a kind of... lets call it "organic feathered edge". So, painting would create a harder edge. Simply dodging and burning would create a nice mask with the "organic feathered edge" in a very controlled manner. I could even decide to increase the density of some parts of the edge and keep it softer in other places.
The same with hairs. Sometimes I just want to keep the thicker hairs and ditch the thinner ones. By dodging and burning on a channel that was derived from a color channel, I can create a very perfect hair mask, that is completely controlled by me, not a result of automatic processes. Oh, I can use automatic processes. But dodging and burning will allow me to edit the result of the automatic process in a very controllable way. Painting hairs is not efficient, specially when they are already there, in the mask, just requiring some brightness/contrast adjustments.

I already did.
I have been asking for more control over alpha channels ever since Affinity Photo was released.
Between 50% to 80% of a professional photo retoucher/calibrator has to do with alpha channels.
If editing alpha channels doesn't get more flexible and powerful, lots of things that are simple in Photoshop will be a pain (or almost impossible) in Affinity Photo.
And, believe me, I really want to use Affinity Photo for everything :)

Have you seen my video?
R C-R, I'm a image processing professional for more than 20 years. And I can assure you that dodging and burning a mask is A MUST for all professionals.
Don't think of a mask as simply a transparency. A mask can be used as a selection. I use masks/additional channels very, very often, because I need to create very precise selection for compositing or for color calibration.
So, I often start with a copy of a color channel or a combination of channels. Then, I have to edit that new, additional alpha channel.
To do so, I need to use ALL the arsenal of tools, adjustments, filters, etc, that I have available for a simple grayscale image. Because alpha channels/masks are just that: grayscale images.
If I can't edit an alpha channel/mask with all the tools, adjustments or filters, that will diminish the methods and techniques used by professionals.

I know that.
But it is just like a greyscale image, because the transparency mask is a set of values that goes from 0 to 255.
We should be able to use ALL paint/edit tools on a mask, just like we can, in Photoshop.

I know this method, Crabtrem.
I don't mean dodging and burning on an image.
I mean, on a mask.
For example, when I have a mask that I derived from a color channel, sometimes I need to darken or lighten some areas of the mask. And I mean, is a very specific way, not globally.
Check out this example I created sometime ago:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6H_8gjX-eI

My mask creation workflow (in Photoshop) requires that I use most paint/edit tools on a mask. After all, a mask is just a greyscale image.
So, why is it that the Dodge and Burn tools (two of the tools that I use more often when creating masks) don't work with masks?

Thank you, firstdefence. 
When I do that, the adjustment only affects the pixel layer underneath.  Obviously, that would usually be what you'd want but I would like to be able to increase the contrast in the actual mask itself.  When I click alt + the mask to reveal the b&w image, I can't seem to make any adjustments to it.  Is there a way you can do that?

Yes. Please. For the love of god at least add some sort of preference to adjust the behavior of saving and exporting files. I can't tell you how many times I've saved and closed a file and then can't find it ANYWHERE. I have to reopen it under "open recent" and then "reveal in finder" just to figure out where the file went.
My vote would be that the "default" behavior would be to save as and export in the same folder as the current open document. Then add a preference if you want for whatever other situations might also be valid.
Currently, if I open a document I worked on a week ago and immediately attempt to "Save As: a new version, I expect to find myself in the same folder as the document I just opened.
Please, please, please fix this!

Yes. Please. For the love of god at least add some sort of preference to adjust the behavior of saving and exporting files. I can't tell you how many times I've saved and closed a file and then can't find it ANYWHERE. I have to reopen it under "open recent" and then "reveal in finder" just to figure out where the file went.
My vote would be that the "default" behavior would be to save as and export in the same folder as the current open document. Then add a preference if you want for whatever other situations might also be valid.
Currently, if I open a document I worked on a week ago and immediately attempt to "Save As: a new version, I expect to find myself in the same folder as the document I just opened.
Please, please, please fix this!

Indesign has this really neat feature where, when exporting a PDF, it remembers the last destination the previous PDF for that document was saved.
I notice this a lot now that I'm using Publisher as I'm inadvertently saving my PDFs in the wrong folders(!). Publisher seems to remember the last location a PDF was saved in, but not relative to the original document.
For example/clarity, lets say I have two projects, numbered 1000A and 2000B.
I open 1000A and create my PDF and save it to a folder inside the project folder called proofs ( '1000A > Proofs').
Next I open 2000B, create my PDF and save it. With Indesign it remembers that the last time this document created a PDF it was stored in '2000B > Proofs' and this is the folder it automatically shows in the save dialog. In Publisher it points the last folder used to create a PDF, which in this case happens to have been '1000A > Proofs'.
Does that make sense?
Its not a life changing problem, more something which you don't realise is a feature, but its only when you move away to another piece of software you realise how useful it was!
P.S. Loving Publisher!