@MikeFromMesa: Happy to have helped a fellow AP user! I was honestly blown away when I discovered this feature. My Photoshop workflow was always slow and convoluted due to its limitations: "Take 5/whatever layers, duplicate them, merge the duplicates to 1 layer, hide the 5 originals, apply static effects to the merged layer" - and I could never edit the applied effects since they were all static, and if I wanted to tweak individual layers I had to delete the merged layer, unhide all the originals, do the edits and then repeat the whole FX process.
Now with Affinity Photo I just use Live FX on the group of layers, and I can even change the blend mode and opacity of the effect (avoids having to duplicate layers for FX too). It's already revolutionized the way I work. The documents I make now only consists of *actual valuable layers* and not hundreds of hidden "step by step" layers.
Launch day is tomorrow and I'm ecstatic, knowing that's it a total Photoshop replacement and that it will just keep getting better and better! :-D Serif are my heroes.