Thanks! alt clicking to view the mask is a big time saver.
Thanks for the tips @David in Яuislip, I guess I was missing something lol and at least I can convert the mask in photo.
btw @MEB it would be really useful if affinity made an app that just combined all the features into different personas or something, it's all using the same engine behind the scenes right? The current limited pixel editing in designer is the reason I'm using it over other apps and I think there's a subset of users that would greatly benefit from a full featured vector and rasterization editor with artboards. You can even call it affinity pro if you want
Thanks for all the help guys.