Knight_of_Newbury

Many thanks to you too A_B_C for your information on this. It's certainly a lot clearer to me than it was. Cheers!

Thanks jmac and crabtrem for your replies. I'll scour the internet for some Photoshop stuff - that may illustrate crabtrem's highly detailed answer (for which I thank you a lot - it must have taken a while to type that!). I'll also fire up the app and try experimenting with it alongside your response to gain a more hands on understanding. Ta very much.

Hi, I'm new to Affinity Photo - but I really like what I see. I'm a Mac user converting from iPhoto and Aperture - so I'm not familiar with layers, masks, etc. Your current tutorials are great from the viewpoint of showing me what can be done with Affinity Photo and how to do specific tasks - and I really like the professional and clear style of presentation. However, I'm struggling to understand the concepts layers and masks. I can understand that layers are like a stack of photos / transparencies and that masks may allow me to see through layers - but what are the differences between pixel layers, adjustment layers, filter layers, etc that are mentioned in the tutorials or listed under the LAYER menu? When do I use each type? Why would I use them rather than filters and brushes? For the benefit of converts (or stupid people) like me, maybe it would be worthwhile for someone to do a tutorial on the concepts / basics of layers and masks - and how they differ from brushes, filters? Pending that, can anyone point me in the direction of some simple explanations? Thanks :-)