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Just to close out this topic, I ended up keeping all my text frame layers at the top, and applied the unsharp filter layer below them so that only the photos were sharpened. This appears to do what I expected.

Good to know. Thanks.

Thank you all for the extremely helpful responses. I am using the picture frames to place all my photos because the functionality is just so awesome in what it allows me to do with the layout--unfortunately, this invariably leads to the images being either cropped or scaled. My original question is answered in that I can achieve what I need by using the Photo Persona to attach a sharpening filter to the images in Publisher. From the responses, other options are: Know the layout beforehand so that the images can be scaled/cropped/sharped for placement without requiring picture frames. (This is too much to ask for a non-professional home user like me!) Do sharpening on the whole page before export. This will apply the same sharpening to all content (including text, it looks like, which might be a problem) and may be the least amount of work (might be what I go with).

First time using Publisher to make a photo book, which I plan to print on a service like Blurb. I tweak my photo book constantly until I am happy with the layout and photo sizes. In the process, Publisher can/will resize/crop the photos. I have been told that the photos need to be sharpened more than usual for them to come out sharp on a printed medium. I do not see sharpening as an option on export--which means I will have to do that manually (after the crop/final size is known). A post in r/AffinityPublisher subreddit suggested to use a live unsharp filter (using Affinity Photo) on each photo so that the filter is used by Publisher. My question is, are the filters run after Publisher has applied the crop/resize on the photo (to fit the picture frame) or before? Is this approach the best way to get the photos sharpened for output without having to crop/resize/sharpen them myself? I may have to rethink my layout/workflow if the photos need to fixed manually. Thanks.