njakeman

What ever became of this... ???
 

Hi njakeman,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
In the first case (on your screenshot - first  layer on top) you have dragged the Background (Pixel) above the (Curve) layer in the Layers panel. This is called Layer Clipping - the (Curve) is being used as a clipping object so you only see the content of the Background (Pixel) inside it.
 
In the second case (on your screenshot -  second layer counting from the top) you have dragged the Background (Pixel) above the thumbnail of the curve layer in the Layers panel.
This is called Layer Masking - the (Curve) is being masked by the shape of the image (rectangle) so you only see it when its overlapping the Background (Pixel) area.
Usually we only drag vector objects or raster masks to the thumbnail of another object to use as masks (vector or raster based), not regular images.
 
For more information please go to:
Affinity Designer Help ▸ Layers ▸ Layer clipping
Affinity Designer Help ▸ Layers ▸ Layer masking

(Well, you can always Option + click the thumbnail of the shape in the layers list, in order to get the “marching ants” …  :))

Hi Neil

Welcome to the forums! :)

I have been looking at some of the tutorials for this and found that most of the steps are just the same in Affinity Photo. I have been using this tutorial as a guide and the only differences are;

Step 4: Hue and Saturation is called HSL adjustment within Affinity, this can be found under Layer>New Adjustment Layer> HSL Adjustment

Step 5: Affinity Photo does not have the Photo Filter, but you can achieve the same effect using Lens Filter (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Lens Filter Adjustment) Just set the colour to blue and then continue as advised in the tutorial. 

I hope this helps, if there's anything you're not sure about just let me know :)

J