Hangman

This should work without any issues...

Text on a Spiral.mp4

This should work without any issues...

Text on a Spiral.mp4

Thanks Hangman! I've reproduced that and will get it logged!

No biggy but both the Designer and Photo About screen on Mac are missing their 2.1.0 moniker so both just say 1769. Publisher shows 2.1.0.1769.

No biggy but both the Designer and Photo About screen on Mac are missing their 2.1.0 moniker so both just say 1769. Publisher shows 2.1.0.1769.

Thanks @Hangman, this is something we are aware of and should be resolved in the next beta. 

Hi @Michael Lewis and welcome to the forums...
I agree, add/subtract modifier keys would be really helpful...
You can hide the marching ants by selecting Show Pixel Selection from the view menu, this acts as a toggle and of course you can set a keyobard shortcut to make it quicker to turn on and off...

You can equally open the file with Import PSD Smart Objects Where Possible enabled and make a few simple tweaks while maintaining editability. Affinity Photo hasn't translated Photoshop's smart objects accurately but it's reasonably easy to fix...

I tried a couple of the suggestions and this photo in unretouched. The lighting video was really helpful. I'll try other suggestions as I go along, but it's already so much better. Thanks to everyone who responded.

Uncheck Import PSD Smart Objects Where Possible in the General preferences and the file will open correctly.

Wow! This is an active forum. Thank you all for your suggestions. I'll be implementing a lot of the photography suggestions. I had tried the select by color with mixed results, but I had no idea that you could do more than one pass, so I'll give that a try as well. Thanks again for your time and effort in helping someone who is just learning.

A good example of this can be found by typing jewellery into Etsy...

If you do a lot of this sort of photography it's probably worth investing in a lightbox, they don't cost that much
 
 
 

Also, use a background that doesn’t have creases or bumps in it1 it is actually much easier to get the lighting and background right in the first place, (especially for product shots) rather than trying to improve it afterwards.

Hi @kjhelm and welcome to the forums,
It would help dramatically if you light your background, i.e., place lights behind the jewellery left and right to evenly light the background. This would help separate the jewellery from the background and if you light it correctly you could completely avoid the need to make any selections to remove the background.
Note: Other videos are available explaining similar concepts…

Hi @Mouloud and welcome to the forums,
Has your Affinity Photo file been anywhere near Affinity Publisher? If so, is it possible that the background has been set using the Text Frame option in Publisher?

Text Fill.mp4

Hi @adequate and welcome to the forums,
The reason you are seeing a different colour when using the colour picker is because the Colour Format for your document is CMYK with a Colour Profile of U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2 but you are selecting an RGB Hex colour value so the colour is being translated between two different colour formats.
If you change your document to RGB/8 using sRGB IEC61966-2.1, make sure your source object is still using #00BCB0 and then use the colour picker to sample the colour you will see it matches.

No problem, glad all is working for you again...

Hi Hangman,

I believe this is indeed an issue with the Magic Mouse. - I've just tried it with and get the same behaviour you are, but works fine with a regular mouse! I'll get this logged.

Hi @david1977m and welcome to the forums,
Try unchecking the Hide Studio option from the same menu...
 

Hi @frankdrake60 and welcome to the forums...
See how you get on with the attached Publisher document...
The issue with your file is caused by a known bug which is affecting the linked, placed pdf file on page 10 of your document, i.e., tabella prodotti DEFINITIVA.pdf. Basically when you look at the pdf in Resource Manager it shows as having an Original size of 0 cm x 0 cm and a Placed size of 0 cm x 0 cm.
Would you be able to upload the pdf file so we can take a look to see if there is anything unsual about it?
The cause of the bug is still being investigated by the Development team at Serif but in the mean time I would do the following:
Make a copy of the attached repaired Publisher file to work with and store the attached version it in a different location as a backup if you have the option to open and resave the tabella prodotti DEFINITIVA.pdf then do just that Place tabella prodotti DEFINITIVA.pdf again on page 10 of your document as required and Save your Publisher file Hopefully, from that point on you should be okay...
On a general note, is your document just intended for onscreen use? I noted that your file uses an RGB/16 Colour Format with the SMPTE RP 431-2-2007 DCI (P3) colour profile which is normally used when viewing on a display or digital projector so I'm assuming that is intentional especially as your document uses a 16:9 format...
Let us know how you get on.
1-GW-CONSTRUCTION MGMT PLATFORM-04 23 (Repaired).afpub

It looks like there's a bug wherein the order of the layers matters if you're going to merge a pixel layer and an image layer.
If the Pixel layer is above the Image layer, it will not work:

However, if you drag the Image layer above the Pixel layer, it will merge:

Result:

This was reported a while ago so I'll go ahead and wake it up as it hasn't had any activity for a while. Thanks!

@Chris B, hopefully you saw the comment above mentioning that Alt Scroll to zoom works correctly for raster based formats only but you can only currently use Cmd + and Cmd - for vector formats...

That is a very good point...

Are you sure that "Merge Visible" rasterizes the image layer? It certainly copies pixel information from the image layer, but Merge Visible (in my experience) creates a brand new layer, and does not affect the layers it's merging from.