Big_Stan

Disregard, problem solved. I used the ultimate cure all, pushed the "Restart" button.

Getting help from Topaz Labs is liking talking to a wall. They brought in a new operations manager, Eric Lowery, and he made encouraging words about cleaning up the mess, but I am seeing no improvement in their responsiveness.  I send them emails requesting help and I receive an automated reply acknowledging that they received my request, but it takes a week before I receive an answer to my question. And, if their answer doesn't solve my problem, it takes another week (if I am lucky) and so forth. I have a chain of emails going back to 8 October (before Catalina) trying to resolve the plugin problem.  
I loaded their AI plugins into Affinity Photo and they show up under Filters > Plugins, but when I try to use them nothing happens; they don't even start-up.  They do work as stand alone but not as Affinity plugins. And, yes I did restart Affinity Photo.  I am using Mac OS 10.15.1 and AP 1.7.3 on a 2019 iMac and I have the latest versions of the plugins.

 

In order to avoid exacerbating my confusion, I sent old brush to the machine that Thomas Crapper invented in 1880.

In order to avoid exacerbating my confusion, I sent old brush to the machine that Thomas Crapper invented in 1880.

Thank you for your suggestion, however, I did look there first.

The installed Catalina path probably differs a little from the one in Mojave, but I'm glad you got it working. To be honest I've been pulling my hair out to find the proper way to do this! And the Topaz tutorials are not of any help!
Remember that when you add an other Topaz plugin you don't have to do the Global + / procedure again and only add the new paths. 
Regards,
David

You guys are number one on several levels, your products are great, your tutorials are among the best, and you are continuing to expand your product line, keep it up.  However, as you increase your product line, the "desktop forum" is becoming cluttered.  For example, when I have a question, I am forced to wade through inquiries regarding Publisher, Designer, and Photo (thank you for separating iPad and Beta).  I realize that Serif has intentionally created products that are are inter-related and have much in common, however from a user ease of use prospective, I think that the time has come to have a separate forum for each product line.

You guys are number one on several levels, your products are great, your tutorials are among the best, and you are continuing to expand your product line, keep it up.  However, as you increase your product line, the "desktop forum" is becoming cluttered.  For example, when I have a question, I am forced to wade through inquiries regarding Publisher, Designer, and Photo (thank you for separating iPad and Beta).  I realize that Serif has intentionally created products that are are inter-related and have much in common, however from a user ease of use prospective, I think that the time has come to have a separate forum for each product line.

You guys are number one on several levels, your products are great, your tutorials are among the best, and you are continuing to expand your product line, keep it up.  However, as you increase your product line, the "desktop forum" is becoming cluttered.  For example, when I have a question, I am forced to wade through inquiries regarding Publisher, Designer, and Photo (thank you for separating iPad and Beta).  I realize that Serif has intentionally created products that are are inter-related and have much in common, however from a user ease of use prospective, I think that the time has come to have a separate forum for each product line.

You guys are number one on several levels, your products are great, your tutorials are among the best, and you are continuing to expand your product line, keep it up.  However, as you increase your product line, the "desktop forum" is becoming cluttered.  For example, when I have a question, I am forced to wade through inquiries regarding Publisher, Designer, and Photo (thank you for separating iPad and Beta).  I realize that Serif has intentionally created products that are are inter-related and have much in common, however from a user ease of use prospective, I think that the time has come to have a separate forum for each product line.

You guys are doing a great job with 1.7 beta.  
I have two questions:
When do you expect to be making a final release? 
I received this reply to an earlier posting, "Currently Affinity Photo doesn't pass the colour profile info to the plugin thus the differences you are seeing. This is more obvious when using wide colour profiles as the ProPhoto RGB you are using."  Will the final release be able to properly handle Pro Photo RGB?  

Today, I froze my Mac again.  I was doing a lot more cloning that a reasonable person would normally be performing.  After I had been extensively cutting power lines out of complex tree limbs, I moved over to perform a pen selection and move (after the moves, I was using the clone brush to blend the seams).  After the second select and move, while I was doing the seam blend, I got the beach ball which continued to spin for about 1 minute, and after the spinning ball stopped the Mac was frozen.  Fortunately, I had been pressing CMD + S to save as I went along, so recovery was not too bad.  After I shut down (white button),  I was able to complete the remaining cloning operations without any problem until I completed the desired changes.

I know I said that I would report back tomorrow.  However, I am very happy to report that for the last two hours I have tried to break the latest version of the Beta (with Metal enabled) and I was unable to cause a freeze.  You guys did a great job!!!

Thank you again.  I think I have that covered, my son is a Mac based S/W developer and when it happens, I am going to bug him to help his old man.

Once I really dug into it, I found the learning curve to be less steep than I anticipated.  While I had to learn how to speak Affinity, after 16 years with PS, I found the the AP sliders to be very close to the PS controls.  The only negative is that most of the AP tutorials are videos ( BTW, there are a lot of them) and I am more comfortable with text based tutorials.
When I am trying to learn something new, I still go to a PS tutorial and translate it into a set of Affinity notes.

Thank you for the link to your photos.  
If you refer to your self a "just an amateur", I would love to see what you could do if your were a "professional".  
In a single word, your work is impressive!! I really like the "blue berry" picture.

HVDB,
Thank you again, that does work, I was just trying to explore an alternative process.  
Since your first response, I continued to play and I have now solved the grayed-out Inpaint command. This time after I sent it to AP, I used the eraser tool on the expanded area.  Using the erasure tool converted the expanded area into "Partially transparent" and then the Inpatient was no longer grayed-out.  While this worked is is definitely more convoluted than it is worth, so I'll stick to the process that you suggested.

When I was using CS6 and LR I used to follow Anthony Morganti's tutorials.  When I was getting started with Affinity, I translated a few of his Photoshop tutorials into Affinity speak.  This morning I stumbled on 10 YouTube Affinity Photo tutorials that were produced by Morganti.  Morganti's tutorials were well prepared and easy to follow.  Here is a list of seven of his tutorials:
Morganti Affinity Photo tutorials
1 Quick Start
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbgONOJHa0Y
3 Overlays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYDxeDZGQZs&index=4&list=PLllFqBuTM0WI8Pt47wBcg25gcYRufEnY8
5 Introduction to Layers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSEZ9Wxtfow&list=PLllFqBuTM0WI8Pt47wBcg25gcYRufEnY8&index=6
6 Adjustment Layers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcgAfMvbIzw&index=7&list=PLllFqBuTM0WI8Pt47wBcg25gcYRufEnY8
7 Curves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrp902JJRzs&list=PLllFqBuTM0WI8Pt47wBcg25gcYRufEnY8&index=8
9 Stitch Panorama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn73qiRJkIo&index=10&list=PLllFqBuTM0WI8Pt47wBcg25gcYRufEnY8
10 Merge to HDR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGm4K-bWp8I&index=11&list=PLllFqBuTM0WI8Pt47wBcg25gcYRufEnY8

Thank you.  I am trying to translate PS into AP and that instruction baffled me.

Here is the PS link: 
 
The specific step that threw me was when the author to right click on the line and drag down to "stroke path".