h_d

It wasn't fixed for this build (1.9.0.206) yet.

Not easy if you want to edit the text afterwards, but if it's a short phrase you could:
Create each letter of the phrase as a separate layer of artistic text and adjust alignment and spacing as required'

 
Place the images in the document and then clip them to the individual letters:

(Cats from Unsplash).
IMO this makes it slightly easier to adjust the images to fit the letterforms, while retaining the ability to edit the individual letters of the text.
 

Hi @K Marie and welcome! It may depend a bit on where you bought your software from, but generally the procedure is pretty seamless. When you start up your new Mac you'll be stepped through the transfer process which will include options to duplicate application files, user settings and files, passwords etc. It's all handled by macOS Migration Assistant. Your Affinity licences should cover multiple Macs (as long as they're for personal use). 
The only thing I've found is that the migration process can be quite slow - two or three hours seems common, especially if it's running over wifi, which it will need to if you're moving to a laptop, as they don't have built-in ethernet. So give yourself plenty of time 
Cheers,
H

It sounds as though the paragraph style is set to align to the baseline grid. Try unchecking this setting:
 

Cheers,
H

If you're using standard squared-up images then placing them in a rectangular Picture Frame gives you a lot of control, including the ability to add a stroked border. 

 
You can even convert the frame to a curve, giving you the option to modify its outline, while retaining the resizing and movement controls: 
 


Cheers,
H

Oh I figured out the meaning behind the horizontal line beneath layers. Here it is for those who also want to know.

The blue line beneath each layer indicates the color of the "selection lines" that appear around the object when selected with the Move Tool.
Here is an example where I changed the color of the layer to dark red using: Right-click a layer → Properties → Click on the current color to change it.

Only layers will have such a line beneath them.
Thank you @MattP for the explanation, it just took me some time to figure it out. 

We sort of have that already. From the File - Open dialog, look down the sidebar for Media - Photos and that will give you access to the images in your Apple Photos library. 

 
However, it's pretty clunky - sometimes it will initially only display my Photo Booth library. On top of that, if you open a file in this way, and then close it (even without editing),  the next time you run File - Open you start deep in the normally hidden Photos.library directory structure, and heaven knows what damage you could do to the database if you start messing with that.
I also don't know what the effect would be in Apple Photos if you opened an image in this way, edited and saved it.  Photos doesn't recognise .afphoto documents, so you'd have to manually flatten it to retain .jpg format. Even then I don't know what effect it would have on Apple Photos, and I'm somewhat reluctant to experiment with it. And I don't even want to begin to think about a workflow for raw files...
 

We sort of have that already. From the File - Open dialog, look down the sidebar for Media - Photos and that will give you access to the images in your Apple Photos library. 

 
However, it's pretty clunky - sometimes it will initially only display my Photo Booth library. On top of that, if you open a file in this way, and then close it (even without editing),  the next time you run File - Open you start deep in the normally hidden Photos.library directory structure, and heaven knows what damage you could do to the database if you start messing with that.
I also don't know what the effect would be in Apple Photos if you opened an image in this way, edited and saved it.  Photos doesn't recognise .afphoto documents, so you'd have to manually flatten it to retain .jpg format. Even then I don't know what effect it would have on Apple Photos, and I'm somewhat reluctant to experiment with it. And I don't even want to begin to think about a workflow for raw files...
 

Alternatively you could use the Selection Brush (or Flood Selection Tool) to select everything except the gemstone, then a Levels adjustment to lighten the background to white while leaving the shadow with a slight grey tone:

 

Hi @Stuido Ryan Coover and welcome! You can also export InDesign documents as .idml files and import these into Affinity Publisher. Again, it's never going to be a perfect process and there are bound to be rough edges. You certainly can't open InDesign docs directly in Publisher, and any apply sales person who says you can is fibbing.

Done and done.

Hi @Stuido Ryan Coover and welcome! You can also export InDesign documents as .idml files and import these into Affinity Publisher. Again, it's never going to be a perfect process and there are bound to be rough edges. You certainly can't open InDesign docs directly in Publisher, and any apply sales person who says you can is fibbing.

Hi @h_d Thanks for sharing this issue. I've just had a look and it has been logged so I will add your information and pass it on to the development team.

Cheers 👍

Worse still, the name of the exported .pdf is inserted into the Filename field in the original .afpub document, until you close and re-open the .afpub.
I think this is a bug, or at the very least unexpected behaviour - I'll report it in the Beta forum as it persists in build 1.9.0.850 and it's unlikely to be fixed for the present release builds.
One get-round is to insert the Title field (although you'll have to type in the .afpub extension). This survives the export to pdf:

 
Cheers,
H

Thanks for reporting this @h_d. Issue logged to be looked at.

Could the dialog remember the last entered values, please. It could also offer a presets facility.  It has quickly become tedious having to change the values away from 32 x 32 every time.

Hi h_d,
Thanks for reporting this. I've logged the issue to be looked at.

Hi,
This probably something of an edge case as it's not often you'd want to blur and sharpen the same image, but here goes...
Open an image, apply a Gaussian Blur layer effect (I set the blur to around 0.8px and checked Preserve Alpha):

Apply a High Pass Live Filter. Adjust radius to bring out contrast. A black border starts to appear around the image, increasing in thickness as the radius is increased:

Set blend mode of live filter to Soft Light (Overlay, Hard Light, Vivid Light will also work):
 

Close live filter dialog, zoom in and out of image. Transient rectangles with borders of various thicknesses come and go across the image:
     
Select the image layer and Merge Visible:

Yikes.
I've attached the .afphoto doc. It appears to happen with any image, in both release (1.8.6) and beta versions of Photo. I'm running macOS 11.0.1 Big Sur.
Cheers,
H 
 
 
yikes.afphoto

I guess that is the strength of outfits like Adobe or Phase One. That is not to decry AP, it is great software. What is strange though is that ON1 2021 recognises the lens and does an auto adjust and I thought they used Lensfun.

@RoyN
Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums  
1.8.6 is compatible with High Sierra, this release ADDS compatibility with 11.0 Big Sur without removing any earlier compatibility
h_d's info is correct, and both these are true. The Mac App Store version has a lower OS compatibility requirement due to sandboxing issues in Lion 10.7 and Mountain Lion 10.8, meaning the Affinity Store version requires macOS 10.9 or above.

Thank h_d. Issue logged to be looked at.

Hi @Dankzy and welcome! Just a possibility - click the More button in the Contextual Toolbar and make sure that Accumulation is set to 100%:

 

Not easy if you want to edit the text afterwards, but if it's a short phrase you could:
Create each letter of the phrase as a separate layer of artistic text and adjust alignment and spacing as required'

 
Place the images in the document and then clip them to the individual letters:

(Cats from Unsplash).
IMO this makes it slightly easier to adjust the images to fit the letterforms, while retaining the ability to edit the individual letters of the text.
 

Another way, if you're using Publisher, you could convert the word to curves, convert each letter to a picture frame, and then insert a picture into each one.

As a possible alternative, you can use a radial fill with the opacity at the centre set to zero - it gives you a bit more control over the lighting effect for a bit of that 3-D bubbly appearance: