verysame

You can use the Channel Mixer.
Here are the steps:
 
Duplicate your base layer three times Add a Channel Mixer adjustment to each layer and nest the adjustments respectively Now you need to split the channels so in order to extract the red channel you pick the Green from the Output Channel in the Channel Mixer and move the red to -200 and the blue to -200, same goes for the Blue Channel, you move the red to -200 and the blue to -200. At the end of the operation, you're left with the red channel only Repeat the process above for the remaining two channels: so, for the green just use the Red and Blue channels and move to -200 respectively the red and blue Once you've done, change the blend mode of the two top layers to ADD and now you get the default beauty pass with no chromatic aberration yet Start shifting the two top layers in the direction that pleases the look you are looking for, you'll see the Chromatic Aberration showing up as you move the layers. Here's an example:
 
Regular beauty pass

 
With Chromatic Aberration

 
You could even add some lens distortion, either to the individual layers or to the top of the stack, it's up to you.
 
 
This is the layer setup:

Glenda,
 
You don't need to group the objects, just select them all and press A on the keyboard:
 

As it is for me as I don't use Wet Edges with the basic brushes and every time I switch to a brush that uses it and I go back to the basic brush (or many other brushes from other categories) I have to switch the Wet Edge off. What is even worse, I can't obviously memorize this fastidious setting for all the brushes so for lots of brushes from other categories that don't use the Wet Edge I end up being extremely confused as I can't tell for sure what their original setting was. So, I have to select a basic brush because I know it doesn't use Wet Edge, switch to the other category I want use the brush from, and finally find out what its setting is. Unbelievable.

I know we had this conversation in the past and I understand for some of you the way it works makes sense, but it totally doesn't for me (and I'm sure, for others).
So, I'm formally requesting to accommodate for users like me who are used to other bitmap editing software were this extremely confusing behavior doesn't happen.
I don't want to have to tweak myriads of brush settings only to avoid something that can be done once and for all by adding a simple option.
The screen record below shows the issue and the fix is not by changing one of the three status option per-brush. A simpler way exists.
2020-08-26 10-57-50.mp4

Some brushes use the Wet Edges mode but changing to a brush that by default doesn't use that setting doesn't revert the Wet Edges to off. This is very confusing. I can't remember each brush setting and there's no way to know whether the setting were originally designed to have the Wet Edge on or off.
Interestingly among the default brush libraries this doesn't seem to happen only with the OIL brushes which switch Wet Edges on and off based on the factory settings.
 
Thanks @walt.farrell for the heads up on a better topic title.

Press the V key. Move the cursor toward the center points of any of the sides and two arrows headed to opposite directions will show up.
Now you can skew.

Quick question,
 
Is it possible to export each individual layer as a separate file?
The reason is, I'm truly considering to ditch Illustrator and use AD as my main vector software.
At the moment, I'm kind of tied to Illustrator because of its integration with After Effects. That said, if I can export separate layers, then I can easily create comps in AE skipping AI altogether :)

You can use the Channel Mixer.
Here are the steps:
 
Duplicate your base layer three times Add a Channel Mixer adjustment to each layer and nest the adjustments respectively Now you need to split the channels so in order to extract the red channel you pick the Green from the Output Channel in the Channel Mixer and move the red to -200 and the blue to -200, same goes for the Blue Channel, you move the red to -200 and the blue to -200. At the end of the operation, you're left with the red channel only Repeat the process above for the remaining two channels: so, for the green just use the Red and Blue channels and move to -200 respectively the red and blue Once you've done, change the blend mode of the two top layers to ADD and now you get the default beauty pass with no chromatic aberration yet Start shifting the two top layers in the direction that pleases the look you are looking for, you'll see the Chromatic Aberration showing up as you move the layers. Here's an example:
 
Regular beauty pass

 
With Chromatic Aberration

 
You could even add some lens distortion, either to the individual layers or to the top of the stack, it's up to you.
 
 
This is the layer setup:

No answer from the developers. Any particular reason for that?

Press the V key. Move the cursor toward the center points of any of the sides and two arrows headed to opposite directions will show up.
Now you can skew.

I don't know why they designed it that way, but they did. I see that some find it confusing.
My point is that the function you asked for "a reset to factory settings" won't resolve the confusion. You need to request something else, perhaps a Preference that says: If a brush specifies "do not set Wet Edges" then turn Wet Edges off.
Then you (and others who don't like the current behavior) can enable that option, and the users who understand the current behavior and like what it does can leave that option disabled.

Right and most likely the others who are asking for this are also here on this forum. 

I never heard any AE artists saying they want an After Effects alternative, and I've been in this industry for 20 years. Mind you, I'm not saying people never complain, but wishing an Affinity After Effects nope, really, never happened. 

A few facts. Anyone in this industry working professionally knows After Effects is not just a 2d animation program, it's way more than that. So, it would actually make sense to either ask for a 2d animation software or (better) look for it (and there are options), but an AE alternative? Do you guys realize what a huge demand is that? Let's just pretend it didn't happen.. 

After Effects animators market's demand would never make an AE artist think  "I have spent all this time learning and finessing my skills, growth a good network, finally paying my bills, feeding my family and get a decent living, let's screw it and start over with a software which will be buggy, will under perform, unknown and that only a few will use. At least il will cost me only 50 bucks"

What an AE artist thinks from time to time is "I should probably learn Nuke or get better with Cinema 4D".

So, either these frequent requests come from people who is getting excited about Affinity (without knowing the limits of the product yet), or doesn't work professionally, hence asking for an AE alternative it's like asking for a scooter with a Ferrari in mind.

On top of that, one thing is clear: you people don't realize what Serif can or can't do. People requesting publisher, a dam, editing, animation.. In the meantime AP and AD updates languish, and this can only get worse. Oh, and let's not forget that a new AE today is not like AE 20 years ago when Mac was dominating the graphic design market: nowadays it has to be released for Windows as one of the major platform and considered how much Serif is struggling with their current products for Windows in terms of stability and performance, your dreams are really going nowhere.

P. S. Before someone will start typing in response to my last sentence, because I know there are people here very sensitive about certain things, remember: you might be fine with your AP/AD for the job you do. I know for a fact that the same isn't true for my type of work.

Thank you @MEB and @Chris B for providing your feedback and confirming the issues.
I'm glad you were able to confirm the unexpected behavior and that this will be looked into.
Sorry for having insisted. I thought the behavior was odd and thus I was trying to get this noticed. I understand that it might take some time to get feedback and I'll keep that in mind for my future posts.
Thanks and stay safe.

Hi verysame,
I'm sorry for the delay getting back to you. I can assure you we are not ignoring you or anyone else. As walt mentioned, sometimes, we are a little more busy than usual or may take some more time to reply due to some circumstances (covid-19, working from home, some staff on holidays etc). Thanks for understanding.
Regarding your issues:
1. Selection from hidden layers is not possible - this is indeed a limitation on both OS's. I've passed your feedback to the dev team to see if this can be improved.
2. I confirm that adding multiple selections does select the layers on Windows which shouldn't be happening (works fine on macOS). I've logged this to be looked at as well.
Thanks for your report and support.

Hi verysame,
I'd just like to quickly chime in here. First of all, I am really sorry you got to a point where you felt like you were being ignored. That is not the case. As MEB and Walt both said, Serif employees are currently working from home and though we are coping well, we still do not have all the available resources we normally would. 
Also, a lot of people are taking holidays to maintain their mental health as well as just wanting some time off and we do not have the luxury of face to face communication. We don't always have the immediate answers and often, we would go and have a chat with other team members or the developers etc. We do have ways of communication now, but it is not quite as good as going up and having a face to face chat.
When reporting a potential bug, we would normally ask for as much information as possible. This includes videos, screenshots, Affinity files, image files etc. and also a written description. For example, what you're doing, what you expect to happen and what is actually happening as outlined here.
We usually work off a ticket system which prevents us from missing posts but I have failed miserably to get back to you in a reasonable time for which I do apologise. Walt (and some other users) kindly assist us a hell of a lot on the forum and if I see he (or they) have replied, I normally follow the thread to keep tabs on it but this time I did not  
MEB has responded and confirmed that both points raised have been passed back to the developers. So thank you for taking the time to let us know. We are always grateful for our customers taking time to report things to us.
Again, sorry for making you feel like you were being ignored—it was not my or our intention. 

When combining selections from across multiple layers by CTRL + left clicking on the layer we want to copy the selection from, the layer also gets selected.
If I want to use that selection to mask the active layer I then need to select the active layer only to de-select the other layer.
1.8.3.641

Thank you for providing your feedback, Walt. I feel at least there's someone to have a conversation with here.
As for the workload if you check this section of the forum other threads are receiving contributions from moderators. So, their silence regarding my posts is a mystery to me.
As for whether the behavior can be considered a bug or not, you're right. It could be something be worth mentioning in the feedback section. That said, it would be logical for some moderator to chime in on this and move the thread to the proper section if they see fit.
But I guess we can agree on the fact that the current behavior has no reasonable purpose and it actually turns out to be counter-productive (unless you see some use of it).
The thing is, with the moderators neglecting my post here the there's no way we can push this forward towards a productive discussion.
Again, thanks for participating.

I'm a registered user since 2016 and I know they do respond, they did in the past.
From my experience, most of the times they do it if it's a new user but I think taking care of older user it's as well important.
I still hope they'll respond here. The points I suggested are among some of the most requested. I discussed Affinity on other forums, blogs, and among the difficulties, short comes, and issues often raised by other users, these are by far the most common ones. It would be a mistake to ignore them.

No answer from the developers. Any particular reason for that?

Still hoping to see some of the following addressed soon.
The gradient tool
The use of the gradient tool is quite convoluted at the moment.
It never picks the default fill colors. It would be better if the user could freely move both sides of the gradient tool, whereas right now one side is always locked as a pivot. It makes the placement of the gradient tool more complicated than it needs to be. It always resets to its default status. It would be very handy if it could just start from the last settings used (I use the Radial type a lot). Other quirks
Selections: having to use the buttons to add, subtract, intersect slows down the workflow quite a lot. There’s really no chance to use the shortcuts here? When soloing a layer there’s no way to keep the layer soloed and preview its mask’s content at the same time. Boolean operations for selections among multiple layers it’s still not possible. It’s not possible to create a selection from an hidden layer. These are all aspects that can speed up the work tremendously, especially for people who do use the keyboard a lot.
Hope to see some reaction to this post.
 
 

I've reported several times this issue in the past. Only a few layers are already able to take the CPU to the roof.
The problem is not simply that Affinity takes advantage of all the CPU available but also that, at least in my case, the fan start spinning like crazy and the amount of noise after a while is unbearable.
As I said in the past, this only happens with Affinity software. The rest of the programs I use rarely trigger similar situations. Most of the time, even when the CPU is under stress, fan are running at normal speed.
There's probably something else going on. 

Do you know how the data structure is stored? Is it a list [witdth, height, 2] matrix or two [width, height] matrixes?
And, no matter how they are stored, they are two matrixes with the same structure, containing the same data type values.
So, once again, there is no excuse for not being able to perform the same operations on a "opacity map" matrix that can be performed on a "greyscale" matrix.

I'm a coder and I know what I'm talking about. One of the last plugins I coded as a 3D vertex painting set of tools. It deals with RGB and, optionally, with an opacity map. The same set of code that is used for each of the R, G and B channels (that are, fundamentally, three greyscale channels), is the one I also use for the opacity map.
I even coded Dodge, Burn and Blur tools and they work the same at the RGB level as they work at the opacity level.

@walt.farrell,
The brushes are so messed up since serif started using Windows Ink. For example there's nothing consistent with the brush shortcut not working, freezing, between the retail and beta versions. If I use Windows Ink, I can not change the size of the brushes using the common shortcut for a tablet, ALT + TAP + DRAG. Sometimes I can. Then add to that, using the pen pressure to change size, or whatever will not work. It takes re-booting AP to get something to work.
Also the wet edges issue, is real. I've been using water color brushes, then switched to any one of the basic brushes, and the wet edges box was still checked. Even though in the properties of the brushes I have them set to not use wet edges. I understand the water color brushes needing wet edges but others do not and that setting seems to stick globally. Any other type brushes used after using a water color will automatically have wet edges checked. Going from basic (or others) to a water color brush, does not require manually checking the wet edges box, it's done behind the scenes (automatically).
FWIW, I've given up trying to use my Wacom with the beta, it's pure insanity to keep trying the same thing and expect different outcomes. I wished they had left well enough alone, I had no problems back with versions 1.6.

Here's a video of how the wet edges are behaving or misbehaving. I'm not sure if it is a bug or it's by design. I would think since the brushes that need wet edges sets this without manual input, when changing from a water color or other brush with wet edges to one that does not need wet edges and the setting is Do not Set wet edges, it would not remain selected in the context toolbar.
2020-03-03_21-46-17.mp4

Serif sucessfully avoided that business opportunity for 20+ years. They do not pose any threat to Adobe. This is budget software in an entirely different league.
And as you can see with the “huge massive improvements” to strokes and boolean operations there is no technological threat or innovation threat... at.. ALL.
Sometimes the explanation is simple.