Greyfox

@walt.farrell
@R C-R
Thanks you both.,
 

For your needs, Templates are the way to go. It is not that easy to save over them, if you use them properly. You select a Template while doing File > New, and you get an Unnamed document. If you Save that document you get a .afpub file, not a .aftemplate file.

You can store template folders wherever you want, as long as they are accessible from your user account, & have as many as you want, named however you like. IOW, it is completely flexible so you can set it up however makes the most sense to you.
Also, like Walt said, you can't easily overwrite template files. The only way I know to do that is from the New > Templates > Your Templates window to select one of the *.aftemplate files shown in the chosen folder & click the Edit button instead of the Create or Cancel ones, then make edits to it, & then saving it.

@R C-R @Ron P.
Thanks for your input.
I am aware of Affinity's use of the xmpMM:SoftwareAgent tag but unfortunately that tag isn't recognized by my asset management software. The more commonly used EXIF IFD Software TAG 305 is. and Tag 305 is supposed to be updated when the image has been rotated, trimmed or retouched.
 

Thank you, worked like a charm.  😃

Glad my post helped Greyfox. I am not having a problem with the image opening in Affinity V2 from ACDSee as you can see from this screen recording. This was using a raw file but I tried it with jpeg & tiff files & all the images opened ok. The video is in real time so, as you can see, it takes a few seconds to open the image in Affinity. This has been commented on in other posts & has been logged with the developers.
Affinity V2 from ACDsee.wmv    

Thank you. It took me a while to find the tick box to turn off Auto distribute, and I wish the display of the measurement was larger so I could see it clearly, but yes, that works for me. I take it that when you say ..."Save measure value" you mean remember what it was.
I notice that the Auto distribute tick boxes return to ticked (enabled) after each use. Is there a way of having them remember the selected state until manually changed?

+1. 
I've spend quite some time today trying to get Ctrl to access the node tool from the pen tool without success. I guess I should have searched the bugs forum earlier. Note the issue applies to both Designer and Publisher 19.1.979

Nice as Affinity Designer is, after years of working with DrawPlus, I'm finding it hard to make the change to the newer Affinity product.
Today a simple task, to change an old bitmap logo to a vector based one.  Right from the outset, I couldn't find a b-spline tool . Spent some time on line searching, and it seems some of the coding for it has been in the product for a few years, but it has never been activated. Each year people have asked about when a b-spline tool would be available, but as far as I can see,  there has never been a positive commitment. So here in 2021, I'll ask the question again "when can we expect a b-spline tool?"
I spent some time with the pen tool smart mode, but the amount of re-work necessary to get decent curves was just way too daunting.
Next issue, I couldn't find an arc tool.  What I needed was a simple quadrant.  Was able to produce one by drawing a circle, then subtracting two rectangles to cut off the unwanted bits. Surely there must be a less clunky way?
In the end it was taking too much time so I took the easy way out and went back and did the job in DrawPlus X8.

What happens if you select the "square object" before File->Print, and then select "Selection"  for range in the print dialog. That should print the selection in the centre of the printer paper size.

Hello Grayfox,
The two image layers were pasted into Affinity Photo via Window's Snipping Tool clipboard.
Interesting enough - I tried the same workflow this morning and it is working properly. I also tried bringing the image into the file with the File>Place command, and all is working as expected. I will keep an eye on the issue and report back if I can identify a "trigger" that is causing this bug.
Thank you Andy and Mark for chiming-in.

I’m up and running again after following instructions from the Topaz Tech help to copy/paste the plugin tltopazstudio2ps_64.8bf from the first location listed below to the second location listed below.
C:\Program Files\Topaz Labs LLC\Topaz Studio 2\PS_Plugins_x64 and
C:Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 2020\Plugins\PS_Plugins_x64
I have to commend the Topaz Tech folk as my experience with them has been good.
 
 
 

As perhaps a simpler solution, set the blend mode of the halftone to Vivid light.

True. It is very faint and I hadn't noticed it.
Interestingly when I turn off the half tone layer, and zoom the image back to around 30-40%, I see a very distinct white border around the outer circumference of the gradient.
Not sure the screen grab will show it as much as it shows on my screen.
 
 

I remembered that video, too. A quick search on YouTube for "Affinity Photo composite" gave me a quick answer. Here's your link:
 

By the way, here's another compositing video from James (from that same YouTube search):
 

The Topaz AI plugins are now in a different folder to the older legacy plugins.  The screen shot below shows my plugin settings and the menu items.
Whilst I have the plugin programs on C:\, the asset folders (.trg) for them are on a local data drive.
Are you able to get any clues from Windows Event Viewer?.  Another option is to start the Topaz AI programs freestanding, and in the Help menus, turn on File Logging. The log files then produced may provide a lead. The log files will be placed in a "Logs" folder within the Topaz Labs LLC assets folder. Typically Denoise AI when used as a plugin (after turning on File Logging) produces two files each run, for example "2021-04-27-00-12-35-Main.tzlog" and "2021-04-27-00-12-35-QML.tzlog". These are readable in Notepad.

The "Enable Transform Origin" button can be useful for this sort of thing.
For "symmetrical" shapes it's fine, others may need flipping after moving
 
flip.mp4

Although this is not exactly accurate, but I would use a measure (Move tool, select middle rectangle, press Ctrl, point to left rectangle, save/remember measure value), and then enter this value in Distribute.

Yes :-) For hard-to-remember numbers, I use Screenshot/PrtScr (Print Screen), from which I will describe it.

Easy in Affinity apps, too. Enable Snap To Gaps And Sizes in the snapping options and then drag the third window until the HUD informs you that the distance between adjacent windows is equal.
Keep that option disabled when you don't actually need it; it can exponentially impact the app's performance as the complexity of the document increases.

Thank you. I use Faststone Capture for screen shots. That also gets around the problem of the dimension being too small for me to read, as I can zoom the screen grab. 👍

Official YouTube channel of Affinity Photo: Advanced layer options -> Resize layer thumbnails [& colour code layers, chequered background].
Works for Designer, Photo & Publisher.

Hi @SeanZ, here's a quick breakdown of the pixel formats and what happens:
As you've observed, when you open a RAW file in Affinity Photo it's processed in a working pixel format of 32-bit float, which is unbounded. This prevents values outside the range of 0-1 from being clipped and discarded, and allows for highlight recovery. Colour operations are processed in ROMM RGB (ProPhoto), which helps colour fidelity even if the intended output colour space is sRGB. You are essentially working in the highest quality that is reasonable.
When you click Develop, by default, the pixel format is converted to 16-bit integer, which is not unbounded. Any values outside the range of 0-1 will be clipped and rounded, so you should ensure you are happy with the tones before you proceed (e.g. using highlight recovery, changing black point etc). The colour space is also converted to whichever option you have chosen—by default, this is sRGB, but you can change this by clicking the Profiles option on the right hand side and choosing another output profile like ROMM RGB or Adobe RGB.
I say by default, because you can change the output format to 32-bit HDR on the develop assistant (the tuxedo/suit icon on the top toolbar). Be very mindful, however, that 32-bit in Affinity Photo is a linear compositing format as opposed to nonlinear. Adjustments will behave differently (typically they will seem more sensitive) and blend modes may produce unexpected results. I would avoid working in 32-bit unless you either want to author HDR/EDR content—this is not the same as HDR merging and tone mapping—or you need the precision for more esoteric genres like deep sky astrophotography. A lot of customers think working in 32-bit is going to offer them the best quality possible. Whilst this is technically true, there are many caveats and I would seriously advise against it unless you have a specific requirement for this format.
To answer your questions:
Technically, the answer is yes, but it's like I mentioned above: unless you have a very specific requirement to work in 32-bit, any loss in quality will be negligible. 16-bit nonlinear precision is more than enough for 99% of image editing use cases. Here's an example of my workflow: I will often choose a wider colour profile like ROMM RGB, then make my image look as flat as possible in the Develop Persona, usually by removing the tone curve and bringing in the highlights slightly if they are clipping. I'll then develop to 16-bit and do all of my tonal adjustments in the main Photo Persona. I have yet to complain about any loss in quality 
The functionality is more or less the same, but the Develop Persona has more intuitive sliders. In fact, in demos I will frequently explain to people that if you want to do some simple destructive edits to an image, you can simply go into that persona and use a few sliders rather than have to build up a layer stack. One key difference will be the white balance slider: when developing a RAW file, it has access to the initial white balance metadata and the slider is measured in Kelvin. Once an image is developed, however, this slider then becomes percentage based and takes on an arbitrary scale.
Whatever works best for you, I think. My approach, which I explained above, is pretty fool proof, but you can do as little or as much work during the initial development as you feel is appropriate, e.g. you might want to add luminance noise reduction during the development stage, perform defringing, change white balance etc. Just be aware that if you perform certain steps like noise reduction during the initial development, you can't undo them. With noise reduction, I prefer to add a live Denoise layer in the Photo Persona, then mask out the areas I want to keep as detailed as possible. Again, though, it's down to personal choice.
Hope that helps!

Serif have given no hints of when 2.0 might arrive, what it might contain, or what it might cost. 2.0 could be the next major release after 1.9, or (after possibly seeing 1.9.3, 1.9.4, etc.) we could see 1.10, 1.11, etc. and then we might not see 2.0 for several years.
All anyone can say right now is buy Affinity products if they do enough right now to let you do your work (or if you simply want to support the company) and don't buy them if they don't have enough functions for you.