dominik

Hello @ZhangX,
it is not possible to select multiple guides and move them together. You can only move them one at a time.
If you want to move all of them precisely you can use guide manager and do some math there. E.g. if you type into a guide's vertical position 30mm+5 the guide will be moved exactly 5mm. You can repeat this with every other guide and move them with precision. But it is not as quick as selecting all of them and moving.
In general guides are treated differently from vector objects. This is the current state. There have been requests to treat them more like special vector objects so that every circle or rectangle could be used as a guide.
d.

Hello @Pyanepsion,
For a very small puzzle, I proceed as follows: after creating the pieces individually and assigning them a slight 3D fx, I place a copy of the photo inside each of them.
It's then possible to move one of the pieces.
If I want a ghost image of the moved piece, I duplicate it before moving it, remove the 3D fx and reduce its opacity.
For the background, I place a very light grey square under the pieces.
I've attached a very simple example of four pieces, with and without ghost image. 
I'm well aware that this method can't be used for large puzzles, as it requires a lot of manipulation, but I'm just adding my voice to the discussion.

Hello @Pyanepsion,
an interesting question - or better challenge - to do this in AD 🙂
To make it look really convincing you have to take care of all those light reflections on each puzzle item. I think with some of the samples @v_kyr presented above as a starting point and then doing some warping for perspective will give you good results.
But it will be harder to create those 3D effects to each single element.
d.

Select the Text Box with the Move Tool by clicking once. The switch to the Node Tool. This brings up the boundaries of the warp group.
d.

Thank you for the various responses, most of which would solve my problem neatly. 
I was especially pleased to see thomaso's and v_kyr's comments that I can just use a browser to link directly to the pertinent help file... something that had never occured to me.
Now that I know where the help files are located, I can do all sorts of things. I've been manipulating lproj files for years, but it never occured to me to actually look inside one! Learn something new every day etc. 

I appreciate the quick and very useful responses!

Hi @evtonic3,
I think you can achieve this by switching to the Node Tool (A) and click on the icon 'Reverse curve', see screenshot.
d.

Hello @Goofy,
it is a very complex question you are asking but the key in your question is 'collaborative'. If you need to exchange designs or files with others that are working with Adobe then Adobe is the way to go. Only this way you will have guaranteed compatibility.
If you plan on designing mainly on your own and delivering drafts and releases e.g. only as PDF that can be the base of a collaborative communication about ýour designs then you could very well use Affinity.
d.

Hello @hopiamainipopcorn and welcome to the forum.
Before giving you some answers I want to recommend that you split up so many questions in seperat posts. This will be more usefull for future readers to find the same answers.
Regarding viewing colors in a different way: in the swatches panel there is a little 'hamburger menu' at the top right (three horizontal lines). Look there for 'Appearance > Show as List'. That should do, I hope.
 
It is hard to give you an answer to that question without knowing what the issue is. What kind of layers are not visible? Can you propabely provide a sample file that does not work?
 
You simply drag and drop layers between Affinity apps. Even from one file within APh to another open file. Just try it.
You also can drag image files from Finder or Explorer into Affinity apps.
Cheers,
d.

Hello @Goofy,
it is a very complex question you are asking but the key in your question is 'collaborative'. If you need to exchange designs or files with others that are working with Adobe then Adobe is the way to go. Only this way you will have guaranteed compatibility.
If you plan on designing mainly on your own and delivering drafts and releases e.g. only as PDF that can be the base of a collaborative communication about ýour designs then you could very well use Affinity.
d.

AI reminds me of the transition from traditional print publishing where it required a team of designers, typesetters, technicians, etc to do the same work a single individual could perform using a Mac and Aldus Freehand and/or PageMaker. Yes, jobs will change, some may even disappear with new technology, but it also opens up new opportunities that we could not have imagined previously.
I recall early on many designers I knew refused to use digital tools until they could no longer compete with the timelines, costs, and flexibility of digital work. Early on I even had a boss that insisted I hand-code Postscript as he felt it was more 'efficient' going to the image setter than the 'garbage' WYSIWYG apps produced.  I see AI being adopted in a similar manner, where the new tools will will enable creatives to further cut timelines, costs and provide additional value (and opportunities) in ways we've yet to imagine.
Personally, I don't see Serif being competitive in this market as many other companies have significant leads (and expertise) already. Also, Serif is still struggling to add basic features that have been missing from the start (ahem, right to left text support, auto-trace, ePub export, etc, etc) let alone fix the countless bugs, including those that still remain from the v1.x releases. I mean the 'balanced dashed lines' and 'running headers' in 2.1 are basic hygiene features today, not headline release features.
I just don't see Serif meaningfully competing in anything AI related anytime soon.

Suggestions for the Guide Manager:
1. When clicking the + icon to create a new guide, have a dialog pop up with a field active/ready to enter a measurement; type Enter/Return to close the dialog and add the guide.
IMHO this is logical and saves time, especially for complex documents where many guides are required. Currently, clicking + automatically adds a new guide in the middle of the page, which is almost never what's needed. So the workflow is:
click + double click the value of the new guide enter a value repeat for each new guide needed If the + could be accessible by keyboard shortcut, major productivity bonus! (Workflow: shortcut, number, enter)
2. Allow the ability to save guide presets. I'd consider this a nice addition, but very low on the list of priorities.
Really appreciate the changes and additions so far. Guide color will be a great addition when it happens, as will the angled/complex guides!

The increasing negativity towards Affinity on these forums is becoming worrisome. I'm unsure whether it stems from disappointment or frustration, but it's unfair for some users to constantly criticize Affinity, especially with the release of a new version that has impressive features. Is there something I'm overlooking? As far as I know, Affinity is still performing well on my devices.

Danke für die Tipps, es hat geholfen!!

For Photo, that's a setting under the Document menu.

... oder prüfe zwei weitere Orte, um eine dem Text evtl. zugewiesene Hintergrundfarbe zu entfernen:
• Zeichen-Palette: Hintergrundfarbe
• Absatz-Palette: Dekoration.

Hi @Bruceki22,
there is no option to change that behaviour.
The single left click was changed to right click during the beta period due to common requests.
d.

Hello @KristianK,
in the snapping manager make sure to have selected 'Snap to shape key points' and 'Snap to object geometry'. And also make sure to have snapping turned on.
In order to drag a certain object node together with all other nodes switch to the Node Tool (a).
Then hit CTRL+A to select all nodes of the object you want to move.
Then grab the node you want to position and move it over to the destination node.
If everything is set correctly you will see snapping guides and nodes snap exactly onto each other.
d.

Was only a rough sketch to give the OP an idea, but I'd advocate learning better flash photography for sure, the less post editing the better in my book.

While the previous posters did offer very good solutions and examples I think they are quite labourious. I'm not critizing this, in contrary I confirm this from my own experience.
A possible compromise would be to just reduce the shadow. This can be done relatively easy and makes an image a little less flash exposed.
Add a levels adjustment layer above the image. Adjust the Master curve in a way that the shadows become less pronounced. Note: everything else in the image will look faded in this stage. Invert the curve adjustmen's mask (in APh make sure the adjustmen layer is active. Then menu 'Select > Invert Pixel Selection'). Switch to the paint brush tool and choose a round brush. Adjust it's softness to about 65% and set it's transparency to 40% (or more). Choose white as foreground colour. Now you can paint in on the adjustment layer's mask the effect of the adjustment. By painting several times you can slowly approach the desired effect. In those areas where the shadow has very sharp edges you might set a softness value of 95% (I'm writing this out of my head, you might want to experiment a little with those values). I hope this offers another approach to your task.
d.

While the previous posters did offer very good solutions and examples I think they are quite labourious. I'm not critizing this, in contrary I confirm this from my own experience.
A possible compromise would be to just reduce the shadow. This can be done relatively easy and makes an image a little less flash exposed.
Add a levels adjustment layer above the image. Adjust the Master curve in a way that the shadows become less pronounced. Note: everything else in the image will look faded in this stage. Invert the curve adjustmen's mask (in APh make sure the adjustmen layer is active. Then menu 'Select > Invert Pixel Selection'). Switch to the paint brush tool and choose a round brush. Adjust it's softness to about 65% and set it's transparency to 40% (or more). Choose white as foreground colour. Now you can paint in on the adjustment layer's mask the effect of the adjustment. By painting several times you can slowly approach the desired effect. In those areas where the shadow has very sharp edges you might set a softness value of 95% (I'm writing this out of my head, you might want to experiment a little with those values). I hope this offers another approach to your task.
d.

Hi All,
An update to the beta has just been made available which we are expecting to be the build we release publicly very soon! This means you can update your beta version to be the same code as what we will be our initial public release of 2.1.
We will therefore now have a period where the latest beta version is the same as the release version. That will remain the case until we begin a fresh beta which will either be a patch to 2.1 if we feel it's needed, or hopefully moving straight to the first beta of 2.2. At that point you will be able to update the beta versions you currently have installed for that latest update to test. 
During the period that 2.1.0.1799 is in sync with the release build (when 2.1 is made public) it's up to you if you want to continue to report any bugs in the beta forums or the main bug reporting forums.
I want to take this opportunity to thank you all so much for being so actively involved with the testing of 2.1 - along with all the new features and improvements we have got through a huge number of fixes, and that's only been possible with having so many of you putting it through it's paces. It's made a huge difference, and we're very much looking forward to working with you all on the next beta!
All the best,
Ash

Good point, @dominik! There are various (free) tools online for merging several PDF files. For instance
https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/merge-pdf.html
https://smallpdf.com/merge-pdf
https://pdfsam.org/downloads/
etc.

Hello @Wittles and welcome to the forum.
I think there is no 'best go-to process' because it all depends on your specific needs. It makes a big difference if you are tracing line-art in comparison to tracing a photo.
A good and free of costs start is to try out Inkscape.
And I suggest you to go through the above referenced list of vectorizer tools. Perhaps you can also provide some examples of what you want to rasterize and some of us can come up with more detailed suggestions.
d.
 

Hi All,
Thanks again for all your continued help with this release. We are getting very close to launch. This will be the final beta build before what will hopefully be our first release candidate next week. For that reason we are not really making any further significant changes (or anything which could be considered risky). 
The main thing I want to make you all aware of is that we have decided to not release the cross-references feature with 2.1. For that reason this feature has been removed from this week's build.
Any documents you may have created which include cross references will still open (and they will even still update), but you will not be able to edit or create new cross-references in 2.1. We understand this might be disappointing for some of you, however we will be moving into 2.2 beta very shortly after 2.1 release, and as soon as a 2.2 beta is available that will include cross-references again (and will definitely make it to 2.2 release!)
We have made this decision primarily as we have been working on adding better formatting options (as have been requested on these forums) into the feature, but we have not quite managed to get it to a point where we feel it will be releasable in time - and considering all the other great stuff / fixes we have put into 2.1 we don't want to delay the whole of 2.1 because of it.

Other than that in this build it's mostly just fixes which you can see in this thread.
Thanks,
Ash

In the latest update (1736) we have now made it so single click adds a mask and alt-click gives the expanded drop down...