LilleG

Hi fizztemo, welcome to the forum.
 
There is a brilliant tip, that I found by mistake.
 
Click on the font bar, so that the pulldown menu appears. The current font will appear, highlighted in a blue bar. Now to find your font....press the font's first letter!

I'm not a professional editor either but $50 for everything you get in Designer, plus the ease of use, is one hell of a bargain.  And I can't wait to buy Photo, (also for $50, I assume?) And I will consider that money well spent also.

If you want to keep the grid, instead of using the straighten tool, use the double-headed arrow just above the grid to rotate the image left or right.  The image will rotate and the grid will remain vertical.

Madame, with your text/object open in AD.  Open the sample file from evtonic3.  Expand the layers in both. 
 
In evtonic3's file select the layer with the text then press and hold the cmd key and press C (to copy it into the clipboard).
 
In your file click on the text/object layer, press and hold the cmd and the shift then press V (to copy the fx into your drawing).  You should see the little fx in your layer to the right of the layer's name.
 
In evtonic3's file select the layer saying Curves Alignment, to select only it actually click on the icon for that line.  Layer1 will NOT be shown as selected.  Press and hold the cmd key and press C (to copy it into the clipboard).
 
In your file with the text/object selected press cmd + V, you will see a Curves Alignment layer added above your text/object.
 
At this point you should have the effect.  I suggest you drag the icon of the Curves Alignment up and drop it into the Icon of the layer above your text/object.
 
To further this effect with your layer selected click the Adjustments (half moon) icon at the bottom of the layers panel.  Select HSL, then play with the sliders.  Especially the Saturation & Luminosity.
 
Notes:
In place of the cmd + C you can use the menu selection Edit -> Copy.
In place of the cmd + V you can use the menu selection Edit -> Paste.
In place of the cmd + shift + V you can use the menu selection Edit -> Paste Style (not just paste, needs to be Paste Style).
In place of clicking on the Adjustments (half moon) icon at the bottom of the layers panel you can use the menu selection Layer ->
New Adjustment -> HSL.

If you want to keep the grid, instead of using the straighten tool, use the double-headed arrow just above the grid to rotate the image left or right.  The image will rotate and the grid will remain vertical.

If you look in Preferences > Performance there is an AutoSave dialogue that you can set to the desired number of seconds between auto-saves.

 

The percentage in the title bar refers to the amount of zoom currently being used.

 

When you have other questions, ask away. There is always someone willing to help. :)

I agree 100%

Some good suggestions grzessnik. I especially would like to see a vector eraser. It is sometimes much faster and more intuitive to erase away an area...

Since I have a very good standalone DAM, I'm selfishly hoping that if Affinity chooses to go this route they will create an extra app that one can buy or not, rather than adding anything more than basic features to Photo and Designer.  I know some of our members would like Media Browser turned into a full-blown DAM but I would prefer them to concentrate on improving the already existing functions and on creating new ones that users are requesting.  

OK, so a car driver buys a caravan and car and has a panic attack cause he can't drive. Surprised? No! This is you, all the kit, none of the training and all of the regret.
 
Stop, take a breath and tell us a few things:
What do you want to do with your photos? Remove red dots from peoples' eyes? Cut the photo to a certain part of the image. Maybe you want to create new montages (Think Sgt Pepper by the Beatles). 
 
What camera do you own? Canon, Nikon, fuji etc. Is it a phone camera, bridge camera, 
What Mac do you own? MacBook Pro/Air, or a desktop model.
 
These new found skills won't happen overnight. It takes about 2 years to be so familiar with a brand new computer/operating system (Windows to Mac OS/Linux/Android etc), that you can teach a newbie from scratch. Cameras not so long. Play with your camera daily, make mistakes, just use the automatic setting first. Train your eye!
 
Read the instruction books; print them out, if they aren't on paper already...read on the bus, bath, lunch break at work. Study one facet, say the rule of thirds. This will become instinctive, your camera should show you this noughts and crosses/tic-tac-toe grid in the view finder/display screen.
 
See pics below. This simple tip, will give instant confidence, as your photos will look a lot better, with zero effort.
 

 
Now go out and photograph the beach/coast or horizon. Then post them on the forum, the good bad and the ugly!
Learn just one new task per week, practice every day and watch your confidence and ability grow. Then once you've mastered that, then you can move on to the next lesson.
 
This is the bit where we can help. Give us questions like, how do I add a sepia effect to a picture? How do I turn a colour picture into black and white? What is exporting? What is RAW? Keep it simple, keep it basic and we'll get you up to speed, before you know it. Some of us are dying to fill the gaps in your knowledge. If your unsure ask me, I might not know the answer, but I'll find out who does. 
 
Try it
 
HTH
 
peter
 
PS there is only one stupid question in this forum: Isn't Adobe's Cloud subscription scheme a wonderful idea! 
 
Remember: save and backup, backup, backup. Lost memory cards/cameras/phones (on the beach, bus or bar), are a curse, deleted files can be rescued!

I like Affinity Layout.  A totally unimportant benefit, :), would be that it would also make it easier to refer to each one by its initials, AD, AP, AL, something you can't do when you have both Photo and Publisher.

Mostly.  We have plans, just need time to do something about them.  We should be able to at least do what Sketch does, but better.

I'm not a professional editor either but $50 for everything you get in Designer, plus the ease of use, is one hell of a bargain.  And I can't wait to buy Photo, (also for $50, I assume?) And I will consider that money well spent also.

Since I have a very good standalone DAM, I'm selfishly hoping that if Affinity chooses to go this route they will create an extra app that one can buy or not, rather than adding anything more than basic features to Photo and Designer.  I know some of our members would like Media Browser turned into a full-blown DAM but I would prefer them to concentrate on improving the already existing functions and on creating new ones that users are requesting.  

Since I have a very good standalone DAM, I'm selfishly hoping that if Affinity chooses to go this route they will create an extra app that one can buy or not, rather than adding anything more than basic features to Photo and Designer.  I know some of our members would like Media Browser turned into a full-blown DAM but I would prefer them to concentrate on improving the already existing functions and on creating new ones that users are requesting.  

My humble beginner’s ‘workflow’:
     Spend time finding my way around Affinity Designer.
     Spend time reading the forum to learn all that I can.
     Replicate/imitate what others have done.
     Use this newfound information in creating my own work.
 
Were it not for this forum and the kind and sharing people here my workflow might very well be:
     Spend time finding my way around Affinity Designer.
     Do some doodles.
     Get frustrated at my lack of progress.
     Give up.
 
Thank you evtonic3 for sharing this file, and to all of the others who have also done so on this forum.
 
sumus quasi nani gigantum humeris insidentes - Bernard of Chartres
 
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton

That could be LilliG, but in the past Apple seemed to time their 'events' around Cupertino time. I think the sales should end at midnight in the customer's time zone.

First of all, Affinity did not take your money; Apple took your money.  Affinity specified the discounted price and the sale end-date to Apple.  After that, it was all up to Apple.  If the sale price was pulled early, it was pulled by Apple and was completely out of Affinity's control.  You really need to take this up with Apple.

Thanks, Allan.  

I mean, for example, it criticises AP for not using white balance metadata.  That's not true.  All he's really saying is that the default process doesn't apply white balance but that's just a matter of turning it on or creating a preset with white balance on.  In my experience, counter to his assertion, a camera's auto white balance data is often questionable and I frequently end up making my own adjustments so, that's not a fair criticism.  When he turns white balance on it isn't identical to his preferred convertor so he unilaterally declares that AP must be wrong without feeling the need to provide any evidence to support that contention.  No photographs of colour or grey scale charts.  That's neither fair nor intelligent analysis.  He might be right in his conclusions but he hasn't provided any evidence to support his argument and so, from a rational empiricist perspective, his assertions alone contributes nothing to the debate.
 
He also compares a Photos default process, which uses noise reduction, with the AP process which does not.  How can that be a fair comparison?  You can turn noise reduction on in AP and get a much less noisy image than that article presents.  Whether or not it's equivalent or inferior is an open question but that's not something he bothers to explore.
 
He declares that AP, "somehow manages to create both chrome (sic) and tonal noise even for well-exposed images...".  What's the evidence for this?  Having looked at images in AP and prior to demosaicing I haven't seen anything to particularly support this, but then he doesn't seem to have done any experimental analysis at all.  Opening an image in one processor with noise reduction on by default and another where it is, by default, disabled is a meaningless comparison with regard to noise levels.  The reality, as far as I can tell, is that AP doesn't create noise it's just that, by default, it doesn't do anything to reduce it.  To be honest, his suggestion that it creates the noise just makes me question whether he really has any understanding of the raw conversion process.
 
Yes, as I've said, there are still real issues with AP's Develop persona that I'm sure could be isolated with genuine empirical analysis.  However, so much of the criticism in that article is very shallow and could be placated with a different AP default preset.  To be blunt, I think there are many valid grounds on which the Develop persona can be justifiably criticised but there is nothing in that article that makes me think this guy is even close to being competent to assess a raw convertor.

it's coming.... 

It moved when I blew on it!!!

Great!  That boa looks fantastic!

See Pic attached.
 
 
After unsuccessfully trying to replicate a chrome layer style in Designer I was about to give up and chalk this up to Designer just doesn't have the goods, BUT IT DOES! After studying the differences in both apps, I saw that a layer style in PS is going to be created differently in AP or AD. I studied why I wasn't getting the chromey effect in AD, I realized that PS has a gloss contour built into their bevel panel, and AD doesn't so I was stumped a while. Soon realized that gloss contour is almost the same or same as a curves adjustment so after tinkering more I came up with this cool chrome CUSTOM effect! AFFINITY ROCKS!!!
 

Thanks for the new outline showing the newer additions. And thank you for all the wonderful tutorials.  I've watched all the originals and they are really great.  I agree that a printed manual would soon be out of date, given Affinity's rate of fixes and request-fulfillment, but a downloadable PDF would be great to have as a desktop reference.