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That menu item is where you see any Photoshop plugins you have installed in Preferences > Photoshop Plugins that are properly installed & compatible with Affinity Photo.

Assuming you mean the just released Windows Affinity Photo Customer Beta (version 1.7.0.178) then it probably should be reported in the Photo Beta on Windows forum in a new topic as a bug, because it is listed as a feature in the pinned topic at the top of that forum.

That is what the "Use Fill" checkbox in the context menubar is for -- uncheck it if you don't want open curves to use the current fill color. It is "sticky," so you don't have to keep resetting it each time you create a new open shape. If you want to 'unfill' any already created shapes, open or closed, select them & set their fill property to "None." The behavior of applying a fill color to open shapes by filling in along a straight line between the two open end nodes is consistent with SVG standards -- fills are always applied to the area defined by the area the path of the curve encloses, whether it is opened or closed. When the curve is complex, the fill rule ("Fill Mode" in Affinity-speak) determines what is inside the path & what is not.

Composite, as the name suggests, is the composite of all layers. If no layer is selected, there will be no other set of channels in the Channels Studio panel. When a pixel layer is selected, there will be a second set of channels for that specific layer. It will have the same name as that layer's name in the Layers panel. So for example, in a document with a single pixel layer with the name "Background," with that layer selected you will see a second set of channels, each of which will be identified with the "Background" layer name. If you change the name of that layer to something else, the name will change in the Channels panel to that name. EDIT: Note that in Affinity Photo, the layer name "Background" is just a default name automatically assigned to an existing single layer raster image file if you open it in the app. It doesn't indicate anything special about that layer or its position in the layer stack. You could have two or more layers named "Background," a "Background" layer that is above another layer you have added to the document, or even no layer named "Background."

Where are you trying to save or export the file to? What happens if you change the location to the Desktop?

It sounds like the images might be stacked one on top of the other. If so, & you want to see them side by side in one document, one quick way to do that if you are using Affinity Photo is to drag one image to the side & then use "Unclip canvas" to expand it so that both images are visible.

FWIW, "Replicate/Blend" is mentioned on the Designer roadmap, so it is reasonable to assume they will "make it happen" ... someday.

I think it is more to use a group of blended/interpolated shapes collectively for some purpose, rather than to use each of them individually. For example, the (long gone but still loved by many old-timers) Macromedia Freehand implemented this as a 'live' path operation on a group in version 7, circa 1997. EDIT: that app was capable of blending different shapes, like rectangles into ellipses, along a path. Unless the blend was ungrouped, the path could be altered dynamically.

There is no stroke tool as such in the Affinity apps. Strokes & fills are properties of vector shapes (like rectangles, polygons, & so on) & of text objects. So to create strokes you need to create one of those objects & (in Affinity Photo) use the context toolbar's controls to set their width & other properties like style, caps, & pressure curve.

I certainly could be wrong but I think by "Blend Tool" what is meant is one that can blend one shape into another shape through a series of intermediate shapes, each one a bit more like the last one in the series than the previous one.

@MEB, @reglico, or whomever: Is there any explanation for the two notices I got when I tried to open either version of the file, as shown in my earlier post? It can't be a "Release version" file that includes later features than the current beta ... can it?

Thanks! I had not noticed that subtle new feature until you mentioned it. I stand corrected.

I think I have misunderstood what you mean because it has always been possible to CMD+Drag to duplicate an object. Alt+Drag has always worked too, the difference being Alt+Drag disables snapping.

Same here. Weirdly, when I try I first get a message about opening a non-beta "Release" version document, but when I click "Continue" I get the 'features from a later version' failure notice. (The same thing happens with the version uploaded by @reglico too.) I assume this is a bug in the Designer beta, unless there is a new release version I don't know about, which seems unlikely.

The Designer beta & the 1.6.x versions of both Photo & Designer show a functional Display menu on my iMac, so it can't be because the hardware doesn't support it.