R C-R

I get similar results -- in the export window 'generating preview' never completes. If I click export anyway, it acts as if it does that but no new file is created. If I try to close the file. it doesn't crash but it hangs (infinite spinning beachball wait cursor), requiring a 'force quit' to recover.

Like with all the other 30+ "live" filter types, it is non-destructive. Thus, among other things it needs no "Apply" button because you can always go back & change its properties, delete it, etc. without destroying any of your content.

Didn't you get a warning about unsaved changes (if there were any)?

It may be hard to accept but there is no one "correct" way to render (a.k.a. "develop") a RAW file. For a great deal more about this I suggest referring to the old but still quite relevant RAW, Actually Affinity Spotlight article. So what it amounts to is RAW formats do not contain an actual photographic image (apart from a pre-processed preview), just the raw (thus the name) sensor data that can be processed in different ways. This is why different RAW processing apps do not all produce the same rendered output.

I use a 2 column layout with all but a few of the tools as individual ones so I do lose a bit of horizontal screen space but not enough to worry about on my 27" display. I also have dragged 6 divider lines (a bit hard to see in the customize tools window) into the panel to help organize the tools into what are for me logical groups.

All I can tell you is what I think they might have had in mind when providing that as a separate option for the desktop UI.

If there is, I have not found any way to do it. So I think we are stuck placing all the selected images before doing any other work on them. Might make a good feature request, if that has not already been done.

Alt-click by itself sets the clone source, like the popup shows at about 2 seconds into your video. But what your video shows later on are keyboard shortcuts to adjust spacing & brush size or rotation. On Macs, that is done by holding down both the alt (option) & Control keys & clicking or dragging. I am not sure which modifier key combination does that, but if you make sure you just drag after setting the source without holding down any modifier keys, it should work as expected (assuming you have an appropriate layer type selected).

I think by "grid" you mean the grey & white checkerboard pattern. If so, this is how Affinity displays transparency -- it is not a part of the document itself. But if that is the case, it should not be included in a JPEG export because JPEG does not directly support transparency so I am at a loss for why it is included in your export.

Does the font you are using have superscript glyphs for any other numbers? What font is it?

I am having a lot of trouble understanding which screenshot is which & what each is supposed to show, but the first of the 3 screenshots cannot be from Affinity Photo because that app does not have an Appearance panel, so it must be from Affinity Designer. It is not clear what the second (middle) of your screenshots is supposed to show us because we can't tell if it is floating or docked & it appears to show the same thing as at the bottom of the last screenshot, which has to be from Affinity Photo because the buttons at the bottom of the Layers panel are the ones from Affinity Photo. All that said, note the following, which I hope may help a bit: The 3 apps do not offer all the same studio panels, so some won't be available in all of them. Likewise, the different personas each have their own set of panels that can be configured in the UI in various ways. Panels can be docked or floating, rearranged within panel groups, & reordered top to bottom by dragging. It may take some experimenting to find the right spot in the UI to re-dock a floating panel or panel group.

It would help us help you with this if you told us what steps you have taken when trying to create a gradient, what kind of layer you are trying to apply it to, what & how many colors you are trying use in the gradient, the type of gradient (linear, elliptical, radial, etc.) you want to apply to the selected layer(s), & anything else that you may be having trouble doing with this tool. Additionally, it may help you understand its many options if you refer to its help topic. I also found a couple of YouTube videos that might help: https://youtu.be/NyYR0JYHhcA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lZH1O9sCek

Another way to think of it is that a node can connect no more than two curve segments. So a closed curve has one node that is both its beginning & end node.

Then I am a bit confused about what you suggested above about a "wish list of features Affinity of Affinity users would like to have implemented in the future...." How does that differ from what we already have in the Feature Request & Feedback forum?

Note that this only works with open curves. You can also select the two end nodes of the curves that you want to join, or let the app decide which ons to join (which will be the closest pair).

A good place to do that is to start by making sure you have "Browse" selected at the top of the page below the Affinity logo, clicking on the "Forums" link below it, & check out the different forums the site offers.

Just a quick look at all the complaints & bug tags should be enough to convince you that it is true -- there has never been an even close to 'clean' V2 release.

You mean like what we already have in the Feedback & Suggestions forum? Besides, as they have mentioned many, many times 'votes' are just one part of what goes into the decisions about what to work on.

What it indicates is that Canva has made little or no difference with any of that (& there are more bugs than ever in recent V2 updates) so there seems to be little other than wishful thinking to believe this will make any difference in expanding development to Android (or to Linux, which there seems to be more interest in doing that than Android, despite the potentially smaller market size.)

What does? Canva does not seem to have done much, if anything, to improve the development of Affinity, add new features or improve existing ones, make it more stable, or bug-free.

Let's also not forget that when Canva acquired Affinity we were told that this would mean we would be seeing more assets devoted to developing Affinity, resulting in faster release schedules with more features, better stability, & so on.

I get your point but Intel CPU-based computers are not exactly outdated, nor is that platform dying. (And my old 2020 iMac 27" model is still going strong & if one wants the luxury of a 27" iMac there is no better choice .... so there!! 😛) 😁

That doesn't explain why a totally empty document can sometimes be switched from one to another app without the save warning popping up ... or why it does when switching back to the first one.

That is what I (often) see as well. I cannot think of any good reason for this so I assume it is a new bug ... & apparently only in the Mac versions.

They have not indicated if the AI features will ever be implemented for Mac Intel computers but it seems unlikely that they will do that, at least anytime in the immediate future.