jer

I think I need to watch this a few more times, first because it's freakin unbelievable.
Second, because I want to understand it.   

Hi pixupdate. If you get completely stuck I cover restoring and colourising old photos on my Affinity Photo: Little Box of Tricks course over at Udemy. Unfortunately it's a paid for course so maybe consider it only if no one comes up with a free alternative.
 
...I'm not exactly salesman of the year, am I?
 
Cheers,
Simon 

A new word for me: Skeuomorphic.
Tips I enjoyed include:
Use shapes rather than strokes for certain edges for their added versatility. Subtract an offset duplicated shape to create highlight/shadow arcs/crescents. Use the star shape tool adjustments to easily position dial points. Great tutorial; thanks for sharing!

Hi peeps,
I leave here a tut on how to create an skeuomorphic volume knob. I'd say this kind of simple pieces is how I started learning how to "read objects" in order to reproduce them in a realistic way. It is pretty simple to follow through even for newbies and results are quite nice. Hope you enjoy it, and if so, comment, like and subscribe for more. Thank you all. 
Isabel.
 
 

There are a few ways to do this.  This one is one of the quickest and will work on most images.
1. Duplicate the layer (optional)
2. Add a Curves adjustment to the duplicated layer
3. Grab middle of curve and drag upwards to brighten all the image
4. Select the Curves adjustment layer in the layers panel and hit CTRL + I to effectively switch it off
5.  Choose a white brush at 0% hardness and paint over the area (on the curves layer) you want to "Paint by Light"
PS The Curves adjustment remains editable so you can go back in and tweak the curve to adjust the effect after you "Paint by Light"

It also seems that it isn't listed in the menu, so I'm sure development has dropped for that product.
 
As for the main topic, you can do such a thing, but there is no custom preset to add pop art. You will have to do it manually, but here is a video that shows a technique that is fairly easy to follow.
 
 

It's a good job the sun wasn't behind you, or you'd have had to invent a way to make a rainbow too!
(Now there's a challenge for you...)

Brilliant and thoughtful use of software to enhance your marital life! Congratulations!
But, in your case, is no more microwaving a benefit or disadvantage? Maybe she means you will be taking her out to restaurants more often?

@Chris: 
Very kind and generous of you and I used one of your 10 to complete the course a little while ago. Nice! Short, sweet and every step was basic Affinity Designer and helpful. In fact, I knew the separate steps and what your course did for me was tie the pieces together in a great method to use AD Symbols to produce great border/pattern results.
 
It was very impressive to see the the way you free-handed the designs in the early segment with a paper copy of your guide and a drawing pen! But my work will all be done inside Designer with the Pen Tool and Shapes 'cause I'm lousy with a pencil.   So I'll be using the AD skills you showed in the 2nd and later segments by opening the PDF of your pattern Guide you provided in the downloads. I liked the time length of the course; being short allowed me to get right to my own playing around with the new knowledge. I like your ideas to follow-up with another course on framing-out the patterns/borders as many times a good horizontal border doesn't lend itself to rotating vertically and looks funny as a frame. What you did include really inspires a lot of ideas on where patterns can be helpful in posters and other designs.
 
P.S. I'm still happy to PayPal you for specific courses once you figure it out. With PayPal, donations can be sent to any PayPal user that is willing to provide their email address. 

There's probably an easier way, but here's how I created some rain today:
Add pixel layer. Fill with white. Add noise (about 30%). Layer/Rasterise (to fix noise). Zoom in to see pixels. Levels, black up about 50% (darkening it a bit). Threshold about 70% (rain distribution). Gaussian Blur (to widen spots), Preserve Alpha. Levels again, black up to darken spots. Juggle Blur and Levels for optimal size of raindrops. Motion Blur, Preserve Alpha, angle diagonal, radius right up (can type in big number). Levels to darken rain. Invert layer to make rain white. Pixel layer Blend Mode: Screen. Adjust Opacity to suit.  

Here is a link that gives the first 10 people to use it, free access to this class. The link is valid for one week (first week of October), or when all ten places in the class have been taken, whichever comes first.
 
http://skl.sh/2xK8diq
 
Note: I have renamed this class to 'Design a Simple Decorative Band' for two reasons:
Although the patterns can be used for borders / framing, I have not covered how to handle the corners, and I needed to standardise the vocabulary I'm using to classify patterns.  The term 'band' is better suited to what is covered in this class. With the next class, I'll outline a taxonomy of sorts.
 
Any feedback will be gratefully received, and with each class I post in the forum, I'll include some free spots for Affinity users.

Chris, your class outlined above looks interesting but, frankly, I have the same aversion to Skillshare as I do to Adobe. That is the reason I'm now an Affinity user. And a Libre Office user. And an emClient user (non Outlook). As I understand it, you can quit anytime from the Skillshare monthly plan but I really don't want to be on anyone's plan (read as give them the right to charge & bill me) for 17,000 courses of which I might take two a year. Is your Decorative Border course somewhere else where I can Paypal it specifically and be done?

You can also do this by selecting the View (hand) Tool -- the context toolbar for this tool includes a popup "Units:" selector. It is often faster to use this than going into the File > Document Setup menu item.

Beautiful work! Welcome and thanks for sharing!
 

@Dave - this is a great find! I like that the tutorials are written (a.k.a. non-video) and the notes you mentioned describe for what uses the AP feature can be applied.
And, under the "Grids" tutorials there are also 100's of grid templates available for purchase if someone wants a quick start. Lovely!
Thanks for finding and sharing this link!

It's the organic look that can be achieved with a tool like AD - even if the look is a little out of fashion - that really is the most fun.
Ink and watercolor-like effects - vector brushes.
I am including the .afdesign file for digging around in.
 
 
 
 

shroom2.afdesign

Hi, new to affinity designer. Here are some fly fishing reels I built, looking to push them farther any feedback appreciated. Thanks

Love the way the Effects are adjustable and reusable. Great tutorial. Thanks for creating and sharing it.

Hola,
Some people wanted to know how to achieve a NEON lights text effect in Affinity Designer, so I created this new tut a bit related to the 80's retrowave one I did some weeks ago. 
Two simple effects in the FX panel and choosing the right font should be enough to create a nice looking neon graphic. Cheers!
 
 
 

Just found this site: http://www.graphicxtras.com/tutorials/tutorials-affinity-photo-designer.htm
Includes useful notes.

Hi swhite44,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
I don't know if the letters on your logo are a shape or a single line. In any case the basic idea/process is to duplicate the object or line, add a stroke to it - large enough to create the gap you want -, then convert that stroke to a shape and subtract it from the circle. Here's the steps:
 

 
You can also do this through masking if you don't want to convert the circle to a shape. In that case create a rectangle bigger enough to cover the circle (set a fill colour - any colour will do -, and no stroke: this is important because the circle will only be visible inside the filled area of the rectangle), convert the small line we created into a shape (after enlarging the stroke) and subtract it from the rectangle. Drag the rectangle over the thumbnail of the circle (you should see a small vertical blue line on the right of the thumbnail when you are hovering the right spot) then release the mouse button. You are now using the rectangle as a mask for the circle.

You can do it non-destructively.
 
Select the areas, Shown as squares.

 
and make a duplicate layer.  Layer > Duplicate then there will be just those areas on the duplicate. 
 
Below, I hid the background layer to demonstrate, although there is no need to do that.

 
and got this

Make sure the duplicate layer is selected and use the burn brush.
 
Showing both layers

 
The original layer is untouched.
 
Hide the top layer

 
and there it is.

 
 

Before  I heard of Affinity Designer I made a return to Serif products and purchased what was to be their last design program under that flag DrawPlus X8. That has a travcer facility in it.Not bad but you will have to tweak around -but you CAN save customised settings. So If I want to convert this is the first place I go. Then if I just can't get it done then I go to an online only file converter site. IF you do decide to use DrawPlus X8 ensure the Export setting is for Inkscape compatibility, NOT AI . By selecting AI format you may end up with a blank image! For the price of these Serif Legacy programs it is a small investment!
 

You can only join open shapes, so if the two halves include the vertical line segments along what would be the centerline of the face, you need to break each of them at their top & bottom nodes & discard the verticals, then select & join the two remaining curves. Alternately, use the boolean Add to combine them into a single shape.
 
EDIT: Be aware of a bug in the boolean operations that can drive you crazy if you don't notice it. As shown below, even if you use snapping to precisely align the end points of a flipped copy with those of the original, using the boolean Add operation may combine some co-located nodes but not others, resulting in pairs of sharp nodes where one smooth node would be expected. The only indication you are likely to see that this has happened at normal zoom levels is what appears to be a single square node symbol where a round one would be expected. Zooming in to extreme levels, like in the inset, will show there are actually two sharp nodes very close to each other.

You can avoid this using the Join Curves action. Because you cannot choose which nodes are joined & only the two nearest ones will be joined, something like in the second row above produces more predictable results, where the shape is finished off with the Close Curve action.
 
Also note that both methods reveal another bug: both adding & joining curves will often increase the stroke width for no apparent reason. This is easier to see in the attached .afdesign file, where the initial 4 px wide strokes become 5.66 px wide ones after adding/joining them into one shape.
face flip.afdesign

@JimmyJack    It did work! For some of the pixel layers I had to Edit in Photo and use the Flood Select Tool (W) to delete some white that began to show up after implementing your suggestion. I don't know why it showed through after Grouping and changing PassThrough to Normal as the Multiply had previously ignored it. Anyway, that done, your suggestion saved me much time and effort.
 
Thank you!