PaulAffinity

Thanks @dvdende, what we will do is incorporate your modifications into our copy of LensFun, and then offer your modifications directly to the developers of LensFun if they require it. This will allow us to more rapidly integrate changes from customers, rather than relying on 'official' releases.

Much quicker loading times. On 1.6 a 24Mb CR2 was loading in about 20 secs. On Beta 188 this time has dropped to approx. 12 seconds!

I can confirm that the filter works again in the latest Beta. Now it's possible to darken or brighten the shadows/ highlights.

No, it's just a bug. This is a beta, after all.

2018-09-30 01.22.55 [X-S1].7z
I know this file is a particularly difficult sample, but I've been watching your journey to improve such files since the 1.5 release and beyond, and I'd like to see the RAW processing engine handle things like this better before 1.7x launch, if possible.
I've collected a number of comparison images across other engines in this thread below:
 
Summary:
Affinity Photo does worse than most every other RAW processing engine I've tested, though I've seen improvements from v1.6 stable to v1.7 beta, though they're not drastic. However, the proper application of the Lens Profile is most welcome and appreciated.

I must say I am astonished by the improvements in RAW file opening times which are down to between 2-4 seconds on my configuration including RAF, CR2 (including 5DsR 75MB) and ARW. All I can say is I am looking forward to the CR3 support.
Please thank the developers for the amazing work.

I have installed the new beta and ran a speed check, comparing it with the current version 1.6.5.135. I loaded a RAW (CR2 format) file of 27.5 Mb; the current version took 20 secs and the new beta 22 secs. I then immediately (without any processing) "developed" in each version - the "stable" version took 15 secs and the beta 1 min 22 secs, with almost all of that time without any sign of activity. I repeated the beta test with the same result. Saving the resulting jpeg in afphoto format and exporting as a jpeg gave virtually equal timings.

Click here to download the latest beta
 
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 

We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post here and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Fixed tool not drawing Allow raster brush size / rotation keys while dragging Fixed Batch dialog not parsing literal expressions properly Fixed render artifacts in split screen views Fixed Isometric panel 'Edit in plane' not working  Fixed New shadows and highlights slider ranges Fixed Procedural Texture light UI icons not loading Fixed missing tool icons for Clarity, Shadows and Noise Reduction  Fixed tool flicker during edits Fixed switching Personas does not retain current zoom settings when using non pixel units  Fixed loading of huge JPEG files Fixed sporadic crash on shutdown  Fixed crash loading old workspace files Fixed rendering of live filters  Fixed Procedural Texture missing tooltips for the buttons Fixed Procedural Texture real number input delete button Changed TIFF compression to be slightly more efficient The 1.7.0 feature list is in the first 1.7 download announcement here

You're missing the point of what the beta is. It's to test upcoming features, and bug fixes before they are officially released. As my announcement post always states, these builds are not intended for production work. If you want a stable build of the product, keep the retail version installed alongside it (the beta and retail versions happily co-exist).

Histogram in Develop persona now matches the Photo persona - thank you!!

Click here to download the latest beta
 
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that you may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 

We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post here and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.
Fixes
Fixed Export file type icons using low resolution images Fixed clipped Grid Settings button Added missing Voronoi filter Fixed Construction Snapping buttons not showing correctly Fixed View modes (Pixel, Retina and Outline) buttons Added missing Isometric panel Fixed crash when closing application in Export Persona with multiple documents open  Fixed crash at startup when loading existing workspaces Fixed sporadic crash when opening Edit menu after copying document items to clipboard Fixed Installer to not specify the text for 'Open' shell entry Improved Freehand import by allowing some unknown tags to be ignored, rather than failing the import Fixed Colour panel Colour Picker being offset for some multiple monitor configurations Fixed modifier keys not being shown for tool shortcut in tooltips Improved HSL Add and Subtract modes The 1.7.0 feature list is in the first 1.7 download announcement here

To give you a choice between live or destructive?
Because live filters have more of an impact on performance than destructive?

First, by default I don't think that Page Up and Page Down do anything. The default keyboard shortcuts for page navigation (Next Page, Previous Page) are ctrl+PageUp and ctrl+PageDown. Those can be changed in the Preferences, of course, if you want to use PageUp and PageDown without the ctrl key.
When I use those shortcuts, I see the next or previous page in the editing area, and the pages in the Pages panel also move up/down.
 

This week I finally finished my beginner's guide eBook for Affinity Photo on iPad!  You can check it out here.
I haven't seen many written tutorials for AP iPad, so I thought this would help out anyone that prefers written tutorials to video ones. 
Fun fact: This book was completely formatted in the beta of Affinity Publisher... 

Haha I thought I'd put the third one up  Thank you very much!

Can't view any TFFs (and, I think JPGs) that have been worked on in Affinity in Capture NX-D. Is there a setting I can permanently set to work around this? I rely on going back and forth, this is a major PITA...
I saw several others complaining about this and hoped it would be addressed in an update but I guess it hasn't been.
 

I have no problem with Capture NX-D and JPG files saved by Affinity Photo.
However, it seems that Capture NX-D prefers TIFF files to have a filetype of "tif" rather than "tiff", so the .tiff files that Affinity Photo creates are ignored by Capture NX-D. You would have to rename them to use them there.

one more demonstration  for clone brush direction rotation feature (there should be also interpolation and blending/morphing between copy steps/spacing)  And I try to demonstrate that first posts result what is happening behind process: source will take care from rotation (path angles and degrees and out put direction/rotation) - 
.

So my idea is some kind  of "clone path source" with direction and rotation detection with output  direction and rotation with interpolation rendering to generate deformed clones and abstract shapes (if user active it from tool: direction and rotation deforming/inerpolation from source  to output/target).

A screenshot might let us see something amiss.
Check you are on the brush tool, with white selected, opacity turned up, flow turned up, the blend mode of the selected brush, protect alpha turned off.

You have Aero on? I am playing with it on Win7 without any problems for about hour now.

We’ve had a small number of reports from users who are having issues when trying to install 1.6.5 ( Affinity Store Version) from fresh or when updating from a previous version. Below are a few suggestions which have resolved the issue for other users: 
Restart your machine and try the installation again Right click the .exe file and select ‘Run as Administrator’ Make sure your machine isn't in the middle of installing updates - this can lock files needed to install our app/update Make sure your machine is fully updated by checking for any available updates - This has worked for a couple of users Uninstall any previous versions of the software first using Microsoft's Uninstall Troubleshooter app (some errors have been caused by the installer being unable to remove the previous version) Make sure the installer file is located on the same drive as Windows (normally C:) (this has worked for several users) Extract the MSI with /extract and then install the MSI (applicable if you've already got the prerequisites installed, worked for several users) Check for invalid fonts on your system (https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/2978135/visual-studio-setup-crashes-with-an-exception-after-the-splash-screen) If you’ve tried the above and you’re still having issues, we suggest that you create a new thread and upload your log files to the following secure dropbox folder (only we will be able to see the contents, it's not public). This will allow us to look into this further for you.
https://www.dropbox.com/request/0M6Pei3iziG4FjYAdRa5 - Click here to upload your setup logs to Dropbox.
The 1.6.5.135 updates and above automatically create setup log files when installing. You can access the setup log files by navigating to %TEMP%\AffinitySetup\ from the Run Dialog. You will want the folder with the latest Created/Modified Date. In this folder you will have two .log files: Setup.log & SetupUI.log.
Hope that helps!
Leigh

Hi,
 
We are pleased to announce the Windows release of Affinity Designer , version 1.6.5
FIXLIST
The changes in Affinity Designer for Windows 1.6.5 over the last ADe  patch 1.6.4 are as follows:
- Fixed Document Setup dialog failing to show correct Height and Width values when switching between portrait modes
- Fixed incorrect colour from CMYK waterfall model
- Improve Microsoft Dial support
- Improve PDF import 
- Fixed resized floating panel not sticking when swapping to a different panel 
- Fixed crash when dragging artboards
- Fixed floating window panels to remember their width as well as height
- Fixed Colour Picker shortcut not working with Surface Pen 
- Improved performance of shutdown 
- Fixed Leading Override (Character panel) and Paragraph Leading (Paragraph panel) key modifier inconsistencies
- Fixed empty gap at the bottom of the font size dropdown 
- Fixed crash when we can't identify any font families in a font 
- Fixed Pen point being placed when panning with spacebar 
- Added missing "Scrubby Zoom”
- Fixed Space bar panning with the paintbrush tool placing nozzlesFixed tool handle selection with touch input 
- Fixed SVG export to avoid exporting spurious groups
- Fixed pressing escape key on font size context toolbar editor not returning focus
- Added option to prefer metafile over raster with per-application default (default to on)
- Fixed main window closing on second monitor not appearing at next start
- Fixed Adjustments panel starting below the visible window 
- Fixed Print dialog not defaulting to current selected artboard
- Fixed Transform panel fields losing focus when using arrow and shift+arrow keys to increment/decrement values
- Fixed intermittent crash when using the Pen Tool 
- Fixed drag dropping a PNG file into the document locks the file
- Fixed rendering issues with custom display scales between 125% and 150%
- Fixed crash pasting into Microsoft Paint
- Fixed dialogs not appearing on second monitor 
- Fixed margins not being set for new artboard documents 
- Fixed keyboard shortcuts becoming disabled after pressing Escape in the Pressure dialog 
- Fixed move up/down in the Assets Panel not correctly enabling after moving a category that is first or last 
- Fixed Embed Assets in Current Document selection state being reversed 
- Fixed colour conversion of bitmaps during vector export
- Fixed adjusting line pressure being laggy 
- Fixed deleting a node on the stroke pressure editor not updating the document
- Fixed New Document dialog not being aligned nicely
- Fixed rotating nodes not being remembered
- Fixed editing a Curves Adjustment preventing you from using Keyboard Shortcuts to add additional 
- Fixed unable to type after tabbing when editing a swatch value
- Fixed RGB slider field getting a dotted outline when tabbing into it 
- Fixed pressing delete with a stop selected on the Gradient Flyout deletes the object, not the stop
- Fixed sporadic crash when sizing text frames to fit
- Fixed editing a guide in Guides Manager not correctly changing selection 
- Fixed adding colour to swatch causes crash 
- Fixed shaking a floating panel minimizes other panels
- Fixed fill layers built-in masks are broken 
- Fixed export area dropdown not working like the macOS version 
- Fixed Pen tool to add snapping while restart dragging under Pen mode
- Numerous other fixes and stability improvements.
REGRESSIONS
There is one known regression in this build over the previous release 1.6.4 (available here), sorry for this inconvenience
 - Artboards in embedded .afdesign file do not export to PDF
Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Bugs on Windows section
For purchases from the Affinity Store the software, each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer any available update, or it can be downloaded from here
For purchases from the Microsoft Store are done automatically (next time you run after it is available in the store)
 

Click here to download the latest beta
 
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: Stability
Requirements: A valid product key (for Affinity Store purchases), or an installation of the full retail version from the Microsoft Store

As this is a beta it is considered to be not suitable for production use. This means that you should not attempt to use it for commercial purposes or for any other activity that you may be adversely affected by the application failing, including the total loss of any documents. 

We hope you enjoy the latest build, and as always, if you've got any problems, please don't hesitate to post here and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks once again for your continued feedback.

If you have a general question about the software, please head over to the Questions Forum, or if you have any suggestions, please head over to the Feature Requests forum.

Fixes
Fixed Document Setup dialog failing to show correct Height and Width values when switching between portrait modes
Fixed incorrect colour from CMYK waterfall model
Added check for disabled .NET 3.5 during installation 
Fixed Info panel not showing W, H and D information in document units 
Fixed being unable to select layers whilst recording Macros 
Fixed crash caused by Shift clicking to select slices
Added save and load of Twirl settings 
Added Twirl to radial controller
Added Blend Modes to radial controller
Fixed Global Opacity on radial controller
Fixed History on radial controller
Fixed PDF import crash when a soft mask doesn't load
Fixed PDF Import hang
Fixed resized floating panel not sticking when swapping to a different panel 
Fixes included in the 1.6.5.119 customer beta 

You might want to start clicking on the color channels until you find the one that gives you the most contrast ... green for the ducks. then tweak that and make the contrast greater withou clipping detail. THEN do your selection, get it the way you want it, hide that layer, select the original layer and you are good to go.
There are a bunch of tutorials about color channels and channel masking here is a great one. Below this is just the green channel from your pic