Mithferion

These ones, hehe.
(They are for the Desktop version, but I could mockup something for the iPad)
Best regards!

The icon-only thing for the Panels is really comfortable to use.
Best regards!

Hi there!
First of all, thanks to the Dev Team for this release and hats off to @MattP for the first implementation of the long awaited "Select Same" feature. After playing a bit with it, I thought of some things that could be great additions:
Select by Font: select all that is Arial, event if on text object is Arial Black, and another text object is Arial Regular. Select by Font Style: same as above but for an specific font style, Arial Black only, even if there is another text object that is set to Arial Regular. Select different: sometimes you simply want to select anything else... either anything that is not the same color / fill / font / opacity, etc. That's it for now, but if I think of something that could be useful, I will add it to this post.
Best regards!

Alt+Mousehweel works. I would personally prefer a zoom icon somewhere too. Thanks for confirming the trackpad works—I was trying to track one down.

Status: Beta
Purpose: Features, Improvements, Fixes
Requirements: Purchased Affinity Photo
Mac App Store: Not submitted
Download ZIP (Universal): Download
Auto-update: Available
 
Hello,
We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the seventh build of Affinity Photo 1.9.0 for macOS.
If this is your first time using a customer beta of an Affinity app, it’s worth noting that the beta will install as a separate app - alongside your store version. They will not interfere with each other at all and you can continue to use the store version for critical work without worry.
This beta is significantly different from the 1.8 version available for purchase - we strongly recommend that you do not use this beta for real work as data could be lost and the files you save are not guaranteed to open in previous / future versions of Affinity Photo.
 
Thanks again for your continued support!
 
Affinity Photo Team  
 
Changes Since 1.9.0.206
 
- Added export preview panel (for raster types) - updates live whenever you change an export parameter.
- Added JPEG-XR 101010 import support (useful for screen captures from Xbox, etc.)
- Added per-layer antialiasing controls in the advanced blending menu (it’s also hierarchical, which is nice).
- Added new splash screen.
- Added a new filter to remove background light from astrophotography images (Filters -> Astrophotography -> Remove Background).
- Assorted improvements to astrophotography stacking (performance, robustness, quality).
- Live liquify improvements.
- The layer link editor is now a studio panel - further cleanup work is still planned on this panel.
- Reduced binary size.
- Content download service improvements.
- Numerous assorted fixes.
- Help improvements.
- Localisation improvements.
 
Cumulative Changes Since 1.8
 
- Linked Layers.
You can now select a layer and do Layer -> Duplicate Linked. Linked layers are denoted by a small link icon in the layers tab - clicking that icon will bring up a link editing panel (the UI here will change in subsequent beta builds - this is just so we can test the linking itself for now). You can “unlink” particular aspects of a layer using the buttons - for example, if you wanted a mask to share the same pixel content as another mask, but not the opacity settings, you can do that using this test UI.
For the brave, this panel also allows “relinking” - even between different layer types(!). Dragging a layer from the layer tab and dropping it onto one of the small target icons in the panel will link together that particular aspect of the two layers (again, the UI is all going to change). For example, you could make a mask layer which shares opacity settings with an adjustment layer somewhere else in the document, whilst also sharing blend mode with a circle shape layer somewhere else. 
It’s worth noting that this feature is quite raw at the moment - please feel free to experiment with it, but *do not* use it for any real work. There is a high chance any documents you make will stop working in a future beta.
- Default to black-to-white gradients in the gradient tool (more gradient tool improvements are coming for 1.9, at last).
- Content download service improvements.
- Assorted astrophotography stacking improvements.
- Allow placement policy for images to be changed using the menu.
- Added missing text baseline options to the menu.
- Added support for 12bit grayscale TIFF files.
- Added ability to create pattern layers from selections.
- Timelapse fixes and improvements, including ability to choose codec.
- Timelapse export performance improvements.
- Fixed incorrect attribute bits when writing 32bit TGA files.
- Fixed bugs when duplicating pattern layers.
- Fixed broken insertion target buttons on the toolbar.
- Fixed incorrect pattern sizes when committing the dialog without tabbing away from the height field.
- Fixed broken AANN sampling mode in pattern layers.
- Fixed filter effects on pattern layers.
- Fixed brush panel crashes.
- Fixed live filters initialising to RGB in (for example) CMYK documents.
- Fixed crazy behaviour when entering Liquify persona.
- Fixed issue whereby you would get more / different options depending where you right click on spare channels (!).
- Assorted other small bug fixes.
- Localisation improvements.
- Help improvements.
 
- Pattern improvements - brushes now wrap around the edges of the pattern.
- Timelapse improvements - progress bar, abortable, crossfade.
- Improved colours for Canon EOS R5 camera RAW.
- Filter effects now work properly with global colours.
- Fixed white balance issues.
- Added a new “Astrophotography Stack” persona which allows you to combine dark frames, light frames, bias frames, flat frames and dark flat frames then stack them. FITS images are also supported. Lots of photographers have been experimenting with astro during lockdown - hopefully these new tools will help users to get better results. I'm sure James Ritson will be providing some tutorial guidance in short order 
- Added “Pattern Layers” - a fixed size bitmap layer which repeats across the entire document. You can paint on pattern layers and use all filters to manipulate them and see the resulting pattern in real time. They can be transformed non-destructively. After a pattern is added and a tool selected, a faint grey box indicates the "real" area of the pattern which can be edited.
- Added “Export Timelapse” - the ability to export a document which has undo steps as a video. Numerous options exist to control how the video is generated (and more will come later!).
- Added “Live Liquify” layers - as the name suggests, they allow you to have non-destructive liquify layers in your stack which can be edited and masked just like all other live filter layers. At the moment, a hard limit of 512 pixels offset in either X or Y is enforced - we hope to eventually lift this restriction.
- Reworked “Studio Presets” from the earlier 1.9 betas. They now work in a more predictable way and store tool / toolbar configuration. A manager dialog is also now provided.
- Added a new “Combined” result to the benchmark - to test performance contexts where vector and raster content is used together. The benchmark version is still 1900 - so existing vector and raster scores from previous builds are still valid and comparable.
- Added a registration page to the app - this allows users to login and auto-install brushes (so far).
- Added the “Resource Manager” functionality from Publisher for managing image placement.
- Added ability to open package files from Designer and Publisher.
- Photo is now a universal binary, supporting both Intel and Apple silicon processors.
- Path text improvements.

- Added “Duplicate spare channel” to right click menu.
- Added missing “Convert to Path Text” menu item.
- Small improvements to the benchmark UI.
- Update app icon for Big Sur.
- Fixed numerous bugs with brushes, introduced in the 1.9.0 betas.
- Fixed issues when opening multiple RAW files at once.
- Fixed significant memory leak introduced in 1.9.0 betas.
- Fixed UI issues with Big Sur.
- Fixed assorted other GPU acceleration issues introduced in the 1.9.0 betas.
 
- Text on a path is now available in Photo.
- More filters now work on masks / adjustments / spare channels (Add Noise, Perlin Noise, etc.).
- Improved Metal rendering performance (over 195).
- Improved experience when editing a spare channel (view artefacts, histogram and navigator).
- Setting a blend mode on a sub-brush will now work properly - paving the way for import of PSD dual-brushes in a future build.
- Attempted to fix startup crash on machines with no compatible Metal GPU.
- Fixed localisation issues affecting non-UK users.
- Fixed issues when attempting to add layers to a spare channel (!).

- Improved “Serif Labs” RAW engine.
- You can now single click a spare channel in the Channels panel to edit it like a layer.
- The Curves adjustment now has numeric field controls for precise positioning.
- Studio presets are now available.
- A benchmarking tool has been added in the help menu. It will only become available when no documents are open.
- Blend modes now work on “alpha only” layers (masks, adjustments, live filters, etc.).
- Added a new “Divide” blend mode.
- Added “Create from centre” for the elliptical marquee tool.
- Allowed snapping to the bounds of the pixel selection.
- Added ability to create brushes from the current pixel selection with one click.
 
To be notified about all future macOS beta updates, please follow this notification thread 
To be notified when this Photo update comes out of beta and is fully released to all Affinity Photo on macOS customers, please follow this thread

Maybe it is a good idea if Affinity creates a poll for all 3 products where users can add the features they like the most. After that Affinity can add first 5 or 10 most wanted features in the new version.

Whenever a new trainee is assigned to work with me, there are two things I always teach them:
1. Where the restroom is
2. Don’t take anything for granted
Best regards!

Best wishes for everyone here. 
Best regards! 

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 a new thread in this forum 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.
Changes
Fixed importing duplicate style category to append a suffix number Added Select Same Name and Select Same Tag Colour (main menu and Layers panel context menu) Added Place Images panel Fixed copying pixel layers and pasting as a DIB producing an empty bitmap  Restored default JPEG extension to .jpg  Fixed crashes relating to importing TIFF files with ZIP compression, and writing TIFF files with ZIP compression Fixed vector export failing to respect JPEG and PNG dimension limits Fixed failure to open .heic files if the path contains non-ASCII characters 1.9.0.869 release notes

Click here to download the latest beta
Status: Customer Beta
Purpose: New features, performance, 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 a new thread in this forum 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.
Changes
Fixed importing duplicate style category to append a suffix number Fixed crash when moving a mask from a layer to a live stack group Added Select Same Name and Select Same Tag Colour (available via Layers panel context menu)  Added Place Images panel Fixed Blur Brush Tool cursor not showing the correct nozzle Fixed copying pixel layers and pasting as a DIB producing an empty bitmap  Restored default JPEG extension to .jpg  Fixed crashes relating to importing TIFF files with ZIP compression, and writing TIFF files with ZIP compression Fixed new HDR Merge and new Focus Merge preventing application shutdown if all input files fail to load Added failure notification for new HDR Merge, new Focus Merge, and new Stack documents if all input files fail to load Fixed vector export failing to respect JPEG and PNG dimension limits Fixed failure to open .heic files if the path contains non-ASCII characters Fixed custom LensFun profiles failing to load Fixed typing in Lens Correction Filter Camera combo closing the popup 1.9.0.869 release notes

LOL. So you believe it is just about the order of the bricks?
Seriously, apologists. Let Serif do the explaining - you guys always forget (or do not understand) business priorities and (long term) strategy. FX how to keep you in the fold for years.
As an "IT person" you should understand the regime you are working under - and why that regime really makes decision and priorities. Technical requirements and architecture are rarely dictating much. More often you build the architecture to support the business priorities. And improvise. 

LOL. So you believe it is just about the order of the bricks?
Seriously, apologists. Let Serif do the explaining - you guys always forget (or do not understand) business priorities and (long term) strategy. FX how to keep you in the fold for years.

My guess is:
Working on Publisher for the iPad is slowing some things down (like when Matt worked on Designer for the iPad) The internal Roadmap that dictates the order of the Features and development of the Core is still way behind getting to this point And talking about the last part, yes, there seems to be technical requirements yet to meet in order for this feature to be developed. As an IT person, that is a warning for me about the inner workings of the program.
Best regards!

Thecnical decisions, most likeley, that goes like this: First, we need to Develop X-thing, then, Y-thing, and finally, Z-thing. Some dependencies on things to be done.
Best regards!

Hi, even without the advanced features of Data Marge, something can be done about it.
Data Merge allows you to import not only images but also pages saved as .afpub with raster and vector graphics, tables, etc. Perhaps it is worth considering preparing the supplementary product sheets as separate pages in the Publisher first and linking them back to Excel as a source of new data in the final publication. If there is no link to the product card in the Excel database, the field will be blank and nothing will appear on the page. The fact that you can connect raster and vector graphics in a graphic frame is a big plus. To sum up, treat the Spare Part Table as a graphic similar to the product photo.
Have a nice day.

I've made a fix for this today on Windows, and it'll be available in the next beta build if you want to try it out (both JPEG|JPG and TIFF|TIF allow either extension now).

Hi there!
DISCLAIMER: First of all, this is not another "bring the Mesh Warp / Distort Tool right now!" Topic. I'm not asking the Team to give us an estimated time of arival... None of that. It's something different, hinted in the Title.
INTRODUCTION & INTENTIONS
The purpose of this Topic is to share my thoughts and considerations, specially with @MattP, the talent behind this and some other great Features, to keep in mind when developing this. Why? The reasons are simple:
Some of us are more than impatient to have this Feature available. It's been on the Roadmap for so long... Many need this and they are all in into Designer and lefting [Design Application] behind. There are high hopes and so much anticipation. And it's in the Dev Team plans. That's all good, but... is the gap between the Dev Team idea and the users need really been closed, even narrowed? When realeased, will it be what a lot of people are expecting? That's the key point that might turn things ugly here in the Forums.
So, I want to open a relaxed discussion to talk about needs, capabilities and workflow. I will do so by diving the kins of distortions I know in 3:
TYPE ONE
Miscellanous Specific Forms Distortions:
Topic 1: Arc Warp. @TonyB confirmed it will be doable as some other transformations. Said feature works like this for texts (but also for shapes), in Illustrator 2019 and on other Apps like PSE 10:

The other transformations available are this ones. Available on both Apps but they don't work exactly in the same way:

 
Now, the thing about these transformations (and the other Types) are these ones: Control and configuration. They are done through a set of parameters, not through a Mesh like the one in Affinity Photo. so, it's not just that it's doable, but that it's repeatable and done with a degree of presicion. And of course, it has to be editable and resetable, or as it's called nowadays: live. For example, trying to do it through a Mesh is not that great (the red one is done by hand after a lot of struggle, and it's no good):

That's the Arc Warp but imagine this for all kind of options known to man.
TYPE TWO
The next thing is about Perspective, whis is another popular requested feature.
Topic 2. This is really clear as what it has to do. Not just of one object, but for an entire Group, to do a pseudo 3D thing. On this one, DrawPlus does a good job and offers interesting options, like the slider on the Top part, and it gives the sens of working with a 3D object.

The one in Illustrator does its part, but once you transform an object, you can't have the original back, so it's a destructive effect (making this a live feature would be awesome).

If the angles of "rotation" can be in the form of parameters and mouse control, would make it cover all scenarios.
TYPE THREE
The last kind of Distortion people ask for in the forums is the Free Transform.
Topic 3. This is the one that sounds more like the one currently present for bitmaps in Photo or the Envelop Tool in DrawPlus. Personally, this is the least I am interested in, but it has its uses and would make this feature as robust as it can be.

I see there are two variations to this feature:
One with the handles, as seen on the previous pictures. One with "sharp" cornes, without the handles (it's almost like a Perspective Distortion, but I present it like a different one because with a perspective you should be able to maintain the aspect ratio, with this one you can go beyond that). In Illustrator, the Free Distort Effect does this in the "sharp corner" fashion, turning it to semi-curves in some extreme distortions:

As with the previous ones, the ability to reset and edit the effect on already distorted objects, would be gold.
SUMMARY
As I said, when talking about Distortions / Warping, most people have one or more of the three I showed. So, I leave some key points:
Having all of the three types listed above in Designer is the best thing that can happen in this regard to Serif and us the Users. Also, having the ability to reset, edit and have parameters in some of the cases, would provide absolute control (and enjoyment). If the Dev Team implements this one after the other and not all in the initial release, even if it's not desirable, is still a good path. Limiting to one or two of the Three Types "by design" would hurt the product. Very important: I'm not saying "copy this and copy that", I'm just showing examples of the possible use cases for a Tool like this; however it's implemented, as long as it's logical and feels natural, offering all of the capabilities presented, would be perfect. So, citing Matt himself:
I want our products to be good in their own right: It’s not good enough to be better than ‘x’ or ‘y’, you should just be really good and that be the end of the sentence
I expect from you what you have set as your own goal: the best possible Affinity Designer.
Finally, I invite anyone who wants to contribute by bringing examples or something they want for this Feature that I missed.
Best regards!

Hi there!
This topic is a word of encouragement and gratitud. Since last year, I had a list somewhere around the forums, of things that people wanted to see in the Affinity Suite. After this launch, and considering some features that came in 1.7, I wanted the thank the whole team for the following (Blue is for things launched in 1.7, Green is for 1.8, and now, red is for 1.9, purple is for 2.x)
Designer
Bleed area guides (now with the possibility to choose a color for it) Mesh Fill tool Mesh Warp/Distort tool Knife tool Scissors tool Calligraphic line styles Arrowhead line style Export slices with previews Export preview (not in Export Persona) Pages (like the ones in Fireworks) (Almost what we expected, but you never know if the allow to create more Pages directly in Designer) Multiple Effects/Fills/Strokes per shape (Not available for text, but it will come later) Replicate/Blend Convert Bitmaps to vectors (Auto tracing) Select same Color/Fill/Attribute (with some suggestion made by me, that I hope they can include them) Blob tool Spiral tool Width tool Paint Bucket tool Vector Eraser tool Vector Crop tool to do actual vector cropping (can be done with the Shape Builder Tool) Shape Builder tool Text Hinting support Prototyping capabilities Vector patterns Fixing the convert to curves problems at small sizes (improved to a great degree. Still needs improving in tiny cases) Fixing problems with Boolean operations "Universal Layers" using Artboards Contour Tool (hope it gets additional functionality in a future update) DXF/DWG Import DXF/DWG Export Photo
IPTC Support Smart Objects support (import only, and of course, not all possible Smart Objects) Better digital painting brushes (the double thing has proven to be very good) Tool Presets Crop to pixel selection Text on a path Publisher
IDML Import support IDML Export Data merge Global Layers / Layer tags ePub Export Color separation Footnotes / Endnotes Running Headers DXF/DWG Import All Apps
Saving custom workspaces DAM Application WebP Import/Export ICO Export BMP Export WMF Export in Mac TGA with alpha Channel Export CDR Import/Export PSD Export with editable text AI Import/Export Right-To-Left languages support Scripting/Extensibility User made Templates MS Windows Hardware acceleration Hope to change the color of more items from the above listing soon!
2020-sep-19. Edited to add 1.9 new features.
Best regards!

Thank you very much,
I had a little Error because the pictures didn´t show up. Well the Error was not in Publisher. 
For all who have the same "blank" picure in the Picuture-Frame:
Check the settings of the Frame. I have changed it to "fit in" (the middle option under Settings) and there is my Picture.

This works also for PSD-File Images not just for jpg. THIS IS AWESOME! 😍
Great Job Affinity Team and this is even better than Adobe Indesign. 

If you mean something like Business Cards, where you may have the Name, Last Name and the Picture of the person, yes, it's possible.
Best regards!

If you want some pictures, here is a list of Public Domain Pictures.
If you are searching for quality free fonts, here you have my personal list.
If you are searching for some icons, this post might be helpful. Also this one could be of interest.
Lastly, I don't remember where I got this Template (attached file). Originally, it was a PSD file but the interesting part is that it was made with Bootstrap 4 in mind. I'm not a Web Designer so what I did was just for entertaining purposes (fonts can be found in the list I pointed to before).
Best regards!
Web Site - Bootstrap 4.afdesign

Hi there!
As the title says, Column Guides will appear only if the value of the Bleed is higher than 0. A quick video to show this behaviour:

ColumnGuides.webm Best regards!

Good I read this: doing a backup of the original Cat ASAP.
Best regards!

Hi @Mithferion,

This is something we'd spotted and has now been fixed by development so should find its way into the next build.  

Thanks for letting us know