kaffeeundsalz

I would also like to know this. When I import a Portrait Mode photo from the iPhone, I get the Depth Map as a separate grayscale layer in Affinity Photo. I can then edit the Depth Map by e.g. painting on that layer. So far, so good. However, there are two things I cannot do: First, I couldn‘t find a way to actually preview the Depth Map layer as an applied depth of field effect on the image. Second, I couldn‘t figure out how to export the image with the edited depth map so that Apple Photos would recognise it as a Portait Mode photo. Any hint would be greatly appreciated.

Hi @lenscapp, welcome to the forums! Displaying MB information when resizing an image doesn't make sense because the resulting filesize strongly depends on which file format you choose when exporting your image. For example, at the very same pixel dimensions, JPEG images are usually significantly smaller in file size than TIFF images. That's why Affinity products only show the file size in the Export dialog. You can also resize your images there.

Affinity Designer doesn't have Fill Layers, but you could just draw a white rectangle and use it in the same way.

I just ran into this problem – again. Had to open an old Affinity Photo document to see how a particular effect was done. Tried to recreate it with another document but for the sake of my life couldn't get the same appearance as in the reference image. It was only after an extended trial and error session when I realised that some adjustment layers had custom blend ranges applied. Is there any news on this?

@Bob_Sloan The tutorial starts with a document already opened because if you want to learn selecting, you need something to select in the first place. This would be the exact same on PC so it has absolutely nothing to do with the operating system. It's just that the tutorial assumes that you're already familiar with opening and creating documents and creating content inside these documents. If you don't understand that you need a document with objects first to make any use of selecting at all, you should step back and start with even more basic concepts. You need to know the idea of document handling in computer applications and how this is used in vector graphics. Otherwise the tutorials won't make much sense to you. Edit: You also do not need the exact same document with the exact same objects opened to follow the tutorial. This is just an example. Selecting works the same across every possible document in Affinity Designer. This means that you need to be able to transfer what you've learned from selecting the objects in the video to selecting other objects in other documents.

All three Affinity applications can handle assets, not just Designer. For backup purposes, the library can be exported from the Assets panel as .afassets file. It's sufficient for me personally, but I can see the point in not being able to access individual assets directly as files.

At least for me, that wouldn't work because I don't have an "Assets" menu item in the View menu. As I already wrote in my first reply to this thread, at least in the macOS version it's usually View > Studio > Assets. I don't know whether it's different on Windows.

I think this mainly depends on how complex you image editing is. If what you use for your designs are mainly stock photos or images from customers or photographers where all the editing is already done, Affinity Publisher is probably everything that you need for some finishing touches. However, if you plan on taking those photos yourself or if you want to do portrait retouching, extensive masking or create complex compositions, Photo will probably serve you well as a companion app. It's just my personal point of view, but these are the occations I can think of where I'd need Photo instead of Publisher.

I can only say for the Mac App Store version, where it's ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/user/assets.propcol

If by shape library, you mean the shape tools with the blue icons from the tools palette on the left-hand side – no, you can't add a shape to these directly. That's what the Assets panel is for. If you go to View > Studio > Assets, you can add almost any kind of object or layer to your Assets library and keep them organised in different categories. They can then be reused at any time in any document by just dragging them out of the panel.

I think "enable transform origin" is just an option of the move tool. Disabling it does allow me to drag the control point, but then what @MickRose said comes into play: Moving the control point will also move the origin with it. So if I get this right, there's no way to keep the origin of an object at a fixed point on the canvas so it would always remain in place, independent from the object's position.

@jackamus So can you get a bit more specific how you solved it? Because I have the same problem as you with your example file: I cannot move the lower left point of the rectangle because that's where the origin is.

I feel the same as @Bryce. Is the problem you encounter visible anywhere in your screenshots? With UI, you mean the white rectangle with rounded corners in the center of your image? I can see something that looks like it might be a thin gray stroke around the rectangle in the Affinity Designer version. Is this what you mean by "white shadows"?

Ah, so the part about layer clipping and nesting was the important one! Glad that you were able to figure out how this works. If you want to dig a bit deeper into the concept of child layers in the Affinity suite, Serif has a quite comprehensible video about this: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/318402519

I happen to have learnt very recently that tinting an image layer with a color like you did in your original apporach is an official Affinity feature. James Ritson makes use of it in a new video that's part of the official tutorials. So please forget that "just as a side note" part of my previous answer.