Medical Officer Bones

Just want to add a vote for changing the DPI label to PPI in the three affinity programs. 
Also, in reply to someone that mentioned there's no difference beyond 360 PPI and higher resolutions. That is correct for the most part with anti-aliased images.
However, It's a minor point, and no one ever works this way, but if you created a 2 bit document (forget what it's called in PShop), but it's just black or white, no gray. If you made a circle and sent that to a 1200 DPI printer you'd want the document to be 1200 PPI to get a smooth line. It's a fun exercise I had my students do. They could zoom in on the image and see the jaggies, but when it printed it was smooth. We then sent a vector file (of a circle) to the same printer and there was no difference. We then set the document to screen res (72 at the time).... 
Anyway, as many have noted PPI is the proper term for resolution of images. DPI is the term for the fidelity of a physical device (monitor or printer). 

Hi, just started the crossover from Adobe to Affinity. I noticed that resolution in all three programs refers to DPI. I know it's a minor distinction that has been lost over time, but DPI traditionally refers to the resolution of an output device: monitor, printer etc.. PPI refers to the resolution of a pixel document. When I was teaching I had to make sure my students understood this because they kept misunderstanding why a given printer was 1200 dpi (or 2400 dpi) and why shouldn't their document be the same? The print students also had to add LPI (lines per inch) to their understanding.
Anyhow, maybe it's just me, but I'd prefer to see the more accurate PPI used to designate resolution. It's very helpful for beginners I think. 
Cheers!

Oh, sorry, thought I did a search before posting this. OK. So I'm not alone in wondering why Affinity uses DPI rather than PPI to label resolution.... unfortunate.... just adds to people's confusion. It was hard enough teaching students the difference even when properly labeled. Ah well.....

May I ask why not? Will it be implemented in v1.7? Since you support webp import, adding export ought to be rather trivial. I use it all the time for preparing game assets in Godot Engine.

This file is... weird. I converted the tree curve with "convert to curves" and still got incredible lag. Then I decided to export to a SVG for testing in other apps and found no issues in InkScape, PhotoLine, Illustrator, or Blender.
Just in case I re-imported the SVG version to ensure the curve would be an actual baked curve. At which point I discovered really odd behaviour: editing a few points on the left side of the tree, and it behaves smooth like butter. But the more I run along the curve clockwise, the worse the lag becomes! The zoom factor affects this as well.
And it affects EVERTHING: even the screen updating. It takes an instant for the nodes to appear when panning the view - but only on the right-bottom side of the tree. Drawing a selection marquee slows down dramatically. On the far left, no issues at all.
Here is a comparison between editing a few points on the LEFT side and on the right-bottom side:

This counts like a bug in my book.
My system: Windows 10, AMD 3900X, 64GB, 3080TI.

I kinda like Krita's start screen approach myself. I wouldn't mind if something similar (as an option) would be implemented. Photoshop offers a similar new start screen nowadays, which I actually find quite helpful to continue to work on projects. But it should be free from unwanted advertisements, of course.

My number one piece of troubleshooting advice to people using computers is "Have you tried turning it off and on again?". I stole this from Roy from The IT Crowd.

Because the original had all those rounded corners applied with the corner tool, I just wanted to ensure Affinity is working with a pure curve and nothing else. The reasoning: when I zoomed in to edit the curve (on the right side) Designer still lagged terribly.
Reversing the curve doesn't matter: the right side of the drawing responds very poorly when zoomed in on a section. The left side does not. The left side of the trunk also performs badly. I found the start and end points, and it doesn't matter.
The odd thing is that when I zoom out to 100% or less, the lag disappears. The more I zoom in, the worse the lag becomes.

Since some users obviously don't know anything like that, just a sample of the Welcome Screen/Page I wrote about in the previous post. Welcome Page is of course fully editable (it's an html page), so according to the user's needs, it can contain the most frequently used projects and documents, a list of recently opened files, links to help, tutorial videos, articles and other documentation, links to forums and their posts, etc. - just what the user needs for his work. This Welcome Screen/Page opens first, and remains visible even after the last document is closed (thus solving the problem pointed out by GarryP), and serves as a basic signpost for work. And of course it can be turned off if the user does not want to use it.

I kinda like Krita's start screen approach myself. I wouldn't mind if something similar (as an option) would be implemented. Photoshop offers a similar new start screen nowadays, which I actually find quite helpful to continue to work on projects. But it should be free from unwanted advertisements, of course.

Blender was mentioned here. Since text in a 3d app is "real" geometry, bevels behave like "real" bevels as well.
And lighting and materials are of course completely controllable. The following example is a screenshot from the 3d viewport: it works in real-time. No waiting required for rendering to be finished.

Although bevels in 3d can go horribly wrong too...

Anyway, lettering with bevels is very simple to achieve in Blender.

Blender was mentioned here. Since text in a 3d app is "real" geometry, bevels behave like "real" bevels as well.
And lighting and materials are of course completely controllable. The following example is a screenshot from the 3d viewport: it works in real-time. No waiting required for rendering to be finished.

Although bevels in 3d can go horribly wrong too...

Anyway, lettering with bevels is very simple to achieve in Blender.

Two options off the top of my head.
1) OpenToonz / Tahoma2d. I use this for my gif animations. Either import the movie file directly, or convert the movie file to an image sequence and import that. The advantage of image sequences: each image can be separately edited in an external image editor, and I use ColorQuantizer to control the conversion to 8bit images with precise controls for dithering, rare colours threshold, balancing gradients and details. The dither amount is controllable, as well as bypassing edges (preventing edge dithering). With ColorQuantizer I process all images to 8bit or even less colours depending on the source material. Then save as an animated Gif. As an image sequence OpenToonz/Tahoma2d automatically re-imports the adjusted images. Then I export to a Gif animation. It is also possible to render a movie file to images with OpenToonz/Tahoma2d.
2) an alternative option is ScreenToGif. The editor allows for movie import, and converts to image frames. Right-clicking one of the frames enables the user to open the folder with the images (which will all be 24 bit).
(1) allows for much more editing control, but is a more complex animation application. (2) is pretty simple, and also includes gif animation controls to define the length of the frames.
Both options are free!
https://tahoma2d.org/
https://opentoonz.github.io/e/
(Tahoma2d is a simplified GUI version of OpenToonz).
https://www.screentogif.com/
http://x128.ho.ua/color-quantizer.html
Processing the frames with ColorQuantizer saves typically 50% in terms of file size in combination with OpenToonz/Tahoma2d and the proper output settings. ScreenToGif offers 5 methods to control the Gif anim export (does not support 8bit source images, so I would have to enforce RGB mode for output and use in ScreenToGif).

Irfanview! The one piece of software that I have installed since Windows 95 times. Still use it every day, and it has excellent batch processing.

Krita is NOT a fork of GIMP. Quite the opposite, actually: back in 1998 Matthias Ettrich demonstrated how easy it was to hack a Qt GUI around an existing application, which happened to be GIMP. His patch was never published, and caused friction with the GIMP community at the time.
So because the GIMP community was unable to work together towards a better image editor, people in the KDE project decided to start their own image editor, called KImage. That was the start of Krita. and initially named "KImageShop", meant to be a GUI shell around ImageMagick. The name was then changed to "Krayon" due to existing trademark issues related to "KImageShop", and finally renamed to Krita in 2002.
All of which brings me to mention here that Krita 5.1 was just released.
Krita is wonderful to work with for drawing and painting, in my opinion.

Various options which support all of your needs already exist on the market: OpenToonz, Toonboom Harmony, Flash/Animate CC, ...
OpenToonz is open source and free, btw. It will also convert black and white drawings to vector.

Krita is NOT a fork of GIMP. Quite the opposite, actually: back in 1998 Matthias Ettrich demonstrated how easy it was to hack a Qt GUI around an existing application, which happened to be GIMP. His patch was never published, and caused friction with the GIMP community at the time.
So because the GIMP community was unable to work together towards a better image editor, people in the KDE project decided to start their own image editor, called KImage. That was the start of Krita. and initially named "KImageShop", meant to be a GUI shell around ImageMagick. The name was then changed to "Krayon" due to existing trademark issues related to "KImageShop", and finally renamed to Krita in 2002.
All of which brings me to mention here that Krita 5.1 was just released.
Krita is wonderful to work with for drawing and painting, in my opinion.

Irfanview! The one piece of software that I have installed since Windows 95 times. Still use it every day, and it has excellent batch processing.

Photoline
Hey Medieval Officer Bones,
thank you very much for the recommendations! 
unfortunately Photoline is too expensive for that single feature, as basically I am happy with Affinity, just missing the above described feature at the moment.
I've checked out Krita, and that seems to do the job, TYVM
With beste regards
-Aran

It’s worth noting that IrfanView is only free for non-commercial (i.e. personal or educational) use. However, the licence fee was just ten euros the last time I checked.

Krita is NOT a fork of GIMP. Quite the opposite, actually: back in 1998 Matthias Ettrich demonstrated how easy it was to hack a Qt GUI around an existing application, which happened to be GIMP. His patch was never published, and caused friction with the GIMP community at the time.
So because the GIMP community was unable to work together towards a better image editor, people in the KDE project decided to start their own image editor, called KImage. That was the start of Krita. and initially named "KImageShop", meant to be a GUI shell around ImageMagick. The name was then changed to "Krayon" due to existing trademark issues related to "KImageShop", and finally renamed to Krita in 2002.
All of which brings me to mention here that Krita 5.1 was just released.
Krita is wonderful to work with for drawing and painting, in my opinion.

Another option is PhotoLine that runs on Mac (M1 native too).

Not as controllable as CQ, but an added benefit is that PhotoLine supports a non-destructive approach if required.
Or Krita's Palettise filter, which again may be applied non-destructively:

Krita offers a really nice option to control the dither pattern as well as dither range. Also works on Mac, of course.
Both reduced to a 27 colour Amstrad colour palette
Actually, most image editors feature a similar colour palette reduction option. I am starting to wonder why Affinity Photo still lacks one. Odd. After all, such a basic tool? Then again, so many other basic things are still missing, so I shouldn't be surprised.
Perhaps in release 2 or 3?

Krita is NOT a fork of GIMP. Quite the opposite, actually: back in 1998 Matthias Ettrich demonstrated how easy it was to hack a Qt GUI around an existing application, which happened to be GIMP. His patch was never published, and caused friction with the GIMP community at the time.
So because the GIMP community was unable to work together towards a better image editor, people in the KDE project decided to start their own image editor, called KImage. That was the start of Krita. and initially named "KImageShop", meant to be a GUI shell around ImageMagick. The name was then changed to "Krayon" due to existing trademark issues related to "KImageShop", and finally renamed to Krita in 2002.
All of which brings me to mention here that Krita 5.1 was just released.
Krita is wonderful to work with for drawing and painting, in my opinion.

In the meantime the latest 5.1 release of Krita added extended Webp support with every option under the sun

A 1-bit image mode is not supported in Affinity Photo or Designer - or Publisher for that matter. The developers have stated that 1-bit support will never be implemented in Affinity:
There have been quite a few threads created about the lack of 1bit mode support in Affinity. Iffy work-arounds abound such as the threshold filter suggestion above, or adjusting the layer blend. None of these are great, unfortunately.
As always, if this is a requirement in your work, I would suggest PhotoLine, which not only supports a proper 1bit image mode like Photoshop, but goes beyond Photoshop in that it allows for layers while working on 1bit images.
It is also possible to export your vector line art/inks from Designer to PhotoLine and convert these to high resolution 1200ppi 1bit images. PhotoLine also allows for proper 1bit high resolution PDF export and can be used to combine cmyk/rgb artwork with high resolution 1bit imagery for this particular task too.