jatclat

Thank you!

It starts with 5 vector shapes in a group, not on a single layer. He then rasterizes the group.

(...)

Walt...
I've attached an image with i) a circular image of a flower on top; ii) a series of black lines beneath it; and iii) a mask on the flower layer. This seems to work the way it should. I'll note that I started with a canvas measuring 1024x1024 and tried to resize it to half-size, and the mask got royally screwed up. I haven't quite figured out why. But, I deleted the mask and created a new one on the smaller document, and this works well. Was this a "lock children" kind of issue? a bug? I don't yet know. Anyway, consider the attached a file as a kind of "proof of concept" in that it can be done; implementation was a bit clunky, though.
Photo with Radial Mask.afphoto

Assuming that you’re in Photo, attach a Mask to the layer with the image that should be transparent in the center. With the mask layer selected, put a Radial gradient into the mask - black in the middle (to make the center of the image transparent) extending to white at the periphery (to make the edges of the image opaque). Slide the center point of the gradient back and forth to change how quickly the transparency gives way to opacity.
If you put the second photo underneath, it should show through in those areas where the top image’s mask is black.

I recently used gradient fills in Publisher for the first time and also scratched my head to set the colors at each stop.  The UI is different from the apps I am accustomed to, but not hard once the trick is learned.
I found a couple of ways to do this.  1) In Publisher and Designer (presumably Photo is the same), select your object.  Add your desired type of gradient (radial) using the Fill button on the toolbar, and selecting the Gradient tab.   Click on the desired stop, and it will enlarge to indicate it's selected.  Click the Color button in the gradient panel and set your desired color, then adjust the opacity field/slider in the gradient panel.  Click the next desired stop, and repeat the process.  2) Use the Fill tool from the sidebar, set the desired type of gradient from the Type dropdown on the toolbar, and drag out your gradient on your object.  Click on the desired stop, and it will enlarge to show it's selected.  In the Color panel (right stack of tool palettes), set the desired color and opacity.  Click on the next desired stop, and repeat the process.
That was for fills.  The Transparency tool works in a very similar way, but color is irrelevant, only opacity matters.  When the Transparency tool is active, there is an unlabeled "fill" button on the toolbar just right of the Type field.  Clicking that opens the Gradient panel, where you can select stops and set opacities.  Or, you can click stops over the object, and set stops in the Color panel.
 

I've just received the email suggesting 'Show as list'. Just what I needed, thanks. That'll do.

It may be cheaper to customize the code than to change the help (including translations).
I hope Serif knows how to do it, and it just doesn't have a high priority for her. The most Windows users intuitively try D&D first. They don't search first in any menu, especially since D&D functions in the opposite direction.

Yes, of course, but it sounds like Serif does not consider this functional discrepancy to be a code bug. (I disagree; any functional difference not mandated by the capabilities of the OS should be considered a program error, in my opinion.)
But if it's not a code bug, it must be a Help bug.

Hi jatclat,
Select the object on canvas then go to the Assets panel and select Add from selection from the subcategories menu icon on the right of the subcategory header. The Windows version doesn't support drag and drop from canvas to the Assets panel (it just moves the object to behind the Assets panel to the canvas or pasteboard area). Are you still having trouble adding them if you follow these steps?

The great thing about exporting to PDF (or printing to a PDF printer driver) is that you get a chance to check the output without potentially wasting expensive ink/toner and paper.

http://www.miguelboto.com/affinity/photo/video-tutorials/ has an organized list of the hundreds of old videos with links to Vimeo. I tried several and they still work. They should have been left available through Serif until they replace all of them with videos for Ver 1.7. Serif only has 64 AP videos on their official site at https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/tutorials/photo/desktop/ and 65 at 
I always download any videos I'm interested in. I learned to my dismay long ago that it is unwise to trust any company to provide long term availability of online resources. I was involved in one situation where an organization had posted many lectures to a video site. The video site decided after a year or so that they no longer wanted to provide that kind of lecture service, being more interested in high traffic kitten videos or something. Just like that the organization's account was deleted. Unfortunately the organization had not properly archived their videos and they were lost, except for the ones I had downloaded and was able to restore to them. Companies are not libraries. These days my experience is that you cannot trust even libraries to to preserve the record of the past. Each of us must take responsibility for archiving those things we might need in the future. 
I use the free, open-source Clipgrab for downloading videos. https://clipgrab.org/ There are versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Thanks, this looks brilliant

The copyright owner may still pursue you for a fee if you create a derivative work. Having said that, take a look at the post below for one way to turn an image into something which doesn’t look like a photo.
 

You don’t need Acrobat Pro for this. The free Acrobat Reader  can do this too!
Go to „Preferences/Full Screen" Adjust the Page turn timing, the background and the transition mode Then go back to display mode and choose menu „View/Full Screen“ Done.

Try XnView  (Win & Mac versions) . Once installed, goto Preferences > General, put a tickmark in "Show all graphic formats".
Then, it also shows all Affinity files.
Other than that, it's extensively configureable,so be sure to look thru all the possibilities.
There is also an Xn Converter program, which will convert any file format to any other format.
Both are free.

Hi jatclat,
 
You'd need to install a 3rd party program as explained on this link from Microsoft:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/wmf-in-windows-explorer-not-shown-as-thumbnails/3f2beb84-54a2-4aa8-9689-b5addb3af237?auth=1
 
I know that link talks about Windows 7, but the same applies to Windows 10 as well.  Once you've got a 3rd party app or extension installed, the thumbnails will show in Windows Explorer