walt.farrell

@srg owenr and R C-R explained already very well what's the confusion about.
There isn't much to add, but I wanted to post this example from a 3d application to show you with a real example what specularity is about (and why it has nothing to do with the light settings):
 

 
Alright, in the first image it seems there is no light. In the second one there's some and finally, in the third image, there's definitely more light.
Well, guess what? They all share the same light setup. In fact, I didn't change the light at all. What changes, though, is the property of the specular channel for the material used on the torus.
That's it.
Every object, in reality, has its own specular property.
You can read more about it on this page:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/reflection_highlight/reflection_highlight.htm
 
As @owenr rightly pointed out, in your second screenshot the specular is set to 0, therefore the surface doesn't react to the light. Granted, this is not a 3d application we're talking about, but it's a good thing the concept remains the same otherwise it would get really confusing.

I agree. However, I think it would be hard to find the help for that without knowing what it is

Yes, and no. You can open a JPEG, make changes, and save it again as a .jpg file with the same name. What you can't do is start with some other kind of file and save a .jpg. To do that you need to use Export.

Yes, and no. You can open a JPEG, make changes, and save it again as a .jpg file with the same name. What you can't do is start with some other kind of file and save a .jpg. To do that you need to use Export.

You may think you are placing a light over one headlight, but what you are really doing is shining a light on a 2D image, part of which includes a headlight. That flat image is the only surface there is. It has just one specularity uniform over its entire surface, one shininess, & so on. The headlight is just part of the image surface, so it does not have any separate or independent surface properties.
 
The same would be true for an image that included 6 street lamps: they are not independent light sources in 3D space, they are all a part of the single surface of the one flat image that the lights of the lighting filter illuminates.
 
Think of it like taking a picture of a painting that is illuminated by one or more lights & the ambient light bouncing off other surfaces. No matter how you vary those lights, the painting has just one surface.

More about the workarounds can be found in the Arrow Brush topic in the Learn and Share > Resources forum, including a useful set of arrow brushes by @ronniemcbride you can download, more about the pressure graph technique, & using the iOS 10 or Grade UI Basic elements assets. 

What I would do is use "Paste Style". Very fast using two hands and you would get an instant visual. What's more, you don't have to keep moving the mouse pointer or your eye focus to a swatches palette and back again.
 
Select one rectangle that is in the colour you want, and "Copy" it. Select the rectangle(s) you want to apply the colour to, then Paste Style. etc etc, etc. The shortcut of Shift + Control + V would be too awkward for normal use, so set a simple one key shortcut for Paste Style, e.g. the backslash key, \
 
Edit > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and in the Edit dropdown menu, scroll down till you find it.

 
it would be very fast (well, for individual colouring). Keep your finger over the backslash key, click to select a rectangle (or several) then press the backslash key to "paste" fill with the colour, and so on. When you need a different colour, copy a different colour rectangle.
 

I agree. However, I think it would be hard to find the help for that without knowing what it is

I agree. However, I think it would be hard to find the help for that without knowing what it is

I agree. However, I think it would be hard to find the help for that without knowing what it is

Hi jer,
 
I have a different technique to fix this problem. Please see the file attached.
This approach lets you adjust colour/tonality and the amount of texture, despite that in this image you can't see very well the full impact it can have because of the lack of resolution and texture in the all image. I hope this could give you another solution.
 
I also addressed a bit of the colour cast but this is a tricky one since I believe we are going to see colours differently.
 
Pedro
 
reflection01-PS.afphoto.zip

Hi, and welcome.
Assuming you're using one of the desktop versions of Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer, and have the standard configuration, look in the column of tools on the left side of the screen. There are two text tools sharing one icon near the bottom of the column of tools. It will show A for the Artistic Text tool, or T for the Text Frame tool. There's a white triangle at the bottom that you can use to select the other tool if the one that's currently there isn't the one you want.

That's been reported previously It's an issue in the beta, but should work fine in the released version. You might find a workaround near the end of this discussion.

I can't speak for Psenda, but I certainly do "know Photoshop and other Photo editing software." Frankly, it sounds more to me like Photoshop is the only program with which you are very familiar.
One of the most annoying things that too many software vendors do is mix what should be the clear and normal meanings of saving a file versus exporting a file. And Adobe is one of the worst offenders in this regard. It leads to endless confusion among beginners about a very fundamental concept.
The "Save" word should only be associated with the program's native file format. Whenever a program converts one of its native files to some other file format--be it an exchange format or the proprietary format of another application--that is by definition exporting it.
Similarly, "Open" should only be associated with the program's native file format. Whenever a program converts a foreign file format--be it an exchange format or the proprietary format of another application--to its own native format, that is by definition importing it.
Importing and exporting requires translating parts of the file or its syntax to conform to the standards of the incoming or outgoing format--in other words, altering the file. Failure to understand this is why so many users of any given graphics program continually beat up on their pet program's vendors. Blurring the terminology just creates confusion and frustration among the users.
Illustrator users complain to Adobe because the marketing bullet point claims it can "open" .cdr files. They try to do so and become upset when their Conical Grads and Dimension objects disappear. So they scream "Illustrator is crap! I'm switching to Draw!."
Inversely, Draw users complain to Corel because the marketing bullet point claims it can "open" .ai files. They try to do so and their Brush objects become dumbed-down to groups of simple path objects with no live behaviors. So they scream "Corel Draw is crap! I'm switching to Illustrator!"
Those are just particulars among many, many more examples that are affected in conversions in either direction.
But all that blustery know-it-all nonsense stems from failure to understand that .ai and .cdr are proprietary formats each of which include proprietary constructs that the other doesn't understand (or have rights to). Like Illustrator, Draw has a "Brushes" feature. But that doesn't mean it is anything like an Illustrator Pattern Brush. Like Draw, Illustrator has Grad Fills. But Illustrator only provides the two most basic types: Linear and Radial. And to this day, Illustrator still fails to provide even basic dimension objects.
Inkscape catches a lot of grief from users of other drawing programs who don't understand that it is primarily all about compliance with an open standard  (SVG), even though Inkscape tries to provide clear documentation and alerts to make the user who pays attention aware when an operation or feature is not yet part of the standard.
So my "vote" is: Leave Serif alone in this matter. I strongly applaud its trying to adhere to the meaningful difference between Save and Export, and between Open and Import. I, for one, want to know when I'm actually invoking a conversion filter, and not just "opening" or "saving" a file as-is.
JET

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but certainly they can do cropping (using the crop tool) once you get the image into the application. I thought your question was how you get the image in the first place.

It sounds like you might not need training about Affinity, but rather about photography in general (composition, lighting, what makes a good photo vs a bad photo, etc.) which is something you need to know regardless of the tool(s) you choose to use.

Well, they can contain metadata, at least according to the specification for "ancillary data chunks" provided by Wikipedia. Perhaps the PNGs exported by the Affinity applications don't contain any, though

We've had a similar conversation before, here, and if I remember correctly a macro implementation was given. (Actually, several, but probably the last one given is best.)

Well, my color wheel is in color when I'm working in RGB or CMYK, but in shades of gray when my document is in grayscale.
 
Out of curiosity, when working in grayscale how would one use colors in the color wheel?

What kind of layer do you have selected? For example, if you're working in a fill layer I think you'll have only one color available: the fill color.

Gerard
My latest creation just might fit your need. First, in a new document with a transparent background, add your text watermark,This will be used to create a Brush.  It's as easy as creating a PNG file of your watermark to create a new brush in the brush panel. (when created, it will be very the last entry in the active brush category) Now, highlight your brush and record a macro of this brush being applied to a new pixel layer located above a background image, in the Layer Panel. Any image will do for the moment. When you replay the macro with any other image, the watermark is applied in exactly the same spot you chose, as you recorded the macro.
You can get as fancy or simple as you like. Transparency, size, color, blend modes... even special effects can all be used and readjusted, if you set things up properly within the macro. It's actually a pretty versatile tool and completely non-destructive. I created several different marks and made a macro for each one, allowing me to apply any of several styles. I have a small plain one that is applied in the lower right corner and a larger one that can be applied across the whole image, for theft prevention.
You get the added bonus of also being able to run this macro from the Batch Mode panel. This allows you to apply the watermark to one image or whole folders of images. You can also choose to store the newly marked images in a new folder .... all without ever opening them into AP.  I don't recommend loading a thousand photos for batch processing, but it didn't choke on the dozen or so that I used for testing.
TIP #1 : That pixel layer is the secret to success. It gives you nearly unlimited options for how your watermark displays and even lets you relocate and or change its size.
TIP #2 : After you export the macro to the library,  rename it "Watermark #XX" and drag the entry to top of the first category in your macro library. Then you won't have to hunt for them.

Steve

Perhaps you could provide a .afphoto file that demonstrates the problem you're seeing, and attach it to a post here so we can see it, too?

Apparently, Serif is not doing anything with it. As that site says,
 

For something like this I'd recommend posting in Questions.
It looks to me like you've simply hidden your Studios by pressing ctrl-shift-H. In that case, pressing ctrl-shift-H again would restore them. (Pressing Tab gives a similar effect, but it would also hide the tool bar on the left.)

It can't. The beta is constantly changing, and the Workbook was produced long before the current beta version (or the current release version) were made available.
However, the Workbook is not a manual, intended to explain every feature of Affinity Photo. Rather, it explains the basics, and then as a learning aid it shows some advanced examples with specific projects you can work on. The beta versions of the program generally fix bugs, and add enhancements, and should not invalidate anything described in the Workbook. All the exercises should continue to work.
The Workbook won't show you everything that is in the beta, but it's not even intended (I believe) to show/describe/explain everything that is in the officially released version of the program.