Gabe

I suspect your brightness contrast filter is the issue. (Just above water layer  (I see Toltec has also picked that up)). The contrast brightness adjustment layer is not a child layer of the water layer and you can see where the inpainting layer is working on the brightness contrast layer. You can see where it is painted out in the contrast brightness adjustment layer. Nest that layer with the water layer and the inpainting layer should hide the flag.

Hi @Quinalty
Designer can, Photo can't. Here's a video.
 

Just use the Adjustment filter Black and White from the Layers Panel

or
Go to the Channel panel and click on any of the background channels and select Create Greyscale Layer.

I used:-
Xara photo and graphic designer for the bird and background
A paintshop pro 2019 plug in called Particle Shop for the smoke effect (you SHOULD see what you can do with the other brushes it offers)
and Affinity Designer for the rest

Patience is the main ingredient.
Basically I used the selection tools and it was trial and error here, just messing with the tolerance settings and turning contiguous off to get it to select the blue, then I selected the trunks and a bit of the ground around the trunk, I inverted that selection and used a textured brush to start erasing around the trees branches, once I'd got a transparent edge around the trees lower branches, I could use a basic brush with the eraser tool to remove the rest of the ground. I then smudged the base of the trunk to get a nice finish to the tree.
  

Apply a Curves adjustment layer. Select Alpha from the menu  then you can play around with the curve to do pretty much what you want with those elusive semis 

As expected on Windows, standard sRGB monitor colour profile. 

Try changing them to sRGB for the meantime and see how it looks: See MEB's reply. 
 

Hi @maxmax,
Welcome to the forums. 
We have got a few articles on how to create your own brushes:
Even though they are for iPad, the same settings apply on Desktop:
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/how-to-create-raster-brushes-in-affinity-designer-for-ipad/
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/creating-your-own-brush-nozzles-from-real-life-media/
https://affinityspotlight.com/article/how-to-create-vector-brushes-in-affinity-designer-for-ipad/
You can also create your own shape and use that as the nozzle. You can also use a standard round brush and change the shape to an elipse. Put the spacing back to 100 and you're done.
 

1 AFAIK, no. Not perfect, but what I do is leave a small gap, select the Node Tool and drag the last node over the first node. You get an on screen magnifier and the node snaps into place, closing the path.
2 There is no vector path eraser, although you can reshape the Pencil's path with Sculpt. Just draw over the previously drawn path and it reshapes the path. Of course, you can use the node tool.

Hi all, 
This has already been logged as an improvement. Basically, it really depends on the size of the shape and the zoom level. If you have a small shape and zoomed our really far ( the shape being smaller than the fingertip) you will, of course, have a hard time moving/resizing. Zooming in should make your life a bit easier. 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Hi@bowen192,
If you cannot see them in the layer studio, can you attach the .afdesign file ? 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Can you please try to run this ? https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17588/fix-problems-that-block-programs-from-being-installed-or-removed

hi @Dahu,
Welcome to the forums. 
You can create a compound by long-pressing on the boolean operations. See below. 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Not sure about PS but i've heard people talking about an app called Affinity Photo  - never heard of it before today but they have a 10 day trial and it has a one off payment 

Hi @starcenter,
Welcome to the forums. 
We are aware of this and has already been logged as an improvement with our developers. 
Thanks,
Gabe.

Hi @Krishna Prasad Kotti,
For Windows, would be N. 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Turn on snapping (the little magnet/horseshoe symbol). Much easier to align the rectangles accurately.
036F709B-9E2D-4EB2-94EF-41E3CDA02670.MP4

Hi @bberguglian,
There's a tutorial here: 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Hi @swmcl-affinity,
Welcome to the forums. 
8 x 10 @ 4800dpi would be 48000px on the long edge. Our maximum size is 256000px on the long edge. So you will be fine
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Hi @Popuri
Is that a slice from the "background"? Slice from a layer? Any chance you can send us a screen recording of your workflow? 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Hi @francwoods,
Welcome to the forums. 
You would have to use the Layer Studio to select the layers because the macro will select layers based on their order in the stack. You cannot select them by clicking on the canvas.
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Hi @kamelelmallah,
Welcome to the forums. 
The crop tool will crop the canvas and not the individual layers. If you wish to crop the image, you would have to create a shape and drag the shape layer on the right hand side of the image thumbnail.
 
 
Thanks,
Gabe.