aleer

Problem solved! See above. Thank you for your help.

That was it! I had opened a Publisher document on my XP-Pen display and apparently shut it down prematurely. Now everything is working again. Thank you so much!

Thanks. I tried it but nothing has changed. Still can't open anything.

I am using OS ver. 14.1.2 (Sonoma) and Affinity Publisher ver. 2.3.0 on my desktop Mac. I have used Affinity products for years. I have been using this version of Publisher for a while and have had no problems. Then suddenly it quit opening files. The app will open, but I can’t get past the New Document page. If I try to open any file (whether stored in Apple iCloud or not), the New Document page closes but the file does not open. And although the document does not open, it will appear in “File/Open Recent” afterwards. Also, if I try to create a new document, when I click on “Create” a new document does not open. When the Affinity Publisher app is closed and I double click on an .afpub file in the Finder, the app will open, but the document will not open. Restarting the computer doesn't help. I also have Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo and I am experiencing the same problem with Designer but not with Photo (so far). I assume whatever fixes Publisher will fix Designer.

Aha! Rasterize. Okay, I didn't realize the image layer wasn't rasterized. Thanks a million, it works smoothly now.

Thanks for the workaround, @toltec. I tried it and it works. I do want to use the selection as a clipping path to drop out the background on a placed pixel image. After several failures (when I tried to delete the inverted selection, the entire image disappeared) I discovered that the placed image has to be embedded. My placed image was a jpeg and apparently you can't embed a jpeg(?). When I tried it with a PSD image, it embedded and I was able to do my editing. As far as I can tell, the Affinity documentation doesn't say anything about this re. jpegs. Anyway, I achieved what I was trying to do and thank you very much for your help.

When I bought Affinity Designer, I assumed I could use the pen tool to make precise selections. But I can't find any way to turn a shape made with the pen tool into a selection. When I Google "Affinity pen tool selections," I find that you can do it with Affinity Photo. It seems like pen tool selections should be available with Designer too, since it has a pixel persona. Am I missing something?