Fantail

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when toggling the UI, the document does not stay in place, which is quite annoying.
For example, when I toggle this:

It becomes this:

It seems the document is moved by as much as the upper left corner moves when the toolbox disappears.
It would be great if this could be negated so that the document stays at the same pixel position so that toggling does not effectively move the image around.

If you mean ZBrush, the 'perpetual' license for the single seat version of the current 2019 version costs $895 USD, plus another $10 if you want a backup disk. It is licensed for use by a single artist & may be activated on no more than two computers (Mac or Windows) at a time, but only one copy can be run at a time. Upgrades from previous versions are indeed free, but they were also pricey upfront  purchases. For example, the 2018 version was around $800 USD.
Compare those prices to what Affinity purchases cost & maybe you will get a better idea why Serif is not offering free upgrades, only version updates.

Another vote for a permanent option.  The boolean workaround is inconvenient - especially if there is a gradient fill or many objects.  Also, why implement something that requires a hack?

I love the Tone Mapping module

I know the feeling! Here's the raw image straight off the camera.
 

Yes, as a comic artist i strongly support this request ! We need a "sample all layers" function. It makes preparing your flat colours so easy and quick.

This build has been superseded by the release of 1.7.1 announced here
We are pleased to announce a major update for the Windows release of Affinity Photo, version 1.7.0
The changes in Affinity Photo for Windows 1.7.0 over the last Affinity Photo patch 1.6.5 (1.6.5 PK) are as follows:
CHANGES SINCE LAST VERSION
EDR
Added support for EDR displays to Photo. When editing a 32bit document. Brushes
Photo 1.7 introduces a new “sub-brush” mechanism, developed in conjunction with Paolo Limoncelli (DAUB® Brushes). This exciting feature allows any brush to have a list of other brushes attached which will draw at the same time. Each sub-brush has a fully separate and customisable set of dynamics. You can control when the sub-brushes are drawn and how they blend with the main brush. The brush engine in Photo has been improved. Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. Wet edges and accumulation are now available on colour brushes and brushes with HSL variance. Brushes with multiple nozzle textures have always chosen the nozzle at random. In 1.7, the nozzle choice has a dynamic controller and ramp for greater control. All brush tools now support left and right arrow keys for rotation - a common feature request. Fixed ABR brush import (would ignore "random" controllers). RAW
The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. RAW files now load much more quickly. Reimplemented support for XTrans sensors. The denoise algorithm has been rewritten. It produces better results and takes advantage of the new GPU architecture. Hot pixel removal is now automatically performed by the Serif Labs engine. Profiled lens correction are more stable, apply more quickly, and can be toggled in the Develop UI. The histogram in the Develop persona is now presented in the output colour space - as opposed to always being linear. Develop now respects the output profile when previewing. Show which autofocus rectangles were in focus and which were selected by the camera (yellow, green respectively). A large number of new cameras are supported for RAW development (we will provide a list of the new supported cameras as soon as possible!). Filters
New “Procedural Texture” filter with advanced presets support. New “Voronoi” filter. Denoise, Clarity and Shadows / Highlights filters have been rewritten (using technology from the Develop Persona). More filters are now available as Live Filters - including the new Procedural Texture filter. Live filters have been rewritten to improve performance - especially when multiple filters are used in a document. Improved Polar to Rectangular and Rectangular to Polar filters. Added round dot type to the halftone filter. New “Lens Correction” filter - apply lens correction from the built-in lens database. Bilateral blur accuracy improvements. Adjustments
The HSL adjustment layer has been rewritten. It now supports custom hue ranges, a new algorithm, new UI and picker controls. The Levels adjustment layer now supports output levels - a common feature request. The White Balance adjustment layer has been rewritten. The Selective Colour adjustment layer has been rewritten. PSD import / export of adjustments has been improved. The Vibrance adjustment layer has been rewritten. The Recolour adjustment layer has gained a lightness slider. Layers
Layers Panel - added option for transparent background for thumbnails. Layers Panel - added multiple thumbnail size options. Layers Panel- added ability to tag layers with a colour - including PSD round-trip. Allow adding an empty group from the Layer menu. New “Duplicate Selection” item in Layer menu (old behaviour). Duplicate now duplicate the whole layer ignoring pixel selection. Alt / Option is now used to make a pixel selection from layer luminance. You can now also hold shift to add the result to the current selection. Hide / Show / Show All Layers options in layers menu. Ability to either rasterise or rasterise and trim a layer. Previously recorded macros will trim. Selections
Significant improvements to selection refinement. When using selection tools with no pixel selection, default to New / Add as appropriate. Added “Alpha Similarity” to Select Sampled Colour tool. Tools
Grouped tool shortcuts now default to needing the shift key held to cycle (option in preferences). The Crop tool has been rewritten - it now supports resolution changes, absolute pixel size and has a much improved preset mechanism. The Sponge Brush tool now gives more correct / pleasant results. Allow brush rotate / size key changes while dragging. Added a “Reveal Canvas” checkbox to the crop tool - defaults to off. Added new “Transform object separately” mode into Move tool. A general tools overhaul has been performed - providing editing of grids, guides, page origin, across multiple tools (not just in the Move tool) Patch tool now supports arrow keys for rotate / scale. All brush tools can now be axis constrained once brush has started - not just the pixel tool. History
“Alternate futures” for document history have been added. Traditionally, if you roll back the undo history then do something else all your changes after that point are lost. Photo will now display a small branch icon in the history tab when you do this. Pressing that button will cycle between all the different “futures” after that history entry - meaning you will never lose work you have done. The History page now has an “advanced” mode - which shows thumbnails and time info. I/O
HEIF images can now be loaded directly into Photo. If they contain a depth map, this will also be loaded as a second layer. Because depth maps are typically lower resolution than the main image, optional “smart” upsampling will be performed. TIFF export now has user selectable compression method. Added support for 12bit TIFF files. Introduced new metadata mining - completely rewritten to improve performance, flexibility and correctness. Metadata is now dynamically synchronised with your document - so if you resize then export, the values will be correct. Added Focal Length to metadata summary view. Added a button in general preferences to open a folder from which Photo will read LensFun-style XML files - if users wish to add / experiment with their own lens profiles. Support 16bit CMYK TIFF import. General
New ability to control how macros are scaled / aligned when playing back. Added an “Assets” panel to Photo. New cube setup mode for grids. Add “Fill with Primary / Secondary” to the Edit menu for fast access. The batch process dialog now fully supports expressions for height and width - available constants are “w”, “h” and “dpi”. “Lock guides” added to menus. Support for drag dropping .afstyles into Photo. Support for drag dropping .afpalette into Photo. Photo now supports custom document presets - a popular feature request. A new blend mode - Linear Burn - has been added. New “Move inside / outside” commands have been added - useful for quick operations on clipping masks etc. The Hard Mix blend mode has been improved. New provider options have been added to the stock panel - support for Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay. All of these providers offer full-resolution stock imagery which is free to use. Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features. Significant stability improvements when working on non-local files (network shares, USB drives, etc.). Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes. Huge macro and batch processing improvements. New welcome screen layout and all new samples.  Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list! This thread is for commenting on this announcement. Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Photo Bugs on Windows section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
For purchases from the Affinity Store the software: Each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer any available update, or it can be downloaded from here. The new build will install over the top of any earlier version, with no need to uninstall. Alternatively you can log into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the download button in there.
For purchases from the Microsoft Store: These are done automatically by the operating system (next time you start the application)

When you require to do something complicated with a mask, then it is sometimes easier to play with a mask as with normal pixel layer.  To do this you have to convert the mask into greyscale pixel layer. You have to choose mask layer first and then in the channels panel find "your mask name" alpha channel. For alpha channel, there is the menu (right mouse click) with "Create Grayscale Layer" option. This option lets you to create the normal pixel layer which can be edited as usual.
 
Other layers can be deactivated or blocked with an additional black pixel layer or what is sometimes better newly created mask layer. When you are happy with the result you can create a new mask using Rasterize To Mask from layers menu. In this case, the whole group will be converted to mask. If you want to keep group, you can use Merge Visible and then convert the newly created layer to mask.
 
You do not have to use groups, but this permits you to keep a history of mask creation. What is more important - such groups can be utilized as templates for other masks. You can also utilize tools which are unusual when we think about masks. For example, you can use vector graphic to make the mask.
 
You can also utilize spare channels for such operations like adding, subtracting or intersecting. In this case, you are going through pixel selection layer. From any colour channel, you can create a spare channel and load this extra channel to pixel selection. It means that in Affinity Photo we have full round-trip: from selection to mask and from a mask to grayscale and from grayscale to selection.
 
Do not forget to deactivate group or greyscale layer when you want go back to normal editing tasks.
 

It's not so much a 'bad phone camera' ... more so a lack of understanding of the tricks food photographers use!
Have a look here and here
Your image (zucchini?) looks unappealing because, in the photo, it looks over cooked—mushy and lacking in colour. The trick here would be to photograph it raw (or very slightly cooked). This way the colour, texture etc would be retained. Spraying the veg and adding steam (how to—pointed out in the links) would create an illusion of a freshly cooked dish.
Bon appetit!   

i thought your result was pretty good all things considered. I might take down the highlights just a tad as the blown out pixels are making your food look a bit plasticky. 

Ok, I reworked the tail curve and her left hand. Simply mirroring the other one turned out to be the wrong perspective. And sketching an ok-looking hand in pixel mode is so much easier than getting it to look good no matter the zoom  But I think I'll try to work on the other points first before reworking the hand again to get my mind off things...

Finally laid down the flat shapes. Any advice on how to make those random red blobs have a more natural flow? Or generally how best to model such a shape.
Thank you! 
(Not my character. Mermaid design based off of Eleanor Forte.)

I love the diversity of art, so many creative people on here, very inspirational.

Wow, thanks for the detailed explanation! That was really the one point I didn't get, I just didn't see it before but now that you pointed it out, that hard edge irks me too haha 
I've just been tracing my sketches - all flaws included -  so far but it seems vector is a whole different world of things to learn! I'll do some fixing now and update later when it's done

Nice drawing, very sweet.
A few observations.
Needs more scales on the lower body  Hair needs more definition, more hair strands The right hand looks more like a hoof than a hand You need to neaten your curves because you have flat spots and they would look much nicer having a nice flow to them.

Have you experimented with effects/inner shadows at all? They can add a bit more dimension to your work. Also using semi transparent darker gradients with a multiply blend mode for shadows...

1. Its a judgement call really, I thought it needs some more to give it more of an impression of scales. If you like it the way it is leave it.
2. Good to know, again there are no rules per se, just stop when you like it, A lot of pointers are really subjective, meaning what I would do isn't what anyone else might do, that's art, it's you that makes it unique. My sister paints oils and has a very distinctive style, unmistakably Milly
3. Hands can be tricky, you could get away with duplicating and then flipping the other hand, I won't tell anyone 
4. Yes, flat parts, they kind of draw the eye, whereas curves let the eye flow over the curve. If I'm drawing a curve manually, I will use an ellipse that I rotate to act as a guide while I move the nodes, a bit like a French curve/frisket once I have the curve er! "curved" I can delete the ellipse guide and carry on.

Here is a visual example of what I mean, I dropped the opacity of the ellipse so I could see in or out what I would need to move.

There are ways of creating nice curves using geometry operations also known as boolean operations, by adding and subtracting shapes from each other.

Some more details, whooo! And I did manage to improve the shape of that tail sploosh. Now onto shading those things...
 

Added some more details and basic shading, but problem still stands. That sploosh at the tail looks like an abomination.

This is a 2017 project I was not yet able to showcase. It was a fantastic project to create and design the iPad version ( plus a UI for the plug in version) from the polyphonic synthesizer Redominator (Audiorealism) that finally was not released due to business reasons out of my control. However, it was nearly finished both from design and dev points of view,  and I'm showcasing it a couple of years later, so I can tell you that back in the day, apart from a couple of little bugs moving things with the cursor keys and some issues I had with the slicing part, the whole experience overall was lots of fun and I loved it, as much as the result.
This is a preview of the interface. You can see many more details and a test demo video on this link: https://www.behance.net/gallery/75938293/UI-deisgn-Redominator-(Polyphonic-Synthesizer)-iPad-Air?

I am using Font Creator 8.0, it is PC only, but thinking about Glyphs (or Glyphs Mini) for my Macbook.

Hello.
 
I used AD to draw and slice single glyphs for my new comic book font... regular is done, others (italic, bold, bold ilalic) are still in progress.
 

 
... and here is the sampler:

Cool Milos, what app are you using to generate the font with?

Sword
Added Inktober [06] Word Prompt:Sword  
 
Original AD= 300 x 300 mm 300dpi
Re-created =AD beta version 300 x 300mm (300dpi)
 
Original
 

 
Vector
Re-created using vector objects only in AD 1.6.1
 

 
Wireframe