How did I do this?

[arquata]

This might seem a really stupid question, but....I took a photo, downloaded it.... looked really boring .... so played around a bit, and to my surprise ...it's turned out one of the best I've ever taken!!

The problem is I cannot remember how I did it. Apparently , with LightRoom it would tell me, but I'm a very new user to Affinity, so don't have a clue how to find out the steps I've taken. Can anyone tell me if there is a way, please? Thank you.

[Oufti]

If you have not closed your document, you can go in the Window menu and choose to show the History panel, where you can go back to every step you've done. 

https://affinity.help/photo2/English.lproj/pages/Panels/historyPanel.html

[thomaso]

In addition to Oufti's hint: In the File menu you have an option to "Save History With Document". If activated before saving a file it will enable you to access the history even after closing and reopening the file or app.

[smadell]

Saving the history is off by default. And, one must presume, your history is not recoverable. If you saved your work as an Affinity Photo file (a file with the extension .afphoto) does that file show any layers in addition to the “Background” layer? That might go a long way toward identifying the steps taken.

Short of that, it is possible that one or more of us could suggest possibilities if you posted before and after versions of the photo. Someone might be anle to “reverse engineer” the changes that might have led the before to achieve the after. If you can’t post the photos, that’s understandable. But if that’s the case, you might be out of luck.

[Pšenda]

10 hours ago, arquata said:

The problem is I cannot remember how I did it.

If you do not work destructively, which is by the way a highly recommended procedure, then by looking at the Layer stack (Layers Panel) you can identify the types of adjustments made and their parameters, which you can then very easily replicate or copy to another document.

[thomaso]

3 hours ago, Pšenda said:

If you do not work destructively, which is by the way a highly recommended procedure, then by looking at the Layer stack (Layers Panel)

Good point, … while, by the way, the Layers Panel in Affinity seems to work similar to the Mask panel in Lightroom mentioned by @arquata.