chriscaldwell

Wow, you guys are truly amazing. I'm grateful for this help! Now, I can work on the next element. Thank you all very much. I'm going to put it together right now. Chris

Hello everyone, I have a .jpg image (attached). I've tried the following steps to make the background transparent, but it just makes my selected color transparent and the rest stays the same. 1. Open the .jpg 2. Be in Pixel mode 3. right click on layer and choose rasterize 4. using the eyedropper tool, sample the color I want to keep. 5. Go to Select Manu and select sampled color. (I noticed this not only outlines my subject, but puts marching ants around the entire border of the image.) 6. Click on mask layer icon at bottom of layers panel (this immediately deletes my sampled color rather than keeps it!) I can't get any further than this to complete my work. Thank you for any help! Chris

Hello, Hope everyone is doing well. I'm trying to figure out how to create one of those glassy looking buttons, but can only get so far. The transparency tool is the key I suppose, but I cannot seem to get it right. How do you clip it so the piece of shape that I used to create the highlight isn't exported? Can someone explain how to do this with a capsule type of button shape? I have attached my work so far. I want to be able to scale this down to try different sizes from say 275px wide to 350px. Thank you so much, Chris order-now-orange.afdesign orange.afdesign

God bless you for doing this! Thank you so much, Lagarto. I'm going to finish this project up right now! Truly, there are some remarkably talented people in this world.

here is my latest PDF. I am not sure how to embed the fonts? AREA-1A.pdf

Hi Lagarto, Thank you for the reply. The way this printer wants the work uploaded is outlined in the screenshots. I just don't know how to get them to accept the file another way?

Hello again, Lagarto, I really thought I had this project done, but apparently, the printing company will not accept the spot color separation. They insist that the large A appear on it's own. It needs to be black. I have tried desperately for hours on end to get this work. I downloaded your file, exported it to a PDF and attempted to place the logo onto the business card mockup. I cannot separate the A on it's own. I've tried to export the file as a pdf unchecking the A layer, and placing it on the business card mockup. Then, I go back to the file and check just the A layer, and uncheck everything else. I try to place that on my mockup but the A will not line up properly, it's always off a hair. My last attempt will not allow the grey A to be without the black eclipse. It's just starting to get absurd. I thought it should be super simple to have the A cropped out in black and in perfect position and alignment. Nothing seems to work. The attached screenshot is my most recent attempt. But that black eclipse will not disappear. I'm out of ideas. I can shut the A layer off, but when I turn it on and shut everything else off, that darn black eclipse is still there. Any ideas? Thank you.

This is just brilliant. Thank you so much for doing this. I see exactly what you mean now. I just took the image you created, then opened it in Designer, then exported it to my desktop as a PDF, then re-opened the PDF in Designer and see that the A is indeed cropped. This is quite cool to see. I cannot thank you enough for going to the trouble. Every time I come here for help, I learn something that takes this software to an even higher level. Thank you.

Hi Lagarto, Thanks so much for sending the PDF! It's very helpful for me to dissect and see how you made the A work for this foil printing. But since I'm a bit of a novice, I'm feeling kind of embarrassed for not understanding how you did this cropping of the large A? I tried to do it by taking the shape tool and making a circle, but it's not working the way you did it. Also, I am not sure how to change the font around the circle that says Area Real Estate Advisors? It appears to be an image layer, rather than a text layer. I wanted to use the proper font and tighten up the text with tracking and kerning. Again, my appreciation for your help, and I do apologize for not understanding something that might be obvious. Thank you Chris

Hello Lagarto, this is so helpful! My deepest gratitude for taking the time to respond and in such detail. I wanted to let you know that I reached out to the printer, and they sent me these instructions: "When creating your cards you will need to have two files ready: one for the design (ink) layer and one for the Foil layer which will be applied on top of your ink design. For the design (ink) layer we recommend that you edit save your files in CMYK and follow our artwork guidelines here: https://support.moo.com/hc/sections/200572484 However, for the Foil layer we have slightly different requirements. You will need to create your design in black and white with the elements you want to have the Foil/Spot Gloss applied in black and everything else white. You can find our guidelines here: https://support.moo.com/hc/sections/201462176 For both layers you can find our sizing templates here: https://support.moo.com/hc/sections/200570950 Please note, if you have chosen to order Foil we ask that you do not duplicate the parts of the design you wish to be in Gold Foil on the design layer as you may see some misalignment in print."

strange. I 'm wanting to respond to Lagarto, since he's been so helpful, and cannot, except for bland sentences like this.

It's like I can only type a small amount of words.

Why do I keep getting 403 forbidden error when trying to respond? I am trying to be more detailed, but can only respond with a couple of sentences.

Hello

Thank you so much Lagarto. While it didn't not jumble up the text, using the outer bottom right handle to scale did sort of mess up the borders on the circle, making them appear thicker, and the spacing is off. I thought maybe everything was supposed to scale together? I selected everything, then grabbed that handle while holding shift. Exporting as a .pdf worked a treat, though. I can certainly re-create the logo for each purpose, but thought it would be easy to scale using the handle. I attached a screenshot after my attempt to scale. One other question I'm hoping you can help me to figure out as I am learning my way around Designer. It's a bit hard to decsribe, but I'm going to have business cards printed using silver foil for the large letter A. The printing company needs me to separate the layers so that the white A is all by itself. I can do that, however, the A as it currently exists in the document is a full letter form that appears cropped by the black circle and rest of the logo. I think I would need to send the A in a cropped form, rather than as a fully formed A. I'm not sure how to do this so that it will match up properly. So, I would send the logo with a black circle in the middle, then a separate file with the cropped out A. I hope that makes sense Thanks again for any help.

Thank you so much, Lagarto and MikeW! You guys, I can't thank you enough for your help and suggestions. So it seems probably my best course of action is to create a separate version for each purpose. If I'm creating a poster, then create a new document with the dimension of the poster, etc. But here's something that I'm unclear about. Using the 300dpi logo (attached above), I'm making a business card and want to reduce the size of the logo to fit on standard business card, I thought I could simply copy the logo from one Designer window, then paste it on the window that contains my business card layout. I was able to paste it, but when I grabbed the corner and tried to make the logo smaller to fit the card, the words in the outer circle Area Real Estate Advisors got all jumbled up? Is it possible to make it work so this doesn't happen.

Hello! I have a question involving a logo and business card that I helped a client create. Specifically, I created this at 300 dpi in Designer. I notice when I exported to PDF at 300 dpi that the incredibly crisp edges in the words Area Real Estate around the circle lose the crispness/hi resolution when I did this. The client is wanting to be able to occassionally print signs that are occasionally poster size, maybe 2 x 3 feet or more. Will this image be okay printing at the size? Is there a way to maintain a crisp image when creating a pdf that will be printed at poster or banner sizes? Also, if client wants to use the image as an email signature logo, say 265px x 265px, do I just export as a .png and then choose the smaller dimensions, or first reduce the image, then export? I just want to be sure the text is legible. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the logo blows up and reduces perfectly in Designer, but when I export it from Designer to .png or .pdf the text becomes fuzzy around the circle. Thank you so much for any help! ( I attached the Affinity designer file) Chris AREA_logo_Master-File.afdesign

Thank you all so much! Just love this program and this community. So helpful.

Hi Garry, Fixed! Thank you so much. I didn't even know that you could that!

Hello, I have updated to 1.8, and notice a strange issue with Designer. It's probably not even related to the update....but, the text in the large letter A in the attached image appears very grainy or noisy, yet no filter or style is applied. It's supposed to be solid white color. Even the little color box at the top displays a noisy/grainy white. I'm viewing this on a Mac 15 inch retina. Does anyone know what's going on and how to fix this? Thank you so much, Chris

Thank you. I was trying to be sure that I understood about "painting over these parts." I first tried just using the selection brush, but it was tricky because of the faded out parts of the window frame. Again, thank you for this help. What great time we live in, that I could just reach out across the world and get instant help at this hour. Just amazing.

Brilliant as always firstdefence. I'm so grateful for the quick response, too. It's almost 3am here in Arizona and I'm been trying figure this out. Thank you so much. Do you have a finished file that I can actually download in addition to the tutorial? This is so helpful. Finally, I can sleep....!

Hello there, I've watched a couple of tutorials on changing sky color, but can't seem to get a realistic effect on the attached image. I think the problem is that some of the window frame is washed out. Hoping someone might have a suggestion on what to do. Just want to make it very pale, light blue, like a sunny day in the city. Thank you so much for any help. Hope everyone is doing great. Chris

Thank you for taking the time to reply, v_kyr. I appreciate your help.

Hi there again, happy holidays and Merry Christmas. I'm back to putting some final touches on this business card project and had a quick question about the shadow color on the front of the card with the tunnel effect. Dazzler made some great points about shadows, and the blur technique for realism was a great point. I got so much good info from everybody, and cannot wait to get these printed for the new year. So now, I'm down to trying to figure out if the shadow color on the back where it has an email address, should be the same color on the front with the tunnel effect? Also, any thoughts based on your experience for the type of card stock that might be best for this? matte or shiny, super thick, regular, etc. Thanks again for this help. business card shadow-3.afdesign