Sunset

what Mith said

Excellent! (too early in the morning to find a glass of red!)

I was one of the early voters, too!

Thinking about it, the nodes that we used to morph the shadows previously are probably not unlike using the mesh warp, just packaged differently for the user. I do agree with you all - and I did ask for ways of doing it and you all kindly helped out! I never hesitate to ask for a feature that I think would be an improvement, though - who knows, my luck might be in! New ways of working is why I like Affinity Designer and Photo, and I am very much looking forward to Publisher. The previous programs were looking dated and most people were using Adobe or Corel, neither of which I could really afford, but I was happy with Serif and delighted when Affinity arrived. I'm pretty good at working out new ways of doing things - and pleased that I had worked out how to do the shadows, your joint confirmation of the method means that I can perfect that method now with confidence. It was always possible that I was missing something obvious amongst the tools and, apparently, I wan't missing anything at all Happy days! I wonder what my next question will be... ? Thanks again

Craft Artist, the incredibly easy to use scrapbooking software that Serif sold previously. So there are lots of us out there happy to move to Affinity but, of course, there are a lot of differences. And, being human, we get uneasy when we can't work out how to do something "instantly" in Affinity because we're always on a mission, things to do, photographs to scrap, art pages to make... Alfred, I've just checked and there are actually 13 of us, hidden away, a self-help group. With you there would be 14 -if you ever join that particular part of social media. We can't be found in any indexes just because there are plenty of places that are like that.

Maybe not for a shadow or opaque object, but could definitely be used for a reflection on metal or glass - what an interesting thought! I've just been looking through stuff I used to do in the 'scrapbooking' way and all the different skills and techniques we used and thinking that it's time to start doing wacky fun stuff again with photographs You've just given me A Good Idea : The artwork is not my own it's from a scrapbooking kit by a very talented Lorie Davison, wonderful images to work with. I just have to pick and choose and come up with interesting layouts. Thanks

This was my work flow. I duplicated the object, applied the gaussian layer and changed the colour. Then I used the Mesh Warp but it crashed the program (separate thread). When I restarted the program everything was fine, so I used the Mesh Warp again to bend the shadow, applied some transparency, ditched the deer and added extra snow. This was done on the Mac,

Thank you all, Haakoo: the gaussian blur etc is exactly what I invented for myself (so I'm pretty pleased that I invented something good!), I just didn't find it very easy to come up with such perfect shadows - a little practice and I suspect that I will find it easy, it's good to see such a good shadow as an example. Carl123: the method you describe I would never have thought of in a month of Sundays! I have both Windows and Mac versions so I shall have a go at that; thank you also for such a great example. Thanks R C-R - I'll definitely try it on Windows then. To the Powers That Be - we (a group of CA refugees, you'd know all six of us!) would still LOVE to have some extra options to the outer shadow Effect, our workflow would be greatly enhanced

A number of ex-CA users are missing a very important feature, the ability to shear a shadow to the left or the right, and the ability to make the shadow smaller or larger than the original object. This is particularly important when creating a work that shows, for example, people walking or the shadows of buildings in the late afternoon sunshine. The Outer Shadow is good at what it does, but appears to be limited in its options, there is no Shear X or Shear Y that I can find, and we miss the nodes to precisely position a shadow so that it falls on the ground at the side of a person, correctly positioned with the persons feet and shortened or lengthened to be commensurate with the angle of the sun, or other source of light, in the work. I did create a passable effect by copying the object (a child running), applying 100% gaussian blur and changing the colour (I wanted a blue tinted shadow onto snow). Then I used the Mesh Warp tool to drag and shear the 'shadow' object down and to the left, positioning the shadow realistically under the foot. The result was passable, but it helped that I was placing the shadow onto a lumpy snowy ground so I could get away with imperfections. Is there a way of fine-tuning shadows? If not, can I add it to the Feature List (I have looked through but didn't see anything)? Hilary

It's good creative structure, I've never had a liking for making random stuff - whether the creative thinking initiates the process or comes along after reading a thread or looking at last years photos in the photos folder doesn't matter, there's always a back story. The outer shadow effect I'll guess you're already using, might be an idea to start with a very short radius blur with no offset to see if that separates the letters from the background paper and then tweak the offset and the direction as required on some letters. If he's using scissors then the edges would be straight anyway. If I was making the ransom note I'd go out of town or mail order and get a publication that was as far as possible from my usual tastes - pig farming weekly, or something like that, and tear a page out of that for the background - or I might want something more scary like a page from Sherlock Homes to give the idea that I was 'on the case! A lot of fun, whether you finish the project or move sideways onto something else.

I need to organise my Mac filing system better! (Windows is organised to perfection!) as I was looking for an overlay that would really created a folded, used page, but just couldn't find it. What would you like the end result to be? I'm just curious, not meaning to interfere with your workflow

My photo of Paris taken on the hottest day of 2011 at dusk when the whole of the gardens around the Eiffel Tower seemed to be one big lazy picnic, low lights and a quiet constant hum of activity. I've used a couple of other images - an old letter and a print of old buildings acquired in digital format over the years - and used transparencies and blends to get the effect I wanted. All made with Designer. Just for the enjoyment and the experience of making things.

Some great art in this thread!

Lovely work, very subtle reflections and a lot of detail.

That must have taken some considerable patience - if it was a whodunit question then I would be looking for someone who buys far too many magazines and stacks them in the living room just for cutting out ransom demand letters! As a poster effect it does work, but for a little more realism the shadows need to stand out a bit more, I would also change the background, maybe add an overlay to it which gives the effect of creased paper, that would generate some automatic shadow/3D and help to lift your letters off the page occasionally. A trick that I used in previous Serif programs was to add another layer that was just a transparent/black gradient and do some nifty dragging of the transparency so that it just affects edges or corners slightly, and makes the letters look a bit roughed up and manhandled. Having said that, I do like what you have done, it takes a lot to come up with so many good variations on this theme!

This creature was also found in the chimney! (He is a wood carving from the local park, obviously looking for somewhere warmer to stay for the winter).

The poor builder (cry) had been up on the roof in the freezing cold, dismantling a damaged chimney, so I thought I'd make everything a bit more interesting. The Refine a Selection worked well.

Hahaha! I wonder what that might have been!!!!! No comment I'm glad you enjoyed the images and the story

Thanks for the comment I'm really looking forward to Publisher - and I had to have a happy ending, well spotted!

I wanted to use some of the huge collection of digital clipart that I've amassed as a CraftArtist User so, purely for the enjoyment, I made a page with CA then made pages in Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo that used the same clipart elements and the same techniques (transparency was the only one that was created differently and that was easy enough) and to see how the work flow matched. I'm happy with the result. I never intended the three pictures to be precisely the same in any way so there are lots of subtle differences and they are immaterial to me, but I do like the little story that the three pictures tell, and how easy it is to use Designer to make just about anything.

Excellent! A lot of patience, time, detail, skill and I'm with you completely about the mouse, I rarely use anything else, my mouse and I are good buddies. Love it to bits. I don't come here often, either, but seeing this has made my visit worthwhile! Hilary

I'm loving the symbols. The symmetry is extremely useful and working with the objects in a symbol is easy. My snowflake is based on a 24 point star and 1 symbol duplicated onto every other point, making it simple to create a snowflake with the pen tool. The symmetry is brilliant and works with everything I've thrown at it from quick shapes and brushwork to things I'd painted in pixels - though the program did crash constantly when I tried to move a circular design that was probably a very large file size because of all the jpg images in it. No work was lost, though, it was all recovered.

thank you If I revisit the city scene I'll work on those bricks, I like to set a time limit (bedtime, usually) on practice pieces but I often go back to them later and make some improvements.

I an a happy cat! I found the cat tool for my Mac tonight and somehow or other I created Sunset's cat! I also had some fun with Affinity Photo removing a street lamp, no waiting signs, graffiti and people from a street scene (no work of art, there are rough edges, it's a practice piece), then used the clarity and a blend mode. Looking forward to giving those family history photos a bit of edge now Sunset is back

Excellent work with the images and the painting