Roger C

Winner! 
(Because it is the purr-fect reply to my catatonia post)

Hint:

Don’t you know it’s bad luck to be superstitious?
Thank your lucky stars if you aren’t!

Strange, can't find my mouse.....

Yeah, I'm already feline queasy. Is it pussible you could stop now?

Ok, first of all, looking at your design this should be fairly easy to create using vectors alone, without the need for pixel layers. As always with graphics software there's normally several ways to achieve the same result, so what I say may not be the best or fastest method.

So first of all, get rid of the pixel mask, that isn't necessary in Designer, as the circle itself can be used to clip the other items by simply dragging the other layer within it (be careful when you drag - note that the blue highlights change position as you drag it over or around another layer, and each of these positions has a different effect when you release). What you want to do is simply drag your curves within the circle so it's just a nested layer within it (so the blue highlight should be showing from the bottom of the purple circle layer with a gap on the left hand side). Once this is placed like that all the inner parts will be clipped by the 'parent' layer - the circle.
Secondly, get rid of the pixel layer masks within the individual curves - you won't need any pixels here! Once you've done that (you may want to delete the masks one at a time to keep track of what goes where and edit the curves each time), select one of the indivudal curves and switch to the node tool. Where you want the curve to stop and go 'under' the other curves, simply hover over the curve at the intersection of the two curves and you should see a highlighted yellow confirmation that let's you know it's snapping to the intersection. Click to add a point here. Then add another point in the same way where you want the curve to begin again. Then you can select one of these points and choose 'Break Curve' from the context menu at the top of the screen. Then do the same for the other point. (you can actually select both points and do the break curve in one go). You should notice now in the layers panel that your curve has now become three curves. Simply select the one that is the middle of the original curve and delete that layer. Do this for all the remaining curves and you should be good to go, with totally vector, scalable shapes that are very clean and accurate.
Hope that helps!

 

Yeah, I'm already feline queasy. Is it pussible you could stop now?

-

I just this minute found a post on the DxO forum, basically titled “Critical Bug in PhotoLab 2 - sRGB profile missing on export.” I’ve included a link to the post below. However, this seems to be a very serious bug in version 2 of PhotoLab, and it explains the problems that you’re all having.
https://feedback.dxo.com/t/critical-bug-in-photolab-2-missing-srgb-icc-profile-during-export/8347

Yeah, I'm already feline queasy. Is it pussible you could stop now?

Yeah, I'm already feline queasy. Is it pussible you could stop now?

You location realy out there?

Yeah, I'm already feline queasy. Is it pussible you could stop now?

I fear that reading these replies are going to drive some forum users into a state of catatonia.

I have been known that Chongqing is a city with a lot of fantasic views. But untill I have seen Zhu Wenqiao's nice shots of Chongqing city, I finally make determine to create something about this city. This is the first one in this series.

Good morning together,
Over the weekend I continued to work with the digital world. The challenge of a friend was "Create something with a frog".
Admittedly, I am not completely happy with it. I still have to work on the hairstyle, I don't like it yet. Furthermore, I have to say that I have trouble finding the brushes again and again. I think I have to take the time to put together my own set of brushes so that I can find my favourites faster.
Starts well into the week.
 

Salute together,
I'm new in the forum and new in the digital world. My English isn't perfect either, but I'll do my best.
Normally I paint realistically with acrylic, pencil or colour pencil. Because this is only a hobby, it was never relevant for me. But... but, I have a dream. To create a children's book and for that I have to paint digitally. Therefore, here is my start into the digital world. I take a Person I know, and it is the only Person (at the moment) I can draw in a "easy" way. Me. I work on that point.
The " little Äshi " will be my exercise object, so I will include new creations directly in the same thread and hope that's okay.
With the brushes of Frankentoon and Affinity Designer I created this colorful variation of the "little Äshi". As always, the sketch is painted analogously. This was the first expirience to draw with Affinity, an I like it! Start with the first digital Äshi!

 

Tried and tested. The level of detail at which each of the suggestions needs to be applied will vary depending on a variety of factors, including but not limited to:
the range of colors in your original images how far off from "true" your monitor is (that is, what you see) vs the mathematical representation of the underlying actual colors used the type and quality of the output substrate (glossy labels will present colors differently than matte fine art paper, etc) how critical color reproduction is for your end result ("different from the screen" and "not an acceptable result" _may_ be different levels of judgement) You expressed a frustration at the detail being thrown at you; that's understandable. The world of color management is obtuse and only made worse by the relative ease with which high-gamut material (photos, designs) can be created these days that look spectacular on a light-based display but will wash out on pigment-based output. Still, if you're doing any sort of non-trivial print, learning the basics (and beyond if you choose) will make your print-creation-life if not easier, at least a little more predictable.

As a follow-up: This feature is now in the HSL Tool. I don't know when it came but I want to say a big thank you. I find it just perfect.
Click on one of the solid colours and adjust range and feathering. Dragging the line between the dots moves the range – great little detail and very useful.
It takes just seconds to make a lot of adjustents.
 

If I recall correctly, the cloning tool operates differently.  Even though one could argue that, by its very nature, a source must be selected, it does not just select, say, the upper right or left corner of the image, depending on the side of the road on which drivers of the locale configured in the OS drive.  If one attempts to click somewhere on the image without having used Option-Click to set a source, a very prominent warning from the Cloning Brush appears in the top right corner of the screen in addition to the still visible discrete prompt in the lower left corner.  There is nothing inherently "right" about selecting white; it would be "righter" to select the color of the color picker if one must be selected by default.
I wouldn't be making such a mountain out of this mole hill if it weren't for the fact that the behavior and even the wording in the Select drop down are so misleading that I spent lots of time trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.  After all, although the "..." in "Select Sampled Color..." indicates that I might have to do something after clicking the item, a selection immediately appeared, the Deselect did not work, and "Sampled" is, after all, past tense, so, I thought, perhaps I must first sample the color.

Thought i'd share my take on chapter 5 from the workbook, Snow Queen.  
 
Model photo is the stock image provided in the chapter.  Graffiti photo is my own, not sure who sprayed it (local skate park and fully allowed area) but it seems to wrap around the model really well and there is a crack/chip in the surface of the wall which lines up with the hair line of the model so well.  I did this version on my iMac but have also repeated the same process on the iPad version of Photo. I did try a full black and white version, but didn't think it suited the image.
 
Attached for those who are interested is very low res version of the graffiti shot used, If anyone wants the full res version to play around with just ask and i'll upload it.
 
 
 

making of: 
 

First six stages of vector portrait Crystal Reed as Sophia Falcone in Gotham. 100% vector, zero pixels. Created in Affinity Designer. Work in progress. More detailed progress sequence: https://communicats.blogspot.com/2019/05/crystal-reed-100-vector-portrait.html
 

Stage 7. Progress will be slower as I wish it to be due to a lack of time.
 
 
 

Stage 9 - working on accents and shadows
 

Stage 12 - accents, highlights, shadows & lip creases
 

Stage 13 - hair background drawn
 

Colour testing
 
 
 
 

Thanks Carl, Walt and everyone.  That makes it er...100% clear!

I don't really see the point in making this a separate feature in Affinity Photo, since there are already many ways you can achieve this. The most obvious one is probably to duplicate your image and then use one copy for editing an the other copy as a reference. Duplicating can be done in Finder (on a Mac) or Explorer (on Windows). It can also be done in Photo by opening an image, saving it as .afphoto and then opening the original image again as a second file which will then be accessible at any time via its document tab. This is how I would do it because I need the .afphoto file anyway (to have an editable file with all my layers and adjustments) so I even save an extra step. If you need the reference image to be always visible, you can switch to Separate Mode and move the image window around as you like. You have a 27 inch screen, so I assume you'll have plenty of screen real estate to put it somewhere.
Another method that is even faster and more flexible is this: Open a file in Photo and then simply duplicate the background layer. You'll then have your original image always accessible as a separate layer. You can uncheck "Is visible" to get it out of your way when you don't need it. You can keep it on top of your layer stack to do quick comparisons. You can assign a layer color to it so you can always instantly find it. You can add a layer mask to hide parts of your original layer for side-by-side comparisons. And so on.
And just as an extra tip: If you forgot to duplicate your background layer and already made some destructive editing on it, you can at any time go to File > Place and add your original file again as a separate image layer. This works even when you have your image open as your active document (because an image file can be "placed into itself") and will give you the original image as long as you don't overwrite the file.
With all of this in mind, what's the benefit of having an extra function for this?