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Hello I want to use an image (grayscale with no alpha) as a mask. How can I do it? Thanks

Hi there, newbie here so please go easy on me! I have selected my foreground and refined the selection nice. I convert the selection to a masking layer. I add a background and place this under my foreground. All looks good except there is the thinnest line of pixels around parts of the foreground. In ps I would select the mask layer then select using the lasso tool an area that i wanted to correct and apply a levels correction just on the mask, very effective and quick. Is there an easy way to do something similar in Affinity on the ipad? I’ve attached a crop illustrating what I mean. cheers, g

I have watched and re-watched the video Clipping vs Masking by James Ritson and am unable to select the mask (child layer) without the layer. Clicking one selects the other. (ditto for a clipped layer) That is not what I see happening on the video as is done at 2:07 min on YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKrQ2BEFWMs This is similar to another question in the forum but the difference is that I don't want to separate the child layer from the layer, I Just want to manipulate each separately. Here is a quote from the other post by webb, "I have a pixel layer (say, Background) and have added a child filter. I would now like to move that child filter up on the stack, but can't seem to select it without selecting the pixel layer as well--both parent and child layers are highlighted and stubbornly insist on staying that way. This doesn't happen all the time, but when it does happen, I don't know what to do."

How is it possible to cut out a shape from another in a non-destructive manner? I see that the "Subtract" shape in the toolbar does what I want it to do, but the result is not a compound or a mask, it becomes an edited shape. One work around I was thinking, is it possible to draw a shape with the pen tool, make it an active selection and perform an inverse selection and apply a mask to the shape?

Hi, Quick question, I'm a newbie to the Affinity Designer Software. I want to create a text portrait (see image example below) but I am not seeing any tutorials on Youtube. Any tips? And can it be done on Designer or do I need to purchase Affinity Photo? Thanks!

Okay - I'm trying to accomplish something like this. I've got the basic shape - the colored circle in the background. I've got a black silhouette of the tree on a transparent background - here is my question: How do I burn the tree image through the circle all the way down to the dark blue background? I tried "Rasterize to Mask" but that just made everything disappear. I'm obviously not a pro graphic designer here, so please forgive my butchering of any industry terms - I'm just trying to learn how to accomplish this effect in as few steps as possible. If anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

A feature I'd love to see after working with some complex masking with AP on the iPad is an easier way to jump back and forth between black and white when using a brush on a mask. Having two color swatches in the brush bar at the bottom when working with brush would be extremely helpful. Thanks for an excellent program.

Hey, I regularly create non-destructive compound path. I then want to use these as masks and clip other layers to them. When I drag a layer onto a compound path, the path gets included into the calculation, rather than being clipped. How can I change this behavior and use the Compound Path as a clipping mask? Thanks!

I've created a vector mask, for a vector, to make the image look degraded. How do I then combine this mask/aged look effect, so I get one complete vector layer, so I can scale and resize with no loss? Am I missing something obvious? Edit: 'Distressed Look' Chapter in Affinity Workbook p.324 should help. Any more pointers though, do let me know.

Hi, I'm new to Affinity and have jut starred using it for Post production on my artwork. I was using Pixlr until Autodesk pulled the dickish move ever by cancelling everyone's subscription and so I needed an alternative. Now let me explain WHY I used Pixlr for so long. Yes it's beautique program designed for applying pre made filters for phone photo's. BUT .. it did one thing that no other program (Photoshop, Paint, GIMP etc) still doesn't do .. I'll explain what this is. So in pixlr one could chose a mask brush that allowed you to draw, or sloppily paint on the area of an image you wanted to affect. You could erase par of this mask if you accidentally masked too much .. or add to it. VERY simple. And you could feather the edge so there's none of that hard edge crap that you need to then arse around with. Photoshop could really learn from this. The point is that with this mask you could then affect just that area, adding highlights to faces, or desaturating, or adding filters .. anything ... you you could invert the mask and affect everything except what you originally masked. It was perfect. And then they cancelled the program. Sure Pixlr still works .. but without the 'pro' features that I need to do effective post work. So after talking with the guys at apple they put me on to Affinity. Now I gotta say that Affinity is seriously AWESOME! I'm loving so much of it but there's a few things I don't know if it does .. or how to do it. For instance .. In trying to recreate my old technique of masking a certain area I use an elliptical mask .. feather the edge to about 350 px .. and then apply an adjustment layer to highlight people or objects. Alternatively I can invert the mask and lessen the surroundings .. but the selection is very rigid. There doesn't seem to be a way to rotate the elliptical selection (I'm just tonne call this a mask even though i know technically it's not ... it's just easier), or to squeeze it after the fact. Sure I can redraw it but not being able to affect it's orientation after it's on the page is kinda limiting. I have tried using actual layer masks and I have NO CLUE how to make them do anything. I select layer mask .. do stuff .. and all I get is a red mask that then does nothing ... how do I mask specific places and things? That's what I need. Once I'm done with Affinity I still have to import to Pixlr as I like to apply some of the filters which darken shadows but also smooth them and it makes for a really deep looking image. I REALLY wish Affinity had stuff like this built in .. or some way to be able to make them. It's a combination of a slight Blur, darkening shadows, smoothing highlights and adding a slight glow to things. I can't see a way to do this in Affinity (just like I can't do it in Photoshop either). Yes I understand I'm a bit of a pleb with photography .. desiring the help of pre-made lens effects etc. But what can I tell you .. it works for me. So, I hope I've explained myself to the point where you can see what I'm trying to achieve. I feel confident I'll be using Affinity for a while to come. But there needs to be a way for me to select a more precise area in my mask .. and still be able to feather edges and add and subtract from the mask if necessary. Would appreciate any thoughts. Great app. Sparkie

Hey guys, I am hobbyist user, so it's not a great deal if you cannot help me. I am trying to stack several photos, but to have the opposite of "object removal using stacks". I have four photos taken from the same point with my two friends sitting at the table and exchanging position between each shot. What I want to achieve is to have each of them several times in the final image. If I use Median stacking, then almost everything disappears from the photo with only table remaining and some ghosting. So I need to use masking, but that's where it gets a bit complicated. I tried Outlier stacking but that produces some artefacts and needs a bit refining, for which I also need some masking. For the stack I have live stacking checked. So I guess the question is how to most efficiently create masks from and for each stack layer? I figured I would select part of the one friend on one photo, e.g. hand, head and part of the body, and then I would apply the resulting mask to all other photos in the stack. But I would need to add all masks for all body parts to all photos... So that makes it a bit daunting. Not helping is that when I Alt-click on a layer and start selecting using Flood select tool that the selection outline is shifted several pixels to the left in comparison to photo itself. Also, I cannot get the tolerance to right amount; it always selects something from the background or not enough of what I need. Also, which blending mode would suit me the most? Do you have some other suggestion how to achieve what I want? Thanks! P.S. I've found that if I stack only two photos and then use Standard deviation as the stack operator that produces black areas where the photos are the same and some type of blending in the areas where there are differences. That seems like a good starting point for a mask. How to create a mask from such stack result?

It seems that masking is broken in the case of an unfilled mask (i.e. fill color: none) under 1.6.2 no fill masking bug.afdesign

Hi, I would like to ask if there is an easy way to alternate between the Freeze and Thaw tools on the liquify persona. If there isn't, I would like to suggest the use of the "ALT" key for that purpose. Also I noticed that on the Liquify Persona's tool bar, there are the primary and secondary color pickers, and I wonder, what is the purpose of that? thanks and keep up with the terrific work! Gustavo

Hi, I would like to be able to limit the effect of the Detail Refinement feature in Develop persona to relevant edges to avoid emphasizing noise in smooth areas. Please add option of edge detection with a slider to control edge strength in masking the sharpening effect. I understand something similar can be achieved in Photo persona with result of Detect Edges filter used as mask, but it requires Developing the image first (destructive step), and also the lots of steps required are cumbersome for a standard requirement against sharpening to avoid the noise.

Semi-automatic masking / masking guide tool for Affinity Photo Here is best example i can find (youtube link) - Zephyr's Masquerade tool is semi-automatic masking tool, user paint guide lines which help algorithm to solve alpha channel. Its very fast, i don't know for sure how it works, but i would guess that those guide lines descrip to the algorithm textures and colors which are wanted (or/and unwanted) for mask. This come to my mind when i saw Adobe's new automatic subject selection demo, where user don't have any control, just some kind of lucky button, so i thought serif could make better, and i think this kind of tool would be much better with better flexibility and control. And it should be non-destructive, it could be based on editable splines/vector paths (like freehand pen tool, or affinity design's Pencil tool) for example? Maybe Affinity Photo should have "Mask persona" (all masking tools in same place, with lasso selection, mask bursh, guide brush, some procedural masking tools? vector tools, refine tools etc. with easy to use possibility control and edit multiple mask channels for same layer, if layer has multiple mask/alpha channels then mask persona would be great way to control the complexity, at least it would be nice to have way to control multiple alpha layers like separated hair mask, head mask, etc. for detailed and flexible workflow)

I'm trying to stack two photos one on top of the other and use a rectangle to mask a hole in the top photo to reveal the underneath photo. I am creating a rectangle above my top photo and dragging it down to create a mask on the top photo. but then I need to invert this so that the center is masked out and the top photo is visible around the edges. I have tried ctrl+i to invert and nothing happens I have tried to set the alpha channel and all I wind up doing is making the whole thing transparent

I am trying to create a digital collage using some of my original photographs. I have had some partial success but have gotten stuck, I think because I don't completely understand how to use masks and work with irregular shapes. I've watched some tutorial videos but they don't answer all my questions. I used Designer to create an outline of the shapes I wanted to use in my collage. I then brought that into Photo. Most of the shapes are rectangles but there are some irregular areas which is where I'm having trouble. I brought in various images using the Place command and clipped them to the rectangles. That worked fine. But at the bottom of the collage there is a dark area that extends into the bottom of the piece. I used a mask to paint away the part of the rectangle that was covering up the dark irregular area inside the design lines I'd created with the pen tool in Designer, but I painted out too much. I then tried switching the paint brush color from black to white but I wasn't able to paint back in the rest of the rectangular image where I had painted out too much. I'm not sure I was on the right layer though I tried working on several different layers, including the mask layer, with the same lack of result. I just wasn't clear what I should be doing to paint back in the rest of the rectangle that now shows as white. Also, on the top of the piece, I want to cut out some areas of the rectangles and create some irregular areas similar to the one at the bottom and fill those with a different image from the image that is filling the rectangle. I don't know how to do that either. I don't know if I have to create a selection in the rectangle and then somehow fill that selection with another image. I don't even know where to start on this part of the collage. I've attached a jpg of my image as well as a Photo file. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would appreciate the help. Digital_Collage_Granite_.afphoto

Hello all, I did this halloween graphic to practice working with affinity. I am getting the hang of using a masking layer and creating effects with brushes

Greetings! I had to do a bit of study and homework in order to wrap my head around the clipping and masking operations in Designer and Photo. In the process, I developed a one-page infographic (attached), and it apparently has already helped some folks on the Affinity Designer and Photo Group in FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AffinityDesignerPhotoPublisher/. I will be updating it shortly, but wanted share the first version here for comments and suggestions. Enjoy! Clipping vs Masking.pdf

I am trying to understand how masking works in Affinity Designer, but I just can't wrap my head around it. In the attached image, I have two things: a logo and a grunge image. I want to use the grunge to apply a distress effect on the logo. I know the way to do this has something to do with dragging one of them inside the other (not sure which one though), with a mask layer thrown in there somewhere.... Most things are pretty intuitive in AD, but how masking works just doesn't make sense to me. Can someone help me out, please?

Hello guys! Is there any way to reverse mask (I don't know how to call that)? I mean to make effect like in this example below (to maked object inside object transparent just like this lily). EDIT Sorry I post it in wrong section.

I included some png images, and put them behind a rectangle to mask the image. Then I export to a PDF - and some of these images (about 50%) are missing in the low-res PDF. The same image not behind the rectangle has no problem, and a higher-resolution PDF also does not have a problem. Looks like a bug, doesn't it? Or did I miss something? (Rasterizing seems to cure the problem, but that fixes my resolution, makes the file less re-useable and it causes unnecessary re-rastering when I export to various resolutions for web/print.) Attached is a sample file with two images that are missing, and the 2 pdfs I created (see settings in the export persona). BTW the "rasterize" function seems to use quite a low resolution. I set the document resolution to 300dpi, but when I zoom in a bit it looks lower (?). Test.afdesign Test-Web.pdf Test-Druck.pdf

I don't have time to search entire forums or the interwebs to see if someone else has ever suggested this feedback before. So I offer my apologies if my suggestions have already been covered. 1) Please can you provide a feedback function WITHIN the application it self. It's incredibly frustrating to have to use out dated methods of signing up to god-awful web-forums which just leads to nonconstructive replies of un-thought out opinions and arguments. It also allows you to correctly link feedback (and abuse) to the software license of the user and even categorise the feedback so you can easily see which areas are causing most concern to the user base. 2) Please can you fix the mouse icon when painting in masks in the develop mode. The standard OS mouse icon does not feel accurate to paint with. Also a nice to improve if possible: Painting often feels sluggish to see the red tint forming. If there is a way to make this feel more responsive without upgrading an existing 32GB RAM I7 processor machine, that would be lovely please. 3) Cropping in Develop mode is missing an "ok" or "finished" button. It's frustrating to be sitting back with my tablet, controlling everything then having reach over to the keyboard which I moved to one side, just to hit <enter>. I don't want to map the enter key to my tablet device as it's never used for anything else! if you simply put a button in the UI it will mean I can just move the mouse there and click! perhaps I've missed a trick that does what I want, but then that would mean it's not obvious and intuitive to the user. 4) Please update the flash function for uploading files on this forum. Who runs flash in 2017? Browsers auto block flash from running by default because it's nasty. 5) More of a question then a suggestion, but is there a way to rename the overlays in the Overlays tab in Develop mode? I have 3 gradient overlays, all with the same name! that's very confusing to simple minds like myself. 6) Although I generally hope you spend more time fine tuning what you have already developed, instead of just rushing out new features, it would be nice if there was an in-application function for browsing image files, with a nice big preview of the image and EXIF data, which you can then double click to open it in the develop mode. I don't think anyone wants all this "importing" and cataloguing rubbish which is very slow. But browsing files within Affinity with a UI that suits photographers that windows/macOS don't offer, would be a great win. Thanks for your time.

I am compositing multiple layers, using masking to control the visibility of lower layers. I have a really simple example, but I see that there is a transparent or white fringe around the main shapes where the colours of the lower layer do not 'meet' the higher layer. I attach a snapshot of the image issue and also of the layers tab. the main shapes (flowers) have themselves been created by selection or eraser to separate them from a background, and they sit on a transparent background. I figure that I am doing something simple wrong, although I have watched the relevant videos (I think!). So would welcome tips to rectify.

Hi everyone, This may seem like a silly question, but I'm having issues exporting an image after editing it. Every time I attempt to save and then export the image, it saves on my desktop as the original unedited image. Here's what I'm doing: After uploading the image to Affinity Persona, I use the selection brush tool to select the desired part of the image that I want to keep, I then use the toggle quick mask tool to add a white background to the image. I then save and export the image to .PNG or .JPEG and both files still save as the original, unedited image instead of the image I edited with the white background. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks very much in advance for your help!