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I'm new to the Affinity suite. I've been chugging my way through the Fora, been watching the tutorials, and experimenting endlessly.

There's one thing that has me stumped. 

I'm trying to make an image to be used in OBS. I need to 'cut out' various shapes, leaving them blank so that I can slide other elements (e.g. a couple of video feeds, a Zoom conference, and a PowerPoint) into the broadcast.

In the sample image I've uploaded here, imagine that the white shapes are the areas I'd like to delete from the background image. I've sort of figured out how to rasterize the image and delete either round or rectangular portions, leaving the deleted areas blank. But I haven't figured out how to use masking to delete specific shapes, such as illustrated in the attachment.

Can someone point me in the right direction? 

Thanks, and sorry if this is an elementary noob question. But I am an elementary noob to Affinity.

Background+cutoutshapes.png

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Hello Bud Brown and welcome to the Affinity forums🙂
First make sure that your Affinity document is setup with a transparent background.
Set the Blend Mode of the objects that you want to act as cutouts to Erase.
Then export as a PNG file to retain the transparency of those areas.
Then bring this “card” in as a layer in your editing software to sit above the video clips and scale and position your clips as necessary.
Quick sample file attached.

Transparent_Cutouts.afdesign.zip

macOS 10.15.7  15" Macbook Pro, 2017  |  4 Core i7 3.1GHz CPU  |  Radeon Pro 555 2GB GPU + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 1.536GB  |  16GB RAM  |  Wacom Intuos4 M

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Thanks, Mark. I'll jump on this and see if I can work it out.

UPDATE

Here's the steps I followed, with mixed success.

  1. I created a new document in Affinity Designer 1.8.2
  2. Set the background to "Transparent" in the Color section of the Document Setup dialog
  3. Placed the image (a .PNG file) and then rasterized it (I also tried dragging the file name from the Finder window and dropping it on the Affinity toolbar which automatically places and rasterizes graphics files).
  4. Drew a couple of shapes and tried set the Blend Mode to Erase, but I did not find an Erase setting!
  5. Poked around for a while in the Affinity Help file and found that some layers have a "Transparent" setting, but not all layers. Mine didn't.
  6. Finally out of frustration I grabbed one of the shapes in the sample file you sent, copied it and pasted it into my working document. Bingo!

So I've got to figure out how you did that. Are you using the same version of Affinity Designer?

Thanks for your generous gift of time.

Edited by Bud Brown
Added an update
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Now worries Bud!
A layer or object’s Blend Mode can be set by clicking in the field to the right of where that layer or objects Opacity% is shown.
The Erase mode is the last entry in the popup menu.
Changing a layers Blend Mode effects how that layer interacts with the layer/s below it.

643185091_Screenshot2020-03-25at22_39_59.png.d8df1634a45dddfc64390fe4032245b9.png

macOS 10.15.7  15" Macbook Pro, 2017  |  4 Core i7 3.1GHz CPU  |  Radeon Pro 555 2GB GPU + Integrated Intel HD Graphics 630 1.536GB  |  16GB RAM  |  Wacom Intuos4 M

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