Affinity Photo Macro with Freehand Selection

[DexterG]

Have shot several thousand images with a 360 degree camera for contribution to a public website.  These have been shot from the roof of my car and from the top of my bike helmet.  Before submitting, I'd like to remove personally identifiable details.  Microsoft Bing does something similar with their Streetside photos - when you look straight down all you see is a blurred area.  Preserving the original EXIF data regarding lat, long, time and date is essential in the process.  Using the current version of Affinity I have been successful in processing hundreds of images by using a two line macro to do a Rectangular Marquee Tool select, followed by a grey fill or Gaussian Blur and drive the process with a batch job calling the macro.  The Rectangle is wiping out more information than I need it to, reducing the usability of the photos for others.  What I would like to do is record a macro using Freehand Selection Tool so that I can accurately draw around the area to mask based on where I had the camera mounted for that session.  When I do this manually, it works as expected. When I try to record this as a macro though, the macro recorder creates a line Set current raster selection, but it seems to carry no information about the selection.  If I just record a single line macro of a Freehand Selection and then play it back, nothing is selected.  Is this a known limitation of the macro recorder?

[John Rostron]

6 hours ago, DexterG said:

Is this a known limitation of the macro recorder?

Yes it is. A Macro will record whatever you tell it, but if you specify a rectangular selection, then it will remember that selection, and that selection only. Fine if your rectangle is in the same place in every image, which I doubt would be generally true.

John

[carl123]

6 hours ago, DexterG said:

If I just record a single line macro of a Freehand Selection and then play it back, nothing is selected.  Is this a known limitation of the macro recorder?

More likely a bug than a limitation.

1. You can use the Selection Brush Tool to make the selection

2. Or switch to Quick Mask (Q key), paint in white where you want your selection, then exit Quick Mask (Q key again)

Both the above 2 options will keep the selection in the macro which you can then fill/blur as required

[DexterG]

Thank you Carl for your time and effort in responding.  I will check these alternative approaches out.

And thank you for responding John.  In fact, because the camera is clamped in place relative to my car, bike helmet, etc., the area I need to blur is the same within each shooting sequence.  With the car, in my older sequences, the area is pretty large as I was clamped to a roof rack, barely 5" above the roof to the CL of the lenses.  I since have gotten a taller studio camera arm extender which will significantly reduce the portion of the image I need to "throw away" - now I just need to find out if I wind up clipping low hanging trees with the camera!    The area I need to throw away with the bike helmet mount is much smaller as the helmet itself blocks the camera from recording unwanted detail.

To simplify the masking task in Affinity, I will likely need to standardize where I mount on the car, so that I can re-use the same mask macro day after day.

The end result seems to be useful and thus worth the effort. In the first small town I documented in this way, the sequence I uploaded to the crowdsource contribution site has been viewed thousands of times so someone is making use of it.

Thank you both again.

[DexterG]

Wanted to report back that I have played with two options presented and have only been able to have success with Carl's no 2. - the combination of Quick Mask and Paintbrush.  That seems to work as expected, though for the larger areas I am dealing with, it's more of a pain.  By comparison, no. 1 - the Selection Brush is a joy to use when making the initial selection during the macro recording.  But try as I might, I could not find a way to record a macro where the Selection Brush was not actively selecting new/different areas in different images than the one I had intended to apply the blur to during macro playback.  If anyone has any ideas on how one can lock down the area selected during macro recording using Selection Brush, I'd love to know.

[carl123]

19 minutes ago, DexterG said:

If anyone has any ideas on how one can lock down the area selected during macro recording using Selection Brush, I'd love to know.

Try this...

Just make your initial selection with the selection brush (not recording this in a macro)

Use Select > Save selection > To File and chose a filename to save the selection to

Now start recording a macro and use the command Select > Load Selection from File (choosing the filename you previously saved)

 

Hopefully that will do as you want, when you replay the macro (if I understand you correctly)

 

[DexterG]

Thank you for your all of your suggestions and continued interest in my problem.  I'm still learning the ways of Affinity, but even so I realize that what I am really trying to create is a static selection and you have just tutored me on how it's done Affinity style.  BTW - Using the dynamic selection capabilities of a Selection Brush in a macro is definitely a means of producing unexpected and sometimes artistic results.   Having programmed computers since I fed punch cards into a mainframe 40 years ago, I should be able to figure out this simple macro - I will let you know.  Thanks again