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If you drag a shape in the Layers panel and drop it on top of the thumbnail of another layer, the target layer is cropped to the dragged/dropped shape. That’s what the top layer in your screenshot shows (hence the cropping icon over the red thumbnail).

To clip a layer to a shape, drag the selected layer below the shape layer in the Layers panel and drop it when you see a thick blue horizontal line extending to the right of the shape thumbnail.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Thanks Alfred.

For me, masking is a very large penny which is struggling to drop. Your first sentence describes what I would term 'crop to shape' as distinct from Layer clipping (which I'm trying to grasp).

My problem seems to be that much of the Help file contents tell you how to do something without first giving the reason why you would need to do it. That's OK for those coming from an Adobe background but not so for those of us unfamiliar with the terminology and with the procedures.

Regarding the Layers panel, it would be useful if Serif could provide a diagram with meanings of the different thumbnails and the relationships between the layers which they represent.

I'll get there but at a snail's pace 😉.

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20 minutes ago, Eddy-2 said:

Your first sentence describes what I would term 'crop to shape' as distinct from Layer clipping (which I'm trying to grasp).

When you ‘crop to shape’, the cropping object completely disappears. When you clip a layer, any non-overlapping parts of the clipview object remain visible.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Hello Eddy-2

yes, the description in the help is not that helpful if you are a beginner and never had anything to do with graphics programs. I also think that maybe you should add some pictures in the description, so that you can understand it better.

Otherwise there are the tutorial videos, in which I think it is described in more detail.

If you take a closer look at it, in Designer you even have up to four different types of masking that you can use.

There are the masking layers, which can be created based on pixels. To do this, first select an object you want to mask in the layer palette and then click on the symbol for masking layer at the bottom. After that you change to the pixel persona and can then use the brushes to mask areas on this layer with black and make them visible again with white.

Then there are masking types, which would be the same in function, that would be the vector crop tool and the one in your example with the green object. Here you create a crop. I would use these masking types mainly if I want to mask a group or a complete layer, for example to show only a part of an illustration.

The fourth type of masking would then be the cut mask, as in your example with the red object. Here the main object is used as a kind of mask. In contrast to the other masking types, the most flexible and most frequently used masking type is the one used in vector programs. It has a similar property as a group in which you can continue to edit all the objects in it, with the difference that all the objects in it are only visible in the area of the topmost object, which you use as a mask.

This would be a rough description of the different types of masking in Designer.

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Thanks PaRunk.

I agree about the lack of pictures in the Help file. I have watched some of the tutorials but found that some are over-complicated for what I need and don't get the point across too well. What would be useful, I think, is to have tutorials using a minimum of basic shapes, only the necessary layers and a mouse pointer large enough to be seen.

Although I have a bit of experience of Serif's DrawPlus, Designer's terminology and ways of doing things are different and it's the difference I'm grappling with.

One good example is that in DrawPlus I used to draw a shape around an object in a picture and use 'Subtract' to effectively cut it out from its background. Only in the past half hour have I discovered I can do the same in Designer by drawing my shape 'inside' the object I want to cut out and using a masking technique.

As I said to Alfred earlier, it's a slow process but I'm getting there.

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Hello, Eddy-2,

I just opened myself in DrawPlus and looked for the tool. You probably mean the tool "Studio for cutouts"?

You can also do that in Designer. This feature in DrawPlus is a pixel-level masking, except that you can't see it in the layers palette, as it is in Designer.

To do the same in Designer, you need to switch to PixelPersona. There you will find the selection tools, with which you can choose the object you want to be masked.

After you have selected the object, you can refine this selection with the command "Refine selection", optimize it and then create the masking from there. The "Refine Selection" function is the new interface with the same and additional tools you know from DrawPlus.

I'm going to record a few videos to show you the function. Hope you can see everything and it will be a help to you.

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3 hours ago, PaRunk said:

This feature in DrawPlus is a pixel-level masking

The Cutout Studio (COS) in DrawPlus offers a choice of output format: ‘Vector-cropped Bitmap’ or ‘Alpha-edged Bitmap’. The latter is the pixel-level masking that you refer to, whilst the former results in cropping to an editable vector shape; the nice thing about the COS is that the user can simply sweep around the main object with the Keep Brush Tool or the Discard Brush Tool — rather like the Smart Selection Brush Tool in Affinity’s pixel editing toolset — without having to worry about tweaking nodes in the vector output to achieve the desired degree of precision.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Admittedly it has been quite a while since I had used DrawPlus. Had bought it privately to be able to work at home from time to time. It was a cheaper alternative to the Adobe programs, because I am not a friend of the subscriptions.
 
Since Affinity's products have been available, I only use them privately, as an alternative to the Adobe and Corel programs.

Furthermore I had also used this programme mainly for creating vector graphics. I had hardly used the function for cropping image elements and did not know that this function could also be used to create vector masks.

Nevertheless, I find the cropping function in AD much better today to be able to crop objects. Here I can create my clipping as I know it from image editing. And if it should be a path to create a perfect clipping, I can use the path tool.

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Thanks for your replies, PaRunk.

My reference to DrawPlus was only to illustrate how doing something in one graphics programme has to be done differently in another. For example, in DrawPlus I add a picture, draw a circle on top of it, select the two and use the Subtract command. The circle effectively punches a hole in the picture.

I can do it in Designer but have to use a different procedure.

Regarding Layer Clipping, my original stumbling block, whilst I can do it, I still don't know why I would need to and that's part of my problem when learning about commands I've never had cause to use. In other words, the 'why' as well as the 'how' seems to be lacking in the Help file.

Regarding your videos, thanks for taking the trouble to do these and I will watch them.

Back to DrawPlus, one of its uses is as a stepping stone between CAD and Designer. Import CAD into DP and copy and paste into Designer.

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Thanks again for the videos, PaRunk, you're obviously good at the job you do.

Although I have used the cutout feature in Pixel Persona, I've never gone below the surface to the depth you've shown. It's good to know the tools are there should I ever need them.

Regarding the selection process in Pixel Persona, it took me a while to realise that Add and Subtract related to the selection and not directly to the picture.

Incidentally, and although it wouldn't have got as good a result as you achieved, I would have taken the lazy way out with the fruit bowl, drawn an ellipse around it and used Mask to Below 😉.

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Unfortunately I cannot test this, because I come from the print media sector and have never had anything to do with CAD or similar programs and probably will not have anything to do in the future.

I have specialised in image and graphic design for the last twenty years. Of course I also do typographic work. Therefore I am mainly familiar with a large part of the programs that are standard in the printing industry.

I find the Affinity products, despite some missing and not yet perfectly working functions that I know from other programs, very innovative and in some functions much better than in other programs. This also includes this function. I had to get used to it and I don't want to miss this function anymore.

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