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Selecting colors within a pixel selection


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How do you limited the selection tools to a pre-selected area? Literally 100% of the time, if I have a pixel selection and then use selection tools, it's because I only want to select colors in that area. I do this a lot, but at times am forced to go into photoshop to make a mask there, because I can't figure out how to do it in Affinity Photo. 

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You can create pixel masks in Affinity Photo, but a simple way to achieve the result you describe is to duplicate the selected pixels onto their own layer (via Cmd+J or Ctrl+J, depending on whether you’re on Mac or Windows) and then select colours from the new layer.

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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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10 minutes ago, Alfred said:

You can create pixel masks in Affinity Photo, but a simple way to achieve the result you describe is to duplicate the selected pixels onto their own layer (via Cmd+J or Ctrl+J, depending on whether you’re on Mac or Windows) and then select colours from the new layer.

I dont understand your answer i have same problem tham @London and did exactly the same i need pass through Photoshop.

My problem is that: once i have a selection area and later i want to refine this selection for an specific color, to do a mask i really cant.

thxs

 

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11 minutes ago, Ricardo Sandoval said:

i want to refine this selection for an specific color

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by this. :(

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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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31 minutes ago, Alfred said:

I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean by this. :(

Hi Alfred

imagine you have an image like a SKY and you did a selection with different blues (deep blue and clear blue) like a degradee and  other colors like withe... you need to select just the deep blue in the selection that you're did first. I don't know how did that 

I attach you and screenshot.

i just want select the blue who are in the black box who is in the selection for made a mask

2028355656_Capturadepantalla2020-11-05alas12_02_31.png.3f89d1e52a435d3cda09b003a6cc9b2d.png

Thx

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  • Staff

Select > Colour Range > Select Blues.

You can also try Select > Select Sampled Colour if you colour pick the blue sky first—though I find this works better with flat colours as opposed to the dozens of shades of blue in that example.

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3 hours ago, Alfred said:

You can create pixel masks in Affinity Photo, but a simple way to achieve the result you describe is to duplicate the selected pixels onto their own layer (via Cmd+J or Ctrl+J, depending on whether you’re on Mac or Windows) and then select colours from the new layer.

That's a work around for selections that creates twice as many new layers as you want (or one new layer you don't need). I played with that and tried the flood select tool (which created hard, pixelated edges I couldn't use) and still ended up wanting Photoshop's tools.

Sometimes when I'm frustrated with Affinity Photo, I accept it has it's own way of working and my issue is that I'm still thinking like a Photoshop user, not a problem with Affinity's tools. But in this case, I think Photoshop just has better tools. (Or perhaps Photoshop has a significantly superior UI for it's slightly inferior tools.) Affinity's different color modes are brilliant (although why no luminosity mode? so want that), as is the clever formula-based selection tools, but there's no substitute for being able to limit selections to a previous masked area and the add and subtract colors in the color selection palette itself. Erm, unless I'm wrong and just don't know the Affinity Way. 

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I took a very tricky to mask thing into Photoshop and quickly masked out a selection for a color overlay. I'm not super brilliant at this and this was a quick-n-dirty job, so I didn't take some steps that would clean up some of the trickier elements (or paint them out of the mask). This isn't hair against a similar colored background hard, but still a tricky test. (The numbering on the images shows the order of my steps).

The Select and Mask panel (#5) is a separate tool. It's wonderful, but kind of my main complaint is that the basic color select panel in Affinity just isn't as robust and easy-to-use as the one in Photoshop. I got so far with this mask just by tweaking fuzziness and adding and subtracting colors. 

 

1. Initial map

1._Initial.png

2. Initial selection:

2.Pick_one_color.png

3. Decrese fuzziness to isolate blues

3._Reduce_fuzziness_to_exclude_blues.png

4. Decrease fuzziness even more and use "Add Color" picker to add back greens and browns

4._Reduce_fuzziness_more_&_add_in_colors.png

5. Finish with Select Color tool, use Select and Mask to refine selection (mainly the contrast tool)

5._Tweak_selection_in_Select_and_Mask.png

6. After some light painting to refine the mask, use it to create a color overly.

6._After_cleaning_up_mask_by_hand,_make_overlay.png

 

 

Edited by London
Edited post to fix image order and add titles to images
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