Cutout Studio & Photolab equivalents in Affinity Publisher

[DJLM]

How do I perform a cutout or a photo edit in Affinity Publisher? I have used Pageplus throughout its life ending with Pageplus X9 which had simple but effective Cutout Studio and Photolab built in to it. I can't find either in Affinity Publisher nor can I find any other tools which will allow me to perform the same functions.

[v_kyr]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

The overall concept of the Affinity Publisher app has slightly changed here since the legacy Serif PagePlus app. - Publisher can dynamically reuse certain features and tools from the other two Affinity apps (Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer) here, as far as you have those apps too then (see it's switchable personas). So for example cutting out portions from bitmap images would be accomplished by tools Affinity Photo offers via it's selection, selection fine tune and quick masking features:

• Selections
  • Creating pixel selections
  • Modifying pixel selections
  • Moving and transforming pixel selections
  • Edit selection as layer using Quick Mask
  • Refining pixel selection edges
  • Creating outline selections
  • Saving and loading selections

The same applies to former PagePlus Photolab features here, for things Affinity Publisher doesn't offer itself you would reuse all what Affinity Photo offers here.

Though Affinity Publisher on it's own also allows to make some adjustments here, see for example:

• Adjustments
  • Applying adjustments
  • Black and White adjustment
  • Brightness and Contrast adjustment
  • Channel Mixer adjustment
  • Colour Balance adjustment
  • Curves adjustment
  • Exposure adjustment
  • Gradient Map adjustment
  • HSL adjustment
  • Invert adjustment
  • Lens Filter adjustment
  • Levels adjustment
  • LUT adjustment
  • OpenColorIO adjustment
  • Posterise adjustment
  • Recolour adjustment
  • Selective Colour adjustment
  • Shadows/Highlights adjustment
  • Soft Proof adjustment
  • Split Toning adjustment
  • Threshold adjustment
  • Vibrance adjustment
  • White Balance adjustment

[DavidBone]

I have just come across the same problem. Using Photolab within Pageplus, it was so quick and easy to add effects to photos or a photo gallery, and quickly see and adjust what it looks like on the page. And you could do things you can't so easily do with the Affinity Photo link, such as edge curling etc....

And you need to buy the Affinity Photo product, doubling the cost.

This is one area which is really, really weak with Affinity Publisher compared with the old PagePlus product.

There needs to be an easily accessible "Photo Effects" menu - something similar to Photolab, available within Affinity Publisher.