Selection and Mesh question on AP

[onamac]

Hi,

 

I've been playing with my new purchase of AP to become familiar. I really love what you've done here, but have a few things that I'm getting used to that need sorted.

 

1) I have an image with a colored background, and select that colored background (let's say blue). I flood select that blue, but find there are little sections of variant blue that are not being included. In Photoshop, I would use shift or option then lasso those areas to either include or exclude them from the whole selection, so that I can then fill it with the correct blue. In AP, I know I can increase the selection or refine but if that didn't eliminate those errant little exclusions, I've also tried the selection brush tool, which seemed to work. So I fill the area with one shade of blue. When I reselect that background I find those little exclusions are really still there and really weren't removed by the selection brush. Plus any extra areas I included via the flood select tool (that I thought I filled with the correct color) don't get selected when I reselect that main color, so apparently they didn't get filled when I thought they did. So I think I may be approaching this incorrectly.

 

2) In the synopsis video showing how to change the shape of a drinking glass, how do you get the mesh to be around that glass? I thought it was the warp tool but if I had an image and applied the warp tool, it is around the entire document not an item within it. But even if I move it, it still doesn't look like what is in the video.

 

Thank you!

[JFisher]

Hi onamac!

Thanks for posting on the forums!

The selection tool usually misses out parts of the selection if it is noticeably different to the rest of the selection, which may explain why the flood select tool isn't actually selecting every different variation of blue in the image you are working with. 

I would suggest using the selection brush, so you can manually select the parts you want and then refine this afterwards should you need to. Another option is to use Quick Masks to make a selection.

With regards to the mesh overlay, this is part of the Liquify Persona. Once you enter the Liquify Persona this will be added automatically.

Jack

[onamac]

Thank you for your reply, I see now. One thing I am really liking with your app, BTW, is the way it automatically applies and shows processing after having painted the area / selected, etc.. That's a really nice touch.

 

Here's what I'm trying to understand with the mesh:

 

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/

 

In the main video on the AP page (video is "fastest smoothest...) I am referring to the drinking glass starting at :47.

 

This mesh is being done in the Photo Persona. It shows making mesh nodes around just the glass, not the entire document, which looks as though you are working with a mesh in a 3D app. This video segment runs by very quickly, but in the history I can see it is using Warp Mode and Add Mesh Node.

 

I thought maybe they are making a selection with the pen tool then switching to the node tool to outline an object. But when I move to the warp tool (as is engaged in the video), my pen selection is gone, so I don't think that's how it's done either.

 

I also thought perhaps they were using Source in the Liquify Persona to get the mesh to be around an object in the document rather than around the whole document. But in the video I can see they are doing this in the Photo Persona.

 

I'm not doing any actual project requiring this yet, but am wanting to learn all things Affinity and use your videos as tutorials, and this one has me baffled. I'd really like to know what's being done. Thank you!

[MEB]

Hi onamac,

That's the Mesh Warp Tool. Click an hold the mouse cursor over the Perspective Tool to access it.

[onamac]

Thank you. But how do you draw the mesh around the object (i.e. drinking glass) to begin with? When I use the mesh warp tool, it draws a white outline around the area I drag to, but when I release the mouse, there is no selection.

 

Do you draw something first with another tool? In the video, it looks as though the outline was started with the pen tool and then built upon.  When I use the pen tool to draw the selection which looks like what is in the video, it vanishes as soon as I switch to the Warp mesh tool.The tool looks like the node tool (white arrowhead), but I can't come even close to whatever it is they are doing. When I use the warp mesh tool, the history says "warp mesh" but there is nothing happening on my document. There must be something I am missing here.

[MEB]

Hi onamac,

With the Mesh Warp Tool selected double-click inside the mesh area to add points. Then drag them to distort the image.

I believe they first created a selection from an image (the drinking glass) then copy/pasted it on a new layer. Finally they used the Mesh Warp Tool to distort just the drinking glass.

[onamac]

OK, now I'm getting somewhere, thank you very much! I now see using Source gets the mesh around the object instead of the whole document, hence my thinking it was the pen tool. That solves that question. Now the only thing is in the video it looks as though they are affecting the whole glass at the same time rather than point by point to warp the shape because it doesn't look like any points are selected when they are doing the warp. 

[decimate555]

Hello, thought this would be a good time to bring this up…

 

Of course using the mesh warp tool on a vector object will raster it, but the option when right-clicking it shows up to "Convert to Curves"… no sense including a command that doesn't actually do anything and just becomes a waste of space and may confuse the user into believing a command is there that really isn't.

 

Could this be greyed-out or removed in the future betas?

 

Thank you

[MEB]

Hi onamac,

The video isn't showing the linear workflow you would follow to distort a drinking glass. What you are actually seeing is the drinking glass already distorted (final editing), coming back to it's original start point (a glass jar) which was then distorted into a different shape (though the movement of the slider in the History panel). 

[onamac]

Thanks MEB. I figured this was just a well-edited promo video. 

 

In your promo videos (for both AP and AD) there are segments of intriguing things that I would love to see as their own videos, this being one of them, because they rush by so quickly in the promo. There really isn't another tutorial available which covers this exact thing.