Best way to add stroke to digital stickers?

[vihtla]

Hi!

Am new to Affinity tools and struggling to find out what is the best way to add a white stroke with some drop shadows to a png sticker's edges.

Basically I need to achieve what is on the included Photoshop file (StickerExample.psd). I have also got screenshots of the exact stroke settings from a friend (first image shows settings for the white stroke, second one for the drop shadow).

When I open the Photoshop file on Affinity Designer, the stroke is way slimmer though. And even if to match settings 1:1 according to this forum page, it won't match. I used Outer Glow for white stroke as in had been used in the Photoshop file, but in Affinity Designer there's not all of the fine tuning options available that had been used on Photoshop file, so when I tried to match them, it turned out to just be glowy, instead of some harder line around it. Also the line is way slimmer and if I increase it, it just gets more glowy.

I then tried Outline effect instead of Outer Glow, but its stroke is just very harsh and needs to be little smoother for my use.

There seems to be specific stroke option as well, but that applies stroke to square box of the png, not just to the outline.

So... what can I do? Essentially I need to mimic the stroke and shadow of the original (third picture). Right now, exact replica in Affinity would be shown on the fourth picture (too thin of a stroke) and adjusted one on the last one (too glowy and not really a line around the sticker).

Edited July 27, 2021 by vihtla

[Komatös]

Try this: Remove the effects from the layer.
Change to the Photo Persona. Hold down CTRL and click on the pixel layer.
Now you have created a selection. Create a new layer and fill the selection area. Move the layer under the 512s layer and position it as you like.
Click on the FX button and select the Gaussian blur and adjust the radius. Change the opacity if necessary.

Note: You need the photo persona to manipulate

.

 

StickerExample.afdesign

[vihtla]

I am using Affinity Designer, it has no Photo Persona. But I can try it in Affinity Photo as well then. Also I use a Mac as well, but I assume I have to use Command instead of Control then.

About the actual process, what you're suggesting is to create a selection of sticker layer each time for new sticker, fill the area and then blur the selection and adjust. That seems to be for drop shadow though, which I have no issues with. I need a better white stroke solution, that's what I have issues with.

If I used selection and and added outline to that, it seemed to be less robust than before, but still not quite the thing (very edges of the white stroke seem to soften up on the reference image). Also that would require me to create a selection layer for every sticker. I hoped to create some sorta preset that I could apply for every sticker quickly instead with existing effects and such.

 

 

[PixelPest]

I doubled the image in Pixel Persona - smart selection brush - Grow selection - paint white in the selection - add gaussian blur from effects panel and add a outer shadow:

StickerExample4U.afdesign

[vihtla]

Like with previous suggestion — this requires to create a new selection with each sticker and I've many to add stroke to, so I'd love to make some preset. Also this solution doesn't seem to get a stroke like on the original either

[Wosven]

Here the result — switching from one file to the other in FastStoneViewer), when saving the file to PSD (but I kept the AD file, since it retains the effects):

StickerExample.afdesign

[vihtla]

10 hours ago, Wosven said:

Here the result — switching from one file to the other in FastStoneViewer), when saving the file to PSD (but I kept the AD file, since it retains the effects):

StickerExample.afdesign

Exported yours and compared it to the original, it still is partly too much of a glow and not enough of a stroke. As you can see from the screenshot comparing the two, Affinity's one doesn't follow the edges very precisely always, especially noticable with the fringe part of the hair. 

[Wosven]

@vihtla,

You can try to adjust it again, especially if it's not the hight resolution version, but it give you an example and a process to compare results until you're satisfied.

An external glow of 100%, 4px, 98% seems good for this size.

Try also to print it to check the differences. At some point, only having the 2 images side by side will show differences, with only one, nobody will see anything amiss.

[GarryP]

This post might not be entirely relevant to this discussion but I think it needs to be mentioned for people reading this in the future.
I think part of the issue here is that each Effect is applied to the original contents of the layer, rather than to the results of each effect applied ‘consecutively’.
If, for example, you add an Outline Effect and an Outer Shadow Effect, the Outer Shadow Effect uses the outline of the original layer to calculate how it will look rather than also taking into account the result of the Outline Effect – the shadow is calculated from the original and doesn’t take the outline into consideration so the shadow doesn’t follow the new visible shape.
This can also be seen with other effect combinations.
See my attached image where the bottom of the shadow is the same shape as the original SVG tornado rather than the shape of the thick white outline.
I don’t think there’s much we can do about this other than manually creating new layers and applying the effects one-by-one.

[Wosven]

@GarryP

Didn't you forget to add a radius of the same size as the outline?

[Wosven]

When you put the shadow to 100% in PS you get this:

 

To get the same result in AD (but the result is terrible):

 

The resulting file (PS) produce a bug when opening

StickerExample2.psd

[GarryP]

Yes, good point, but even if I add the radius to the Outer Shadow there’s still a discrepancy between the shadow and the outline.
See attached video where the green is the outline of a duplicated layer; you can see that the shapes of the green outline and the black shadow don’t match, no matter how I try and get them to.

[vihtla]

50 minutes ago, Wosven said:

@vihtla,

You can try to adjust it again, especially if it's not the hight resolution version, but it give you an example and a process to compare results until you're satisfied.

An external glow of 100%, 4px, 98% seems good for this size.

Try also to print it to check the differences. At some point, only having the 2 images side by side will show differences, with only one, nobody will see anything amiss.

Yes, new effect measures seem to work a little better, but the issue with outer glow I have had is that it is either too rough when intensity is big and too glowy when it's smaller.

And like I pointed out at first, those are supposed to become digital stickers in a messaging app. So the difference will be more visible. I try to mimic what the official sticker example suggests to use.

[vihtla]

@GarryP Yes, a little irrelevant for me indeed, as I have no issues with shadows with any of the recommendations or even with my own first tries. What I am struggling with is to get exact stroke effect in the original PSD file.

[firstdefence]

The only way I could get an outline that was as good as Adobe Photoshops; and this sounds backwards on and upside down, was to vectorise the image using a single colour and transparency and then exporting the result to a png (raster) this created an underlay image.

The first method was to select the default minimum colour option in my app (Vector Magic) and ending up with this, I just added a recolour filter to turn it white, I also removed the fx from the main image and added it to this graphic else the stroke would come out darker because of the shadow above.

The second option was to change the blue/gray to white in vector magic which resulted in this...

Dark background added for obvious reasons but where it's dark it would be transparent.

This is without the dark background, added so you can download it, it's there but obviously white on white.

Both these files result in a nice stroke effect.

StickerExample edit.afphoto

[vihtla]

@firstdefence That doesn't seem to be much different from just using outline effect, just more complicated to apply to over a hundred images. I need to be able to save some preset. But thanks for checking out, seems Affinity just doesn't have anything specific that they had used in Photoshop for reference image. Wish Affinity added some technique and quality options to outer glow and other effects that Photoshop has.

Used some recommendation of outer glow and mixed it together with my shadow presets and it seems to be close enough. Ignores some sharp point now and then and just rounds it up aggressively, but it probably won't be an issue with my own stickers.

[vihtla]

Thanks for everyone's help! Didn't expect to get so many people to try hard to help me with that. 😁

[firstdefence]

52 minutes ago, vihtla said:

@firstdefence That doesn't seem to be much different from just using outline effect, just more complicated to apply to over a hundred images. I need to be able to save some preset. But thanks for checking out, seems Affinity just doesn't have anything specific that they had used in Photoshop for reference image. Wish Affinity added some technique and quality options to outer glow and other effects that Photoshop has.

Used some recommendation of outer glow and mixed it together with my shadow presets and it seems to be close enough. Ignores some sharp point now and then and just rounds it up aggressively, but it probably won't be an issue with my own stickers.

Was a bit convoluted but was just an experiment really, photoshops antialiasing is good and clean, maybe affinity need to work on that a bit, good to know you got a positive result.

Yep, people are very helpful on this forum, a lot of very knowledgeable people, with generous natures. 

[StuartRc]

I thought I would have a go at this!

The process using effects or adjustment layers is pretty straightforward but getting very mixed results. largely the smoothing of the pixels after the automation is applied.
 

The outline function in fx would have been ideal but tended to follow the pixel anti-aliasing a bit to closely!.

A smoothing method was a bit more convoluted but gives you some extra options to create the outline shape:

1. Duplicate the original px layer and remove the Fx
2. Select Adjustment Layers and apply Threshold (100%) to covert colour image to black (Use this a lot for creating textures and exporting for vector conversion!)
3. Control-Click to select layer (fill with colour!)
4. Select > Grow/shrink (add px; outline 20px)
5. Add Px Layer and fill with white (Make sure still selected)
6. Select > Feather (2px) or Smooth (2px) to smooth out edges
 

[vihtla]

@StuartRc Thanks for giving it a go! Didn't get past 3rd step, control click (on Mac) on the layer icon didn't give an option to fill it with a colour, neither worked just flood fill tool. Grow/shrink option was grayed out as well.

But it seems to be another duplicate layer method. I have a bunch of stickers to apply that effect to and wouldn't really want to mess with getting a duplicate each time first before being able to start applying some effects. 

Would still check out the solution just in case, if I could get some further help with how to fill the layer and whether that'll allow me to grow/shrink layer then.

[Wosven]

13 minutes ago, vihtla said:

really want to mess with getting a duplicate each time first before being able to start applying some effects. 

If you do it once and save it as a new Style, it's possible to just have to dupplicate and paste/add the style on the other stickers.

[PixelPest]

@vihtlaSounds like what I suggested yesterday already.

[vihtla]

22 minutes ago, Wosven said:

If you do it once and save it as a new Style, it's possible to just have to dupplicate and paste/add the style on the other stickers.

But I'd still need to create a new layer for effects with each image

[vihtla]

@PixelPest Yeah

[StuartRc]

3 hours ago, vihtla said:

@StuartRc Thanks for giving it a go! Didn't get past 3rd step, control click (on Mac) on the layer icon didn't give an option to fill it with a colour, neither worked just flood fill tool. Grow/shrink option was grayed out as well.

But it seems to be another duplicate layer method. I have a bunch of stickers to apply that effect to and wouldn't really want to mess with getting a duplicate each time first before being able to start applying some effects. 

Would still check out the solution just in case, if I could get some further help with how to fill the layer and whether that'll allow me to grow/shrink layer then.

Hi you have to have a selection to activate the Grow/shrink and the smooth options (you can apply them in sequence)