Cutting out the round shape but keep the white part.

[R C-R]

13 minutes ago, ennuied said:

That's because your raster layer is background, you need to place it.

I have no idea what you mean by that. In Affinity "background" is just a name that can be given to a layer. It has no special significance. Try it yourself: in a new document, add a vector shape, the double-click on it in the Layers panel & when it highlights, type "Background" to give it that name. Likewise, create a new pixel layer & rename it to "Background." Or create half a dozen different layers & give them all the "Background" name.

21 minutes ago, ennuied said:

Yes I just realized the placed image is called image and the opened image is called pixel. I have no idea what this means, seems like unnecessary complication.

Like I said, "(Image)" layers behave differently from "(Pixel)" layers. You can give them strokes and/or convert them to curves, at which point they become vector shapes with bitmap fills, so you can use the Node Tool to control how much of the bitmap is visible. Once converted, they can be treated like other vector curve objects for things like boolean subtractions, cut into several pieces using the Break Curve option, etc.

38 minutes ago, ennuied said:

And yes the pixel layer does not even allow to subtract. So like I said the polygonal lasso tool is the only controlled solution to cut raster layer.

To cut a raster layer in AD, you can use any of the six selection tools in its Pixel persona (four types of marquee selectors; the Selection Brush tool; the Flood Select Tool; & the Freehand Selection Tool in freehand, polygon, or magnetic mode) & combine them in various add, subtract & other modes to create 'marching ants' selections, then delete, cut, or copy the selection. Depending on the selection tool you are using, you can refine the selection, feather it, apply anti-aliasing, etc. before the delete, cut, or copy.

If you take the time to learn how each tool works, what the properties of the many different types of layers are & the various ways they can be manipulated, pay attention to the Context toolbar & to the status bar, & browse through the help topics & tutorials, you should be able to answer most of your "how to?" questions yourself.

If you get stuck on something, don't hesitate to ask for help here, but please understand that we may need to ask you to provide screenshots or files of certain specific things to see what the problem is & how best to help you resolve it.

[ennuied]

16 hours ago, R C-R said:

I have no idea what you mean by that.

File > Place...

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, ennuied said:

On 7/30/2021 at 4:49 PM, R C-R said:

I have no idea what you mean by that.

File > Place...

You said I was not duplicating your results because my "raster layer is background." As I explained, "background" is just a name given to a layer. And no, when I use File > Place, the placed layer is not named "background," so I still have no idea what your "is background" point is supposed to mean or its relevance to anything.

You really need to spend a little time learning about the basics of (among other things) the ten types of layers & the seven pixel selection tools that Affinity supports if you want to use even a small part of its capabilities. 

EDIT: The Image layers help topic is hard to find but well worth reading.

[Frances Proctor]

Hi ennuied  I know that coming from Using Xara Designer Pro into the world of affinity is a learning curve.  But not a huge one.  One thing to consider Affinity is not an all in one program like  Xara Designer Pro.  Affinity Designer is mainly for vector graphics but you can do some photo tasks in the pixel persona. 

You can mask out the white background. 

1. Go into pixel persona, use the selection brush to select the rubik's cube. 
2. Once you have the cube selected press refine on the info bar a new panel will come up and you can see a red overlay showing the areas that will be masked out.  here you can use the brush that automatically comes active to brush over any areas of your selection that still need work like fine hairs or branches.  you can use the sliders as well. 
3. Once you are happy with your mask  go down to the bottom of the refine panel and you will see a dropdown menu under the label output.  choose new layer from that menu and click apply.  You will now have your cube cutout and on a new layer of its own.  and the original photo will still be there on it's layer.  You can simply keep the original turned off by making sure it's check box in the layers panel is not checked.  and you will always be able to go back to it if needed. 

[ennuied]

On 7/31/2021 at 9:33 PM, Frances Proctor said:

Hi ennuied  I know that coming from Using Xara Designer Pro into the world of affinity is a learning curve.  But not a huge one.  One thing to consider Affinity is not an all in one program like  Xara Designer Pro.  Affinity Designer is mainly for vector graphics but you can do some photo tasks in the pixel persona. 

You can mask out the white background. 

1. Go into pixel persona, use the selection brush to select the rubik's cube. 
2. Once you have the cube selected press refine on the info bar a new panel will come up and you can see a red overlay showing the areas that will be masked out.  here you can use the brush that automatically comes active to brush over any areas of your selection that still need work like fine hairs or branches.  you can use the sliders as well. 
3. Once you are happy with your mask  go down to the bottom of the refine panel and you will see a dropdown menu under the label output.  choose new layer from that menu and click apply.  You will now have your cube cutout and on a new layer of its own.  and the original photo will still be there on it's layer.  You can simply keep the original turned off by making sure it's check box in the layers panel is not checked.  and you will always be able to go back to it if needed. 

Xara is insanely intuitive app and is very quick to work with, and it works seamlessly with raster images. You can drop a raster image and cut it into any shape you like. It has the right mentality, simplicity is everything. Affinity tries to do do many things but fails to polish what it already can do, it wants to be the cool kid by copying the popular kids like Illustrator. Which makes me wonder why Affinity exists, because people want cheap Illustrator?

[Frances Proctor]

Yes Xara is fast and intuitive but Xara is not without some issues.  Affinity has better brushes already and better Svg export.  Affinity is missing some basics like blends and the contour tool is just a beginning but the main thing is Affinity is putting more work into its vector art tools and Xara has all but abandoned the art side of things favouring its business layout stuff.  And if you have publisher you can set up a picture frame that is a container for a photo.  you can drag and drop a photo into a frame  once you have your frame set up in Publisher you can save it and use it in Designer and Photo.  

[lacerto]

Xara is quite clever in handling cutting off (non-destructively) background from images as its magnetic lasso (one of its region masking tools) creates an editable vector shape that is then used as a clipping view. Affinity apps, despite advertizing a seamless vector and raster workflow, still miss e.g. capability to convert a bitmap selection to a path, which would allow similar smooth and versatile masking operations. [Trivial and destructive cut outs can naturally be handled without editable masks or paths.]

But you can create an editable vector mask by outlining the area of the image you want to clip by using the Pen tool, use the Node tool to refine the shape, and once finished, fill the shape with any color and, having the vector shape on top of the image, select it from the Layers panel, right click and choose Mask to Below from the context menu (or alternatively, dragging the masking shape directly on top of the image layer in the Layers panel):

 

Which does this:

This is pretty much the same as ClipView in Xara. You can edit the clipping mask any time by selecting it from the Layers panel and using the Node tool, and release the mask by right clicking and choosing Release Mask command, or just by dragging the mask off from the clipping group.

An alternative for clipping mask (distinguished by the crop icon at the bottom right of the masking curve in the Layers panel), which always needs to have a fill color, is using any vector shape as a container and creating a clipping view by placing the clipping shape on top of the image to be clipped (or actually it can also be under the image), and, in the Layer panel, dragging the image inside the vector shape (not on top of the vector shape layer, but slightly below it):

 

The shape that serves as a cliiping view does not need to be filled.

In addition to these vector based masks, you can use a pixel based mask creation of which in Pixel Persona was advised above by @Frances Proctor. An elementary pixel mask can be created in any Affinity app without switching to another mode (Photo Persona in Publisher, and Pixel Persona in Designer) by using the Mask Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel, and then using the mask refining tools accessible from the context menu of a mask layer:

 

[PixelPest]

Can´t think of any easier&faster way:

[ennuied]

I'm aware of this trick but it works only with simple one toned backgrounds.

[ennuied]

11 hours ago, Frances Proctor said:

Yes Xara is fast and intuitive but Xara is not without some issues.  Affinity has better brushes already and better Svg export.  Affinity is missing some basics like blends and the contour tool is just a beginning but the main thing is Affinity is putting more work into its vector art tools and Xara has all but abandoned the art side of things favouring its business layout stuff.  And if you have publisher you can set up a picture frame that is a container for a photo.  you can drag and drop a photo into a frame  once you have your frame set up in Publisher you can save it and use it in Designer and Photo.  

I miss the lightning fast workflow but there's no turning back, they don't want to port to MacOS, to hell with them.

[Twila]

I want to do the exact same thing with my pic as with the Rubic's cube shown above. Can I do this with Publisher and if so, how? I have attached the file below that shows an outline map of the Latin American countries that are chiefly Spanish-speaking. I want to cut away the white background. Please tell me how to do this,

if possible, in Publisher.

[Twila]

So you're saying, it is not possible in Publisher, only in the Photo Persona (which I don't have)? I only have the Publisher Persona, so is there any way I can do it in Publisher?

 

[firstdefence]

10 minutes ago, Twila said:

So you're saying, it is not possible in Publisher, only in the Photo Persona (which I don't have)? I only have the Publisher Persona, so is there any way I can do it in Publisher?

 

The only way to do this purely in publisher is to use the pen tool and draw around the countries to make a clipping mask.

[Twila]

20 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

The only way to do this purely in publisher is to use the pen tool and draw around the countries to make a clipping mask.

Thanks, I appreciate your quick response. 

[v_kyr]

5 hours ago, Twila said:

... I only have the Publisher Persona, so is there any way I can do it in Publisher?

 

Well as usually "...there are many ways which lead to Rome", and in your case here it would have even better to use from ground up some free vector based "Latin America" map, instead of a bitmap/pixel based one. A vector map (as PDF/SVG) is overall easier to scale & color & modify & print then. - For example see ...

• https://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=5110&lang=en
• https://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=5111&lang=en

... where you can download maps as PDF/SVG/... etc.

Here how to finetune and reuse such a map then on a vector base ...

 

• latin-america.afdesign
• latin-america.pdf

Another possible way would have been to trace/vectorize the map bitmap image you used above, with some good free third party tracer (see therefor) and then to customize/modify the vectorized map output to your needs.

Finally you can then reuse/import the ADe and/or PDF files (see the supplied "latin-america.*" files) in APub too!