prophet Posted December 21, 2021 Posted December 21, 2021 Hunted around to see if this had been mentioned before, but couldn't find it. Issue: when attempting to "clip" a layer to a placed image that contains transparency, Photo ignores that transparency and instead clips to the bounding box. The green circle was created in Photo and behaves as expected. The Pink circle is a vector PDF created in Designer and then Placed in Photo and does not behave correctly. Screen Recording 2021-12-21 at 12.25.59 PM.mov
Old Bruce Posted December 21, 2021 Posted December 21, 2021 I am guessing here but I think that the actual area of the PDF is going to be rectangular, not the circle. Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.6.0 | Affinity Photo 2.6.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.6.0 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
walt.farrell Posted December 21, 2021 Posted December 21, 2021 42 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: I am guessing here but I think that the actual area of the PDF is going to be rectangular, not the circle. That sounds right, to me. To get what @prophet wants I think an SVG would be more appropriate than a PDF. Or perhaps the PDF could be clipped by a circle. -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop 1: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 26.0, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.6.1
prophet Posted December 21, 2021 Author Posted December 21, 2021 Sure, the bounding box of the placed PDF is rectangular (square actually), but it's not like Photo doesn't know what area is transparent. I can move the placed circle over the native one and the transparency works. Why not apply that same information to the clipped layer as well.
Old Bruce Posted December 21, 2021 Posted December 21, 2021 There is no circle/ellipse. Just a rectangular area with some pixels that have different levels of transparency/opacity. Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.6.0 | Affinity Photo 2.6.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.6.0 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
walt.farrell Posted December 21, 2021 Posted December 21, 2021 6 minutes ago, prophet said: Sure, the bounding box of the placed PDF is rectangular (square actually), but it's not like Photo doesn't know what area is transparent. I don't think it matters what area is transparent. You're clipping to the entire PDF layer, not clipping to the non-transparent part of the layer. And the PDF layer is rectangular, not circular. -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop 1: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 26.0, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.6.1
prophet Posted December 21, 2021 Author Posted December 21, 2021 We’ll, I hate to be one of those “Photoshop can do it, so why can’t Affinity” types, but…
prophet Posted December 22, 2021 Author Posted December 22, 2021 3 hours ago, Old Bruce said: some pixels that have different levels of transparency/opacity. My point exactly. The app knows about the transparency, and it uses that info when the placed object overlaps other layers. Yet it can't use that transparency info with a clipped layer?
Old Bruce Posted December 22, 2021 Posted December 22, 2021 2 hours ago, prophet said: My point exactly. The app knows about the transparency, and it uses that info when the placed object overlaps other layers. Yet it can't use that transparency info with a clipped layer? It is a square clipping versus a circular clipping. Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.6.0 | Affinity Photo 2.6.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.6.0 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
NotMyFault Posted December 22, 2021 Posted December 22, 2021 When you rasterize the embedded document you get the desired functionality. Similar to an image layer type, the embedded document acts „virtually“ as a vector shape with a fill from the file, unless you rasterize it. Goodby Forum, thanks for good discussion and so much support from great peers and Affinity staff. It was a great pleasure to be part of this fantastic community. After 03.10.2025 find me on https://creofora.com
prophet Posted December 22, 2021 Author Posted December 22, 2021 5 hours ago, NotMyFault said: When you rasterize the embedded document you get the desired functionality. Indeed, but again, in Photoshop… Perhaps this is a feature request rather than a bug report.
Dan C Posted January 5, 2022 Posted January 5, 2022 Our sincerest apologies for the delayed response here @prophet, we were extremely busy over the Christmas period and working from home during the pandemic is unfortunately extending our response window to be longer than normal, many thanks for your continued patience and understanding here I can confirm that the behaviour you're seeing in Affinity currently is expected, as the app will clip the layer to the bounding box of the full PDF 'page size', rather than the PDF content itself. I'll be sure to move this thread to the feature request section, as I certainly can see how this could be improved
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