Expand, or select/separate a shape/path from itself

[chaos9830]

I've traced a low res pixel image in Inkscape as an Image Trace workaround, and now I'm trying to select the eye in the bird in Designer. The problem is, I can't. It appears the whole shape is treated as one big curves layer/path, so selecting the eye only selects all the paths/points. Even trying to select the points/paths of the eyes and copy/pasting copies the entire shape. How can I workaround this? I only want to copy the eye.

[MEB]

Hi @chaos9830,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
There's a couple ways to do this involving separate curves/boolean operations but in this case you can simply duplicate the whole thing then delete all the nodes except the ones that below to the eye (so only the eye remains from the duplicated shape), then delete the nodes of the eye in the original shape to remove it from there.

[chaos9830]

49 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi @chaos9830,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
There's a couple ways to do this involving separate curves/boolean operations but in this case you can simply duplicate the whole thing then delete all the nodes except the ones that below to the eye (so only the eye remains from the duplicated shape), then delete the nodes of the eye in the original shape to remove it from there.

Thanks for the reply! I thought i'd probably have to delete the nodes, but you mentioned separate curves operations? could you point me in that direction of where i could learn more?  thanks!

[MEB]

You can separate the whole object (notice these objects composed by several curves/shapes are labelled as curveS in the Layers panel) in its basic elements going to menu Layer> Geometry> Separate curves. As you will see even the "contour lines" (for example the outline of the ghost) will be split in two separate shapes: the shape defined by the outer line of the contour and the shape defined by the inner line of the contour (both filled with black in your case since the line is black). To then turn them into a "contour line" again you must use the geometric operation subtract to remove the inner shape from the outer shape (make sure the inner shape is above the outer shape in the Layers panel then select both shapes and go to menu Layer > Geometry > Subtract.

To lean more about boolean operations (also called geometric operations) check this help topic. There's also a video tutorial that introduces compound objects (that is non-destructive geometric operations) - here's the video tutorial.