create a small circular crop from a large image, then delete the original image?

[keynotes88]

My first post. Hope this is the right place. Can Affinity Designer do a small circular crop of a large image then delete the original image and keep the circular crop in Designer? Or does the original image have to stay in the document? I have looked for the answer but only found how to crop.

I use many of these crops in the same document and with my current software I have to export the crop as a png then open the png in a new document. Otherwise, with many crops the document file size becomes extremely large. Opening the document is slow and working in the document is laggy. Could I overcome this problem using Designer? It's not the extra steps that are the main problem. There is often loss of quality, especially if the original image is a vector. I have to enlarge it many times before exporting a png, then import the png and reduce the size back to what I need.   Thanks for any info on how Designer could overcome this issue.

[Paul Mc]

Yes, you can create a circular crop of an image in Affinity Designer. The crop is really a mask and it is non-destructive in the sense that you can save the AD file and you could later remove the mask and it will reveal the whole of the original image. The image could be a bitmap (pixel image) or a vector design. The mask is a vector image. The whole image is stored in the AD file along with the circle (ellipse) profile for the mask.

Depending on your downstream use of the cropped or masked image you may need to follow the same process of conversion to a PNG. It is hard to comment more on this without knowing more about how you use the cropped images.

The performance issue is common with large bitmaps. This shouldn't be an issue within AD if you don't need to enlarge the images as you currently do.

Why not download a trial version and see if it fits your workflow.

[NotMyFault]

While Paul‘s reply is true in general, it can get a bit more complex as Affinity allows to place linked files. This feature should not be used for your use case, of course. Instead you can open the file, or embed the file which essentially makes a copy.

Then, there are multiple ways to mask, clip, or crop.

When dealing with true vector documents, there are minor edge cases which cause issues, in the field of anti-aliasing of edges.

As Paul mentioned, it would be great to get example images to check this out before we can give a final advice. 
 

[keynotes88]

Thank you for your quick and informative replies. I make promotional buttons. The circular crops are how I need the art to be printed. For my 1 3/4" diameter round buttons I get 15 images on an 8.5 by 11 sheet. My most recent project required me to create 15 circular clips (masks) from different parts of a large vector file. It got so slow I finally had to enlarge each mask, export it as a png, then import it and reduce it to the right size. Then I deleted the mask for that particular button art. After all the masks were deleted the software ran smoothly again. If I ever have a similar project I'll do one mask at a time then delete it after I import the png.

It sounds like I would have to do the same thing with Designer. But this seems like a great community and Designer is very reasonably priced. I'll try the free trial and likely buy the software.

Thanks!

[NotMyFault]

3 hours ago, keynotes88 said:

It sounds like I would have to do the same thing with Designer.

I would really like to test.

In Designer, you can use any curve directly as mask (no need to rasterize / export as png), and apply it to any vector object. I‘m almost sure  your workflow can be simplified. Just test it, Affinity offers free trials. 

see tutorial video below, same function in Designer

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/318402519/