Frosted glass / Background blur

[telemax]

This is a short tutorial for Affinity Photo that shows you the steps for creating a frosted glass effect.
The finished effect created in Affinity Photo can be used and edited in Affinity Designer.

1. Deselect all layers.

2. Click the "Live Filters" icon in the Layers panel, and choose Gaussian Blur from the list. Move the slider so that the effect is visible.

3. Create a shape, it must be filled with color, it can be vector or raster. This shape will be the silhouette of the frosted glass.

4. In the Layers panel, drag the "shape" layer onto the "Gaussian Blur" layer icon so that a small vertical bar appears on the layer icon.

Thus, the shape will limit the effect, i.e. the shape will be a mask for the blur effect.

Tip: For the effect to work properly on the artboard in Affinity Designer, the artboard must have a background as a vector or raster non-transparent layer, or just apply color to the artboard. Also, the "Preserve Alpha" option must be enabled in the blur effect settings.

Example files: Blur.afdesign Blur_Artboard.afdesign

Video tutorial:

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[infacto]

If I understand correctly, did you create the effect in Photo and import it into Designer (copy & paste)? Because Live Filter cannot be created in Affinity (v1)? Interesting that things which cannot be created are supported by paste... Why not just allow creating live filters in Designer (at Serif devs)? Anyway... thanks for the hint. I hope this (unofficial?) feature works in the future (not tested in v2 yet). Update: There are some bugs e.g. when creating a group. It feels a bit hackish.

Update: It seems this no longer works in V2. I wonder why? Is this for marketing? I bought all programs (Universal License). NOT because of missing features in each program. So why blocking this core features? ...

[plow0455]

On 9/27/2023 at 8:04 AM, infacto said:

If I understand correctly, did you create the effect in Photo and import it into Designer (copy & paste)? Because Live Filter cannot be created in Affinity (v1)? Interesting that things which cannot be created are supported by paste... Why not just allow creating live filters in Designer (at Serif devs)? Anyway... thanks for the hint. I hope this (unofficial?) feature works in the future (not tested in v2 yet). Update: There are some bugs e.g. when creating a group. It feels a bit hackish.

Update: It seems this no longer works in V2. I wonder why? Is this for marketing? I bought all programs (Universal License). NOT because of missing features in each program. So why blocking this core features? ...

I just did this in photo and copy and pasted it into designer. AFAIK both were V2. Although now in the layer panel it looks slightly different, and moving the group together does nothing, I had to open the group and move the rounded rectangle itself. 

I had managed to do something similar to this effect a while back but was unable to remember how, or reproduce the effect I wanted. This worked nicely, once I figured out you could copy the effect from photo.

[Megnusin]

Copy/pasting live filters from Photo to Designer is an old trick, but I've always had serious issues with performance and crashes when doing so, so I wouldn't say it's a viable option. With Fluent/Acrylic and now Liquid Glass cementing glass morphism as a leading design trend, it makes it all the more urgent for Designer to have this feature natively. What do professionals who use Designer do—just apply the effect in Figma?