Jump to content

Newbie Affinity Designer How to mask out part of some text for example the dot above an "i".


Recommended Posts

I did a search for various videos and most are about masking text to allow a picture to show using the text as a mask. What I am looking for is how to mask out a portion of text for example the dot above the "i" character. In the text "Dream imagine Believe" I wanted to remove the dot above the first "i" in the word imagine. What I did was break the text into four parts. "Dream" "i" "magine" "Believe" then I converted the "i" to a vector and then removed the dot. However, I thought it could be easier using a text mask, like when you use a mask in photoshop and just paint black where the dot was but yea it doesn't work like that so I was hoping someone could enlighten me if its possible to use a text mask layer to get rid of the dot in my example. Now I understand Photoshop is raster based and Affinity Designer is vector based and I want the Text to be a vector svg to use as a watermark on photos so I am hoping to get pointed in the right direction on how Designer works with something like this.

Hopefully someone can help me out or point me in the right direction on how this would be normally done.

Thanks in advance

Trevor Awalt

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Assume the capital "i" is just a solid line like this "I"

I would look at replacing the lowercase "i" with its capital and adjust the font size (& width etc) for that letter to fit, so it looks like a lowercase "i" without the dot

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, tgAwalt said:

Hopefully someone can help me out or point me in the right direction on how this would be normally done.

Depending on the font, you could look for a small letter without the dot above. E.g. Arial has such a letter.

----------
Windows 10 / 11, Complete Suite Retail and Beta

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first thought is why the "i" is lower case, when the "D" and "B" are uppercase! Be that as it may, I would have thought that the best way was to do as Catshill said and convert to curves then delete the part you don't want. Alternatively (assuming the background is white) you could just cover the dot with a small white square.

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

"Beware of false knowledge, it is more dangerous than ignorance." (GBS)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks everyone for your help.

Seams the best way is to convert the "i" to curves. I have attached my example to show why I wanted to remove the dot from the lower case "i" in imagine, maybe I should have included this in my original comment. I'll know better next time.

Again I thought I could make use of a mask layer to just remove the dot easily but couldn't get the mask to work in that way. The convert to curves worked.

Can anyone suggest a video tutorial that just concentrates on how a masking layer works with text, so I can understand how it's intended to work and why it doesn't work in that way I thought it might. Thanks again for the help.

DIBPhoto_Logo_HeartCamera_Black_small.jpg.9a4909af27618d1891a03bc52baa4606.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, tgAwalt said:

I have attached my example to show why I wanted to remove the dot from the lower case "i" in imagine

I'm still not sure why you don't simply use an upper-case "i". Or use the Typography options in the Character panel to pick a different form of "i" from that font (as it seems to have at least 2).

-- 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:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 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 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

I'm still not sure why you don't simply use an upper-case "i". Or use the Typography options in the Character panel to pick a different form of "i" from that font (as it seems to have at least 2).

Thanks Walt,  I did try the glyphs  and the closest was the lower case i with a line instead of a dot and that did work ok, but the camera did not cover the line perfectly. Again as I am a newbie to Designer I am trying to understand what is the best way and at the same time understand how it works.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

58 minutes ago, tgAwalt said:

I did try the glyphs

I was not suggesting glyphs but the Typography options in the Character panel. But they, too, depend on what the font makes available. And not knowing what font you used I can't say more about that.

-- 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:  Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 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 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard 
Mac:  2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Update, I was watching a YT video called "Affinity Designer Quick Start" by Envato Tuts+ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd7FmjUxFnE&t=5893s) and at marker 1:34:40 there is a description on how to mask using the pixel based persona. This was exactly what I was looking for.

I tried this method putting a mask in the pixel persona on the text and was able to use the eraser or the brush tool "black" to remove the dot above the "i" character the same way I am used to doing it in Photoshop.

I was missing I had to switch to the pixel persona to create the mask then switch back to the Designer Persona to finish my project. I tried scaling the text and it works as I would expect.

My final question, is there any disadvantage by doing it this way, am I missing something?

Again thanks for all your ideas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, tgAwalt said:

My final question, is there any disadvantage by doing it this way, am I missing something?

You initially said...

On 6/20/2022 at 12:55 AM, tgAwalt said:

I want the Text to be a vector svg

Adding the mask this way means part of the SVG will be rasterised

To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.