creating borders

[Jenny Manes]

I am just learning Affinity.    I need to add borders to photos.  I have watched the tutorials and also bought the Affinity e-book on tutorials.  It shows me how to do borders, but when I do as it suggests:  click snap tool, and enable it, then click rectangle tool, drag my cursor horizontally across photo to center point, and then---when I press command and try to drag out a rectangle, I get nothing.  

Help, please.  Thank you in advance.

[barninga]

this works for me: in the toolbar on the left, click on the small triangle in the low-right corner of the shape tool icon (it should be the fourth from the bottom): this will open the shapes menu.

click on the rectangle tool (the first on the top).

then, hover with the mouse around the center of the image: when you are on the center, a horizontal and a vertical line will appear (the red horizontal line indicates that you are in the middle of the image between top and bottom; the green vertical line indicates that you are in the middle between left and right: if they both are displayed, you are on the center of the image).

press the cmd key and keep it pressed while you click and drag the mouse.

a rectangle will be drawn from the center of the image.

[A_B_C]

Hi Jenny,

 

and welcome here …  :)

 

The cause of your problem seems to be the following. When you open an image, this image appears as the background layer of your document, and that layer is usually selected by default, thereby preventing a proper operation of the Rectangle Tool from the corner of your image. This problem is bypassed by barninga’s solution. Please be aware though, that his solution works only with specific snapping settings, i.e. Snap to spread midpoints active, but you can also try the following:

• Open your image.
• Enable snapping and make sure that Snap to spread is ticked.
• Choose Select > Deselect Layers to deselect your background layer.
• Choose the Rectangle Tool, and draw out your rectangle from one corner over the image. No need to press any other modifier keys.
• Adjust fill and stroke of your rectangle on the context toolbar. Don’t forget to set the stroke alignment to Inside.

Another, even easier, way to create borders around your image, is to use the Outline Effect on your background layer. Please have a look at my screen shot below.

 

Hope that helps …  :)

Alex