BlauerClaus Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Is there a way in Affinity Photo to generate this effect: - you have a picture, e.g. of a leave, - you draw a shape, e.g. an ellipse, on top of the first picture, as a second layer (e.g. a magnifier glass) - you assign a live distortion effect to this ellipse, e.g. a wave, sphere, lense distortion etc. (the magnifier effect) - and this effect is then applied to the layers below the shape, but within the frame of the shape? You could design a magnifier glass on top of the leave picture, and while moving this glass around, you see the magnification effect constantly. - Useful to find a right position for this effect to magnify the right spot. - Useful to draw a rain drop on top of the leave which really looks like a drop, including distortion of the water. Ideas? Best regards BlauerClaus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 Are you talking about something like this? I just duplicated the layer. Changed the size. Added a distortion effect. Drew an oval, and dragged it over the mask layer of the copied layer. Of course I may not have understood your question. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlauerClaus Posted February 4, 2016 Author Share Posted February 4, 2016 @crabtrem: This looks nice, thank you, but unfortunately, this magnifier is static. You cannot move the oval around and the underlying layers follow (as a real magnifier would do). In your picture, when you move the oval, the ladies face will be moved around. This is because you determined the position of the distortion effect in the beginning. I difference to your approach, I would like to apply the distortion filter to the oval, and then this oval becomes a "live magnifier" that you can move around. Is this possible? Best regards BlauerClaus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 If you select just the mask you can move the part of the image showing through. So it looks like you are using a magnifying lens moving it across the picture. Add any distortion effects you want. Just remember most default to distort around the center, and you will need to drag the center of the distortion with a mouse for most that I have come across. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 4, 2016 Share Posted February 4, 2016 I'm not sure if you can attach the distortion effect on the mask itself? I haven't tried that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 5, 2016 Share Posted February 5, 2016 BlaueClaus, Try the LIve Layer Spherical Filter. I think that's exactly what your looking for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlauerClaus Posted February 5, 2016 Author Share Posted February 5, 2016 The Spherical Filter does it, thank you crabtrem I can move it around. But how can I assign the distortion effect to any shape? A triangle, a rectangle, a star, any self defined shape? This is why I hoped to start with a geometric shape, and then to associate the distortion effect to this shape. Best regards BlauerClaus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 5, 2016 Share Posted February 5, 2016 This is all I could think of. I made a copy (cmd J) of the main image. I created a triangle shape and place it so it would mask the picture. I added the spherical live filter to that layer. so when I select the mask (triangle) I can move that over the image. I looks like there is a distortion from the spherical filter, although not a pronounced because of the shape. I'm guessing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 5, 2016 Share Posted February 5, 2016 I just can't figure out a way to lock the movement of the shape with the live filter layer. Since the center of the distortion seems to be locked to the screen size, and the center is moved only when you are in the editing mode of that live filter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barninga Posted February 6, 2016 Share Posted February 6, 2016 the center appears to be locked to the center of the image. imho filters like this (i.e. zoom, etc.) should offer a way to place their center where needed. anyway, the spherical filter seems to have problems the team should look at. in the test i did to experiment with the question asked by BlauerClaus, i found that on certain images it works as expected, in other it only acts on the lower half; in addition there's some strange interaction with the crop tool: if i crop the image after applying the filter, the upper half or the image disappears. take a look at the screenshots attached. 1) the original image, loaded in ap 2) the image after applying the spherical distortion live filter: it only distorted the lower half 3) the image after applying the spherical live filter and cropping it (the crop included the whole width of the image and about two thirds of it starting from the top - notably, it did not entirely include the semi-sphere of the effect) 4) what i got exporting the cropped image and reloading it: it looks like the effect was applied correctly also to the upper half, but the crop screwed up the image. by the way, this is exactly the same result i obtained exporting the image before trying to crop it. 5) i reloaded the original image, then i cropped a slice at bottom and reapplied the filter: this time, it worked correctly. obviously i suspected that there was something wrong in my photograph, so i tried to apply the live sphere filter to different images and i found the same behavior with several jpegs and pngs. with some other images, however, it worked correctly. Quote take care, stefano Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anon1 Posted February 6, 2016 Share Posted February 6, 2016 - sorry misread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barninga Posted February 6, 2016 Share Posted February 6, 2016 ? Quote take care, stefano Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 6, 2016 Share Posted February 6, 2016 You can move the center of the live filter, but only when you have the edit pop-up available. The live filter starts at the center, but you can drag it anywhere on the screen. You just can't move it unless you then double click on the live filter to bring up its pop-up. JimmyJack and anon1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barninga Posted February 7, 2016 Share Posted February 7, 2016 thank you for pointing that out! i expected to see a center moving control inside the edit popup and did not notice that when the mouse hovers the sphere, the cursor's shape changes to a node-edit-like triangle and the sphere can be simply dragged around... which is much better than setting the center coordinates by numbers! however, i think i'll have to start a topic in the bugs forum, since the behavior i described above cannot be right... Quote take care, stefano Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyJack Posted February 7, 2016 Share Posted February 7, 2016 You can move the center of the live filter, but only when you have the edit pop-up available. The live filter starts at the center, but you can drag it anywhere on the screen. You just can't move it unless you then double click on the live filter to bring up its pop-up. That IS good to know. Double thanks for pointing that out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlauerClaus Posted February 7, 2016 Author Share Posted February 7, 2016 Hi guys, I have summarized the finding in a short video tutorial. It shows a way how to make a shape, to assign a distortion filter, how to adjust the effect within the shape and how to make the effect movable around the picture. It also shows the limitations. What I would wish is that we could assign a live filter directly to a shape, that the life filter is moving its position with the shape automatically Thanks to crabtrem and barninga for your contributions! Best regards Blauer Claus Tutorial Distortion Effect.mov Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barninga Posted February 7, 2016 Share Posted February 7, 2016 thanks for the video, it's clear and useful. Quote take care, stefano Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 7, 2016 Share Posted February 7, 2016 Great video. It got me thinking. Hope you will forgive the video quality. I haven't mastered a good way to get the file sizes down. So you can follow along. I added the twirl live filter. I placed the center of the twirl where I wanted it. I placed the twirl live filter on its own layer. I drew a shape with no fill around it. I then shift selected both the shape and live filter layers. You now have the illusion of the filter moving with the shape. barninga 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlauerClaus Posted February 8, 2016 Author Share Posted February 8, 2016 Hi crabtrem, Interesting approach, yes it works, even with the spherical effect. The key drawback of your approach is that the effect is not limited to the shapes border. In your case, the shape must be bigger than the effect, then it looks perfect as in your video. But, when the effect is bigger than the shape, it becomes visible. Look at the attached screenshot. Especially for a magnifier, it is important to limit the magnification effect to the border of the physical magnifier geometry. Use cases of my original questions are: - you want to emphasis a part of a picture, - you want to create a rain drop on top of the picture of a leave. Then you need such kind of glass effect, assigned to the shape of the magnifier or the rain drop. Best regards BlauerClaus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted February 8, 2016 Share Posted February 8, 2016 That is so very true. As I said it is just an illusion. It was just fun to consider the possibilities. I mean you could really debate why would you need motion in a photo editor at all, when you will only be able to display the finished static product any way. But it was fun to consider. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlauerClaus Posted February 8, 2016 Author Share Posted February 8, 2016 Maybe the team of Serif can give us a hint. The need of having motion in a photo editor is the real time tuning of the effects. We use that commonly for all standard exposure and shadow effects. You need to see them in real time to make adjustments. Especial the magnification of text requires motion to see which part of the text is magnified. Best regards BlauerClaus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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