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Is it possible to make a shape with a distortion filter that changes the layers below within the shapes border? Like a magnifier glass?


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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

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@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

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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.

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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

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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.

 

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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.

 

post-22319-0-27185300-1454755646_thumb.jpg

post-22319-0-95498400-1454755771_thumb.jpg

post-22319-0-52034500-1454755919_thumb.jpg

post-22319-0-44001200-1454756144_thumb.jpg

post-22319-0-91198200-1454756317_thumb.jpg

take care,

stefano

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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...

take care,

stefano

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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!

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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

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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.

 

 

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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

post-23077-0-85284900-1454915235_thumb.png

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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.

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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

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