Mini tutorial: Add Noise globally in Affinity Designer

[NotMyFault]

In case you want to add noise to multiple layers or any area defined by existing curve, you may miss the noise filters or procedural texture filters from Photo. For those who want to stay 100% in Designer, this might help:

You can of course add noise by using the color panel, but this needs to be done for every layer on its own. Lucky you if using styles, or color tags for labels so you can tackle multiple at once.

If you document is intended to be exported as a bitmap file (PNG, JPEG, TIIF), you have multiple options to achieve noise on a more global level:

1. Add a rectangular shape (or any shape suitable to define the region where you need noise added) on top
2. set fill color to 50% grey.
3. Click the "opacity" button to change to noise, and add suitable noise level.
4. Have "Pixel" view mode active, and zoom level 100% or larger, to get realistic preview of noise. 
5. set blend mode to "linear light" or "overlay"

This works great, but the constraint is you need fully opaque pixels.

In case you have some areas with full transparency (either 0% or 100% alpha, but no values in between) you can restrict the noise to fully opaque areas using a little trick:

• set opacity of rectangle to 99%
• add channels mixer adjustment
• select alpha channel
• set offset to minus 99%
• add levels adjustment
• select alpha channel
• set white point to 1%

A minor change in colors is possible, normally below 0,5% and not noticeable. If you plan to add noise to a picture, i think this is totally acceptable.

There are of course other methods possible, e.g. "steal" a noise filter from a document created or edited in Photo.

Image 1: original without noise

Image 2: rectangle with noise added, extends over transparent areas

Image 3: additional adjustments to restrict noise to opaque areas

 

 

Edited January 22, 2023 by NotMyFault
typos