key lines around image

[Michael Warren]

Camera club photographers who prepare images for projection often want to be able to easily create a key line border, which can be sized, positioned and coloured. This is particularly important with low key or high key images.  Similarly, printers often want to put key lines around their print a few pixels outside the image to add to the presentation, before mounting.  In photoshop this is easy "select all, stroke in edit menu - enables line width, colour and position relative to image perimeter", but is much more complicated in Affinity Photo

[Silversnapper]

Actually, it is very simple in AP2. At the base of the panel containing the layers, to the right of the Adjustment icon is the Layer Effects icon, shown as FX with lines above and below.

Click on this and this panel appears:

Make sure the outline option is selected and ticked, as shown. Choose your colour, mid grey in the example, (suggest from a greyness scale unless you want a colour) and your keyline thickness in pixels. I always select 'Inside' as the alignment.
The beauty in doing it this way is that the Layer Effects stays within the layer, so can adjusted 'live'. You can return to it at any time to readjust any parameter.
 

[PhilipC]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with "Actually, it is very simple in AP2"!  I've just spent ages trying to put a keyline border around an image. I've tried clipping the canvas, rasterising and trimming, resizing - amongst other things. Still it won't put a border around my image. This is what I end up with:

 

Currently tearing out what is left of my hair 😒

[GarryP]

If you can give us a full-screen screenshot, where the Layers Panel is visible and the ‘problem layer’ is selected and visible in that panel, then we will have more of an idea of what’s going on. Otherwise we are missing a lot of useful information.

If you can also share the document that would be even more useful.

[Pšenda]

23 minutes ago, PhilipC said:

Still it won't put a border around my image.

Bigger radius?

[PhilipC]

44 minutes ago, Pšenda said:

Bigger radius?

No, it's trying to fill the image, regardless of what radius I select.

[PhilipC]

1 hour ago, GarryP said:

If you can give us a full-screen screenshot, where the Layers Panel is visible and the ‘problem layer’ is selected and visible in that panel, then we will have more of an idea of what’s going on. Otherwise we are missing a lot of useful information.

Hmm, I think I've lost that info. I saved the file after flattening the file to see if that helped. [That's another issue I've raised with Affinity - it would be helpful if you could set 'save history' to the default]. I'm in a bit of a rush now, but I'll replicate the issue later with the history showing and repost.

[GarryP]

We don’t need to see the History, we only need to see everything that you can see (on the screen that is) when you are trying to do what you are doing, which includes the information as described above.

[Silversnapper]

A few comments that might help. In the screenshot you gave, the keyline colour is the same as the background fill, so a keyline will not be seen, or am I missing something? In my experience, the keyline is the last thing I do, so I flatten the layers. The layers Effects panel looks exactly like when I apply the keyline, so far so good. However, If you are working with a large image file, you will need to increase the line thickness to 7 to 12 pixels, depending of the dimensions of your image. You increase the thickness until it looks 'correct'. Then it will still look 'correct' when the image dimensions are reduced for competition entry. Until I discovered this technique I was faffing about with a new layer, increase canvas size, fill... and so on. This is SO simple (sorry if that irritates you) and has the benefit that you can go back and adjust the size and colour - it is non-destructive. Oh, and there is a facility to save the history on export.

[PhilipC]

21 hours ago, Silversnapper said:

A few comments that might help. In the screenshot you gave, the keyline colour is the same as the background fill, so a keyline will not be seen, or am I missing something? In my experience, the keyline is the last thing I do, so I flatten the layers. The layers Effects panel looks exactly like when I apply the keyline, so far so good. However, If you are working with a large image file, you will need to increase the line thickness to 7 to 12 pixels, depending of the dimensions of your image. You increase the thickness until it looks 'correct'. Then it will still look 'correct' when the image dimensions are reduced for competition entry. Until I discovered this technique I was faffing about with a new layer, increase canvas size, fill... and so on. This is SO simple (sorry if that irritates you) and has the benefit that you can go back and adjust the size and colour - it is non-destructive. Oh, and there is a facility to save the history on export.

Hi,

The keyline isn't the same colour as the background fill; when I try to add the keyline the images is partially filled with the keyline colour.

Here's the image when I've started to add the outline:

 

And here's the image as soon as I start to increase the keyline pixel size:

That's all I've done between these two screenshots:  started to slide the radius up from zero.  Even at 0.2px that fill has occurred!  Hence my feeling that this is not "so simple"! 😁

[Yes, I know there is a facility to save history, but you have to remember to switch it on for each file. I wish you could set it to default to on or off in preferences, so if you're forgetful like me, you don't have to remember to set it to on. I know others have raised this as a request for future versions.]

 

[Gripsholm Lion]

Do you get the same result on a processed pixel layer or an imported JPG? Or only with an embedded raw file? I don't have a Nikon, but I tried to replicate your example with a Canon file and did not have a problem at all. The one thing which looks odd to me in this context is that the image is not filling its thumbnail. It's not impossible that you have done nothing at all wrong and have just discovered a bug.

[MEB]

Hi @PhilipC,
Seems you have cropped the original image and the cropped parts remain there but invisible but are still being affected by the FX (note the size of the image inside the thumbnail with lots of space around it). Right-click the image layer and select Rasterise & Trim to ensure it's size match the canvas. You can then apply the FX and it should work as you'd expect.

[PhilipC]

Thanks, just "rasterised & trimmed" but:

[PhilipC]

Now I've opened a jpg file and I can add a border with no problem. So that's what I'll have to do with the puppy photo I guess. It's not the end of the world, but just a little annoying that I have to export and then import to do something that should be quite straightforward.

Thank you to all of you for your comments and help. 👍

[MEB]

You don't have to export and re-import. Just make sure you rasterise & trim after the crop to get rid of the cropped parts, before applying the FX. In the case above, when you applied the rasterise & trim command toi the layer did you keep the "Preserve layer FX" ticked in the dialog that appears? It's necessary to keep it ticked for the app to (re)apply the FX to the new rasterised/timmed area otherwise the current state (with the outline only visible in some edges) gets backed in the rasterisation process and nothing changes visually which seems what you've done.

[GarryP]

I have a feeling that the problem might be something to do with the interpretation of the NEF image format.

The Outline Effect looks for transparent ‘parts’ of the ‘stuff’ that is being outlined (not just the outside 'edge' of what’s there) and puts an ‘outline’ on every ‘part’ that isn’t transparent.

Because of this it looks like the software might be ‘seeing’ most of the image as transparent (maybe it’s not looking at the NEF image properly) and could be filling most of the image with the outline.

My attached image might show what I mean where you can see that the outline fills the pixels on the right (duplicate of the image on the left) because it’s filling all the ‘stuff’ that exists.

[MEB]

Didn't noticed the colour of the outline is the yellow. Good catch Garry.
@PhilipC Do you mind attaching the original NEF file please?

[PhilipC]

1 hour ago, MEB said:

You don't have to export and re-import. Just make sure you rasterise & trim after the crop to get rid of the cropped parts, before applying the FX. In the case above, when you applied the rasterise & trim command toi the layer did you keep the "Preserve layer FX" ticked in the dialog that appears? It's necessary to keep it ticked for the app to (re)apply the FX to the new rasterised/timmed area otherwise the current state (with the outline only visible in some edges) gets backed in the rasterisation process and nothing changes visually which seems what you've done.

Hi MEB.

I did rasterise and trim but no "Preserve layer FX" option was shown, because I did that before applying the outline layer effect. The "Preserve layer FX" dialog only shows up if a layer effect has been applied before rasterising and trimming.

I think GarryP's comment is probably getting to where my problem lies; I had been using transparent areas but I thought once I had flattened the image I'd be ok.

[MEB]

There's still something wrong with the outline filling the whole canvas. If you could attach the original NEF and the .afphoto file for inspection it would help determine where the problem is. If you do not wish to share them publicly let me know and I will provide an upload link for you to send the files directly to us. Thanks.

[PhilipC]

Hi. Here are the NEF and .afphoto files.

Z50_1657.afphoto Z50_1657.NEF

[lepr]

In the file Z50_1657.afphoto, the Pixel object isn't truly opaque except near the top. Make it all fully opaque then do Rasterise & Trim, and then you'll be able to add the correct FX Outline.

There are many ways to make the Pixel object fully opaque, so let me know if you need advice about that.