Clip a noise layer to a group?

[cayenne]

Hello,

I'm trying to emulate something I used to do all the time in PS.  Basically at times cleaning up an image, I just open some layers and paint things out and in....

I then group those paint layers together in a group.

Then when done, I need to add a bit of noise to where I painted to match it to the noise natively in the image.

I usually create a fill layer of 50% gray.

I apply the noise filter to get it to approx the same size noise that the regular image has.

I then would clip this to that group of paint layers and I think the blend mode was "Overlay"....and by doing this, I'd be able to apply noise only to the areas that were painted which does a great job of hiding your tracks.

 

I have Affinity Photo 2.  I've created my noise layer, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to "clip" it to the group that contains the paint layers.

 

Can someone give me a quick idea what to do, or point me to some links?

 

Thank you in advance,

CC

[thomaso]

Apparently a Noise filter layer placed directly under a Group layer affects layers below the Group, too, in full canvas size. I wonder if this is "by design" for a noise filter – other filters and adjustment layers don't have this kind of limitation.

A workaround could be using several noise filter layers, as linked layers for easier common setting.

[lepr]

21 hours ago, cayenne said:

I've created my noise layer, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to "clip" it to the group that contains the paint layers.

Affinity doesn't yet have clipping by group, unfortunately. A workaround is to duplicate the group and use it as a mask on the object which you wished to clip.

[thomaso]

37 minutes ago, ,,, said:

Affinity doesn't yet have clipping by group,

I might misunderstand "clipping by group" but doesn't this way work for various layer types but 'just' not for a Noise Filter layer?

[lepr]

35 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I might misunderstand "clipping by group" but doesn't this way work for various layer types but 'just' not for a Noise Filter layer?

 

I didn't disagree with what you are saying/showimg. I simply said that Affinity does not yet support clipping by group and gave a workaround for that.

Note that changing the group's blend mode from Passthrough to Normal will prevent an Add Noise child of the group being applied to things behind the group.

However, the OP wants to apply different noise to group members than simply and directly applying Add Noise to them, in which case clipping by group would be helpful.

[cayenne]

On 4/29/2023 at 12:13 PM, lepr said:

 

I didn't disagree with what you are saying/showimg. I simply said that Affinity does not yet support clipping by group and gave a workaround for that.

Note that changing the group's blend mode from Passthrough to Normal will prevent an Add Noise child of the group being applied to things behind the group.

However, the OP wants to apply different noise to group members than simply and directly applying Add Noise to them, in which case clipping by group would be helpful.

But...what he is demonstrating...isn't that exactly what I'm trying to do...with his HSL and halftone...clipped to that group of two objects he has...it is only affecting those areas...I believe that's essentially what I'm trying to do with noise.

I notice it has been quite awhile since I brought this up...I'll fire up Affinity 2 and see if noise now works when used as a clipping mask to a group.

 

cayenne

[cayenne]

Ok, after playing with this some more...I may have it working, although not sure exactly how...again, I'm used to doing this in PS as described above.

 

But I added the noise as a layer of the group where I had painted with a brush...in this examples colors....

 

And then I took the group itself and made it a clipping mask (is that the right term with Affinity) to the rectangle below, which would generally be the image I was trying to correct by painting things in/out....it seems to work...?

 

 

I know Affinity can do pretty much ANYTHING PS can do...and I do this one often.

But whew...it does somethings SO differently, it's hard to figure out the secret Mickey Mouse handshake you need to make it work.

 

But I think this is close.

[NotMyFault]

The noise filter has a bug in my view as it affects all color channels and alpha channel.

If you need noise only on color channels, you can add a procedural texture filter with a noise function of your choice and activate it on RGB channels only.

This will the work as intended when nested into the group into child position atop the pixel layers.

noise(x,y)

activate RGB

[cayenne]

55 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

The noise filter has a bug in my view as it affects all color channels and alpha channel.

If you need noise only on color channels, you can add a procedural texture filter with a noise function of your choice and activate it on RGB channels only.

This will the work as intended when nested into the group into child position atop the pixel layers.

noise(x,y)

activate RGB

Hello and thank you for the reply.

Alright, you completely lost me on this one...never heard of a procedural texture filter. I don't see it under filters...?

Can you give me some insight how and where to find and use this?

It appears to somehow be able to do some coding within Affinity Photo 2....but I've never seen anything like that that is user accessible....

 

Thank you in advance,

 

cayenne

[v_kyr]

8 minutes ago, cayenne said:

Can you give me some insight how and where to find and use this?

See ...

• Procedural Texture
• also Equations
• ...

[thomaso]

… and in the forum ...