magicmarker Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 Hi All! I too am making the leap from Adobe to Affinity. I use Photo from an illustration perspective, working with scanned-in drawings, removing the white backgrounds, and then going crazy cutting things out, resizing, arranging, coloring, etc. It's been great so far, just getting used to where things are in Affinity Photo. My question here is: I see how one can paint an alpha channel only (equivalent to locking pixels on a layer in PS), but how do you bulk fill an alpha channel (i.e. locked pixels) on a layer? In PS, you can select the layer (with locked pixels), choose a color, and either select "fill"from the drop-down menu, or "option/command-delete". Does anyone know the equivalent in Affinity Photo? I hope that makes sense! Thanks in advance! Pierrick 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crabtrem Posted March 7, 2016 Share Posted March 7, 2016 I am no expert. And I may not understand your requirements. But, assuming I do, I think you are looking for the Flood Select tool (W) to select a range of colors. Then by hitting the delete key, they are gone. You should only have a transparent area showing through. For removing white specifically. Under the Filters-Colours-Erase White Paper will remove all the white from a layer. For any selections made to you can have any adjustment or filter added to that selection, which gives you a large latitude of options to play with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asha Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 Make a new pixel layer, and in the channels panel, lock each of the R, G and B composite channels by deselecting the little pencil icon to the right of the eyeball icon. Then, with your new pixel layer active, you can make a selection and use the paint bucket to fill it. If you are only painting on the alpha, it always goes to white regardless of what color you have selected (even if black or gray) because you are basically making a 100% alpha of the filled area. You can also paint with black, white or any shade of gray on your pixel layer by locking the R, G or B channels you don't want to paint on. It will add color value only from the active channel. This thread may also be helpful: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/17438-using-channels-as-non-destructive-way-to-color-wallcovering-patterns/?hl=channels magicmarker 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evtonic3 Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 If you just wanna fill pixels that are on a transparent layer and you want to "lock" the transparency, there is no direct equivalent yet like you described. A workaround that I was suggested was to use the paintbrush on the layer but to click on Protect Alpha, and then you'd have to manually brush over your layer, not a big deal I guess, but I do too wish it was available in Photo. magicmarker and Máté 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierrick Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 Agree with the OP. Brush + protect alpha works beautifully to fill in a layer with a foreground color. But an equivalent to the ⌥⇧Delete would be a killer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierrick Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 Another option is to create a Fill layer (that you can assign to ⌥⇧Delete!) and nest it. Still two steps, but the Fill layer gives some flexibility. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asha Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 magicmarker--are you talking about having a kind of "alpha lock" feature on any given layer? The equivalent in PS is "Create Clipping Mask" in the layer contextual menu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magicmarker Posted March 8, 2016 Author Share Posted March 8, 2016 Thanks for the help everyone! I understand that I'm using Photo in a slightly unorthodox way. I have been using the paintbrush & "protect alpha" mode, but to save time I was looking for an "locked pixels/alpha channel" fill method. Sometimes it's just easier to fill in a large area, rather than manually paint it. It's actually helpful to hear that there is no such feature at this time, so I can stop hunting around looking for it. I'm curious about the Fill layer method that Pierrick mentioned though, I will explore that. Pierrick 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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