Cropping old photos with rounded edges -- Is there an easy way?

[G-SF]

Hello all, I have a slightly unusual use case, and I want to see if Affinity Photo can do this easily. I have hundreds (potentially more) old photos from the 1970s-1980s that I want to scan, crop, and send out to relatives. The only issue is that these photos have rounded corners, which makes cropping a bit tricky (example attached). Here is my ideal workflow:

1.     Use a marquee tool (rectangle with rounded edges) to select photo contents
2.     Hit a button to crop to selection and eliminate white scanner background
3.     Save file

I WANT destructive editing in this case, because I have no desire to retain the white background behind the photo, and I don’t want recipients to see it when they open a photo or post on social media. Since I’ll be dealing with hundreds of images, I’d rather avoid messing around with layers, rasterizing, etc.

I know there is free software that can do this, but I want to support software makers with my $. So is this doable in Affinity Photo 2.5.5? I tried looking around before posting, but most of the related questions I saw applied to an earlier version of Affinity Photo. I am using the Windows desktop version. Thanks!

Edited November 4, 2024 by G-SF
Formatting copy

[Ron P.]

@G-SF, Welcome to the forums

I think this will get you very close to what you're wanting to do.

1. Draw a Rounded Rectangle Shape above your image layer. Much like you're using the Marque tool.
2. Right-Click on the Rounded Rectangle Shape layer, select Mask to Below.
3. Right-Click and select Merge Visible. OR Rasterize & Trim
4. Export. PNG. Exporting to JPEG, will still show the areas outside the Rounded Rectangle.

I've tried looking on my various HDDs for images I had that were just like you describe. I had a ton of them. However I already cropped them, years ago. I think I had to pretty much crop one at a time.

[GarryP]

@G-SF Just to try and understand what you want to do a little better, do you want to do either of the two things in my attached image, or something else?

In both “A” and “B” the purple rectangle is the extents of the original image, the red rounded-rectangle is the area in that image which contains the ‘actual’ image (the ‘coloured stuff’), and the black rectangle is the resultant extents of the image after cropping.

In “A”, the extents of the resultant image are the same as the red rounded-rectangle and the white corners have been ‘filled in’ somehow.

In “B”, the extents of the resultant image define a rectangle which is the largest rectangle which can be made from the ‘coloured stuff’ with the corners removed.

[Pšenda]

36 minutes ago, GarryP said:

or something else?

This is how I personally understood it:

[GarryP]

I guess we’ll know more if/when the OP gets back to us.

[PaulEC]

I think this is what is needed! (Using Flood Select with a low tolerance to select the white area. Saving as png, as jpg would not have transparency.)

[G-SF]

Hi folks, I really appreciate the assistance. Pšenda was right, I was looking to retain the rounded edges without needing to trim any of the image. I tried the Flood Select method but I was having trouble with some of the image being selected. The rounded rectangle method seems to be working -- thanks Anto for the video, it was a BIG help!