[AP] How to create outline of object (without translucent borders)?

[Anonymous Puddle]

I have a JPEG photo that I have isolated from the background to turn it into a PNG photo. Now, I am trying to create an outline for it. I imagine this should be painfully obvious and simple.

I have tried using the QuickFX outline tool but it looks worse than vomit (I imagine because of all the pixelated edges?). I have also tried Select > Selection from layer; then Select > Outline... (using a 30px circular outline, centered); then creating a new layer and fill the outlined selection on the layer with white. So far, I am very happy with this! But... I think due to the matte edges from the selection, I get translucent spots on the curve of the outline. I just want a solid white outline that looks just like the selection from the layer! But when I disable matter edges, the section expands into chunky curves. Yikes.

Mover Light 2 Back for Affinity Forum.afphoto

[Ldina]

@Anonymous Puddle One option is to add a Curves Adjustment Layer. Drag it over the Icon of the white outline layer (masking position). Then, set the Curves dropdown to target the Alpha Channel (instead of the Composite RGB Channel). I created a steep curve on the Alpha channel which changed the transparency of those "semi-transparent" pixels, making them more opaque, to prevent the black background from bleeding through. You can do the same using Levels instead of Curves too, if you wish. 

It's still a bit pixelated, so you can try adding a very small Gaussian Blur, or perhaps a Median Blur to smooth it out somewhat if you wish. 

Edit: I watched your video after posting this. In the Refine Selection mode, try playing with the sliders to see if you can reduce those transparent edges before saving your selection. That might help, but I didn't try it myself.

[Anonymous Puddle]

@Ldina That helps, but even doing that, there is still poorly resulting translucent edges (top of your screenshot). I expect to have to have SOME translucency on the curves, as that's how pixelated curves appear smooth, but the routes I've tried do not provide the result I would expect to achieve with a seemingly simple smooth outline.

[Anonymous Puddle]

Here I have applied your suggestions, and setting the gamma to 0 on the levels adjustment has dramatically helped. I am quite happy with this.

Still, this seems like a convoluted way to achieve this.

Mover Light 2 Back for Affinity Forum Gaussian + Levels.afphoto

[Ldina]

Honestly, that is a perfect candidate for the Pen Tool. Fairly quick and easy to outline, with nice sharp edges and no overspill. That's what I'd probably do.

[Anonymous Puddle]

I would like to have a much more automated way of applying outlines, hopefully a workflow where I can throw it into a macro, so manually mapping nodes is not an option for me unfortunately

I've been browsing the forums and this seems to be an oversight by Affinity

 

[DuncanL]

With a vector drawn behind the cutout works well, as @Ldina suggests.  It doesn't have to be pixel perfect and you can easily tweak the nodes and curve to get a good looking fit.



Mover Light 2 Back for Affinity Forum.afphoto

[Anonymous Puddle]

@DuncanL Can you please explain how you did that? Did you trace that with the pen tool?

[DuncanL]

11 minutes ago, Anonymous Puddle said:

@DuncanL Can you please explain how you did that? Did you trace that with the pen tool?

Yes.  Just drew a quick shape round the image and then tweaked the outline to a good looking fit.  A short,  rough example:

Or not...  Geting an "Error 200" attaching the  video - sorry!
 

[Anonymous Puddle]

I believe I've figured it out. This gives me a workflow that can be automated:

The issue indeed has to do with the "matte edges" when making a selection. This results in edges that are translucent and many partially transparent pixels, as opposed to solid clean edges, which carry over when making an outline of the selection. This is also why the outline feature in QuickFX resulted so ugly. In my case, in order to achieve a clean result with masking when removing the background, I needed "matte edges" turned on. However, since this results in problems when trying to use that masked image with the matted edges for the outline, I need to use two layers: one to remove the background, and one for the outline. I remove the background with "matte edges" on in the first layer, and in the second layer (the one for the outline) I reference the original JPEG image and select the background as I did before to remove it but this time, I deselect "matte edges". This gives me a sharp outline with little to no partial transparency or extra pixels, which I want. From here, I use this selection and create the outline as I showed in my earlier post.

[GarryP]

One method you can try is to:

1. make the selection;
2. use menu “Select → Outline...”, set the Alignment to “Outside” (if you have selected the thing you want, otherwise set Alignment to “Inside”), set the Radius to whatever you want, and click the Apply button;
3. press the Refine button in the Context Toolbar, set Matte Edges to OFF, and click the Apply button;
4. add a new Pixel Layer;
5. fill the selection with the Flood Fill Tool.

It’s a bit like the method immediately above but a lot less work.

See attached video (where I have already done the initial selection to save time).

[Anonymous Puddle]

@GarryP That won’t work for my case. In my initial video on the post, I made a selection, then outlined the selection, then disabled matte edges in the refine menu- but I was still not achieving expected results with the outline. This was because matte edges was turned on when the initial selection was made, resulting in the outline generating based off those matte edges.

To fix my issue, I specifically had to disable matte edges before creating the outline.

[GarryP]

This is one of those areas where the ‘best’ method is very much dependant upon the specific requirements so some experimentation may be required.

At least someone coming to the thread with a similar requirement now has various different things to try.

[Anonymous Puddle]

@GarryP For experimentation purposes, could you share the .afphoto file you used?

[GarryP]

I could but it would only contain an image of a flower that I got from a photo sharing website, so I don’t see how that would help.

All of the steps to reproduce the result are given in the text and shown in the video except the initial selection which was done by quickly painting with the Selection Brush Tool.