Where is the cutout tool, please?

[Helen L]

I've been a Serif Photoplus user for 15 years, almost every version, but I'm struggling with Serif Affinity Photo and the help menu with the program doesn't seem to yield the results I'm after. 

 

How on earth do you cut out an image, please?  I want to cut out one of my products (usually a complex shape) from an image to leave it on a transparent background which will then save as a png (in order to preserve the transparency). In online retail, this is known as a cutout shot. In Photoplus it's simply a case of opening an image, using Cutout Studio, and then using export function to save the image as the required png.

But in Affinity there seems to be no cutout menu at all. And when I search the help menu it returns options, none of which say it's cutout. Or Cutting out.

In fact everything in Affinity seems far less intuitive and so much more complicated.  I've accepted the loss of Photofix (although I hope the programmers might consider adding it to Affinity - along with Cutout Studio -at some point at it's great for the amateur user who will probably find Affinity Photo way beyond their understanding) and have had limited success replicating the use of curves and HSL in Affinity to achieve what is very simply done in Photoplus, but Cutout seems just not to exist.

 

 

As an aside, I find the instructions for use of any of the functions very 'jargonesque', almost as if you need some sort of qualification in photo editing and/or programming language to even begin to use it so I'm sorry if I'm asking for something that IS already explained. It's just that the "laymen's" terms don't seem to exist in the Affinity help section!  (I'm only half an hour down the road from you Serif guys in Nottingham so it's not as if we're in different universes!)

 

Any help on whether Cutout is available in the Photo Beta - and how I find it - would be greatly appreciated. It's an integral part of my weekly work in my business.

Thank you in advance.

Helen

[MEB]

Hi Helen,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Affinity Photo doesn't have an Image Cutout Studio but it has tools to do it. Select the Selection Brush Tool and paint over the item/subject you want to cutout. Then press the Refine... button in the context toolbar (right above the work area), to refine the selection if needed. To learn more about Cutting Out and the Refine Selection dialog check those tutorials: Cutting Out and Refining Selections.

On the bottom of the Refine selection dialog there's a dropdown that lets you choose how you want to output the cutout: as a Selection, Mask, New layer or New layer with mask.

Let me know if you still have trouble.

[Daniele Salvatore]

Hi Helen,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Affinity Photo doesn't have an Image Cutout Studio but it has tools to do it. Select the Selection Brush Tool and paint over the item/subject you want to cutout. Then press the Refine... button in the context toolbar (right above the work area), to refine the selection if needed. To learn more about Cutting Out and the Refine Selection dialog check those tutorials: Cutting Out and Refining Selections.

On the bottom of the Refine selection dialog there's a dropdown that lets you choose how you want to output the cutout: as a Selection, Mask, New layer or New layer with mask.

Let me know if you still have trouble.

 

I am trying to use AP, but I have serious problems either with the Cutting Out, i.e. the Selection Brush Tool, and the Refining Selections, i.e. Replacement Brush Tool; once I opned AP the first time they were both working, but now they do not any more; I have followed your suggested tutorilas.

[SrPx]

In what way or exact point do you have problems ? I've done this in a much more manual way than even what AP provides. So I'm sure that with existing tools is more than possible. If you describe, even if briefly, which is where you got stuck, or found some big problem, we then might suggest several methods to do what you want/need. It would be also practical to know what type of shape is giving you issues... hair over a background, etc.