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Marquee / Lasso / Selection Tools - Magic Wand?


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Hey All...

I am a novice for sure, and have enjoyed all the tutorials I can find, well done.

 

However, I am at my wits end trying to do simple select and delete operations. Very simple, I have an image on a colored background in odd shape and would like to select the visible background area to delete so I can create a transparent image.

 

In photoshop they have this miracle little thing called Magic Wand. Set it's tolerance and done.

 

So far I have been using the pixel persona and the selection brush tool. But that's an exercise in patience... and trying to figure out the marquee tool with New, Add, Subtract is just frustrating. On a side note, if there are any tutorials on this I'd be happy to go off and watch. But for now, the easiest way to select and remove a background color would be very helpful...

 

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

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Affinity Photo, Photo Persona, which is designed for manipulating existing images, has a magic wand tool with tolerance, looks like a magic wand icon but it is called the Flood Select tool.

 

However, it sounds like you are using Affinity Designer, designed (in my viewpoint) for creating your own images (mostly vector-based) from a blank canvas, in which case your current technique, followed by the wonderful adjustment brush and other options under the Refine button (really worth playing around with them, especially useful when the background you are selecting from is not a plain uniform colour), is one choice.

 

For another technique, try (Pixel Persona) the Select menu, Select Sampled Colour. It is somewhat similar to a non-contiguous magic wand, with a tolerance slider. If you have background colours on the areas you wish to retain, you might potentially want to paint out any unwanted selection areas afterwards with the Selection Brush in Subtract mode.

 

You can also manually create a mask with the vector tools under the Draw Persona.

 

There are probably other techniques, but hopefully this (and the Select Sampled Colour option) will get you on your way.

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Thanks for the quick reply.

I am using designer.

At some point, Photo looks like a great app to get also.

 

I had difficulty getting the Select > sample color option to come up... don't know why. After some playing it finally became active. But once I hit apply, it selected my whole canvas and when I tried to 'cut' the white nothing happened.  I guess it's the adjustment brush....

 

Thanks for taking the time.

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Yea, this is not very productive.

Sometimes the brush selects, sometimes it doesn't, back and forth between add/subtract... 95% of the time it deletes the entire image, not just the selection. There has got to be a better way... c'mon... it's a png file with a white background... select color - delete, done.

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Hi everyone,
​I'm new to Affinity Photo, just taking my first steps and trying to figure out to translate my Photoshop knowledge to the nice new software.

 

Similar to JoeFine, I tried using the FloodSelection Tool for quick selection of areas with similar color (although in Affinity Photo).

However simple the concept, it did not seem to select anything on clicking, nor deselect (when starting with selecting everything (Strg+A) and trying to deselect the corresponding colors)... Could you give me a hint how to make this work?

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@pixel_pet

 

I'm not sure what Strg+A is. 

If you want to subtract from the selection I think you have to alt click.

 

When I use the flood select tool, I have to make some choices in the context toolbar;

new, add, subtract and so on.  I have to tick or untick contiguous if I want to choose the same colour in all the picture or just for the part I'm clicking in.

I also have to set the tolerance. The higher tolerance, the more pixels you get in your selection.

 

 

And, I have to be sure what layer I work in.

 

If you have tried all this, please disregard my post.

 

Maybe ti's better to post in a new thread?

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

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I figured it out... feel a bit dumb now, but here it is, if anyone experiences similar issues:

When I created my picture by pasting from clipboard, the new image is generated as a group, containing the pixel layer I wanted to work on. I had to expand the group and select the pixel layer (after selecting the pixel layer, the Flood Selection tool worked as intended), but selecting only the group without expanding did not let me make any selection, as descibed above.

 

Strg+A or Control+A is the shortcut for "select all" (working with Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.5.0.45)... I tried this to check if I can maybe deselect / subtract portions of the image, but that didn't work either.

 

 

I'm not sure what Strg+A is. 

If you want to subtract from the selection I think you have to alt click.

 

When I use the flood select tool, I have to make some choices in the context toolbar;

new, add, subtract and so on.  I have to tick or untick contiguous if I want to choose the same colour in all the picture or just for the part I'm clicking in.

I also have to set the tolerance. The higher tolerance, the more pixels you get in your selection.

 

 

And, I have to be sure what layer I work in.

 

If you have tried all this, please disregard my post.

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I'm not able to help, sorry. It works perfectly for me. Hope someone can chime in to help.

 

Maybe it's an idea to start your own thread, so we don't hijack JoeFine's post.

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

MacBook Pro 16 GB
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If you describe all that you do in steps, and provide a screenshot including tools and layers panel, maybe we can begin to tie up some loose ends.

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

MacBook Pro 16 GB
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However, I am lost that a vector "design" tool has no simple way to simply select a background color and one-stroke remove it.

Vector documents have no inherent background color. Your choices are a transparent background, which shows the checkerboard pattern to let you know it is transparent, or not transparent, which shows a default color (usually white).

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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Thanks for the kind replies.

I think for this individual task, Affinity is not the right tool.

I have a bunch of png/jpg icons with a variety of colored backgrounds and wish to remove those backgrounds.

It's really as simple as the magic wand in PS... select the background color, constrain or expand it with a pixel slider and hit delete, creating a transparent background. Or like the 'Instant Alpha' option in Keynote... brilliant.

 

Cheers!

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You should be able to do this easily in Affinity, but you have to make sure you have set the background to transparent.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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RC a

 

You should be able to do this easily in Affinity, but you have to make sure you have set the background to transparent.

Are you saying it is easy RC? This is a huge issue for me also. It is driving me crazy!!! Why would the document need to be set at transparent background? Why cant I move the picture I'm trying to do this with anywhere on the whole page and do it?

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No worries... every bit of conversation leads to an outcome.

However, I am lost that a vector "design" tool has no simple way to simply select a background color and one-stroke remove it. Must I go back to Photoshop?

Joe this is exactly my problem also I believe. You are saying you have an image that is on say a white back ground, and you want to simply remove the back ground, or as I say cut the image out lol. I thought the brush tool was gonna do it, but the more I messed with it, the more frustrated I got. What is it for anyway? Please letme know if you figure this out please

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Why would the document need to be set at transparent background?

Because if you want anything to be transparent you need to have a transparent background. Isn't that obvious?

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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Because if you want anything to be transparent you need to have a transparent background. Isn't that obvious?

Yes that's very obvious. I guess I was trying to figure out how choosing transparent on document set up, would take the back ground we are talking about away from the pictures we are talking about

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Yes that's very obvious. I guess I was trying to figure out how choosing transparent on document set up, would take the back ground we are talking about away from the pictures we are talking about

It won't do that. You have to do that separately. The method will depend on the type of file (jpeg, PNG, whatever) & what the background consists of.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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I'm just wondering.. your talking about vector work and layers...

If you want to get rid of the background, can't you just delete the background layer? 

I think you would enjoy Affinity Photo. It's a lot more like Photoshop if you are used to that. 

- Affinity Photo 2.3.0
- Affinity Designer 2.3.0
-Affinity Publisher 2.3.0

 

MacBook Pro 16 GB
MacOS Sonoma 14.1.2

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  • 1 month later...

I'm a long-time Fireworks user coming over from the program that Adobe finally killed after 30 years. SO. Let's talk LASSO. In Fireworks, I can use the vector-like lasso to click along the edges of an area. There seems to be something like this, in Affinity, albeit with a bunch more steps. I am trying to figure out how to use it.  AND, since I've been reading this thread and it makes no sense, understanding that you have to put transparent mode on to see the changes, particularly on a white background being edited, there really is no tool here to click on a color and just have the wand locate all of it?  

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  • 4 months later...

I'm a long-time Fireworks user coming over from the program that Adobe finally killed after 30 years. SO. Let's talk LASSO. In Fireworks, I can use the vector-like lasso to click along the edges of an area. There seems to be something like this, in Affinity, albeit with a bunch more steps. I am trying to figure out how to use it. AND, since I've been reading this thread and it makes no sense, understanding that you have to put transparent mode on to see the changes, particularly on a white background being edited, there really is no tool here to click on a color and just have the wand locate all of it?

 

I'm in the same boat as you. Appears to be a learning curve with Affinty. Or their selection tools are not industry standard. I'm left with frustration, end up up clicking and loading old faithful Fireworks.

 

Hopefully someone can show us the light..so we can be free of Adobe subscriptions.

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Um, I don't do much work w. pixels, but I know that AD's selection brush will do a pretty good job of selecting color areas. Just started using AP, and the selection tools there for pixels are a lot more subtle. Seems fairly workable to me with only a small amount of practice. While I hadn't done much w. graphics for the preceding 5 - 7 years, I do know that it took me some time to unlearn what I was habitually doing and figure out how the Affinity software did the same things I was used to in Corel Draw, or Photoshop, etc.

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9 minutes ago, gdenby said:

Um, I don't do much work w. pixels, but I know that AD's selection brush will do a pretty good job of selecting color areas. Just started using AP, and the selection tools there for pixels are a lot more subtle. Seems fairly workable to me with only a small amount of practice. While I hadn't done much w. graphics for the preceding 5 - 7 years, I do know that it took me some time to unlearn what I was habitually doing and figure out how the Affinity software did the same things I was used to in Corel Draw, or Photoshop, etc.

 

Is it possible the Windows Beta is different from the MAC version?  

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AFAIK, the 2 are the same. From my readings here, there are some problems based on the Windows version. There have been reports of slowness. Obviously, each version has specific ways of working w. the UI and getting to the system resources. But the base functions are supposed to be the same.

 

As I mentioned, in Designer, I haven't had much trouble selecting areas w. similar colors. And even less w. Photo. But I have no experience in using Fireworks for at least 15 years, so have no idea how the selection process compares in terms of ease of use.

iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb,  AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb

iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil

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17 hours ago, bflores said:

I'm in the same boat as you. Appears to be a learning curve with Affinty. Or their selection tools are not industry standard. I'm left with frustration, end up up clicking and loading old faithful Fireworks.

All apps have learning curves & Affinity's probably is steeper for those used to Fireworks than most other apps. I suspect one reason for this is Affinity makes a sharp distinction between raster & vector objects, including the two separate apps but particularly the "Persona" concept. This is intended to reduce clutter in the UI, lower demands on system resources, enable near realtime filter/layer blend mode/fx previews for even very large documents, etc., while still providing a very large toolset, extensive export options, & an extremely customizable UI.

 

It has delivered on this concept somewhat better on the Mac platform than the Windows one, but the developers are working hard to close the gaps.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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