Layer clipping vs layer masking

[lepr]

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[PJD]

@owenr i think you might have answered another issue i had. why the invert selection didn't seem to do anything, or had strange results. i assumed it would take the artboard as the perimeter of the inverted selection, but creating the box is a doh! moment for me.. thanks for giving me the nudge i needed there.

 

yes, clearly i have a much more complex shape i am working on so need the 'vector mask inversion toggle' you speak of. sounds perfect. hadn't realised it wasn't there.. that explains my problem. 

 

i'll try your divide (and conquer) solution on my complex shape and see if that gets me closer to what i want. Which is basically the transparent bits of my vector being opaque and vice versa. 

[carl123]

@Phoxy Design

It looks like your black shape has a very large stroke applied to it which is not subtracted in the Subtract operation

Try it with a black shape that has a (black) fill but no stroke

[PJD]

@carl123 that's it! needs to be a fill rather than a stroke.. genius! thank you.

 

@owenr your trick also worked, i use divide and then deleted the outer bits i don't want and am left with the filled in bits that were transparent. 

 

Thanks guys. that will do me for now. Yours and everyone's excellent help is VERY much appreciated. I love this software (although I still have an illustrator licence as there are still features that haven't made it to designer yet, image trace and smart vector objects being my big ones) but really support the idea of affinity stuff. i prefer working in affinity than adobe as it's way quicker and there are some amazing extra things that adobe stuff cant do. And it's a much cleaner interface.. the price is silly cheap too but i expect that will creep up over time, which is fair i think.. just pelase no subscription. 

 

i am excited to see how it develops over the years and cant wait for the iPad app of designer. What Adobe Draw is missing is a vector pen tool so if the designer app has a vector sketch (pencil and brush) tools and a vector drawing pen AND the seamless switching between it and the desktop versions it will be BLISS!

 

Cheers, and enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

 

Phil

[h_d]

 

 

1 hour ago, Phoxy Design said:

@h_d

 

i tried that, and it didn't work. see video and result image when i did what you said:

 

cheers.

 

 

 

You've got the layers nested - they need to be separate, one above the other.

 

[PJD]

@h_d i dont think i do, they are just on an artboard:

 

or have i misunderstood something? 

 

 

[h_d]

Should work the same way, artboard or no

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

 

[PJD]

can you try on my file?

 

 

affinity mask eg for upload.afdesign

[MEB]

Hi Phoxy Design,

This cannot be done because you can only use the filled are of the red shape to mask other objects. The circular area inside the "inner circle" of the red shape doesn't belong to the shape itself so it can't  be used to mask anything unless you create an "inverted shape" of the red shape performing a subtract from a rectangle as @owenr suggested. Another process you can try although i don't know if it's aplicable to your work/project is to simply change the Blend Mode of the red shape to Erase (on the top of the Layers panel). If you want it to affect just a specific number of shapes, group it with these shapes otherwise it will be used to erase everything that's below it.

[h_d]

Ah your black shape is constructed in a different way to mine - you have a very broad stroke round yours and no fill. This is what happens if I reduce the weight of the stroke:

 

 

 

 

Try drawing a simple shape, no stroke, just a fill:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PJD]

@MEB thanks, that works well too. might there be a future release that addresses the inability to invert selection using the artboard as the boundary without having to create the rectangle behind? 

 

@h_d yes the fill rather than the stroke was the reason i was getting stuck. very good to know this for future stuff.

 

 

[Lorox]

On 3/18/2018 at 12:22 AM, PJD said:

It seems it's not just me that struggles to understand masks & clipping. I've tried all sorts with this simple one and i just can't get it to do what I want.

 

See image below. I have two vector layers on artboard A, the red bit (B) and the black bit (C). All I want is to create D by dropping one layer over the other and masking it, but however i try it just won't do it. 

Hi all,

I've struggled with a related problem lately and I really couldn't think of a way to do what I wanted in Designer by straightforward (vector only) masking. The most simple example of my problem may be to make some sort of moon crescent using two circles where you want to be able to control the amount taken away from the "full moon" at any time later without creating it all again from scratch or copies of the original circles.

I could have done it easily in Adobe Illustrator, though, with its concept of opacity masks (which in AI can [also] be populated by vector elements which then hide content at the same/corresponding location on the "real" artboard according to their degree of greyness [the old “black conceals, white reveals" way]) and I could even have done it in Designer using a pixel layer mask. But with just curves which at all times should remain fully editable by themselves and NOT be merged to the shape/curve which they were meant to make invisible some part of by "Substracting" it seemed impossible... (you might, however, try something with shapes/curves set to "Erase" which are then attached as a clipping mask to the shape which they are supposed to visually take something away from).

A day later now I've come across a solution which I'll attach a screenshot of here. Using "Compounds" to me seems to do the trick.

Still, Adobe Illustrator [regrettably] seems to offer more options as with the "compound trick“ in Designer you seem to be reduced to using the hard edges of the vector curves only, whereas with AI's opacity masks you can can also work with varying degrees of transparency according to the "greyness" of the schape on the mask layer – so fading in or out is possible when using shapes with gradients. As far as I see you can only do something like this in AD by using a pixel layer mask...