Adding blur to selection

[NilsKarlsson]

Hi!

 

I've made a selection and now I want to add blur to the selected area. I have several layers already: background, black and white and brightness. Can I add another layer from the selection and add blur to that?

[MEB]

Hi NilsKarlsson,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

If you want to add a blur to the active pixel selection area go to the Filter Studio, pick the Blur filter you want to use - probably Gaussian Blur - (there's several types) and adjust its settings on the bottom in the context toolbar. If you don't want to apply it destructively to the image/layer, tap the lightning bold icon on the context bar on the bottom to convert the Filter to a Live Filter - your active pixel selection will be passed to the built-in mask of the Live Filter as a mask to limit the filter effect to the selected area, so there's no need to create a separated pixel layer with the selection just to apply the Blur.

 

If you still want to create a separate pixel layer from the pixel selection, tap the three dots icon on the top of the interface, select Pasteboard ▸ Copy then go to the same menu again and select Pasteboard ▸ Paste, to paste just the selection in a new layer. Note that to perform this operation you must be working with a Pixel layer type. You can check the layer type looking at the small text in all caps over the layer's name in the Layers Studio. If it says Image there, you must convert the layer to a pixel layer type first. To do this select the layer in the Layer Studio, tap the three dots on the top of the interface (NOT the three dots on the top of the Layers Studio) and select Rasterise ▸ Rasterise. You can then copy/paste as described above.

 

Image layer types cannot be manipulated at a pixel level because they retain all original image data so you can scale/skew/rotate them without losing quality. To be able to manipulate their content - the pixels- they must be converted to a pixel layer type first.