selecting multiple layer masks at once ore cumlative

[Tom Schülke]

Hallo everyone,

i am quite new to this program and at first want to tell that it is allready a very good peace of softwarer thinking of the 1.5 version. 

I will be responsible to distribute and to teach affinity Photo to our 400 People Architectural Company that totaly will switch to this software in the near future.. So my first aim is to look for Worflows that correspondent to the workflows we used in Adobe Photoshop and to convince our employees to dive in to this new peace of software. Of course i am still in the learning process, to progress with this aim.

 

my first question here  in this formum is the following.

 

many of our employees have to deal with rather heavier immages contining often dozens of layers and layermasks, to get the desired results for our immages. Often we get Renderings from 3D software like cinema 4D or 3ds max using Vray as a renderengine and have to produce and use many many masks, layermasks and so on to be flexible untill the very end of the process because architects tend to fix their ideas very often at the end of a project. In Photoshop we could have our layermasks on the right side in the layermanager and   strg + click the masks, to load the into a selection and then could ad further masks into our selection by going on to cklick this way further masks..  and than aplying for example an adjustment layer using the combined selection at once..

 

in affinity i can´t find a way to do so..     wether i can select one layer mask or another..    but is ther a simple easy way just to click several masks ore layers to load their masks  all together in one selection at once ?

 

this is very crucial , because it is an essential step in working fast with many needed selections..

 

any workaround ?

 

many thanks.for your Help

 

Tom

[MEB]

Hi Tom,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
This is not currently possible in Affinity Photo. You can load the alpha composite as a selection but not to selectively add layer masks from the Layers panel to a selection using a shortcut.

Currently these type of operations can only be performed using the Channels panel bu they are far from being as quick as in Photoshop.

 

[Tom Schülke]

Hallo MEB

thanks for your reply..  Well thats a sad thing, because selecting multiple layers additive in such a way is sure a musthave for complex compositions.  Seems that getting the needed mask- mask-group at the moment in AP is by far slower in day to day work as it is in Photoshop.

So i hope very much in further stages of your software this will be added as a feature.

greetings

Tom

[Tom Schülke]

Hallo MEB,

Sorry to ask again.

So the only workaround ist..   

1.  strg+lmb  klick on the layer or layermask

2. go to the channels tab, search for the pixelselection

3. rmb cklick on the pixelselection and at it as a spare channel

4. Do this with all needed channels you need for your additiv selection

5. go to the Channels tab and right mous button  rmb cklick all of them seperately and use the context menue to ad them to the selection...

right ?

 

WEll do you see what i mean ?   This is horrible slow even if i get the result to produce this way the additive selection i do need. with adove Photoshop this part realy is fast. You can ad the needed pixelselections on the fly using fast shortcuts and cklick on all wished layer-alphas, masks and so on.. select and deselect them as needed..

But doing so is an essential part of workflow for everyone who  needs to deal with big compositions and beeing slow can only be at the cost of money on a professional level.

 

so please please    ad an additive selection shortcut in the layermanager in some way to your to do list..  or maybe make it and the visual feedbackof the selection even better...   ( otherwise it will be difficult to convince my colleques in our company to use AP with love...     ;-)    .  and we use more but 50 AP licenses...    )

 

Thanks again Tom

 

[- S -]

3 hours ago, Tom Schülke said:

So the only workaround ist..   

1.  strg+lmb  click on the layer or layer mask

2. go to the channels tab, search for the pixel selection

3. rmb click on the pixel selection and add it as a spare channel

4. Do this with all needed channels you need for your additiv selection

5. go to the Channels tab and right mouse button  rmb click all of them seperately and use the context menu to add them to the selection...

right ?

 

Although it's still not what you're looking for, an alternative is:

1) Create a new layer mask (or add your adjustment layer), which you will add all your required selections to

2) Make sure the above layer in step 1 remains selected throughout
3) CTRL + click your first layer thumbnail to make a selection from that layer
4) Press SHIFT + F5 (Or Layer > Fill) and fill it with black
5) CTRL + click your second layer thumbnail to make a selection from that layer
6) Press SHIFT + F5 (Layer > Fill) and fill it with black
7) Repeat until done

 

At the end you can deselect all (CTRL + D), then invert the mask (CTRL + I) to reverse it if necessary.

 

[MEB]

Hi Tom,
Yes, we are aware this is not very efficient. Masks still need some improvements until they reach Photoshop's level (we can't also copy/paste to masks etc). Hopefully all these things will be improved as we move forward.