How to create splotchy letter in Designer?

[pomme27]

Attached is an image of the letter E. Can someone offer advice on how to create the splotchiness effect using vector (not pixel) graphics in Affinity Designer?  Thx

[gdenby]

Not quite the same speckled look, but maybe you'll find some ideas from this:

 

MottleE.afdesign

[DWright]

Hi pomme27,

 

You can achieve this effect by placing a distressed image above the layer with the text and then use the mask below to apply the image  to the text creating the distressed effect

 

[pomme27]

Thank you both!  Appreciate it.

[Fantoga]

Considering moving some projects over from AI & PS.  Trying to distress some text using the method described by DWright. Can anyone please explain why Method A outlined below does not work? I feel I must be missing something...probably an obvious something.   

 

Method A (not working):

1) Placed a grunge image in a layer above the vector text

2) Right click and select "Mask to Below"

3) Fail. No masking is applied based on the grunge gray values BUT the text will be "Clipped" by the boundaries of the image 

 

Method B (working):

1) Placed a grunge image in a layer above the vector text

2) Right click and select "Mask to Below"

3) With the Mask layer still selected, go the menu: Layer > Rasterize to Mask

4) Success!

 

Any input greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[R C-R]

11 hours ago, VTpress said:

Trying to distress some text using the method described by DWright. Can anyone please explain why Method A outlined below does not work?

I cannot get DWright's method to work. Specifically, I cannot get an image layer placed in the mask position (either with "Mask to Below" or by dragging it onto the thumbnail of the text layer) to create the effect shown in his example. This only works for me if I also use "Rasterize to Mask," just as you did.

 

I think this is because an "(Image)" layer is treated as an object in the same way a vector shape is, so "Mask to Below" creates a vector mask rather than a pixel one. According to the Layer Masking help topic in the "To add a vector mask" section:

Quote

The mask of the object is applied in a "crop to top object" operation.

So in effect this just clips the text layer to the boundaries of the image layer, just as you discovered. 

 

I thought that perhaps rasterizing the "(Image)" layer before using "Mask to Below" would create a pixel mask but it does not -- I get the same slashed square vector mask badge on the mask layer as shown in DWright's example for his image layer & it does not have a visible effect until it is converted to a pixel mask with the "Rasterize to Mask" step.

 

As an aside, this does not meet the "using vector" criterion @pomme27 wanted. Only a variation on the method @gdenby mentioned would do that.

[lepr]

.

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, owenr said:

DWright's method uses the opacity of the masking object, not the colour.

But how does he manage that with what appears to be a vector mask?

[Fantoga]

Related. Can anyone confirm that, once an image is converted to a pixel mask with "Rasterize to Mask", we can no longer nondestructively add FX or Adjustments? Follow Method B outlined above then select the grunge layer and add a Gaussian Blur from FX. Same goes with adjustments Invert. Does not seem to work and seems it should. Again, I feel like I must be missing something. 

 

[lepr]

.

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, owenr said:

The particular little symbol on that mask's thumbnail does get presented on a mask that is a vector object, but it is also presented on a mask that is an Image object.

OK, but that does not answer my question. In his screenshot, the "Overlay_077" layer is an image layer & it uses the same symbol as would a vector mask object. According to the help topic, this results in a "crop to top object" operation, which only uses the layer's opacity for cropping, not for transparency. This is what @VTpress & I see happening.

[Fantoga]

Is there no way to nondestructively blur or feather an image mask in Designer or Photo?

 

[DWright]

Attached is the overlay that I used and the designer file before the mask operation

distressed effect.afdesign

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, DWright said:

Attached is the overlay that I used and the designer file before the mask operation

Thanks for that. It took me much longer than it should have to figure out why I was not able to duplicate the same effect with an image of my own (& probably also for one @VTpress was using). But there is a simple explanation for this:

 

Your Overlay_077 image includes transparency while none of the ones I was trying did. I assume yours came from a png or other file type that supports transparency. Try exporting just that layer to a jpeg, or to a png without an alpha channel, & I think you will get the same results as I did: by itself, "Mask to Below" won't have any visible effect. To get the effect, it is necessary to add the "Rasterize to Mask" step.

[lepr]

.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, VTpress said:

Is there no way to nondestructively blur or feather an image mask in Designer or Photo?

Adding a Gaussian layer effect (via the fx button on the Layers panel or the Layer > Layer Effects menu item) to an image mask layer works fine in Affinity Designer for me. Just make sure the image mask layer itself is selected & not the parent layer, & if (like in DWright's example) the image mask layer includes a transparent alpha channel the "Preserve alpha" checkbox is not ticked, & it should for you too.

[R C-R]

5 minutes ago, owenr said:

I had already answered your question a couple of posts before you asked it, so I provided further info about the little symbol on the mask's thumbnail since that seemed to confuse you.

It was not the symbol that was confusing me; it was not realizing that DWright's image layer must have included an alpha channel. Without an alpha channel, the opacity of the layer would not matter because it would be applied uniformly to the masked layer. Once I changed his document's set up to have a transparent background, it became clear (pun intended) to me what was transparent. 

[Fantoga]

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

Adding a Gaussian layer effect (via the fx button on the Layers panel or the Layer > Layer Effects menu item) to an image mask layer works fine in Affinity Designer for me. Just make sure the image mask layer itself is selected & not the parent layer, & if (like in DWright's example) the image mask layer includes a transparent alpha channel the "Preserve alpha" checkbox is not ticked, & it should for you too.

 

Exact same settings here. It is not working in my tests here on Windows. Tiff image converted to a mask cannot be blurred or altered with any nondestructive FX or Adjustments.  Vector items work fine.  If I add the blur before converting to mask it works but then there is no way to tweak the blur. Can anyone on Windows confirm? Thanks.

[Fantoga]

Test scene attached. Top hidden layer contains the simple test image for more convenient trouble-shooting. If you select the mask layer you can see an FX Blur is applied but has no influence.

 

Am I doing something wrong here?

 

 

Mask_Test.afdesign

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, VTpress said:

Test scene attached. Top hidden layer contains the simple test image for more convenient trouble-shooting. If you select the mask layer you can see an FX Blur is applied but has no influence.

 

Am I doing something wrong here?

Masks contain no pixels, just an alpha channel that controls transparency of the pixels in masked layers, so there are no pixels in the mask for the fx to blur.

 

That is why if you blur the image first (which does contain pixels) & then converting it to a mask (using "Rasterize to Mask,") it works, as in the attached Mask_Test rasterized blur.afdesign file.

[Fantoga]

So then how do we non-destructively blur (or add other FX or adjustments) an image mask? I have never used any compositor that did not allow this and am thinking there must be a way in AD or AP.

[R C-R]

7 minutes ago, VTpress said:

So then how do we non-destructively blur (or add other FX or adjustments) an image mask?

You can't add an FX that affect pixels to something that does not have any pixels to affect. (Well, you can, but that will have no effect on the image, as you have seen.) So instead, apply the FX to something that does have pixels & rasterize that to a mask layer. It is destructive but if you save a copy of the pixel layer in the document you can always revert to that & try again.

[Fantoga]

Is there any reason why an Alpha should not be composed of pixels? Alphas can be composed of pixels and non-destructively inverted, feathered, blurred etc. in Photoshop and other programs.

 

This is a surprising limitation that diverges from the generally non-destructive nature of the Affinity line.  It will not keep me from continuing to test and learn Affinity products but I hope they revisit this workflow...especially with Publisher on the horizon.  This is something that should be resolved in the core code that affects the full suite IMO. 

 

Keeping an extra copy is a messy workaround for a variety of reasons. But thank you! I am just starting out and appreciate you taking the time to confirm that this is not user error after all. 

[R C-R]

14 minutes ago, VTpress said:

Is there any reason why an Alpha should not be composed of pixels?

I don't know how to answer that other than to say that in the Affinity apps alpha channels used to create transparency masking effects do not have any color pixel channels -- if they did they would affect the color as well as the transparency of whatever they were masking.

[Fantoga]

Whatever the technical reasons for the limitation, such functionality is useful and, frankly, common in compositing programs. The lack of non-destructive FX and adjustments to image masks is IMO especially counterintuitive considering we can paint on and erase image masks with the Pixel persona brushes.

The "Rasterize to Mask" workflow is cumbersome but certainly better than nothing.