N'Awlins Contrarian Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 I feel like I must be missing something basic, but I cannot get a mask onto a layer. The issue may be that a pixel layer and a mask layer are totally different things, and never the twain shall meet. If so--and I think this has to be my ignorance--then that's a terrible design flaw. Background: I have an image where the foreground and sky need very different raw conversion to look good. Years ago in GIMP I painstakingly created a very detailed mask to combine TIFFs from the two different raw conversions. Now I want to use Affinity Photo to do the same thing, so I can work from 16-bit TIFFs in ProPhotoRGB instead (the stable version of GIMP is limited to 8 bits per channel, so ProPhoto RGB is not a good choice). So I exported from GIMP the layer mask as a TIFF. It opens fine in Affinity. I can paste it as a layer into the same file with the two raw conversions, but when I a Mask to Below, although the operation seems to work, it does not have the masking effect. I've also tried New Mask Layer followed by Paste Inside, but I can't seem to get my previously-created layer mask to function as an Affinity layer mask. I have to believe there's a way to paste into a mask a pre-existing layer, and thereby use it to create a mask. So how do I do it? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smadell Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 Once you have the TIFF imported as a separate layer, choose Rasterize to Mask (I think it’s on the Layers menu). Then, drag the mask layer into the TIFF layer so that it becomes a child of that layer. N'Awlins Contrarian 1 Quote Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N'Awlins Contrarian Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 Doh! Thanks, that's exactly what I needed. I just tried it, and it worked as desired. Now I can't believe I didn't try that before--if it had been a snake, it would have bitten me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smadell Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 I can't begin to tell you how many times an answer should have been just staring me in the face, except that someone else had to tell me where to look! Glad you got what you were looking for. ps - are you from N'awlins? Spent 4 years there at Tulane. Great food, great jazz. Quote Affinity Photo 2, Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2 (latest retail versions) - desktop & iPad Culling - FastRawViewer; Raw Developer - Capture One Pro; Asset Management - Photo Supreme Mac Studio with M2 Max (2023}; 64 GB RAM; macOS 13 (Ventura); Mac Studio Display - iPad Air 4th Gen; iPadOS 17 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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