Making selections in Affinity Designer

[aleer]

When I bought Affinity Designer, I assumed I could use the pen tool to make precise selections. But I can't find any way to turn a shape made with the pen tool into a selection. When I Google "Affinity pen tool selections," I find that you can do it with Affinity Photo. It seems like pen tool selections should be available with Designer too, since it has a pixel persona. Am I missing something?

[firstdefence]

In Affinity Designer in Pixel Persona there is the Freehand Selection Tool (L) it has freehand Polygon and Magnetic options, you also have a Selection Brush Tool (W)

[lepr]

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[toltec]

35 minutes ago, owenr said:

A workaround for the missing function is to cmd-click the thumbnail of the shape you've drawn to get a marching ants selection.

Note that if you use the pen tool to draw a selection, the shape you draw must then have a fill colour (any colour) for that to work. So once drawn, just fill the closed shape with colour and cmd-click (ctrl-click windows) on the shape thumbnail, as @owenrsays.

Also, the actual pixel selection will be on the shape layer, so you will need to click on the image layer to actually move the selection focus to the image. Once done, you can use Refine Edges, like any selection

That is assuming you want to end up with a pixel selection?

If you want it to be a clipping path, with an adjustable vector outline, just drag the image to the nesting position of the shape.

 

[aleer]

Thanks for the workaround, @toltec. I tried it and it works.  I do want to use the selection as a clipping path to drop out the background on a placed pixel image. After several failures (when I tried to delete the inverted selection, the entire image disappeared) I discovered that the placed image has to be embedded. My placed image was a jpeg and apparently you can't embed a jpeg(?). When I tried it with a PSD image, it embedded and I was able to do my editing. As far as I can tell, the Affinity documentation doesn't say anything about this re. jpegs. Anyway, I achieved what I was trying to do and thank you very much for your help.

[toltec]

Not 100% sure what you mean but if the placed image is an "Image" layer, there are restrictions to what you can do.

Convert it to a "Pixel layer" and all should be well.

Right click on it and choose "rasterise".

[aleer]

Aha! Rasterize.

Okay, I didn't realize the image layer wasn't rasterized. Thanks a million, it works smoothly now.