Add, Subtract, Intersect, Divide buttons working incorrectly

[sstewart85]

Hi guys, I'm Sean. Thanks for having me. 

So this has been confusing and frustrating me probably since I got Affinity Designer. The Add / Subtract / Divide / Intersect / Combine buttons don't seem to work right for me. I'm sure it's probably something I'm doing wrong or some setting that's messed up, but I just don't know what to do. 

I have a shape and a few lines intersecting and sticking out past the shape... 

• When I click 'add', the lines just disappear 
• The same thing happens when I click subtract
• Nothing happens when I click "intersect"
• Nothing happens when I click "divide"
• The lines disappear when I click "combine" ... 

I've searched for some answers and can't seem to find anything. I also checked my version and I have 1.6.1 on Mac... is this the latest version? 

Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks for your time. 

 

 

[MEB]

Hi sstewart85,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
It's not possible to perform boolean operations between shapes and lines. Only between shapes. You can convert the line to a shape using the command Layer ▸ Expand Stroke and then perform the boolean operation (although expanding the stroke may not be desirable in some cases).

[sstewart85]

Ohh... that makes sense. Wow thanks for the quick response, I appreciate your help!

 

[Josie]

When I try to intersect a cat and an octopus on my iPad the whole image disappears and I can’t figure it out, any suggestions?

[Alfred]

1 hour ago, Josie said:

When I try to intersect a cat and an octopus on my iPad the whole image disappears and I can’t figure it out, any suggestions?

Sorry if I led you astray about this earlier! You can only intersect vector objects.

If you ‘Convert to Curves’ two images, you’ll get rectangles with bitmap fills (so there will be no visual difference). If you then intersect the two rectangles, the resultant rectangle with be filled with the picture from the lower layer (which will be distorted unless the overlap rectangle happens to have the same aspect ratio as the lower rectangle).

To replace a cat’s legs with the tentacles of an octopus, you need to overlay the cat picture on the octopus picture and erase or mask off the legs and any other unwanted parts.

[Josie]

Ok, how would I do a dJ cat similar to this one?

[Alfred]

Exactly the same principle as all of the others: put each of the component images on its own layer, position the layers as desired and mask or erase wherever necessary to let parts of the other images show through.

[Josie]

How would I make a design like this 2?

[Alfred]

Corleone is a free font that you could use for the first one. Everything else is just simple lines, shapes, or clipart.

[Josie]

I’m talking about the designs themselves. How would I do those?

[Josie]

Using the iPad 

 

[v_kyr]

Either this way here ...

... or via plain and common image manipulation ...

For a more abstract look of cat heads and the like use the Adjustments Studio's > Posterise adjustment (play with the levels).

• cathead.afphoto
• cathead_posterize.afphoto

[Josie]

Just put a cat head on the design with the suit and paint in the background? Correct?

[Pariah73]

52 minutes ago, Josie said:

Just put a cat head on the design with the suit and paint in the background? Correct?

you need to cut the cat head out of the background that it's probably on.  Here are two videos to show you how to do that. WATCH THEM.  It's your job to learn the software. You won't learn anything at all if everyone keeps doing the work for you.  I want you to succeed!

 

[Josie]

If I’m working in affinity designer how do I get rid of images that are really pixelated?

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, Josie said:

Just put a cat head on the design with the suit and paint in the background? Correct?

Basically yes, you can reuse an already available image background (like I did with the MIB image here), or paint your own black rectangle background (etc.) one. - For this quick demo I used 4 layers ...

1. Bottom the original MIB image, where I then overpainted with a brush and the black background color parts of the two men heads, so the cat heads fit there in the next step on top then covering the men heads.
2. In the middle I placed the two cat head layers with a transparent background and adjusted them slightly in size.
3. On top I placed again a copy of the background layer, but this time I removed from that with the eraser tool everything that should shine through the underlayed layers, namely I removed the men faces, so the cat faces are visable. I did this layer mainly in order to let the hand & gun cover the right cat head and thus to be in foreground view.

A quick visual layer order overview here ...

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, Josie said:

If I’m working in affinity designer how do I get rid of images that are really pixelated?

If it is some simple image sketch, redraw or manually trace the bitmap to vectors. You can also try a third party trace tool to vectorize the image, though automatic tracing works best on better quality bitmaps than low res pixelated ones.

[Alfred]

5 minutes ago, Josie said:

If I’m working in affinity designer how do I get rid of images that are really pixelated?

I presume you want to get rid of the pixellation, not the images! You can add a small amount of Gaussian Blur to smooth out a pixellated image.

[Josie]

How does the sharpen brush tool work in affinity photo for iPad ?

[v_kyr]

19 minutes ago, Josie said:

How does the sharpen brush tool work in affinity photo for iPad ?

Pretty the same here, the iPad online help should tell you too something like this ...

• Sharpen Brush Tool

And for Designer on iPad related topics you can look into this one ...

• Affinity Designer on iPad PDF Help File

[Josie]

How would I know if anything is happening or difference in the picture?

[Fixx]

9 hours ago, Alfred said:

to get rid of the pixellation, not the images! You can add a small amount of Gaussian Blur to smooth out a pixellated image.

Use higher rez images. Or if that is not possible, resample images to higher rez. There are different methods and apps for upsampling, some slightly better than others.

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, Josie said:

How would I know if anything is happening or difference in the picture?

Not to state the obvious, but if the sharpening brush has any effect, the image will look different after you use it.

[Josie]

How do I place a cat in to a space ship using the iPad affinity program?

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, Josie said:

How do I place a cat in to a space ship using the iPad affinity program?

Exactly the same way as you would put a cat in an astronaut suit!