Color B/W Photos

[Alfred]

You don’t use the Pen Tool for colouring in, you use it to draw shapes. My instructions for creating a yin-yang symbol will give you two copies of a shaped curve, but you don’t actually need those here: sorry about that! What you really need to start with is a black circle with a purple ‘yin’ curve on top of it, so that you can add triangles for the purple cat’s ears and subtract triangles to form the black cat’s ears. You’ll find the ‘Add’ and ‘Subtract’ commands in the Geometry section of the Edit (‘...’) menu.

To recap:

1. Draw a black circle

2. Create a purple ‘yin’ curve on top

3. Draw two ears for the purple cat

4. Select the ears and the purple curve

5. Choose the ‘Add’ command

6. Draw two ears for the black cat

7. Select the ears and the purple curve

8. Choose the ‘Subtract’ command

9. Draw black eyes, mouth and whiskers on the purple cat

10. Draw the other (purple) whiskers on the black background

11. Draw white (or purple) eyes, mouth and whiskers on the black cat

12. Draw the other (black) whiskers on the purple background

[Josie]

How do I color in the object without coloring over the face?

[Alfred]

4 minutes ago, Josie said:

How do I color in the object without coloring over the face?

Just keep the face layers on top of the others.

[Josie]

How do I do that?

[Alfred]

Select the ‘yin’ layer in the Layers Studio before adding the facial features. When you start drawing with the Pen Tool, each new layer will be created immediately above the currently selected layer.

[Josie]

How do I select the face?

[Alfred]

I’m not sure I understand the question, Josie! You can select the face layer use like any other layer, by tapping on it in the Layers Studio. If you want to select multiple layers, tap to select the first one and then swipe each of the others from left to right.

[Josie]

The picture below is what I am talking about.

[Josie]

When I color it colors over the face and I don’t want that.

[Alfred]

If you’re starting with a raster image like that, you can’t avoid colouring over the faces. You have to create the cat outlines as previously described, and then add the facial features on top with the Pen Tool.

If you need the original picture as a guide, select the ‘yin’ layer and reduce its opacity so that the underlying reference image shows through (or place the reference image at the top of the layer stack and reduce its opacity so that the new vector layers show through). Don’t forget to reset the opacity to 100% and hide the reference image before export!

[Josie]

What websites are out there where there are vector free images, no copyright?

[Alfred]

Openclipart.org immediately sprang to mind, but it’s down for maintenance at the moment. Vecteezy is another popular one.

[Josie]

How do I make a design look like these or similar using the iPad?

[Josie]

Using images 

[Alfred]

The best way to get help with this kind of problem is to start a project, work on it until you get stuck and then post your file along with a “How do I...?” question.

[Josie]

How do I put the images together to make it look like a design? When working on the ipad

[Josie]

Does the affinity designer on the iPad have the features in it to where I can do that?

[Josie]

I just want to know are these designs difficult to do on the iPad? How do I manipulate images that I use to look like that?

[Alfred]

Have you spent some time becoming familiar with the way layers work? That’s the basis of pictures like these (where you have cats, against various backgrounds, posed with clothing or other props).

This discussion is straying rather far from the topic of colouring B&W pictures. It would probably be a good idea to create a new thread.

[Josie]

Does the affinity designer on the iPad have the features in it to where I can do that?

also when I try to crop a picture there is no check mark for me to say I’m finished and done with it.

[Josie]

how do I use images and make it into a cat wearing a suit?

Untitled.afphoto

[Alfred]

To avoid duplication and confusion, please continue the discussion in your new thread.

[Josie]

The glasses and other images that I use how do I get rid of pixels around the image? So it doesn’t look like that?

[Josie]

Using the ipad

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, Josie said:

Using the ipad

You’re posting to the ’Affinity on iPad Questions’ forum, so you don’t really need to say that.  However, it might help other users to know that you’re using Affinity Designer, not Affinity Photo.

If you purchase stock images (from Shutterstock or anywhere else) they won’t suffer from the kind of problem you’ve shown in that sample.