Change image color and background color

[BugsJane]

I have a black snowflake on a white background. I want to change a blue snowflake to white with an invisible background to place behind the logo at the upper left corner.

How can I do that?

Thank you for any help.

[v_kyr]

Use a vector snowflake, here's yours white on transparent (shown selected here just to make it better visable) ...

• schneeflocke.afdesign
• snowflake.afpub

• Snowflakes (Angelize AD ressources)

Or reuse some even better free vector one from some net service and change it's color to white then, most such vector drawings already have a transparent background. Then import, place the snowflake inside your business card and arrange/place it's layer under the upper left corner text layer there.

[BugsJane]

How do I select white for the snowflake?

How do I select transparent for the background?

Your two links did not connect.

Thanks!

Edited May 3, 2019 by BugsJane

[v_kyr]

The first two links are file downloads, you have to be logged in into the forum in order to download the files. The third is a forum link to a resources thread which contains some other vector Affinity Designer made snowflakes which you can reuse for your Publisher tasks.

[carl123]

@v_kyr

You are assuming the OP has AD or wishes to use a different snowflake design.

The question (and challenge) should be how to take the OP's existing blue snowflake on a white background and change it to a white snowflake on a transparent background using just Affinity Publisher.

 

 

[v_kyr]

@carl123 If you look carefully at my first posting you will see, that I also provided her an Affinity Publisher file of her own snowflake in white on transp background. She just needs to open/load that file, select the snowflake curve and copy that over into her document. Or alternatively use the "File > Place ..." command instead. - So I already did the prework for her, namely ...

Quote

...taking the OP's existing blue snowflake on a white background and changed it to a white snowflake on a transparent background...

I already did that under the assumption that she maybe don't has AD. Further she can also import/open the AD file into Apub, that's what I did in order to build a Apub file.

Now since I'm in a hurry I don't have the time for further explanations, if you like you can dive in and explain her in more detail how to do it in Publisher!

 

 

[carl123]

As you have already provided the OP with a file they can use I see no rush in documenting a procedure of how this could be done only using Publisher.  But I have logged the post and will come back to it later today(?) to do so.

Providing a ready made file that the OP can use, although useful, does not teach them how to do it themselves should the situation arise again in the future.  So where possible I like to see the steps that are needed, which also helps me learn as well.

It took me about 15 minutes to find a way to do this "challenge" using only APub and I'm not sure my way is the easiest or most efficient way so always looking for other peoples' expertise in challenges like this.

[carl123]

On a new document...

Add a red rectangle covering the page

(this is just so you can see the final white snowflake clearly)

File > Place the blue snowflake image on the page

Right click the layer and Rasterise the image

Click the Blend Ranges cog in the Layers panel and drag the right hand node in the left hand panel (Source) all the way to the bottom

Add a Threshold Adjustment layer to just the blue snowflake layer to turn it black

Add a white rectangle just slightly bigger than the snowflake so it covers all of it.

Move the snowflake layer above the white rectangle in the layers panel

Right-click the snowflake layer and select "Mask to Below"

Select the layer which now has the Mask applied and Right click and Rasterise it

You should now have a white snowflake on a transparent background which you can copy and paste into another document

I have attached an APub file with history saved just in case I missed something in the above instructions

If someone knows an easier way than the above, (just using APub) please share it

snowflake-fin.afpub

[v_kyr]

That's pretty much what I did before with a plain bitmap of that snowflake ...

... but then realized that a bitmap isn't that good here and a vector drawing of that would be probably much better suited for BC printing etc. Thus I vectorized her snowflake with the help of one of my tools and AD and provided that one.

[garrettm30]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Thus I vectorized her snowflake with the help of one of my tools and AD and provided that one.

Out of curiosity, did you have some procedure of generating curves from a bitmap other than manually recreating it? If so, I would be glad to learn it when you have the time.

[v_kyr]

57 minutes ago, garrettm30 said:

Out of curiosity, did you have some procedure of generating curves from a bitmap other than manually recreating it?

I used an own vectorizer/tracing app for this (see this thread) which can trace a bitmap into vector curves and route the vector result into Affinity Designer directly. - But you can generally  use some tracing tool (there are different such tools available for Win/Mac/iPad platforms) for such tasks, which is easy to do for images like such two color snowflakes etc.

[BugsJane]

v_kyr ... Thanks for the snowflake design.  I would like to do this myself, however, I can use this.  Thank you.

carl123 ... Yes, I want to use just Affinity Publisher.

[BugsJane]

I thank both of you so much for all of the time and effort you put into helping me do this task. I now believe I can repeat it again and again right away to know how to do this.

I appreciate the instructions, carl123, which I tried to follow twice and finally succeeded the third time. Three times ... a charm!

vkyr, thank you for the video clip. That is a great help as I am still unfamiliar with terminology and tools onboard this program.  The previous publishing program I used, ReadySetGo!, is no longer available in updates for the Mac but only PCs. It was not nearly as comprehensive as this one is. I DO like this one!

My husband has Affinity Photo to replace Adobe Photoshop. I do not have Affinity Designer. We are retired teachers and now use programs for our own interests. After our old computer died, we are now adjusting to these new programs.

I have many pages of genealogy composed on my old Ready,Set,Go! program that are backed up as PDF documents. Do you know if those are editable on Affinity Publisher? I did buy PDF Expert to do this task, but wonder if it is possible here.

Thank you, v_kyr, and carl123, for taking this on. You are both good Samaritans!

[v_kyr]

If the PDF files generated by that ReadySetGo! software (honestly, I don't know that software) are common format PDFs, then Affinity Publisher should usually be able to open and import these. You can give it a try.

Note however, that in the actual Publisher beta version when you try to open a PDF file with this enabled option setting ... 

• "If text is to remain more editable at the expense of accurate design reproduction."

... it will crash Publisher. Thus actually don't use this option and left it disabled when you are opening PDF files. This will hopefully be fixed for the next beta version updates.

[BugsJane]

v_kyr ... Thank you for the tip regarding opening a PDF file.

[BugsJane]

Snowflake White Invisible Background.pdf

[Peter-N]

This worked very well for me thank you Carl123, I am very grateful.