Affinity Photo - 5 Hidden Tricks you need to know

[Multi4G]

From Smart Layers to viewing your Mask content in full resolution. Let's uncover some Hidden functions in Affinity Photo:

- How to see the content of a mask
- How to use smart layers based on Affinity Photo or Affinity Designer Files
- What is special about Vector shapes in Affinity Photo
- Can i export Vector Masks in a PDF
- Combining, Substracting, Dividing and other things to do to Vector shapes.

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[Uncle Mez]

Thank You Olivio, this was needed on this side of the world.
BLessings

[casterle]

Thank you. You've got a new subscriber.

[v_kyr]

8 hours ago, Multi4G said:

Can i export Vector Masks in a PDF

If you in APh instead export a vector with a vector mask as a PDF, then you will of course get a resulting vector. It depends on what you mask and how here. The way your final sentence sounds for this hint here is somehow more like "it will generally yield to a bitmap in an exported PDF", which isn't always the case.

It's logical that a masked bitmap results to a bitmap (no matter if you use a bitmap mask or vector mask), since the origin is a bitmap here. The other way around a vector mask applied on a shape/vector, will give you then a vector in the PDF when exported via APh.

ORIGIN     MASKTYPE    RESULT
bitmap  +  bitmap    =      bitmap
bitmap  +  vector     =       bitmap
vector   +  vector      =      vector
vector   +  bitmap    =      bitmap

The easy way to remember these is, as far as a bitmap is involved (as an origin or a bitmap mask) the PDF result we be always a bitmap. - Only when instead all is vector, then the PDF result will be a vector here.

[Multi4G]

@v_kyr  You are totally correct on your list, so thank you for that! I'm not sure i would call that logical, since clearly the intend of a vector mask would be to have a masked that is indeed a vector in the print version too. And you can actually do that, by dragging the photo onto the vector, instead of "mask to below" - which i just found out! - BUT it will crop the image to that size upon export - probably to save space, probably that could be avoided by different pdf settings. 

[v_kyr]

On 5/7/2019 at 8:40 PM, Multi4G said:

And you can actually do that, by dragging the photo onto the vector, instead of "mask to below" - which i just found out!

That sounds more like clipping than masking inside APh here. Also it always depends on how APh handles certain things on it's PDF export then, so to say what it generates and makes PDF wise out of that then.

[Alfred]

On 5/7/2019 at 7:40 PM, Multi4G said:

And you can actually do that, by dragging the photo onto the vector, instead of "mask to below" - which i just found out!

 

3 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

That sounds more like clipping than masking inside APh here.

Agreed. For masking in both APh and AD, you would drag the vector and drop it onto the thumbnail of the photo.