sharp straight edged selection

[HelenC]

I am switching from photoshop and have a problem with trying to 'cut out' part of an image where the part of the image I want to keep and surrounding areas are very similar in colour. The tutorial I have seen uses a selection brush but I have found this is not satisfactory as it gives rather ragged edges when I want precise straight edges - As the actual section of the image I want is mainly straight lines. In photoshop I would have made a shape with the Pen tool and then made that into a selection and simply copied from the background onto a new layer. I tried to do this in AP but although I can make a suitable shape it appears as a 'Curve' layer but I cannot see how to make a selection of the shape and use that selection to make a copy of the same shape in the background layer. Please help.

[R C-R]

20 hours ago, HelenC said:

In photoshop I would have made a shape with the Pen tool and then made that into a selection ...

You should be able to do the same thing in Affinity Photo. Once you have made the selection with the Pen Tool, before you do anything else, look on the context toolbar for a button named "Selection." It should be the third item on the left, after "Pen" (the name of the current tool) & "Mask" (another button).

Click the Selection button to convert the shape to a selection (or use the Mask button to create a mask).

[HelenC]

Thank you, I knew there had to be a way but I just hadn't been able to find it in the tutorials.