Linked layers (Affinity Photo)

The following is an outline of the steps taken to remove a white background with Affinity Designer. For a more thorough learning experience, consider watching the video tutorial below:. This makes Affinity Designer a unique application in that it can be used for both vector design and raster editing. To access the Pixel Persona, look for the icon in the top-right of your screen. It is representing by a series of colored boxes:.

Once opened, you should immediately notice that the tools on the left-hand side of your screen have changed. This is because editing pixels requires different tools than you would typically use for editing vectors.

Next, we have to unlock the layer. Navigate to the right-hand side of your screen to the Layers tab. Right-click on your layer and look for Lock in the menu. Next, right-click the layer and select Rasterize. This will convert it to a pixel layer, which will allow us to delete portions of the image. Considering that written instructions may be a little difficult to learn from for something like this, it is recommended that you watch the video tutorial at the top of the page for these next two steps.

The Selection Brush Tool is a freehand brush that allows us to paint a selection around the subject of our photo. For this tutorial we want to make sure that we have both the Snap To Edges and Soft Edges tool settings enabled. The snap to edges setting is what allows the tool to auto-detect the edges of your subject, and the soft edges setting will give your subject a more tapered finished along the edges. Without this setting enabled you will end up with hard, pixelated edges that do not look clean.

Once the settings are in place, use the left and right bracket keys on your keyboard to set the size of your brush, then manually draw a selection going around your subject.

Make sure to fill in the remaining white area of the image as well. Zoom in on your subject and use the Selection Brush Tool to manually correct the imperfections of your outline, only working from the inside out. To do this, hold Alt on your keyboard, and then click and drag. Holding Alt allows you to remove parts of the selection, whereas not holding Alt allows you to add to the selection.

Navigating back and forth through these two functions, go through your image and make sure your subject is perfectly outlined. Next, open the Refine Selection menu by clicking the button in the toolbar that reads Refine. The red mask represents where your selection has been placed, and it gives you a better visualization of how a photo would look once you remove a white background with Affinity Designer. You can zoom in on the edges of your photo to get a closer look. If your selection already looks good as it is though, then it would be wise to leave it as is.

This is where the magic happens! Once your refined selection is in place, all you have to do to delete the white background is simply press Delete on your keyboard.

With the background deleted, we can now release the selection. In the Export menu, make sure that you choose to export your document as a PNG file. This is very important! Other formats, like JPG, do not support transparency. So if you export your document as a JPG file then you are going to end up with a white background again.

Exporting your document as a PNG file ensures that your image will have a transparent background. Leave the default settings as they are, then click the Export button. You will then be prompted to name your document and choose a location for it to be saved to.

And with that, you are finished! That is how you can easily remove a white background with Affinity Designer! You would normally have to use something like GIMP for this sort of task, but tools like the Selection Brush Tool make it quick and painless to do things like remove a white background with Affinity Designer.

If you have any questions or if any part of this explanation is unclear, simply leave a comment below. As always, thanks for visiting! Want to learn more about how Affinity Designer works? Enroll Now. Want to learn more about how Adobe Illustrator works? Check out my Illustrator Explainer Series – a comprehensive collection of over videos where I go over every tool, feature and function and explain what it is, how it works, and why it’s useful.

This post may contain affiliate links. Read affiliate disclosure here. Hi, thanks so much for video. I got all the way to the end but when I press delete on my keyboard nothing happens!? Is this anything you can help with? Sounds like the layer is locked. If not that then try right-clicking the image layer and selecting Rasterize. Awesome tutorial. I cannot get it to work, I first made the mistake and selected the wrong area, I then corrected myself after I worked out what I did wrong and when I press delete it deletes everything and just leaves an outline of where image is supposed to be, everything turns to transparent background.

I have been having a lot of problems with affinity and I am beginning to wonder whether it was all worth it. Thanks for your help. I did this while in vector mode if it matters. Best, Ed. This is the best ever. And he does not skip simple steps. Other videos go fast over key steps so much that sometime i have to reply to find where the mouse pointer went in 0. I am having a similar problem as Jeremy. I select the background, and when I refine the background, the image I want to keep is highlighted in red.

Yet when I click apply, my image disappears as well as the background. It will show me the outline of the image I want to keep with a checkerboard background, but the image itself is…? Hi Rebecca, check the tool settings when using the Selection Brush. They should match my settings in the video. Hi Nick. Thanks a lot. Did you check that out? Thank you for the information. However, every time I try to do this, it keeps erasing the item I want to keep instead of the background.

What do I do? You have to create the selection on the background, not the subject. Your email address will not be published.

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment. Attempting to create animated GIFs in previous versions of Inkscape proved difficult due to a lack of proper tools. Thanks to some of the advancements in version 1. Arguably the most powerful tool Adobe Illustrator has to offer is its Envelope Distort feature, which allows you warp and distort vector objects in any imaginable way. In this tutorial we’ll be going Skip to content.

Hey Nick, Awesome tutorial. How do I do a selection on background? Am facing same challenge. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Read More. Become A Master of Affinity Designer! Become A Master of Adobe Illustrator!

Locking/unlocking layers – Affinity on Desktop Questions (macOS and Windows) – Affinity | Forum

You must enable JavaScript to fully view this webpage. If it is not enabled, your experience will be limited and you will be unable to purchase products, complete forms or load images and videos. Operating System 12 Monterey 11 Big Sur Operating System iOS 12 or above. Overview Key:. You can then simply continue using the version you have or choose to upgrade to version 2 for an additional cost. This will open up the Refine Selection menu, and it will also apply a red mask over the areas outside of your selection:.

For this lesson we will be focusing exclusively on the Foreground and Background settings. This is where things can become a little confusing. The Foreground setting does not represent the foreground of your image; it represents the selection you just created around your background which would be the background of your image.

The Background setting represents the area outside of your created selection, which would be the foreground of your image. Toggle back and forth between these two settings and carefully paint over the areas of your image where the selection needs to be corrected:. By the time you are finished, you should be left with an accurate selection over the foreground of your image, represented by the red mask.

If you need further clarification on this step then be sure to watch the video tutorial above where I demonstrate exactly how this works. Once you are finished refining your selection, click the Apply button in the Refine Selection menu. For Mac users, go to:. The background of your photo will be deleted to transparency, represented by the checkboard pattern in the background:.

Or in other words, it contains a separate layer that is reserved exclusively for transparency, meaning you can overlay your image onto any backdrop and it will show through the transparent areas. In order to preserve the transparency of your deleted background, do not export your work as a JPG file. JPEG images do not support alpha channels or transparency, meaning your deleted background will default to some other color, like white.

You will see a variety of different file formats to export your work as, but make sure to choose PNG from the tabs at the top of the screen, and leave the default settings as they are.

Once you press the Export button, you will be prompted to choose a location on your hard drive to save your PNG image to. Thanks to the Selection Brush, you can quickly remove a background in Affinity Photo in a matter of minutes.

If you have any questions or need clarification for any of the steps in this lesson, simply leave a comment below. Want to learn more about how Adobe Illustrator works? Check out my Illustrator Explainer Series – a comprehensive collection of over videos where I go over every tool, feature and function and explain what it is, how it works, and why it’s useful. This post may contain affiliate links. Read affiliate disclosure here.

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Lock layers affinity designer free

 
replace.me › watch. To unlock your layer, simply click the lock icon again. You can also click the lock icon next to the visibility check box. Either one works.