Excellent tutorial. The best yet to help me get to grip with the pen tool. What really helps a lot is the way you describe all your steps and key presses again and again as you do them. That makes it clear and helps memory. Thank you!
Whilst I do have prior Photoshop knowledge I have subscribed to several AP (Affinity Photo) coarse's on differing websites in order to familiarise myself with the location of all the various buttons within AP so that PS can be dropped together with its offending annual subscription. That said it is my humble option that this is without doubt the best tutorials on the AP Pen Tool currently out there, explained with a clarity that puts this presenter to the top of the tree. Chris you are to be congratulated and whilst I relise that making these tutorials involves your time and patience......... long may it continue. Thank you so much for taking the time. Harry.
Thanks for this one Chris. I needed some help understanding all the options of the pen tool. This was spot on! Thanks so much for taking time to explain so clearly. 👍🐺👍
Excellent Tutorial, so so clear and precise. Thank you very much. I have given up on Adobe PS because of there monthly subscription. I think Affinity Photo will just get better and better. Thanks Chris, keep up the brilliant tutorials.
Awesome tutorial! You are very good at explaining your steps as you go and making it easy to follow. I am so glad I bought Affinity Photo. As a photographer it is one of my most valuable and used tools.
I love video tutorials. Yours are very good. Since recently purchasing Affinity Photo, I am happy to have come across your channel, and subbed. Cheers.
Hi Chris, I just wanted to thank you for this excellent tutorial. I've never really gotten to grips with the pen tool and I now feel I have the confidence to tackle some cut-out jobs. This has been really useful. Many thanks for putting the time into explaining this so well. I've really enjoyed your tutorial and will certainly be following you in the future. Bless you. John G.
Main thing I needed to know is to hold option and click the last node to make the next node independent. Only difference with PS is you don't have to hold option down. Thank you!!!
Perfectly understandable - I find myself often reverting to my old PS, too, especially when the job at hand must be done quickly. Old habits die hard, as the saying is... But then again I find one has to take up the fight when you don't want to pay month after month for a subscription - so resort to Affinity Photo instead whenever possible. Just try to get it done in AP and learn what's to be learned to finally be able to kiss Adobe goodbye...
I am trying to master this pen tool and it is not reacting to what I see. If I use ALT to start a new line the previous line goes straight off the curve I made, I got around half of the item and then I hit ALT and the whole path disappeared. any suggestions, I am missing something here
Chris, It seems that much has changed since this tutorial, would you consider doing another tutorial of the same detail with current changes? Your work is great. And the pen tool needs some updating. Thank you.
Thank you, interesting and informative. I"m coming from PS and the pen tool there...learning the slight differences in commands, etc in AP. What I can't figure how to do, is to do what you did with multiple paths on the same layer so that I can cut out the outer AND inner areas at once....I might do this not to cut it all out in one step, but possible to do something like add a curves affect to just that area between the cut out area. I'm thinking the simpler example of a doughnut, selecting the outer edge with pen tool, and then also selecting a path around the hole with the pen tool on the same layer somehow...and making the selection the area between the two paths/curves...and then could cut it out or mask it all at once, or maybe do a levels adjustment or color fill in that area. I can't figure how to do it with Affinity Photo like I could do with PS....AP keeps trying to force me on different layers every time I start a new path/curve....thoughts?
Hi, when you have made your first selection eg the outside of your doughnut, click on the subtract tab in the top left corner toolbar and then make your inner selection. This will remove the centre of the doughnut so to speak. Hope this helps.
@@chrispwilliams6297 Hello and thank you for the reply. I was looking for the subtract button/tap in Affinity Photo and couldn't find it. However, in this latest version, I found a button up top, that says: "Add New Curve To Selected Curves Object".
Good tutorial! Is there a way to merge multiple curves/shapes into the same mask? I personally can't find out how, and I think it'd be pretty limiting if you couldn't.
Thank you. .. I loved the pen tool in Ps, now I'm going to love it in Affinity. .. Question: Can AP do cut and paste 'reticulations' in both 'size' and 'position' of a copied object? Thx.
Bob Tarmac hi I know you can paste in place by pressing shift but I have never tried reticulation. I will give it a go and get back to you. I take it you would like the same object repeated across the frame at a particular size?
Yes, that is correct. You can get very useful patterns from reticulating an object across a path while incrementally increasing or decreasing the pasted object (as well as rotation). Ps has this function and I miss it, Ap is an awesome app, and I was just doing some wishful thinking. :)
Just press ctrl+j and make a copy of it. You can also group them and activate the group in the layers tab (by clicking with ctrl on the group thumbnail and be sure the curves are filled with a solid colour and not transparent) to make it all of them into a selection at once. Makes it easier to apply feather ;-) *If you just want to have a selection without loosing the curves just press ctrl and click on the curve's thumbnail. (Curve must be filled with a solid colour not transparent!)*
Quite surprising that "Smooth Curve" puts in additional nodes - I'd expected smoothing doing away with some nodes as any additional node might add opportunity to roughen up an otherwise already smooth curve... Generally it's less nodes making smoother curves: so perfect circles tend to ideally have only four nodes (preferably on north, west, south and east positions) and not - say - 12 like numbers on a clockface.
You show "Pen" "mask" and "selection" next to the "fill" and "stroke" My affinity designer does no show this no matter what I do, can you tell me how I get the "mask" and "selection buttons?
I was holding option and clicking the last node to make the next node independent and it worked fine until the next Affinity Photo session where I found I suddenly had to hold both the Control key and the Alt key while clicking. Seems rather odd this would happen. Any ideas?
Did you went through all the hard work of masking with curves and then just used a destructive "curves to selection" workflow? Why not just create a mask? will never complain a about a free review but this seem very wrong. or am i missing something here ...
I can't believe how ridiculously annoying this software is. Why does creating a selection from a path destroy the path? And why does the user not get the option to even do that when using the node tool and not the pen tool (same shortcut and tool group)? SO FUCKING OBNOXIOUS.
