{"id":380,"date":"2019-08-02T01:15:56","date_gmt":"2019-08-02T01:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/?p=380"},"modified":"2019-08-02T17:20:15","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T17:20:15","slug":"refine-edges-in-affinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/2019\/refine-edges-in-affinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Refine edges in Affinity"},"content":{"rendered":"

What:<\/strong> Refine edges > Apply > Done!<\/p>\n

Where:<\/strong> in Affinity Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

A client wanted his name as his logo in a handwritten style. He was thinking of a handwritten font; I asked him to actually write his name for me because if you want personal, it’s often good to be<\/em> personal. He wrote his name for me on paper, took a photo of it and emailed it to me.<\/p>\n

I did all the obvious things: increase contrast, select the light background with the Flood Select Tool<\/em>, Invert Pixel Selection<\/em>, copy and paste it to a new layer. So far, so good. It looked smooth.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t want the letters to be a dark gray, I wanted them to be white. And it didn’t matter how I changed the color, when I did, all the rough edges on the letters popped out and it didn’t look good. I tried Feather…<\/em>, Smooth…<\/em>, Refine Edges…<\/em>, Grow \/ Shrink…<\/em>\u00a0 all the obvious steps and finally I got it to work. It looked so smooth. I was in awe. In all my years of image editing in Photoshop, I had managed some pretty smooth edges but nothing like this. It looked vector-sharp. I was so happy. And I was sure it was the Grow \/ Shrink…<\/em> option in Affinity because that was the last one I’d tried before the magic happened. I was going to write it down so I wouldn’t forget but first I had a deadline.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When I started to write this post, I opened Affinity and tried to recreate the effect with the steps I thought I’d taken. First, I tried Grow \/ Shrink…<\/em> but no matter the settings I tried, I could not get that same smoothness. I tried Grow \/ Shrink…<\/em> in combination with Feather…<\/em> but even a 1px feather just blurs the edges. And Smooth…<\/em> didn’t seem to smooth what I had hoped for. I was stumped. I knew it wasn’t Refine Edges…<\/em> I remembered opening that and seeing all the settings and thinking, I’ll try that later, if nothing else works.<\/p>\n

I went to bed dejected, an unfinished post sitting in the trash, thinking that smooth result had been a one off, something I’d never be able to reproduce.<\/p>\n

I tend to get dejected at night but I’m usually hopeful and determined in the morning.<\/p>\n

When the thing you’ve lost isn’t in any of the places you think it could be, stop thinking and start searching through everything methodically.
\nWhich is what I did but I still started with the most obvious seeming option: Refine Edges… <\/em>and that was all that was needed.<\/p>\n

All the steps<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. I dragged the photo into Affinity<\/li>\n
  2. Adjustment > Brightness \/ Contrast > Contrast 100% and click Linear<\/li>\n
  3. I like to select both layers and Merge Visible<\/li>\n
  4. Selected the Flood Select Tool, I had it set to Tolerance 20% and Contiguous checked<\/li>\n
  5. Clicked the light background, added to the selection the space inside a’s, e’s, o’s and d’s and the edges of the paper<\/li>\n
  6. Select > Invert Pixel Selection<\/li>\n
  7. Select > Refine Edges…<\/li>\n
  8. I like to change Output to New Layer but I didn’t change anything else and you don’t need to do even that. If you don’t, copy and past your selection to a new layer yourself<\/li>\n
  9. With your new layer selected under Effects choose Color Overlay and the color you want et voil\u00e0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Affinity does all the work, easier\u00a0 and sweeter than I imagined.<\/p>\n

    \n
    \n
    Photo by Dawid Zawi\u0142a<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What: Refine edges > Apply > Done! Where: in Affinity Photo A client wanted his name as his logo in a handwritten style. He was thinking of a handwritten font; I asked him to actually write his name for me because if you want personal, it’s often good to be personal. He wrote his name … <\/p>\n

    Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,14],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-things","tag-affinity","tag-images","infinite-scroll-item"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blindemanwebsites.com\/today-i-learned\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}