in a recent video I explained how to use the pen tool in Affinity photo to create an accurate mask
of this building if you watched that video you may have noticed a problem with the mask I drew
let's magnify the image to 200% so I can show you if I hide the sky layer you can see that there's
still part of the original sky at the top of the building but that isn't the only problem
when I move down the right side of the building there's another small area of original Sky that's
become visible let me show you how to fix these problems and improve the quality of your masks
and selections now usually when editing a mask in Affinity photo there's an option to refine The
Mask but when I right click on this mask we don't see it in the pop-up menu thus because this mask
isn't a pixel mask as I drew it using the pen tool this created a series of precise curves which are
just mathematical shapes rather than pixels in a mask the benefit of this type of mask is that
you can continue to change and refine the curves watch what happens when I click on the Node tool
in the tools palette you can still see the nodes or points that I originally Drew to create this
selection I can then click and drag them with my mouse to reposition them I can also change the
shape of those curves which allows me to fix this problem unfortunately this doesn't help me remove
The Unwanted Sky let me now show you two ways you can do that the first is using the pen tool again
before I do anything though I need to select the mask I want to modify in the layer Studio panel
then when I select the pen tool I can see the nodes that make of that mask last time I drew
around the building which removed the sky from the image to remove the other areas of the sky from
this mask I only need to draw around them again but there's an easy mistake to make if you're
not familiar with the tool watch what happens when I try selecting the section of unwanted Sky
it creates a new curves Vector mask rather than removing the section from the original mask let's
undo that now by pressing command and Z on a Mac which is Ctrl and Z on the Windows PC the mistake
I made was forgetting to click this icon in the pen tools toolbar before I started drawing this
icon causes any new curves that I draw to be added to the existing Vector mask now I can draw the new
selection like I did in the previous video I'll then drag the curves into position using the node
tool you can already see that the checked pattern is displayed through the building in the area that
I selected showing that it's now transparent let's select the node tool and I'll use that to drag the
lines into position to create a precise mask I can now continue and select the next area to remove
that from the image and repeat the process if you give me a few seconds I'll just finish the rest
now earlier I said that there were two ways that I could fix this mask the first was using the pen
tool which we've already looked at but the second way is using the refine mask feature
in Affinity photo I know I said earlier that that wasn't available but that's because we
were working with a vector mask the solution is to First convert the vector mask into a regular
pixel mask by rasterizing it the downside is that rasterizing the mask will destroy
the nodes so I won't be able to change them again I'll therefore first duplicate my mask
in case something goes wrong I'll right click the mask in the layers Studio panel and then in
the pop-up menu choose the duplicate option let's turn off the original mask so that we can now see
what's happening when we work with the duplicate I can then right click on the duplicate mask and
select the rasterize to mask option in the menu this converts it from Vector curves to pixels
which we can then edit using the refine mask command know when I right click on the mask
thumbnail again I can see the refine math command clicking this opens the refine mask
dialog and we can see the mashed out area in red now I can use the controls and tools in the
dialog to remove The Unwanted Sky by painting it out these tools are extremely powerful so
you need to watch this video next to understand exactly how they work thanks for watching today
and if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe I'll see you soon for another video