in today's video i'll show you how to easily make complex selections using affinity photo
let's start by using the flood select tool to select the sky in this image
after clicking the magic wand icon in the tools palette i just need to click on an area of the sky
when i do this you can see the marching ants appear around what affinity photo is selected
you may be able to see this better if i turn on the quick match view by clicking the icon in the
toolbar now you can see a red mask over the area of the image that isn't selected if i zoom in you
can see the flood select tool has selected the sky right up to the fine branches of the tree but the
problem with this is that it hasn't selected the sky you can see between the tree branches
let's switch back to the view with the marching ants and i'll show you a couple of ways to fix
this in the toolbar you'll see that there's a mode section with four icons these icons change
the behavior of the selection tool allowing you to modify any current selection the default
option is to create a new selection this creates an entirely new selection replacing any existing
selection you might have made if i click on an area of sky showing between the tree branches it
then selects that and removes the selection from the larger area of the sky what we really need to
do in this situation though is to use the add mode so we can add new areas to an existing selection
whilst the add mode is useful and i can use it to select all the additional areas between the
branches that isn't very practical fortunately there's a much easier and faster way the reason
the flood select tool didn't include the areas of the sky between the branches was because they were
surrounded and not considered part of the sky what controls this behavior is the contiguous
option in the toolbar when using the contiguous option an area must be next to another area that's
included in the selection for that area to be included because the sky between the branches
is cut off from the rest of the sky it's ignored here's what happens when i turn off the contiguous
option and click the sky again this time all the pixels that match the color sampled in the sky
are included in the selection this is a much better selection but there are still some problems
we now have other areas of the image that are included in the selection but which aren't part
of the sky let's look at a couple of tools we can use to fix this and which you can use in all sorts
of circumstances i'll start with the freehand selection tool which allows me to draw around
areas with the mouse to select them this has three type settings that change how you use the tool
the one to use in this example is the freehand option because it allows me to quickly draw
around areas to select them when i zoom into the image you can see the lake is currently
including the selection to remove it i can use the subtract mode with the freehand selection
now i can draw roughly around the leg and when i release the mouse it's removed from the selection
this is easy and fast to do and i don't even need to close the area i'm drawing around
as soon as i release my mouse button affinity completes the selection and removes it
i can also use this tool to easily clean up other problem areas look more closely at the horizon you
can see the selection is spilling onto the hills in the distance because they aren't well defined
against the sky it's very easy to use the freehand selection tool to draw along the mountains to
remove them having done that let's zoom out to see the entire image and you might notice other
areas of the foreground that are included in the selection i could use the freehand selection tool
to remove these as well but i can also use the rectangular marquee tool using this with the
subtract mode i can draw around the entire lower part of the image to remove it from the selection
let's do a check with the quick mask and you can see that it's pretty much a perfect selection i'll
save the selection in case i want to use it again you can do this in the select menu by choosing
save selection as a spare channel this saves the selection you've made as part of the image
so that it's easy to find when you want to use it again if i go to the channel studio panel you can
see the new spare channel that's been saved by right clicking on the channel i can rename it to
sky selection so that it's easily recognized after that i can clear my selection now the mistake lots
of people make when using affinity photo is to try to create a selection using a single tool this is
probably because the tools seem so good at what they do but it hardly ever works unless it's a
very simple selection instead you need to combine the different tools as we've done in this example
also be sure to use the add and subtract modes because creating a complex selection
with one click is almost impossible break down the selection you want to make into sections or stages
another common mistake is trying to use the wrong selection tool for the job look at what happens
when i try to select the sky with the selection brush tool it just can't handle the fine branches
or the gaps between the trees the selection brush tool is better for making large selections where
there's a contiguous area to select and a clear and smooth edge a better option in situations
like this is to use the flood select tool where you can turn off the contiguous option to create
the bulk of the selection with a single click we can then refine that selection with the freehand
selection tool this excels at allowing you to quickly draw rough selections around objects
there's also the rectangular marquee tool which is great for selecting rectangular shaped areas
let's go back to the original selection we saved in the channel studio panel when i right click on
the save channel i can choose the load to pixel selection option i'll then turn on the quick mask
so you can see the unselected areas in red zooming in affinity photo has made an excellent job of
selecting even the finest details but if it hadn't we can use the refine button to easily fix problem
areas if you want to know how to use the refine tools watch this video next and if you enjoyed
this video let me know in the youtube comment and please share it with other affinity photo users