lots of photographers find Affinity photos freehand selection tool frustrating to use
so in this video I'm going to share some of its secrets that allow you to master it let's
say that we want to select only the cross in this image using the freehand selection tool
you'll find the tool over in the tools palette on the left of the screen it's
part of the same group as the Marquee selection tools so it's possible that one of these could
be shown instead to show all the tools in the group click the bottom right corner of the icon
you'll then be able to choose the freehand selection tool from this group after choosing
the tool you'll find several options and controls appear in the context sensitive toolbar the first
of these is the type which we'll look at in a moment next we have the mode where we can
choose to create a new selection as well as add to subtract from and intersect with
existing selections after that there's a feather option which allows us to feather the edge of the
selection we draw we'll keep this set to zero because the cross has a hard Edge to it finally
there's an anti-alias option which softens the edge of the selection very slightly I like to
keep the anti-aliasing option turned on because it makes for a more natural looking cut out this
isn't the case with all images but with this one we probably do need to use it now back to the type
section where we want to start with the first of these which is the freehand selection to use
this click on a point in the image where you want to begin to draw your selection this adds a small
node or point and then whilst continuing to hold down the mouse button you can draw freehand along
the edge of the Cross it's only when I release my mouse button that Affinity photo draws a straight
line back to my starting point this completes a selection and we then see the matching answer
pair there are though a couple of problems with this the first is that it's very difficult to
draw accurately along a straight edge and curve using this type of tool it's also difficult to
draw around the entire cross without releasing the mouse button the way to fix this second problem is
by changing the mode setting because I've got the mode set to new if I click to add a new selection
of the cross it replaces the existing one to avoid this I need to select the add mode in the toolbar
this then allows me to draw around the next section of the Cross to add it to the first
selection these four mode buttons are extremely useful in making and cleaning up selections as
you'll see later let's now create a new selection but this time changing the type to polygonal the
polygonal type allows us to add a starting point as we did before then as I move the mouse pointer
it draws a straight line between that point and the mouse pointer when I then click it at
the next point in the selection I can continue to add points like this along the edge of the Cross
until I come back to the starting point then when I click on that it completes the selection and we
see the matching answer pair the polygonal tool is excellent for creating straight edge selections
and a lot of this cross has straight edges there are however some curved edges which the polygonal
tool won't be able to select accurately we'll also probably struggle using the freehand selection
tool for this as it's going to be difficult to draw an accurate curve this is where the third
option comes in which is the magnetic type to show you how this works I'm going to use it to
add to the selection I just made I'll therefore click the add mode in the toolbar I can now click
once at the point where I want to start then as I move my mouse pointer along the edge of the
Cross you'll see the software detects The Edge and adds new points it's only when I get back
to the starting point and click on that that I can complete the selection sometimes when you're using
the magnetic tool Affinity photo adds points that you don't want it to when this happens just press
the delete key to remove The Unwanted point but there's another great feature to make creating
selections with this tool easier if I hold down my shift key whilst I'm using the magnetic tool
it temporarily changes the tool into a polygonal selection let's clear the current selection now
and magnify the head of the cross because I want to show you why this is so important I'll start
by clicking once with the magnetic tool at the starting point then because the first section
of the Cross is a straight line I can hold down my shift key to invoke the polygonal tool I can
then move directly to the end of the section and click to add a point then the next point
is another straight line so I can continue to hold down my shift key and click to add the next point
after that there's a curve section so I can release the shift key and draw carefully
along the edge of the Cross now the magnetic selection is doing all the work for me once
I've passed the curve selection there's another straight edge so I hold down my shift key again
let's magnify the image now to examine the detail more closely if there are any obvious
problems we can now fix them using the add and subtract nodes with the different freehand
selection tools another option that can work well for cleaning up selections like this is
to use the refine button but because this is so powerful I Do cover it in a separate video I'll
include a link to that in the YouTube description below now I'll just finish selecting the cross
then if I duplicate my layer using the selection and turn off the background you can see the cross
is a neat cut out now as powerful as the freehand selection tool is once you understand its features
it may not be the best tool for selecting a cross like this an alternative and extremely
powerful method is to use the pen tool to create a selection if you want to know how to do that
watch this video next thanks for watching today and I hope you enjoyed the video if you haven't
already please don't forget to subscribe and I hope to see you soon in the next video