in today's video I'll demonstrate how to easily create amazing selections using the pen tool
in Affinity photo along the way I'll share a few things about using the pen tool that you
probably didn't know in the video I'll be using Affinity photos pen tool to replace the sky in
this shot of the gherkin building in London most people face with this task will probably use the
selection brush to select the sky but when I try this and look closely at the results we see areas
of the selection that aren't quite accurate what makes this a perfect task for using the
pen tool are the Curves in the building it's a fantastic tool for selecting straight and curved
hard edges unfortunately most people avoid using the pen tool because they find it's difficult to
control that's why I'm going to share my basic but easy way to use it you'll find the pen tool in the
tools palette on the left of the photo Persona interface it has an icon showing the nib of a
fountain pen when you select it you can see lots of complicated options appear in the toolbar we
don't need most of these and the only setting that I'm going to use is the pen mode now I can begin
to make my selection of the building using the pen tool I'll position my mouse pointer on the
left of the image where the building meets the edge of the frame I can then click once to add
the first point of the selection now I can move the mouse pointer to where I want to add the next
point for the selection and this is where lots of people make their first mistake they try to
add points all along the edge of the building but the secret to making a good selection with
the pen tool is to use as few points as possible that's why I'm positioning the next point where
the curve of the building changes Direction I can then click to add the next point to the end of the
curve after that I'll add the next point at the end of the next curve now I want you to notice
that the pen tool is drawing a thin straight blue line between the points on Madding if you've used
the pen tool before or you've watched videos about using it you may know that you can click and drag
when you add a point to create a curve but we don't want to do that because it's difficult to
learn how to control the curve when you're new to doing this shortly I'll show you how to convert
these straight lines into curves that match the edge of the building but first I need to finish
my selection I'll therefore add my next curve where the building meets the right side of the
image frame I can then add further points below the right and left corners of the image before
clicking on the starting point to close the selection and in case you didn't know you can
position the pen tool points outside of the image area the next stage is to make the curve match
the edge of the building which we'll do with the node tool you'll find the node tool in the tools
palette in the same group as the pen tool again this tool has lots of options in the toolbar but
we won't use any of these let's magnify the image now to 100 and I'll show you how to make one of
the lines match the edge of the building what the no tool allows us to do is select the points or
nodes that we've added with the pen tool we can then click and drag those nodes to move them into
position with a high degree of precision now let's use the node tool to move the line between the
points so that it meets the edge of the building when I move my mouse pointer over the blue line I
can click and drag it to move it into position along the edge I can continue to hold down my
mouse button whilst I move this into position I can then release the mouse button to drop it and
fix the curve then when I have one of the nodes selected you can see the control lines at either
end of the curve these are the same control lines that appear if you click and drag with the pen
tool when you're drawing the selection we can now use them to precisely position the curve to match
the edge of the building let's position the curved line at the top of the building and I'll show you
what I mean as before our position of most pointer over the line and then click and drag to set the
curve now you can see the control lines for that section of the curve most people that I share this
with find it's easier to control the curve with the node tool rather than when drawing with the
pen tool let's do the final curve on the building on the right as before I'll move my mouse pointer
over the line so that I can click and drag it into position then when I click on one of the points
using the node tool it displays the control arms for the curve when you're using the control arms
you can click and drag up to increase the angle of the curve and drag down to make it shallower
the length of the control arm also changes where the bend in the curve appears when it's longer it
moves it away from the origin but when you shorten the line you move it nearer to the origin when a
testing a curve with these lines it's best to use the arms at both end of the section to make it as
accurate as possible most of the time though if you're using the no tool to drag the curve
into position you probably won't need to use the control arms I'll just undo that change though
before I go any further by pressing command and Z on my keyboard if you're using a Windows PC
that's control and Zed sometimes when refining a selection you may find that you haven't added
enough points to match an edge you can fix this by adding individual new points using the node
tool but an easier solution is often to click the smooth curve icon in the action section of the
toolbar when you click this Affinity will try to smooth out the curve that you've created and will
add additional points you can then move these into position with your mouse for an exact match know
that we have our points in place let's go back to the pen tool to create the selection or in this
example a mask all I need to do is Click The Mask button in the toolbar this converts the curves
that I've drawn into a mask which hides the sky but leaves the building untouched it also attaches
this mask to the background layer now let me show you something else if I go back to the node tool
I can still click and drag the nodes into position which dynamically changes the mask I'll just undo
that change now because I want to replace the sky for this I'll open my asset Studio panel because I
have dozens of Replacements guys I can use in the atmosphere add-on pack by James ritzen you can get
this in the Affinity photo online store and I'll stress I'm not connected with this in any way and
just happen to think that it's an excellent set of assets you can use for this image I want to add a
rainbow sky I can then drag that into position and drop it onto the image then to make it
appear behind the building I can drag it below the background layer now earlier in the video I tried
to select the scale using the selection brush but it failed the reason may have been that I
wasn't using the tool correctly in this video I explain a hidden feature of the selection brush
which makes it easier to use it's a great video to watch next thanks for watching today and if
you haven't done so already please remember to subscribe I'll see you soon for another video