Affinity Designer Tutorial: Vector Flood Fill in V2.1, Graphic Design, Digital Art, Vector Graphics

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for watching and learning all about the Vector Flood Fill tool! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Just in case you run in to difficulty finding the tool... I have heard of an issue where it's hidden. This shouldn't be an issue in the iPad version but, if you don't see the tool on the desktop version, go to View > Customize Tools and just turn on the Vector Flood Fill (paint bucket with nodes pouring out of it). I didn't have to do this when I updated to V2.1 but just in case you do, you should be able to turn it on! :)

[@ozpaul2sb]

Hullo Tracey. I have been an Adobe apps teacher and user for 45 years. I have recently switched. There are a lot of people posting Affinity tuts on KZbin. Yours are the most professional and informative. Thank you.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

@ozpaul2sb, thank you so much! That means so much, especially coming from a long time teacher. Welcome to the world of Affinity! :) Thank you so much for watching, and for taking the time to comment.

[@windowtothemind8534]

i second that, sir!

[@loribeads1]

I will keep coming back to this video for more and more tips. The decorated text at the end is very inspiring.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you so much Lori! Many thanks for watching, and taking the time to leave this lovely compliment! Have fun creating :)

[@windowtothemind8534]

I'm going to repeat this for the millionth time on Friday the 29th, 2023 (date for referance lol): You are the best and the sweetest! thank you

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Wonderful, thank you for watching! (and for the lovely compliment :))

[@windowtothemind8534]

@@Tracey-CreatorCollage thank you so much, Tracey! I may have one silly question: I am stuck at the point of making the same shape like that lovely flower. i've tried circles overlapping each other and i tried clicking ENTER to duplicate but none seems to work for me. do you have any quick tip for this, please?

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

@@windowtothemind8534 not a silly question at all. When you say you click enter to duplicate, do you mean you're trying to power duplicate the circle shape? I apologize, I'm not certain at what point you're clicking Enter and what you're trying to duplicate.

[@windowtothemind8534]

@@Tracey-CreatorCollage thank you very much, Tracey! I created one perfect circle and then i clicked ENTER then the duplicate menu opened up, then i tried rotating ... and duplicating but i couldn't come up at exactly your flower shape. Would you mind showing me how to create a flower like this one in the video, pleasE? i'm afraid i might be following the wrong steps

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

@@windowtothemind8534 ok now I understand what you meant, thank you for the clarification! It would be a long explanation for here, however I'm creating a few tutorials today and can create a quick tutorial showing how to use the Move/Duplicate ("Enter") dialog box to create a flower shape, if that would help.

[@user-KoreanJB]

great tutorial. Thanks a lot~ You got a new subscriber.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You are very welcome! Thank you for watching and supporting the channel!

[@joesmigielski4778]

Thanks for the great Affinity tutorial, so easy to follow!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you very much Joe, and thank you for watching!

[@mimibkeeper]

Thank you Tracey for another awesome tutorial!!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You are very welcome!! And thank you for the lovely compliment... I'm so happy you found it helpful!

[@mynas3354]

Love it! Will probably watch it again. And maybe again.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you Myna! So happy you enjoyed it and found it helpful. Thanks for watching!

[@labsquadmedia176]

Excellent content, Tracey. Clear. Thorough. Useful. Thanks!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you very much, for watching, and taking the time to leave such a lovely compliment!

[@louiselamirandeart]

There is so much valuable information in this tutorial Tracey! I will surely watch it again and again to grab all of it and give the techniques a try for sure. Thank you so much!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you for watching Louise! I'm so happy you found it helpful and plan to try it out! Thank you!

[@comicbrandon]

This is great! Thank you so much for contributing!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You're very welcome! Thank you for watching, and taking the time to comment!

[@mandyleeporritt]

Excellent tutorial as always, I think I need to do some playing around with this tool, thank you.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you Mandy! Once you start playing around with it, it's hard to stop :) Have fun! Thanks for watching!

[@bramvandenboom1466]

Thank you, that was a fun tutorial! I learned a lot from it.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You're very welcome; I'm so happy to hear that! Thanks so much for watching, and taking the time to comment :)

[@linac4680]

Great tutorial, thank you!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you Lina! Thanks for watching!

[@tararitchie_1828]

I love Affinity!! This is great!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

So do I! Thanks so much, Tara, for watching and commenting!

[@pamdashandrobbie9563]

I've just made my second design using this procedure - I love it. It doesn't really matter that your design elements don't line up perfectly because neither does Stained Glass :) I had tried the Vector Flood Tool before and struggled - it was the selecting of the shapes that caused me the problems. Now I'm sorted but also have this video to look back on if I forget what I'm supposed to do. I love that your tutorials have an end design that really resonate with me rather than flat graphics, cartoons etc.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

So happy to hear that Pam! I hope you enjoy using the Vector Flood Fill moving forward!! Thanks so much for watching, and for taking the time to comment!

[@johnlepore1562]

Thanks!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you very much John!

[@constantineskliris]

Nice one Thanks

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You’re welcome! Thank you for watching, and taking the time to comment!

[@elainehoskins6245]

Ty new to affinity love how you use the flood fill tool with text just can't get I will keep watching

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Welcome to the world of Affinity! I hope you are enjoying learning it. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have questions as you watch. Thank you for watching, and commenting!

[@thoughtsRpower]

Great instructions, loved the sample stained glass, and text designs at the end that helped bring all the concepts together in a playful creative informative way. By the way, where did you get your large source of "lots of gradients" used for the final example?

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thanks so much for watching, and the lovely compliment! Honestly, it's a mix of a bunch of gradients I have created or collected over the years. There isn't one source that I can pinpoint, sorry!

[@jillwirsing7544]

I love this video! Thank you! This is a new tool for me. Is the only time the fill stays vector when you pick a color or gradient from within affinity, as long as it isn’t an asset? I’m not sure if that makes sense but I’m trying to wrap my mind around when the tool converts to raster or stays vector. Thank you!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You're very welcome! I'm so glad you found it helpful! The question makes sense, yes! Correct, it remains a true vector shape (i.e. infinitely scalable) as long as it's a solid or a gradient from the color picker. However, anything else, such as a fill created from an asset, or something pulled externally, will be added as a bitmap fill and therefore be raster based.

[@jillwirsing7544]

Thank you Tracey! I really appreciate that you explain these kinds of details because they are important!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

@@jillwirsing7544 you're very welcome! Thank you for watching!

[@p8prslar]

Wow, detailed 👌👌👌

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Thank you!

[@BlancheFury]

Thanks so much Tracey. What an amazing new tool. Really appreciate such a thorough rundown.

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You’re very welcome! I’m happy you found the tutorial helpful; t really is an awesome tool. Thanks so much for watching!

[@BlancheFury]

If I told you how long it took me to figure out the origin transform point in this new version, you would faint. Image incoming to the group!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

@@BlancheFury it wasn't just you! It took me a while as well!! :) They hid it on us! Looking forward to seeing what you create!

[@dkickelbick]

Thank you

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

You're welcome! Thank you for watching!

[@NBGdealer89]

How do i create semi transparent textures?

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Hi there! There are a number of ways to approach this, but here are a few. In Affinity Designer, you can use Blend Ranges on a texture to pull out either the dark or light values in the textures. Wherever you reduce either dark or light to invisible, it's going to create an alpha background. (you would then save as a png to retain the alpha background) In Affinity Photo, you could use Erase White Paper on a manual texture you created and scanned and, again, it would create an alpha background where, if you export as a png, you will have a transparent texture to use. You can also pull a texture in to either app, reduce it's overall opacity of the layer itself, until you begin seeing the checkerboard, make any adjustments you might want to it (curves, threshold, etc) and export as a png to retain the transparent background. With any of these options, you would just save the png export and then pull in the bitmap texture via "Set Bitmap Fill" using the Vector Flood Fill Tool Here is a tutorial on using blend ranges with texture in Designer kzbin.info/www/bejne/p6avg5Scm6-UhLs Here is a tutorial on using Erase White Paper in Affinity Photo if you have created analog texture that you have scanned kzbin.info/www/bejne/pmiVkGd5hq2Nd68

[@morrownow]

I just got Affinity Designer v2.3 and I don't see this option, did they move it or something?

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Hello @morrownow! If you are on desktop, and aren't seeing the option, go to View > Customize Tools and see if you see the paint bucket with nodes pouring out of it there. If so, you can drag it in to your toolbar. I never lost the option with updates but if a tool is missing this is where you would find it. If you're on the iPad version, it should be on the toolbar standardly.

[@ruthwilson5523]

Don't know what's up--trying to fill a shape with this tool from Stock is instantly crashing Affinity!

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

Hi Ruth! I have had several people tell me that and some have reported it to Serif, who said it was a known issue that would be fixed in the next update. It's not happening to everyone so there must be something specific. They just released 2.5 today. If you haven't already, I would make sure your app is fully updated, try it again and, if it's still crashing, report it to Serif.

[@ruthwilson5523]

@@Tracey-CreatorCollage Thank you so much, Tracey--that was very helpful and very fast! I will update... This video is just what i needed, b/c I have started making moodboards and had been using child-layers to do it. The vector flood tool will be SOOOOO much better!

[@joanl.2471]

@@Tracey-CreatorCollage Hi, thanks for great tutorial. I just got the v2 trial (2.5.3) and encountered the same problem with Designer crash when trying to use stock photos in this vector flood fill. Good to hear that this issue was already known to Serif but apparently last update hasn't fixed it :( I'm thinking about switching from v1 but even if v2 looks nice, the software crashes at the very beginning of tests are a little discouraging...

[@Tracey-CreatorCollage]

​@@joanl.2471 Hi there! I'm sorry you're still experiencing issues. I totally understand where you're coming from. I would definitely recommend posting in Serif's forums and sharing the detail about what's happening and details about the machine it's happening on. I haven't heard of any crashes lately (on this particular issue) so it would be good for Serif to see this. Even better if you can share the original file it's happening on. Hopefully, if they can get to the bottom of what's happening with yours, that can give you some peace of mind about transitioning to V2. Serif is extremely open to hearing from their community so I definitely urge you to post the bug on their forum. :)

[@joanl.2471]

@@Tracey-CreatorCollage Thanks, I'll try to look through this forum and find the right place for my bug report ;) There was no specific file yet, usually just a new document with a square or a cirle and me trying to follow your tutorial :D From both stocks, with differrent photos and several documents, all with the same crash effect. No problems with placing any photo from stock without this tool. Or when I saved the photo locally first. But it didn't work the way you showed it. I agreed to send the automatic crash report, so perhaps they already got it. But thank you for your encouragement, it's just my bad luck to start with bugs ;) And I really love AD v1, it's been my favourite software for several years now, even though I do not know all its features yet..