The Basics of Masking in Affinity Photo

Masking is an essential skill in any editing program, and so in this chapter, we are going to cover the principles of masking, the methods you can use to mask different types of masks (such as paint-on masks and vector-based masks), when you can use masking (practical uses), and lastly, we will apply these techniques into a full edit. By the end of this chapter, you will have a firm awareness of what masking is used for in the workflow at the basic level. Later in the book, when discussing selection, we will revisit masking based on things such as selection. So, for right now, let’s keep it simple.

There are a variety of masks, such as the gradient, mask, layer mask, clipping mask, group mask, and so on. But for this section, we’ll just cover the basics, the two most utilized styles of masking in the work that I do. It is important to note that masking is an art, and as such, every editor develops their own versions, workflows...