How to Use Textures in Affinity Designer

In today’s tutorial you are going to learn how to use textures in Affinity Designer. Textures can be added in various ways to give different results. We will show you how to add a texture overlay for a very cool, mysterious and vintage feel to the image.

We are going to be using a misty forest background and vintage digital paper for our texture. If you would like to use something else, we have tons of great texture backgrounds to choose from.

Step 1 - Place the Texture Over your Image

Open the image you want to use in Affinity Designer by going to File > Open. Then locate the image and click Open.

Once open, we need to place our texture over the image. To do this, go to File > Place.

In the window, click on the texture that you want to use. The window will close and your cursor will change into an arrow pointing down to a circle. Move your cursor to the top left corner, then click + drag down to the right.

You can drag the texture until it completely covers the image or you can stretch it out as shown below.

Step 2 - Change the Texture Blend Mode

With the texture layer still selected, go to the Blend Mode and select Vivid Light. Now, the result will differ depending on the texture and image used. So you may need to experiment with the different blending modes to find one that works for you.

If the Blend Mode is too strong you can tone down the Opacity. Here we adjusted the Opacity to 50%.

By experimenting with the Blend Modes, you can get some surprising and interesting results. In the image below, we created a ghostly night time effect by changing the Blend Mode to Subtract.

We decided to go with a fade out effect below and used the Reflect Blend Mode.

That is how easy it is to add texture to your images. If you are working on text or designs, you can add a texture fill instead. There is no end to the possibilities when you know how to use textures in Affinity Designer.