How to Use the Contour Tool in Affinity Designer

The Contour Tool in Affinity Designer offsets the boundaries of shapes and curves. This is done by decreasing or increasing the radius. In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Contour Tool to create a design.

Open Affinity Designer and click on New Document to get started. Choose your page settings and click Create.

Step 1 - Where to find and use the Contour Tool

Begin with a basic heart shape and adjust the boundary. On the left side panel click on the shapes tool. The last tool used will be the shape you see on the panel.

Click on the small white arrow to open the selection of shapes and choose the Heart Tool.

Drag the shape out on the canvas. Next, select the shape and click on the Contour Tool on the left side panel. Click anywhere on the shape and drag out. The Radius or contour width will increase. If you drag inward the Radius will decrease.

The Contour Tool can be used on open paths drawn with the Pen Tool. Once the path has been drawn, click on the Contour Tool and then click and drag to widen the contour.

Step 2 - Change the Contour style

The Contour Tool opens a selection of options at the top. The Radius can be adjusted here if you don't want to click and drag. The Contour Type changes any sharp corners present.

Click the Contour Tool, select the Contour Type and then click and drag to change the contour.

The Miter size option allows you to choose the miter limit of the contour. This defines when a point becomes beveled.

The Contour Caps round or square off the edges of an open path.

Contour Fill will open or close a gap in the contour. By default the contour is automatically closed. The Force Closed option looks the same as Auto Closed.

Step 3 - Use the Contour Tool with multiple shapes

The Contour Tool shows its liquid like flexibility when two or more shapes are combined. For this step we will combine different shape tools.

A Cog wheel, Star and Donut were drawn out. The shapes were positioned to overlap one another. Select all three, click Layer and Create Compound. Click the Contour Tool, click anywhere on the compound path and drag inward just a little bit.

Select the Move Tool, double click on the Star and drag it around. Where the shapes connect there is a fluid like interaction. These shapes can still be adjusted further with the Contour Tool. Each shape can be moved around independently and resized.

Even when the shapes are moved apart they are still connected as a compound path.

Step 4 - Add new objects to the Compound Path

New objects can easily be added to the Compound Path. Draw out three heart shapes and arrange them in a design. Select all three shapes and make a compound path.

Click the Contour Tool and choose Force Open as the Contour Fill. Click and drag on the heart path to create a frame within each heart.

The Tear Tool was used to draw out the next shape. This was duplicated twice and placed at the points of each heart.

Hold Shift and click on each Tear shape to select. On the right side panel under Layers, drag the Tear selection over the word Compound. If you drag the selection over the thumbnail it will create a mask. You don't want this.

The Contour Fill is automatically applied to the new objects.

To make the design pop, click on the Compound path layer to select, right click and Duplicate. You won't see a change until you click the Contour Tool and select Force Closed. Drag inwards until the heart shapes appear.

Change the colors of the compound paths with the color palette top right. Be sure to check that Fill is selected.

Step 5 - Convert to Curves

Convert the design to curves to access the Node Tool. The compound path groups will also become single layers.

While the Contour Tool is active, select all design elements and click on Bake Appearance top of screen. The initial contour becomes a curve and can no longer be edited with the Contour Tool. You can, however create a new contour.

Adjust the nodes if needed by using the Node Tool on the left side panel.

To save as a cut file go to File, Export then select SVG and SVG (for export) under Preset.

Affinity Designer is an affordable yet powerful vector graphics editing software. The large selection of editing tools give the designer freedom to create anything they can think of.

In another tutorial, we've used the contour tool to create an offset around text which is useful for making knockout designs.