Smart Selection Brush in Affinity Designer

The Affinity Designer Selection Tool is a powerful tool for adding or removing selected areas. It can also be used to creatively add Adjustment layers. Unlike Affinity Photo, you need to access the selection brush in the Pixel Persona. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a smart selection with the Selection Brush Tool in Affinity Designer.

For our tutorial, we will be using a spring flower image but you are welcome to browse through our selection of nature photos for more options.

We will also be using this tablet mockup from the Plus Membership in our background example. If you’re not a Plus Member yet, you can sign up for a free month of the Gold Membership today!

Step 1 - Locate the Selection Brush

Open your selected image in Affinity Designer. Next, go to the top of the screen and click on the Pixel Persona icon. In this new window, on the left side toolbar, click on the Selection Brush Tool (W).

Step 2 - Make a Selection of Image

At the top of the toolbar, you will see settings for the Selection Brush Tool. Add is used when creating or adding to a selection. Subtract removes part of the selection, for example, where too much of an area was selected.

Before creating a selection, make sure that the boxes for Snap to edges and Soft edges are ticked. Snap to edges will easily snap the selection to edges where there is a good amount of contrast.

The Soft edges option adds a softer edge to your selection.

You can use the bracket keys [ and ] to increase or decrease the brush size.

Create a Selection

Now, click + drag your brush over the area you want to keep. In the image below, the red arrows show areas not properly selected. So we will need to Subtract from the selection.

Subtract From the Selection

We can easily fix any areas not properly selected by using the Subtract button. Click on Subtract at the top toolbar, then click + drag your mouse over an area to remove it from the selection. You may need to decrease your brush size for more control.

Affinity Designer’s Selection Brush is very intuitive so sometimes a simple click over the area is all you need.

Create a Mask

If you are happy with the selection result you can create a mask of the selection. Do this by clicking on Mask Layer at the bottom of the Layers Panel. Using a layer mask for the selection allows you to carry on editing as needed.

Refine the Selection

You can fine tune the selection by using the Refine tool at the top toolbar. Click on Refine and a new window will pop up. You will also see areas highlighted in red. These are the areas that will be removed.

You can change the Preview from Overlay to other options to make it easier to see. We chose Black matte. Make sure that the Adjustment Brush is set to Matte then increase or decrease your brush size. Paint over the edges that need to be refined, as shown in the image below.

The Output was set to Mask so that we could change the background for this example.

When you are done, click Apply to commit to the changes. You will see that the current layer now has a mask.

Add in the Background

You can go ahead and change the background of the photo like we did below by using a JPG or PSD mockup in Affinity Designer.

Step 3 - Use Selection Brush with Adjustment Layers

In this step, we will use Affinity Designer’s Selection tool with Adjustment layers.

Make Selection of the Image

Create your selection as with Step 2. If you use the Refine option make sure that the Output is set to Selection. With Adjustment layers, we don’t want to create a mask but rather keep the selection.

If you selected the flower instead of the background, this is an easy fix. With your selection ready, go to Select > Invert Pixel Selection. This is a helpful tip in case you make the wrong selection.

Add an Adjustment Layer

At the bottom of the Layers Panel, you will find the Adjustments icon. The icon looks like a circle that is half colored in. It is a quick way of accessing the adjustments. Click on this to open the Adjustments menu and select one. We chose to use Curves.

Alternatively, you can access the adjustments by going to Layer > New Adjustment > Curves.

You can now easily edit the background without affecting the flower.

If you want to edit the flower, just go to Select > Invert PixelSelection and the flower will now be selected. Just remember that when editing the Adjustment layers, you need to select the correct area first.

With the Affinity Designer’s Selection tool, you can fine tune an image down to the smallest detail. You can create a surreal photo or professionally enhance your images far beyond the basics. We hope that what you have learned today can take your images to the next level and boost your creativity.