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affinity designer clipping mask not working

HeyBraza watches the layers panel and points at whether to drop on the layer's name (clip) or its thumbnail (mask).

the single most common affinity masking mistake is dropping the layer in the wrong place: drag onto a layer's name and you clip (nest) it; drag onto its thumbnail and you mask it. people want one and get the other, so nothing looks right. here's the difference and how to do each correctly.

or do it yourself

  1. 1position the object you want clipped so it overlaps the shape that will contain it.
  2. 2in the layers panel, select the top object and drag it onto the name (text) of the layer below - a blue highlight on the row means it will clip (nest) inside.
  3. 3if you instead want a mask, drag the masking shape onto the thumbnail of the target layer, not its name - that hides everything outside the shape.
  4. 4to clip on creation, select the container shape, click 'insert inside the selection' in the context toolbar, then draw inside it.
  5. 5if it went wrong, expand the parent's arrow in the layers panel, then drag the child back out (or layer > arrange > move > outside) and try the correct drop target.

let HeyBraza do this with you

HeyBraza is a tiny on-screen guide that points at the right buttons and talks you through it, on windows and mac.

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common questions

what's the difference between clipping and masking in affinity?

clipping nests one object inside another's outline (drop on the layer's name); masking uses a shape's alpha to hide pixels (drop on the layer's thumbnail).

my mask hides the wrong part - why?

a mask shows white/opaque areas and hides the rest; if it's inverted, invert the mask or swap which object you dropped onto the thumbnail.

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