Create Posters Fast and Free with AI and Affinity

1. 00-01 Introduction: Welcome to the future of creative design. Have you ever been stuck with zero ideas to start off your poster design, or perhaps you have great poster ideas but are trapped behind long hours of tedious production work? Well, everything is about to change. The course, you're going to learn how to turn AI into your most powerful creative assistant. This course does not teach you to forget and replace your craft, but to teach you how to supercharge it. You'll discover how to write a good prom for composing poster designs using hepGBT. You'll also learn how to write a good prompt for creating text content using Gemini. But AI generation is only the first step. The real design happens in the details. That is why you will learn to take those raw AI results and perfect them in affinity. If you have never used affinity before, don't worry, as I provide basic lessons to get you up and running quickly using all the tools that you will need. After that, you will learn how to edit the design further by removing graphical elements, recreating new ones, adding editable text, fixing layout errors, changing the colors, and more. At the end, you will learn how to export the design as different types of images and also as a Canva project. Please note that every technique that you will learn in this course does not require you to purchase anything. You don't need to pay for AI credits or tokens. You also don't need to pay any software licenses. We will be using the fret here of het GPT and Gemini. And you will also be using affinity which is completely free. So not only does this course enable you to work faster in creating poster designs, but it will also save you money in the long run. Asalam Molcum, my name is Wide Mutakin. I am an entrepreneur in creative industry and also an academic lecturer in design and computer graphics. I teach graphic design, digital painting, architecture of visualization, CD animation, web design, and many other topics related to computer graphics. So let's get started Wsalamlecu. 2. 00-02 Exercise files, OS, and Software: Welcome to the Corus. Before moving on, there are also important things I need to mention about the Corus. First, it's about the exercise files. You can load all the exercise files for this course in the resources section of this lesson. In case there is a problem as a backup, you can also download the files from the following link. Please pay attention to the capitalization of the letters, as this link is case sensitive. If you open the link, you will see something like this. You can download the files one by one. However, it will be easier if you download them all at once. To do so first select the top item, hold Shift, and click on the last item. Then click this Download icon. This will prepare all the files into a single downloadable zip file. Next, it's about the structure of the course. I have carefully crafted the curriculum so that everything is placed sequentially. Each lesson you take on one level will become the foundation of the lessons in the next levels. Therefore, it is important that you take the course in order step by step, not jumping around. If you take the course by jumping around, most likely you'll get confused at some point. The second thing I need to mention is that you need to practice for each video. Please try out lesson yourself at least once. The course is not just baterias. Most of the lessons are practical skills. So again, you need to practice if you really want this online course to benefit you in this course, using a PC with a Window stenoperting system. So every shortcut I mentioned in the video will be for PCs and Windows OS. If you are using a Mac computer, you will find some differences. I believe most Mac users already understand that the command key on a Mac is often used to replace the control key on a PC. And the option key on a Mac is often used to replace the out key on a PC. Essentially, if you are using a mac computer, you may need additional effort to check the menu or the online documentation for keyboard shortcut references. The second thing that I need to mention in terms of the computer hardware is the input device. Although you can use a trackpad when using laptop, I strongly recommend that you use a standard mouse with a scroll wheel when using Affinity. Usually, if a mouse has a scroll wheel, you can press down the scroll wheel to activate the middle mouse button. We will use the scroll wheel and also the middle button a lot for canvas navigation. You want to avoid using minimalistic mouse products that do not have any scroll wheel or middle buttons. Alternatively, you can also use a drawing tablet if you own one. The third thing that I need to mention is the software. You should always download the Affinity app from its official website at Affinity dot sudo. Do not download the app from other untrusted sources as it may contain computer viruses or malware. As for the version throughout the course, I use the most recent version of Affinity available when recording the video, which is version 3.3. If you notice any differences with the one you are using, such as NUI or shortcuts, you may be using a newer version of Affinity. If so, you may want to check if I have published a newer version of this course. 3. 01-01 How to write a good prompt: In this lesson video, we will discuss how to write a good prompt. A prompt is basically an instruction that we as the user, give to an AI model to perform certain tasks because AI is basically a machine, not a real human being. The quality of the output is very dependent on the quality of the prompt. If we give AI a prompt that is too general, the AI is then forced to fill in the details by itself. On the other hand, if we give it a detailed but incorrect prompt, then the AI will have no room to correct the result. So the basic idea here is that you want to give EI specific or detailed instructions in certain areas while also giving it more room in other areas to explore different ideas and solutions. This all depends on your situation or condition because we are focusing on using AI for creating poster designs. There are at least eight parameters or variables that you want to have in your prompt. You can think of them as a checklist that you need to go through every time you want to write a prompt for creating posters or any designs in general. They are role, goal, format, reference, over writes, nuance, constraints, and content. Let me break each of these parameters one by one real quick. The first parameter is the role, meaning that you need to explain to the AI what hat it should wear, what type of job or expertise it needs to become. For designing poster, you can tell the AI to act as a professional graphic designer. Okay? Next is goal. You want to explain clearly your goal of why you want to create a poster. Is it for environmental awareness? Is it for business promotion? Is it for social charity, et cetera? This course. We want to create a poster for a fictional, non formal school called English Brilliant that sells English courses. So when writing the prompt, you can write, I need to create a poster for promoting an English course for my school. Again, this way, the AI has a clear understanding of what you want to achieve. All right. Next is the format. Designs can come in many different sizes. Real papers can be letter, legal, a four, a three, B five, and so on. Videos can be in HD, full HD, four K, and so on. Not to mention different mobile device screens and also social media standard sizes. Knowing the image size you want to target and getting it right on the first try is crucial in writing a prompt. Otherwise, you will need to revise it again and again, wasting tokens and credits in the process. Please note that in free tier, AAI surfaces usually generate lower image resolution than the pro or paid tiers. As of this recording, the Frith here of Jet GPT can generate up to about 1,500 pixels wide or high. So, yes, it may not be suitable for high resolution printing. You may need to be on opiate tiers for more professional proposals. But if you are only targeting mobile screens or social media such as Instagram, this resolution is more than enough. Now, besides specifying the width height in pixels, you can also specify the size using an image size ratio. For example, one by one, for a perfect square image, four by five, for an Instagram post, 16 by nine, four full HD videos, and so on. In our case, we want to create a poster for Instagram post and for sharing it via Whatsapp, so we can write in a prompt. Make sure the image size ratio is four by five. All right. Next is reference. Essentially, this is where you tell EI what style reason should be created in. You can describe it with words such as minimalist art deco, psychedelic, cyberpunk, Bauhause, pop art, and so on. You may want to search online to learn more about these different graphic design styles. Besides using words, another way to control the style reference is simply by uploading an image. That is, if you see a nice poster online that you like, you can download the image and fed that to the AI and tell it to copy the style. In that case, you need to tell the AI the Dimage you uploaded is only for the style reference and not for the content. Next is overwrites. Here, you want to specify certain aspects of style that you want to have on your poster, which overwrite the provided style references. For example, the style reference may contain a lot of brown colors, but you want blue colors instead in your poster. You can also overwrite textures, fonts, spacing, et cetera. In our case, we want the colors in our poster to be 60% purple, 30% white, and 10% orange. And we want to give a bit of freedom to the AI to add other colors as well. So I add the text in the prompt. Feel free to add other accent colors if you see fit. Next is once. Basically, we tell the EI what graphical elements it needs to add to the design that may not exist in style reference in our case because we want to create a poster for education. You can write in a prompt. You may add graphical elements such as notebooks, laptops, pencils, stars or other objects related to education around the design. Next is the constraints, or some people may refer to it as the negative proms. Essentially, you want to explain to the AI what you don't want to appear in a design. For example, you don't want certain colors or certain elements in a design. In our case, let's say that. We want to poster only display objects without any people or characters. For this, we can type, do not put any people or characters in a design. Finally, is the content. Basically, the content is the elements you already have or created before, and you want to include them inside the design. For posters, there are only two types of content images and texts. For images, most likely, they are logos. Logos need to be precisely follow the original designs, while other graphics, such as illustrations or photos can be freely generated by the eye. In our poster, there is only one logo that we want to display, which is the logo of the school. So we will need to provide that leader. As Photo text content. They are the message that we want to communicate inside the design because the video is already quite long, we will continue with the content creation in the next lesson video. 4. 01-02 Creating the text content: In this lesson video, we will prepare the content that we need to finalize the prompt. At this point, I have already moved the prompt to word processing app called LibreOffice Writer. It's basically like Microsoft Word, but it's free and open source. You don't need to use this app, feel free to use other apps such as Notepad or any other text app you have on your computer. As you can see, I used all the prompt texts we discussed before, but with several adjustments, first, I changed the main color from purple to indigo blue. And then I also changed the lines where I explain the uploaded images. I'm writing the prompt for two uploaded images. The first uploaded image is the logo of the school, and the second uploaded image is for the style reference only. Personally, I don't think I want to upload any star reference image for this project. I will just let AI explore the style for me. I wrote to prompt this way in case you do want to upload an image as the style reference. All right. Next, at the bottom, you can see a sentence. Here is the text, and then you can see all the texts that should be included in the poster. Now, for text content, each business or each product should have its own unique script because each of them may have a different niche, a different angle approaching the market, and have their own competitive advantage. If you already have running business and products or services, you may already know what you are selling, and so you may have the script prepared beforehand. But if you are just getting started and you have no idea what you want to write, you can ask AI to write the script for you. For writing a script, you can write the prompt following the checklist we discussed earlier, but in a much simpler form. You need to tell AI its role, the goal, the structure, or what should be included in the sc and the content, which is basically the name of the business or the product. So you can write the prompt like this, act as a copywriter. I need a script for a poster to advertise an English course offered by my school. The poster should include a title, subtitle, Y section. Programs section, promo section, and call to action section. The name of my school is English Brilliant Academy. So again, this part is the role. This part is the goal. This part is the structure, and this part is the content, okay? Now, for writing the initial script, I like to use either Google Gemini, or hat GPT, as they are both free because I will be demonstrating how to use chat GPT in later lessons. For now, let's explore how we can use Gemini or Google's AI. First, simply open Google's homepage, then click on AI mode and then page the prom text that we just created. Then click on its blue button. As you can see, it already created the title and subtitle sections. Then do I section, a section explaining different programs, the promo section, and the call to action section. If you like the result, you can copy the text by clicking on the small Icon. Next, open your text. Then press Control V to piece the text. From here, you can refine the text further to match your business or your product. Now, what if you still need AI to help you structure words and fix any grammar issues. For these tasks, I usually use two other AI web apps. First is DPL writer for writing short messages or scripts, and second is grammarly for writing long scripts. I won't discuss these web apps in too much detail as it may take too long to cover in this course. But let me show you real quick how it is to edit the text in DeepL writer. First, you can copy the text and then open website, depel.com slash ANSRSI notice, I said the language to English American. Then just paste the text into the left column or the input column. Notice that when we do that, we get corrective suggestions on the right side or the output column. You can keep tweaking the words on left. The right column will be updated accordingly, and you can also edit the resulting text on the right if you need to one of the best features of DPL writer, at least in my opinion, is that you can click on any of the words, and then you can easily find replacement for that word. This is huge for me because I am not a native English speaker. And so I often struggle to find right words when expressing my thoughts. When you are done, you can click on this copy to clipboard button and then place the result into your text application. To conclude the lesson, this is the final form of the prompt that we will use to generate the poster. Notice that I also use a simple formatting technique for defining headings and bullets. Three hashmark symbols mean that the text is set as heading three. This is heading one, and this is heading two. The star or the asterisk symbols are for bulleted lists. You can also use minus symbols for defining bullets if you want to. I provided this prompt text for you in a eadyOfice file format and also in Microsoft Word file format. This way, you can edit it as needed and follow along by the way to the next lesson where we will be using this prompt in jet GPT. 5. 01-03 Using ChatGPT: In this last video, we'll start using chat GPT to generate the initial poster resign for us. But before we do that, you might be wondering, why should we use chat GPT? There are dozens of AI tools that we can use to generate images. Well, the thing about AI is that it has evolved rapidly in the last few years and is accelerating even more in the past couple of months. If you can find other more capable AI for generating images, feel free to use that instead. I use hatGPT because it was the best free option that I could get for designing posters. At least by the time I recorded the video, it can generate images and handles text almost flawlessly. The fret here allows you to create three images a day. If you use all the quota, meaning that you already created three images, you didn't need to wait until the next day or past midnight to get another three images quota. As of the time of the recording, the EI model used by Cha GVT to generate images is called GPT Image 2.5. Yeah, I know the name is way too generic. But despite the simple name, it is a very powerful AI model for generating images that is available for free. So how can we use hat GPT to generate images then? It's very simple, actually, open your browser and then go to the official website, chatjpt.com. If you haven't logged in, you'll see the login or sign up notification up here. You can log in using Google account or other social accounts that you have, or you may also create a new account manually if you wish. Basically, in order to proceed, you need to be logged in. All right. Next, you need to be in image creation mode. If you cannot find the option up here, you can press this plus button and then choose Create image. Now, we need to provide the logo. I already created the logo here inside affinity. For your information, I also use AI to help me design this logo. I won't be discussing how to design logo in the course as that will take too long and wander too far away from poster creation. You can check my other courses related to logo creation if you want to learn more. For now, to follow long, you can use your own logo image if you have one or just use the files I provided for this course. Okay? We need to convert the logo into a PNG file. Why? Because hetGBT does not support the AF native affinity file format. And use PNG instead of JPEG because JPEG does not support transparency. Currently, the pixel output size is too small. Let's set the width to 1,500 pixels because it is a vector. You can freely export it to any size you want without being blurry or weeklatd. Click the Export button and then specify the file name and the location of the exported file. I already exported the logo before, so I don't need to do it again. You can go back to hat GPT. And then click the plus sign again, choose add photos and files. Then find the logo file you exported before. It is the file. Again, you can just use the file. I provided if you want to follow along right away. After we have logo uploaded, we need to type in the prompt here. We already prepared the prompt, so we can just copy and paste it. But I want to skip providing chat GPT with a style reference image. I just want to let it be creative and suggest a style that it thinks is best. Control C to Cathy, then go back to Chet GPT and paste the text here. Again, I want to remove the line where it mentions the second image for the style reference, press the lead, and let's do another review in case there are mistakes in the prompt. After everything is good, you can execute the prompt by pressing this button. Chat GPT will need a few minutes to process it. Here is the result. As you can see, it already did a pretty good job designing the poster, at least as a starting point. Yes, there are still many things that we can improve. For example, the logo, the text should be central aligned, not left aligned. Also, there are some blue colors on the star areas. It generates a tag line or a motto for us, which is very cool, better English, brighter future. You can change this if you want, but I honestly like it. So I think I will keep the tag line. As for the blue ornament at the top, I prefer making it flow to the left. And the icons, currently, it generates alternating colors for the icons. I prefer to make them uniform. That is, we can make all left icons orange and right icons blue. Again, there are still many things we can improve, but we will get to them step by step later. For now, I want you to know that you have two options at this stage. Either keep modifying the image using AI or just bring this to affinity and move forward from there. You need to know that if you do choose to edit the result using AI again, the process will take up your image generation quota. We will discuss the two options. So let's save the image first. To save image, you can click on this download button. Then just select the folder and the file name that you want to use. Okay. Now, let's see how we can edit the image directly using AI. First, we can zoom in to see the image up close. Then you can actually dig this panel to the side or perhaps to the top left, so it does not get in the way. For now, let's focus on recoloring the icons to guide the AI to only fix the problematic area. We can use the markup tool then draw line around the area that we want to revise. Type prompt field, make all left icons in orange. And then draw another line around the white icons. And then type in make all left icons in blue indigo. I'll just copy the text from left to save time. Please note that you do not need to draw and write the prompt in sequence. You may also draw all the markup first and then type the prompt or vice versa. Before we continue as a reminder, this process will cost you one image quota, and most likely this process will slightly change other areas of the image, even if we already mark the areas that we want to fix, the AI often changes other areas also, just so you know the consequences. Okay? If you are ready, just click on this button and then chat GPT, we process the image. Okay, guys, we have the result. As you can see, it did what we asked for. It changed red icons to orange and white icons to blue. We can compare this with the previous version. Let me move this to the side. Not a Saudi, I changed the colors in this area. It also changed other areas if you look closely. Again, this is something that you need to keep in mind. Even if you only want to revise the icons or certain parts of the image, the AI will most likely also alter other areas of the image. I personally like the second version, so let's download the image, and we will continue working on image inside affinity. 6. 02-01 Introduction to Affinity: In this lesson video, we will get to know affinity in terms of the UI, studios and navigation. In a top area, you can find the menus. This is perhaps the most common UI element that you can find in all computer applications. Usually, it starts with the file menu and ends with the help menu. In each of the menus, you can find different sub menus and menu items for different commands or features. Below the menu, you can find a large horizontal bar called the tool bar. Here, you can find global tools, features and modes that you may need to access frequently. If you click on this large affinity icon on the left side, the home screen window will open. And here you can access the studios. We'll discuss more about studios in a moment. Below the tool bar, you can find a smaller bar called the Context tool bar. It is called context because the parameters using this bar do not stay the same. They change dynamically depending on the tool you are currently using. On the left side, you can see a long vertical bar where you can access all the tools in affinity. This area is simply called the tools. Notice that some of the tools in the tool area have a small elbow or carat symbol at the bottom right corner of the icon. This indicates that the tool is not alone. It is grouped with other similar tools. To access all the tools in a tool group, you can either click on a small carat symbol. You can also click and hold the mouse button. In this netian, you can hover over the tool you want to use and then release the mouse, or you can just click to activate any tool. The tool group should show up as a small floating panel. Okay, large area at the center where you can see the document is the canvas area. You can have multiple artboards or pages displayed in this area. Then on the right side, you can find the panels. These panels can be grouped together. If they are grouped together, you can access each of the panels like tabs. And last but not least, you can find the status bar at the bottom of UI, all right. Now, let's go back to the studios. This is perhaps the most important part of UI that you need to understand before anything else. You see, prior to Version three, affinity was not a single application. There is Affinity Photo, which is the equivalent of Photoshop, then there is affinity designer, which is the equivalent of Adoblltraor, and finally, affinity publisher, which is the equivalent of Adobean design. Since version three, that is, since affinity was acquired by Canva, affinity comes in just a single app. But all the features from the previous apps are available inside this one app. Essentially, they transformed into this studio option. So if you activate the vector studio, all the UI elements will be geared towards vector editing. Just like affinity designer or Adobe Illustrator. If you switch the studio to Pixel, the UI transforms into raster image editing, just like a filthy photo or Adobe Photoshop. And if you switch to the layout studio, the UI transforms into a desktop publishing workspace similar to affinity publisher or Adobe design. Now, besides these three main studios, you can also see a studio called Canvo AI. In the studio, you can access many AI powered tools such as generative Expand, generative fill, and so on. But please note that these AI features are not free. You need to be in the paid here where you will get credits or tokens for AI usage. If you click on three dot icons, you can see even more studios. You can turn on or off the studio options using these switches. And notice down here, there is even a button that you can use to create your own studio. This course is not a full course on affinity, so we won't be discussing all of these different studios. In this course, we will only be using two of them, which are the vector Studio and Pixel Studio, all right. Next, let's discuss navigation techniques in affinity. There are at least seven methods that you can use in affinity to perform navigation. Again, for a quick introduction, I will only explain 12 of them, which I think are the most common and fastest ways to navigate in affinity. The first method is using the mouse or the mouse wheel to be exact. This is the best method if you are on a desktop computer and you have access to standard mouse. What I mean by standard mouse is a mouse that has at least a scroll wheel. If you press down and hold the scroll wheel, it will trigger the middle mouse button. In this condition, you can move the mouse around to pin the canvas, then to zoom in and out of the canvas. You need to hold down the Control key, and while doing so, rotate the scroll wheel, rotate up to zoom in and rot it down to zoom out. Alternatively, you can also just rotate the scroll wheel without holding any keys to pin the canvas up and down. And rotate the scroll wheel while holding down the Shift key to pen the canvas sideways. All right. The second method is using the spacebar key. To do this, you first need to press and hold the spacebar key on your keyboard. While in this condition, you can click and drag the mouse to pen viewport. To perform zooming, you need to hold the spacebar first and then hold the Control key. While in this condition, click and drag with your mouse to the left or to the right. If you prefer clicking instead of dragging to perform a Zoom, you can hold the Spacebar and Control and then click to Zoom in, and you can hold Spacebar and out, then click to Zoom out. Okay. Now, you may be wondering, who in the world wants to use this method if using the mouse is easier and faster? Well, you may prefer this method if you are using a drawing tablet because when using a drawing tablet, your right hand is holding the pen, so you cannot use it to rotate the mouse wheel. Of course, if you are left handed, it is your left hand that holds the pen. Nonetheless, your main hand cannot rotate the scroll wheel, but your other hand can still access the keyboard. Okay, guys, so those are the main navigation techniques that you can use in affinity a 7. 02-02 Vector editing basics: In this lesson video, we will cover the basics of vector editing in affinity. For now, make sure you are in vector studio so you can easily access all the vector features that we are about to discuss. In affinity and also in many other graphic software as well, vector objects can be categorized into two types, parametric shapes and editable curves. Parametric shapes are vector objects that after you create them once, you can still reshape them using special control nodes. It is easy to edit them in certain ways, but you cannot freely select their nodes or segments. On the other hand, editable curves are vector objects also, but they don't have any parametric control nodes. You can freely select the nodes inside the curve and tweak them to any shape that you want. To create parametric shapes, simply click on this rectangle tool or its siblings. You can create an ellipse. For example, you can hold the shift key while doing this if you need a perfect circle. You can create a polygon. You can create a star, and so on. After you create some ships, you can select them using the move tool or by pressing V as the shortcut. It is called the move tool because you can grab andrag objects while using it. You can also perform scaling using this tool by dragging the corner nodes and perform rotation using this pointy node. Okay. Now, if you activate the node tool or press A for the shortcut, you can also select objects using this tool. The primary function of this tool is not just for selection, but for editing vector shapes. While the tool is active, you can select a parametric shape. You will see red nodes that you can click and drag to alter the shape of the object. You can define roundness of the corners. For example, change different aspects of the stars primeters change the shape of this polygon, et cetera. So parametric objects like rectangles and circles, do not have any red control nodes. Besides dud control nodes, you can also control parametric objects via the contextual toolbar. As you can see, there are more parameters that you can use up here. For example, you can make more points on star object if you want to. Now in affinity, if you find a value field like this one, you can edit the value by clicking and then typing it manually. You can click here and then wreck the sliders, or my favorite method is just have the mouse cursor over the field and then rotate the scroll wheel up or down. All right. Although working with parametric objects is fun, in the end, you may need to create custom shapes by editing the nodes freely. For example, you want to drag this node to another location or just reshape the object freely. For this, you need to convert the parametric objects into editable curds. You can right click and then convert to course, or as you can see here, the shortcut for the command is Control Enter. If the object is already irritable curve, when you use the node tool, you can access each of the nodes and move them independently to any location that you like. You can drag the segments to bend or curve them. You can also access the handles to control the curvature in more detail. Please note that once you convert a parametric shape to an editable curve, you cannot change it back. Well, unless you perform an u, so just be aware that this conversion is one way ticket wide. Vector objects have two different color types, field color and stroke color. Field color is the color that fills in the vector area, while stroke color is the color of the border lines or curves that surround the vector shape. To see the stroke color, you need to set the stroke width to a value greater than zero, as zero means the vector object does not display its stroke element. Let's make the stroke width of the shape four points. Just for example, now, we can tell that the field color of the shape is gray and the stroke color is black. Okay? Affinity provides many ways to access or change the colors. You can access them up here in a contextual tool bar. This is the field color. This is the stroke color. You can also access them by double clicking on these two circles. The block click on this one to change the stroke color, and the block click on this one to change the fail color. You can also access the colors via the color panel at the top right. Clicking here will access the stroll color, and clicking here we access the field color all right. Next, let's discuss the pen tool. You can find the pen tool here or simply by pressing P on a keyboard. So what can we use the pen tool for? Well, we can use the pen tool to draw custom editable curves. So the result will not be a parametric shape, but an editable curve out of the box. You activate the pen tool, you have two important options up here in the context tool bar. Use line style and use fill. Essentially, if you have this active, when you draw a shape using the pen tool, the resulting shape will have a stroke element visible. But if this is off, the stroke will be invisible. The same concept applies to this field color. If this is on, the shape will have a field color. But if this is off, the resulting shape will have no field color. For example, let's say that we only want to draw strokes without the fill color. We can activate the stroke icon and turn off the fail icon. In this condition, you can perform multiple clicks to form an editable of object. Once you are done, you can click again on a starting node to close the shape. Or if you don't want to create a closed shape, you can also hold Control and click on an empty area. Or you can also switch to other tools such as the move tool by pressing V or the node tool by pressing A. And again, if you are in a node tool, you can further adjust the shape that you just created with the Pen tool. Finally, I want to discuss layers in layer clipping. Make sure you have the layers panel open. In affinity, every object you create will become its own layer. A layer is basically a representation of the objects stacking order. Objects that you place on top will block the objects beneath them. Just to prove this, we can select this star object first and then change their color to orange. And then we can select this polygon object because objects and layers are basically the same. You can select objects in layer panel just like you select the object in the canvas. Let's change the pale color to blue. Now, notice what happens if you overlap the two objects. If we put the orange object on top of the blue one, the orange object blocks the blue one, vice versa, if I move the blue one to the top, it is now the blue one that blocks the orange object. What makes layers a powerful design tool is that you can ask them or create hierarchy, or in other words, you can place one inside another one. You can do this recursively, meaning that you can put layers inside the layer, which is inside another layer and so on. Layer hierarchy can be achieved via grouping, compound layer, masking, and clipping. For now, we will be focusing only on clipping, as this is what we will be using in the upcoming videos. For example, let's say that we want to place the blue shape inside the orange shape to do that. Just drag the blue shape and then drop it on top of the orange shaped name. Remember, do not release it on top of its thumbnails that will create masking instead. Release it on top of label. Now, as you can see, the blue layer lives inside the orange shaped object. The blue shaped area that is outside of its parent area will be invisible. If you select the orange shape and then try to move it using the move tool then or blue shape follows. But if you move the blue shape by the block clicking it first to select it or wide layers panel, moving it will not move the orange shape. In conclusion, moving a parent also moves its children, but moving a child does not move its parent. Okay? If you want to make the book shape independent again, simply drag it so it is outside the orange layer. Okay, guys, there are still many vector editing techniques that we haven't discussed yet. We barely scratch the surface here. But for now, this should give you enough foundation to continue with the next lessons. 8. 02-03 Raster editing basics: In this lesson video, we will cover the basics of roster editing in affinity. To start, make sure you have the pixel studio active. One important aspect that you need to know about roster editing in affinity is the layer types. You see in affinity, there are two types of raster layers, image layer and pixel layer. Image layer is a layer that contains image data usually imported from an external image file. Raster data inside image layers are protected. Meaning that you can scale it down or up without degrading the original image quality. The downside of the image layer is that because it is protected, you cannot perform destructive editing on these layers, such as using the paintbrush tool or the as brush tool. Okay? So that is the image layer. Pixel layer is the opposite. It is a rust layer also, but provided as without any protection. So you can apply all the pixel tools and features, including ones that are destructive, such as the brush tools. Let's see an example of the two layer types. To create a pixel layer, you can click on this icon that looks like a checker pattern. After you have a pixel layer, you can now use it as a blank canvas for the paint brush tool. To activate the paintbrush tool, you can click here or you can also press B for the shortcut. We'll discuss the brush parameters in a moment. For now, we can change the color to red and then apply some brush strokes on this pixel layer. If you want to erase, you can activate the erase brush tool by clicking here or press E for the shortcut. With this tool, you can erase existing pixels. Okay? If you are on a pixel layer, you can also create a pixel selection like this. For example, and then using the move tool, you can click drag inside the selection. Notice how the pixels inside the selection move. You can perform scaling and also rotation on the selected pixels as well. To clear the pixel selection, you can press Control D on keyboard. So that is what a pixel layer is. To see an example of an image layer, you can convert the existing pixel layer into an image layer by using this to image resolves command, but this is not a common scenario. More common one is that you'll get an image layer when you inport an image into your design. The simplest way that you can do this is just by dragging and roping an image file from your file browser to your Affinity app, and there you go, you just created an image layer. With the move to active, you can move the layer, scale it, and also rotate but notice, if I try to apply a brush stroke on this layer, affinity doesn't do anything. The same thing happens when I try to erase the layer using the erase tool. Again, this is because the original raster data is protected. Now, you may be wondering, what if I do want to apply brush strokes or erase certain parts of this layer? Well, one way to do that is to convert the layer into an ordinary pixel layer. For this, you can right click on layer and then choose Rasterize. Affinity will give you the option for rasterize algorithm. For now, use the default option and click the Rasters button to confirm. Now, this layer is a pixel layer. To prove this, you can apply brush strokes to it or other destructive editing techniques. Let me undo it for now. So we have the image layer back. You can tell a layer is an image layer or a pixel layer by looking at its icon. If you see this icon, then you can be sure that the layer is an image layer. But if you see a checkerboard pattern icon, you can be sure that this is a pixel layer. The second method of generating a pixel layer from an image layer is by copying and pasting. For example, I can use rectangular selection tool to select a small part of this image layer. Make sure the layer is active. Now, if I press Control C and then Control V, Affility has just created a new pixel layer on top of the original image layer. You can press Control D to clear the selection. I think you can see this more clearly if we hide the image layer beneath. As you can see, this new pixel layer only contains the part we selected before, right? When you switch the studio from vector to pixel, you may notice a slight difference in the color options. We still have two active colors like in a vector studio, but this one is not the stroke color anymore. It is now called the foreground color, and this color is not called the field color anymore, but is now called the background color. Now, the terms foreground and background may confuse you into thinking that these colors are related to the sorting or composition. Well, they are not. These are merely names from the old days of photoshop. They are basically just placeholders for two different active colors that you can quickly use. For example, you can set the foreground color to red and then set the background color to blue. Now, if you activate the paintbrush tool, you can quickly swap the active colors by pressing X on a keyboard. After applying red, you can quickly press X to apply blue, press X again to get red, and so on. Now, let's discuss several important parameters of the pin brush tool. Please note that because the red brush tool is also using the same brush engine, most of the settings we are about to discuss also work on the s brush tool or any tools that have reward brush in their names. Okay? So first, is the brush size. To control the brush size, you can use this field at the top left of context tool bar, but I don't recommend this method, as you cannot see the brush circle right away. Second method is to hold Control and out, and then click and drag left or right. Going we will make the size bigger, and going left will make it smaller. Sorry, please ignore the yellow circle around my mouse cursor. This is just a highlighter software to use when recording so people can better see where the mouse is going. Let me turn this off so you can see the actual brush cursor in affinity. Besides using the Control back method, you can also press the closing bracket key to make the brush size bigger and press the opening bracket key to make it smaller. Okay, let me turn the highlighter on again, then hide the window. The next important parameter is the brush opacity. You can control the brush opacity here. Or faster way to do this is by pressing the number of keys on the keyboard. If you press two, opacity will be set to 20%. Notice that, if I apply a brush stroke, the resulting pixel becomes very transparent, almost invisible. If we press five, opacity will be set to 50%. This will make the brush strokes semi transparent. Pressing eight will make it 80% opaque and so on. Now to go back to 100% or a fully opaque brush, you can press zero. As you can see, it is now fully opaque. The last thing that you may often be using is the hardness value. If it is set to 100%, the border of the brush strokes will look sharp. There is no transition between the inner and outer area of the brush. If you set this to zero, the border of the brush stroke will be blurred or transition gradually. If you prefer keyboard shortcuts, you can use the same control out drag method as before. But instead of dragging left or right, you need to drag the mouse up or down. So again, while holding control and out, dragging left and right will alter the brush size. And ragging up or down will alter the hardness. All right. Besides using the Context toolbar, if you have a brush tool active, you can also right click anywhere to open the current brush settings floating panel. Here, you can set the size, opacity and hardness and also other settings that we have when discussed. Now, in this condition, to close this panel, you do not want to press Escape, as that will redo all the settings you just made unless you do want to cancel them. Also don't want to click on a canvas as that we apply a brush stroke on your work. To close this window, you can click on any of the UI area that are not the canvas, or you can also press the middle mouse button as if you are trying to pin the canvas. Okay, guys, there are still tons of things that we haven't discussed in terms of raster editing, but this should provide you with good foundations to follow along with the upcoming lesson videos. 9. 02-04 Removing elements and replacing the logo: In this lesson video, we will open the image created by hat GPT, learn how to remove elements from that image and then finally replace the logo. First, make sure you have the Affinity app running. To open an image, you can go to the file menu, then just open. Here if you remember, we have two images downloaded from JatGPT. Let's open the second image. For now, we want to fix the upper left part of the poster where the logo is. As I mentioned before, logo is not correct. We have some blue colors on the star element, and the text logo should be central lined, not left lined. To remove logo non destructively, we can cover it with a vector shape. To achieve this, we can use the pen tool. As for the field color, we can set the color by picking the color near the logo. We can see that the color is actually white on that all the RGB values are at 255. For now, we do not need any stroke color. To set this, we can turn off the stroke icon or use the stroke color here to control it. After that, we can create a shape by clicking and releasing round logo to cover the area. Press V to finalize the pen tool and switch to the move tool. At this point, we have a new vector shape in white sitting on top of the original image layer. Now, if you click on empty area to dislike everything, you can see that the original background area is not a flat white color. It actually has a subtle gradation from white to an of white color. To create gradient coloring, you can use a tool called the fail tool or just press G for the shortcut. And then you can click Andrag to form a gradient in a diagonal direction. While the field color is still active, you can click on any of these nodes to activate it. This is useful if we want to change the color on a specific node. For now, we want this node to follow the off white color. While the node is active, you can click Andret the color picker to the target area. Another method to remove elements non destructively is by covering them with a pixel layer and then using the brush tool to paint on the area that you want to hide. Let's see this in action. First, you can create a pixel layer by clicking on this icon. And then to easily access all the pixel related tools, you can open the Pixel studio, use the freehand selection tool, but activate the polygonal mode. With this tool active, you can create a pixel selection area by clicking and releasing the mouse. Double click to finish up the selection. Next, use the paintbrush tool. White click and then turn down the hardness value, so the outdoor brush is blurry. Okay, let me undo this. For the color, we can pick the off white color. Then you can increase the brush size by pressing the closing racket key on the keyboard and you supply the brush strokes gradually. Press Control D to clear the pixel selection. If you over paint an area and you want to remove or erase it, you can do that using the eraser brush tool to reduce the brush strength. You can lower the opacity value by moving the mouse cursor to this area and then rotating the scroll wheel. Or you can also press the number keys on the keyboard. For example, if you press the number five key on the keyboard, the brush opacity level will be set to 50%. After that, you supply some brush strokes on the image or layer to erase the pixels. Feel free to combine the brush and eraser techniques until you get what you need. To recap, up to this point, we have created two layers. First is the vector shape layer. And second, is the raster or the pixel layer. Next, we can add or replace the logo with our original logo. You can use the logo in a PNG file format that I provided for the scores. You can just click and drag the image to affinity if you want, because I already have the logo file open on another tab, I can just copy all the layers belonging to the logo. Go back to the poster file again and then press Control V to paste the layers. You can scale the layers while holding Shift to retain size ratio and then move them as you see fit Sorry, I think we should group all these layers together, like one at the bottom hold sat and then select the top one. Then press control G to group them. As you can see, we can now easily select and move the logo as one group object instead of multiple independent layers. Also don't need to press the shift key anymore to perform a uniform scale when your object is group. Feel free to just logo position until you like how it looks. You may also use the arrow keys on the keyboard to nudge or move logos slightly. I think we have done a good job replacing the logo. 10. 02-05 Recreating graphical elements: In this lassen video, we will discuss how to fix the poster image by recreating some of the graphical elements inside it. First, I think this blue ornament should flow to the left. To fix this, you can use the pen tool. Let's turn off the snapping feature for now. Click and in this location. And then click and drag here, hold out to corner of the node, and then keep clicking until we have a closed shape. Was V and drag the color picker, icon to sample the blue color. I think it looks too curfy. We can fix this using the node tool. Move the node to the right, and then select and move this node. We can control the curfature by dragging the handle. All right. Next, let's fix the megaphone grip, as you can see, the grip detaches from the main body. To fix this, we can use the pentle again, click here, then here, and so on until it ps back to the first node. For the field color, we can pick the existing bright orange color to create the shade area. We can use the Pen tool again, but hold Control and then click to disect all objects. Sorry, I forgot to lock the original image. We need to lock it so we don't accidentally move it. Now we can click here, click and drag here, and so on, until it goes back to the first node. Let's move this aside for now. The pick the darker orange color from the image. We can move this back into place. Now, we want to please darker orange shape, so it is inside the bright orange shape. For this, we need to drag the dark orange layer and then release it on top of the bright orange layer's name. Remember, do not release it on top of its thumbnail, as that will create masking instead. We want to release it on its name so it creates a clipping layer. Now the dark orange layer becomes spot or a child layer of the bright orange layer. All right. I think we should add another element for the blue part. Use the pen tool again. Click here, then here, then here, and so on. Set the color to follow the nearest blue color and then use the field tool to create a gradient coloring from blue to darker blue. Should place this blue shape on top of the orange grid shape. Now, if you notice when we zoom into close, you will see white grid lines indicating the pixels. This is called the Pixel grade. If you do not like this behavior, you can hide the pixel grid by going to the view menu, then choosing show, and then finding the pixel grid option to deactivated it. Personally, I prefer this clean look without the pixel grade. I think I want to edit the shape again using the node tool. Move this up here, and this one goes up here. Dig this segment to curved and also dig this segment. Alright. Feel free to keep tweaking the shapes. But I just consider this megaphone object done. Let's move on to the middle bottom area. There are many things that we want to erase first from the original image. For this, we can use the pixel layer method. So create a new pixel layer at the top of the stack. Go to Pixel Studio, activate the brush tool. White click, and set the hardness value all the way to 100%. Press the opening bracket key to decrease the brush size. Let's pick the blue color here. We can make the brush smaller. Let's add some brush strokes to cover the orange dots. Let's continue the process. Now, you can keep using the Dicker icon method to sample colors. But if you are using the brush tool, you can also press out and click or A and click drag to sample the color. So again, while using the brush tool, you can hold out and click or A and click and drag to sample colors. Okay. Next, we want to fix this ugly dashed line. First, we can cover the original image using the brush tool. The technique is the same as the previous. Hold all and then click and drag to sample the blue color. Then just click and drag to paint to cover the white line. Okay, to make the bright and dark blue colors blend even more, we can white click and then try decreasing the hardness value and then just carefully apply some brush strokes in the area where the colors look disconnected or clashing. A All right. Next, to redraw the dash line that forms a rectangle, we can use the pen tool again. Let's first activate the vector studio and then the pen tool. For now, what we need is just the stroke without any feel. As for the stroke color, let's pick white. Now, personally, I do not like using these RGB sliders to pick colors. My favorite color picker mode is this huge strip mode. Make sure white is selected. Now we can start brewing the shape by clicking here. Then here and here, here, then back to the first node. To tweak the nodes positions, we can use the node tool. If you prefer a rounded corner, you can direct this red node. But to perform this uniformly across all four nodes, you can first press Control A to select all nodes. For your information in previous versions, you needed to use the corner tool to round corners. But since September 2026 release, you can just use the node tool to round corners, which is quite convenient. Just direct one of red nodes, then all the other selected nodes will get rounded as well. In this condition, you can still fly tweak the shape by dragging the original node location. All right. If you are done, you can control the appearance of the stroke by clicking on this icon. This will bring up the stroke properties panel to turn the line into a dashed line. You need to click on this icon. Let me zoom in even more so I can see the line better. Currently, the line is too thin. Let's increase the width value. I think three points is enough for our purpose. Now we can try increasing the solid length to two and then the gap length to two as well or perhaps three. Nope, let's just stay with two. Okay, guys, I believe our work is done for now. We will continue with other tweaks in the next videos. 11. 02-06 Fixing the title area: Let's continue fixing the poster. In this lesson video, we will focus on the main title area. First, we want this area to be larger so we can put larger text and also more elements. Make sure the original image layer is active and we are in a pixel studio. Then use the freehand selection tool and set the selection mode to polygon. Start creating a selection from this part and then cut through the middle. Basically, we want to select the title background from the middle to the top. Try to follow the shapes as closely as possible. Then double click to close the selection. If you want to add more area to the selection, you can do that by holding Shift. If you are done, you can press Control C to copy and then Control V to paste that will paste the pixels inside the selection into a new layer. Press Control D to dislike everything and then press V to activate the move tool. Notice that when I click and drag the layer, we actually have identical pixels to the title area in the original image. Position this layer to the top of the stack, you can hold Shift and control and press the closing bracket key on keyboard. As you can see, the layer is now at the very top of the stack. Next, you can move this layer up stack vertically by holding Shift, or you can just use the arrow key to move it upward. I think we need to move Globo upward also so we have more room for the title. Remember that we have created the grip for the megaphone object before. Currently, the layers are not visible because they are blocked by the title layer. You can select them and then press Control G to group them. Then press Control Shift closing bracket key to place it on top of the layer stack of this up while holding Shift, or you can also use the up or down arrow keys to nudge All right. Next, we want to remove or cover the whole text in this area. For this, we can press P to activate the pen tool as photopil color, change the color type from gradient to solid color, then sample the blue color in the title area. Make sure we only have the fill active without the stroke and then create a shape that covers all the text in this title area. Press V for the move tool and then click on an empty area to dislike all. This is what we have so far. Again, we basically just created a vector shape on top of the title area. To make the colors bend more seamlessly, we can create a new pixel layer on top of the vector shape layer. Use the selection tool to create a selection region slightly larger than vector shape, but still within the blue background area. Next, we can press B to activate the brush tool. Then hold out and click drag to sample the blue color. Next, apply some brush strokes at the vector shaped border to blend the colors. After that, you can press Control D to this leg. If you are still not satisfied with the result, you can also pick the darker color of the ra area and then paint that instead on top of the ship layer. Feel free to repeat the process until you like how it looks. For now, I consider this good enough. All right. Next, I think I want to go back to the megaphone object. Notice how the audio muting effect looks kind of awkward. It's yellow, but then turns to white. I think it will look better if we just use red, so it is more consistent. I think this thread will do. Make sure you are in a pen tool. Then click here, then here, and so on. Until you cover the effect. You do not need to create any cuff around the corner at this stage. For now, just make simple rectangles with all the corners shop. We will round them later. Press V for the move tool, select all these shapes by holding Shift. To combine them into a single object, we can go to the vector studio and then press this Ed Bull and icon, press A for the node tool, click on the shape, then hold Shift and keep clicking on the rest of the shapes. To select only the end nodes, perform a click drag like, then hold Shift and throw click drag again, to also select the other end points, and then we can direct the red nodes to round the corners. Let's do the same with the starting nodes. Select all the shapes, again, click and drag to select only the Sting nodes and then rack red nodes. Try to make it less round than the end points, and that's it. I think we can move on to adding the title text, but we will do that in the next video inshalla. 12. 02-07 Rewriting the title text: In this lesson video, we will replace or rewrite the text in the title area. But before we do that, we need to make sure that we have the font that we need. You may use any fonts that you like from your own library or computer. But right now, let's just say that we want to follow the font as closely as possible to the font used by the AI. If you look closely, the font is a sensorive type that has a distinct characteristic. That is the end of the G letter and the a letter from a diagonal line. We can use this characteristic to find the font that we need. There are many places online where you can find phones for free. My favorite and number one place to find free phones is the Google phones repository. The URL is funs doggle.com. Now, if you cannot see the left panel, you need to click on this filters button because we want to compare the word English in our poster. We can type English here in all capital letters. Currently, Google displays all types of fonts. We want to narrow down the list to only display Sserif phones, not Serif phones but censerif and we want the growths category, as it is both, just like the phone in the original poster. Now the phone list only display both sensitive phones. We can make the phones larger to clearly see their characteristics. Again, we need to find a phone with the ends of letters G and S sranded. Also, the G letter does not have any legs. Now, this amabara font is closed, but I did this before off the record and already found the best phone for our title called Gantari. I hope I pronounce it correctly because I already know the font name. I can just type it here, Gantari and here is the font. Now, we are focusing only on the Gantari phone. We can try to make the phone bolder and also make it larger. As you can see, letter G and letter both have slanted ends. Okay? To be able to use this phone, you need to first download it and install it. You can press the G button up here. This area is like a shopping cart. This means that every time you press the GPhone button, the phone will be listed here. Currently, we only have one font listed, which is Gantai so you can just click on this download icon to download it. The font will be packaged inside a Zip file. Have a special subfolder called fonts in my downloads folder where I usually store all the downloaded fonts. Okay. Let's open a folder, and then we can extract the zip file. The phones are now ready inside the folder called Gantai. Now, before we install the phones, you may want to close all applications running that make use of the system phones. Why? Because some applications tend to crash when new phones get installed. Let's just close them all to play safe. I have two documents open in delivery office writer currently. I can close all Windows to close them all at once, and then you want to close the Affinity app as well. I already have the document saved. You may want to save it first before closing the app. Okay? Now that all text related applications are closed, we can safely install the phones. The Gantari phone has two types, the straight version and the italic version. I want to install both. So I am selecting both of them. White click and then choose install for all users. Wait for it and it is done. We can start Affinity again and open our web document and also the word processing app where we have the prompt text. After we have the document open, we can add a new title. I want the title to just say English Brilliant without the word CadmiF this, you need to activate the artistic text tool, not the front text tool, as this is more suitable for long form text with multiple paragraphs. We will use this leader for the subtitle text. For now, we use the artistic text tool as it is more suitable for short texts such as the title. Then click and drag LZo to preview the size of the font and then release, type in English, press Enter, then brilliant, all in capital letters. Press Control A to select all text. Change the text alignment to center, then apply the phone we just download it called Gentari. Sorry, I mean Gantari with an A. Here is the phone. Make the phone bolder. I think we can even go to Maximum or use the black version. Change the phone color to white, and then to control the line height, you can hold the key and press the up or down arrow keys on a keyboard. Press escape and press V. Sorry, you need to press Escape twice, then press V for the move to move it here, rotate it using the top handle. You can also scale it using the corner nodes. Okay. Now, to make the title more prominent or stand out from the rest of the design, we want to add a dark arrow element almost black, pointing to the right as if when you learn English via this English brilliant program, you will be able to listen, speak, read and write fluently in English. This, you can use the pen tool. Make sure only the field is active. As for the color, you can choose something dark. Perhaps we can start by picking one of the dark blue colors that already exist in the original design. But then we make it even darker. Now we can start drawing the arrow shape. Click here, then here, and so on. Try to create an arrow shape that encloses the title text. Don't worry if it is not perfect yet, as you can edit it again after this, press V, and then position this layer below the text layer. To edit the arrow shape, you can use the node tool, feel free to keep ticking the shape until you like how it looks. You may also scale down or scale up the title text if needed. Next, we want to add the subtitle text in this area. You can open LibreOffice or any word processing app that you have, then select and copy the subtitle text from the prompt we just created earlier. Now, we want to use the frame text tool and not the artistic text tool. Click and Drag like this and then press Control V to piece the text. The text size is too small, press Control A to select all. Then change the phone to any phone that you like. For now, I prefer to use a phone called Monsrat. You can also find this phone on Google Phone's repository, increase the size by rotating the scroll wheel up. I think 20 points is enough for this text, and then change the phone color to white. Currently, it's using the thin version. We want to use something thicker like the bolt version or extra bolt version. But I think the semi bold version is enough for our purpose, activate move tool and move it up a bit. Now, notice the difference between frame text and artistic text objects. Unlike the artistic text object, changing the scale nodes does not alter the phone size, but rather changes the size of the container. We can use the rotate node to rotate the frame. And let's change the alignment to center. I think we should make the text closer together. You can do that by holding out and then pressing the up arrow key. I think this is enough and just position it roughly at the center, bottom of the blue area. Now, if you want to see the design without any text boxes or as if it were the final product, you can open a view menu and choose preview mode, or you can also press Control Shift W as a shortcut, okay? I think I need to move this subtitle text down a bit. Also, the title and the arrow shape, move this down also using the arrow key. Okay, guys, this is what we have so far. I may weak the ships or the text here and there off record, but I won't be using any techniques that we haven't discussed. 13. 02-08 Fixing some layout mistakes: We will continue working on a poster. In this video, we want to fix the frontis in a poster. First, we want to focus on this part. Notice there is a strange bump here and a small light blue triangle on the right. We can fix this by creating a shape that covers the top and right area of the heading. For this, we can use the pen tool Press here to swap the colors, and instead the feel color to match the nearest background color. Make sure you have only to feel active for now. Click here. Then just before the curve here. Then here, and then here. We want to create a straight shape that covers the bump area. Press A for the node two and then drag this segment to curve it out. You can use the handles to control the curvature further. And HamduraT part is done. Now, before going down, I just realized that we still have problems in a title area. There are blue spots and the plan pot is covered by a white border. If you use to move to and then try to move this image layer, you'll be able to see the problem more clearly. Currently, I am in pixel studio mode use the freehand selection tool. Click here, then click and then press Andrag to draw a selection region with the mouse. Then click and click. And finally, double click to close the selection region. And then press de lead to erase the pixels inside the selection region. All right. Next, we want to remove the blue spots. You can use the brush toool method you say before, but I want to explore alternative techniques. So first, you need to create a selection. We can draw a selection region around the spot, then pick the background color. Then to fill the selection with the active background color, you can press out and B space. We can do the same with the bottom spot. Create the selection first, and then press out Backspace. You can continue making the color more seamless using the brush technique. I won't do that, as I think this is already good enough. As you can see, it looks fine if you zoom out and see the poster from a normal distance. 14. 02-09 Changing the text color: In this lesson video, we will discuss how to change the text color inside the poster to black. We are not going to change just one or two pieces of the text in a poster, but we will change all the bulleted list text, excluding the headings because of this, using the recreate method, as we did with the title will be a bad idea because that will take too long to do this. First, make sure you have the original image layer selected, then activate rectangular selection tool. Click and Drag to select the first stop text area. Now while holding Shift, you can click dreg to create another rectangular selection. This will add the selection without clearing out the previous selection region. Just do this for all the text areas, including the text areas on right side. We also want to cover the bottom text, but because the text is rotated, we should switch to the freehand selection tool. Remember to hold the Shift key otherwise, the previous selection will be gone. Now that we have selected all the text, we can press Control C, then Control V. This will create a new pixel layer containing the text inside the selexen region. Just to prove this, you can breast Control D, it's like, and then if we move layer, you can see the actual content of the new layer. Okay? Now, we want to make the layer become black and white or gray scale to be exact. To do this non destructively, you can create a new adjustment layer called black and white. Notice how this adjustment layer affects everything. Sorry, let me just close this for now. Essentially, an adjustment layer affects all layers below it. To make it locally affect the pixel layer, you need to direct the adjustment layer on top of the pixel layer's name. As you can see, it is now inside or has become the child of the pixel layer. That is why only the content of the pixel layer looks gray scale. Currently, the black level is way too low. We can fix this using another adjustment layer called level. But we want to create it directly inside the pixel layer, so it does not affect the other layers. Just make sure the black and white adjustment layer is selected, so the new layer will be created on top of it. Click here, and then choose level. Notice the level layer is already inside the pixel layer. Next, we need to drag the black level up to make the black color stronger. And then we can wreck the white level down to make the white color brighter. Just play around with these two sliders until you get clean black and white colors. Okay, we now have a text layer with good contrasting black and white colors. Now, to make all the white color transparent and keep the black color visible, you need to select the main pixel layer and then change the blending mode from normal to multiply. As you can see, all the text in this layer becomes black while the original background colors remain visible. This is before, and this is after. 15. 02-10 Fixing the call to action with Image Trace: The most important aspect of design is the CtA or the call to action. It is something that we want viewers to do or take action. That is why you mostly want to make the cts color different and stand out from the rest of the colors in the design. In the case of our poster, the call to action is obviously the phone number and website URL at the bottom right of the page. We want people to call that number or visit the website. For this purpose, we want to change the background element color to something striking like red, while also fixing the layout of the background shapes. As photo text elements, we can recreate them as there are only two of them. The main problem is these icons here. You can create them from scratch. I do have a course that covers logo and icon creation. But in this lesson, I want to show you how you can use the image trace feature in infinity to convert raster graphics to vectors. First, select the original image layer, then use the rectangular selection tool, select the two icons, press Control C, and then Control V. Again, we've done this before. This basically creates a new layer on top of the original layer containing pixels inside the selection. Okay. Next, to trace this layer into vector shapes, you can open a vector menu and then choose image trace. For the settings, I usually try to increase the age threshold value as high as I can and lower the curve fitting tolerance value as low as I can. You can see the preview directly on Canvas. If you like how it looks, you can hit Dplight button. Okay. The result of image operation is a group layer containing different vector shapes that make up the graphic side the original layer for now, so you can see the vector shapes better. To break a group layer, you can press Control ShifG. If you ever forget the shortcut, you can also right click and then choose and group. Now each layer is located on the main level. You can select the blue background shape. Notice how the image trays feature in affinity is smart enough to stack to vector layers. We don't need this shape, so it's safe to just delete it. As for the phone icon, we want it to punch a hole in its circular shape to do that. We need to select both shapes, go to the vector studio, and then click on this subtract Bullion button. The bottom globe icon is the same. If we move the Blue circle, we can see that it is actually stacking on top of the L circle. We can select both of the shapes and then perform another subtract Blon. Next, we can select all the ships belonging to the global icon. Sorry, be careful not to select other shapes or layers that we don't need. We can select them one by one by holding sat. You can also do this via the layers panel. Anyway you do it, just make sure you have all the shape selected and not more. After that, click on the Ad Wolean button. All right. So you now have this icon in vector, and this icon is also in vector. Let's unhide the original image layer. Next, we want to recreate the range triangle. Make sure the original layer is selected, so the newly created shape sits on top of it. Use the pen tool and then create a triangle shape following the reference. Press V, and then move this to the side, pick the orange color from the reference, and then slide this back to its place. Next, we can select the original layer again. Use the pen tool, then draw a shape that covers the blue colored element in your original design. You can tweak the shape further using the node tool if needed. After that, use the color picker icon to sample the white background. Now, select the orange triangle and then create a rounded rectangle at this location. As for the field color, we can select reddish color, perhaps slightly towards purple or magenta. And let's make it darker so the white tax on top of it becomes clearer. All right. Next, we need to recreate the text for the phone number. For this, we can open a prom text we created earlier, and then copy the phone number. Go back to affinity, use the artistic text tool. Click and drag to refine the size, and then press Control V to paste the text. Sorry, you should press Control of Shift V instead to paste only the text without the formatting. If you ever forget the shortcut, you can also open the di menu then paste and then choose without format. Okay. Let's repeat the process by copying the URL text. Then use the Artistic text tool, click and Rack and make it a bit smaller Do phone number, press Control Alt Shift V. Okay. Now, use the Move tool and then slight both text objects. I'll be using the same phone as the subtitle, which is once raw for the upper text, you can change the weight to semi bold or just bold and then change the color to white scale it up or down until it is roughly the size, and then position it so it is on the middle line of Rufon I can Okay. Now we can select the URL text, change the way to semi bold, change the color to white, tweak this scale if needed, and then try to align it with the upper text. I think the red area has too much empty space. Before moving the elements, it will be easier if you first select all of them And then press Control G to group them. This way, we can move them as a single entity. I think we also need to adjust the shape of red proned rectangle. AHdulaO project is done, and it is the final result. 16. 02-11 Exporting designs to Canva and images: In this lesson video, we are going to explore different ways we can export our design. After you have finished design, you may want to publish it to social media or share it with your clients, friends, and community. To quickly export your design, you can access the Quick Export panel located at the top right area of Y. Notice that here, I have three options SVG, PNG, and JPG, also known as JPEG. If you often use other file formats, you can add that format by clicking this Plus button. One thing I need to remind you is that before opening the Export panel, you do not want to select any element in a design. Why? Because if you do that, Affinity will think that you are to export only that element and not the rest. Just to show you what I mean, if I select this layer, which is basically this blue area element, when I open the Export panel, notice the preview box. I only displays the blue element, and the option down here says selection only by default. If this is not what you want, meaning that you actually want to export the whole design, then you need to change this option to whole document. Now, we can see the whole design in a preview box. So yes, this preview box is very important for you to check before you do any exporting. But again, to avoid any mistakes or regrets, it's better to just not select anything before exporting. That is, if you do want to export the whole design because this way, by default, Affinity will set the export setting to whole document. After that, you can press the export button, right? Now, you might be wondering so when should we use PNG, JPEG, and as Fiji then? If you want to publish your reason to your own website, such as to Wordpress Propel, Jumbl or other CMS that you have, you should use JPEG instead. JPEG has lossy compression algorithm that can make your image file quite small. This way, your website will open faster. It's called lousy compression because the quality of your image will be grade. So this is a trade off that you need to make. Another thing about JPEG is that it does not support transparency. So to recap, if you do not need transparency and you want a smaller file size, then you can go with JPEG. But if you want to keep the image quality, and you may also want to keep the transparency, then you should select PNG instead. The PNG file size is usually bigger, but there is no quality loss in process as for SVG. You should use SFIgi when you want to export vector graphics, such as a logo or icon from Affinity to another app that supports the SVG file format. You do not want to use SFIgi if your design contains many raster graphics or if you want to publish it on social media platforms, right? Now, you might be wondering again, what if we want to use other formats such as PDF or OFP, for example, can we do that in Affinity? Yes, we can. If you need more format options, you can click on this Advanced button. This will bring up the complete export window. Another way to open this window is to use the shortcut Control Alt Shift W. Or if you forget the shortcut, you can find a command in the file menu, Export and then export. As you can see, the same export window opened. In this window, you can access all the file formats that Affinity can handle. You can export to PDF. You can export to PSD or Adobe Photoshop format. You can export to EPAb which is like PDF, but has the ability to float the text. So it is commonly used for eBooks, then you can use the WG and the XF. These are two main formats used in cat applications. So you mostly want to use these two file formats to export vector ships to CAD software like AutoCad, QCAD, OpenCad studio, and the like. And there is also web P. Web P is a modern file format designed by Google. Replace PNG and JPEG, just as before, after you select the file format, you can then press this Export button to save the file. Because Affinity is now owned by Canva, there is a unique export option that you can use in Affinity called Canva Design. It's unique because instead of saving your design as a file, it exports your design directly to your Canva account, but there is a catch. Not all of your layers or desi and elements get converted correctly. At least that is the case in the current version when I recorded this video. I hope this gets fixed in the future or when you watch the video. Now I have already pressed the Export button, so the design is already in my Canva account. Let's see how we can access the design in Canva. Make sure you are logged in to Canva with the same account you logged in with Affinity. You may not see the design right the way on your homepage. You need to find it in your projects page. I have mine showing up here because I opened it before off record. So again, you need to open the projects page and here you will see the design, you just exported in this area. We can open the design simply by clicking on it. And here you go. As you can see, this is not a flat image like PNG or JPEG. It retains the layers we have in Affinity. But as I mentioned earlier, some of the design elements are not exported correctly. As an example, the title text does not use the Gantai font that we carefully set before. Instead, it uses a Serif font type. There are still many things that are not correct in this design. In conclusion, if you want to export your designs from Affinity to Canva, you may need to spend extra time fixing some of the elements here and there. 17. 03-01 Affinity for beginners course: By now, you have seen and experienced how AI can speed up your workflow when creating poster designs or other graphical designs. However, you also understand that the manual graphic design skills still matter. You can prompt your way through dozens of image regenerations to get the right result. But this method is expensive as it requires a lot of tokens or AI credits, and it does not guarantee a faster workflow as AI tends to change areas that were already correct. In many cases, manually editing infinity is faster and cheaper because you can get straight to the point. If you want to learn how to use all the vector tools in Affinity, you should check out my course Affinity for beginners, designing logos and icons. This course is designed with complete beginners in mind. It will guide you step by step from the very basics to designing simple icons until you can master creating complex logos. So join the course now and take your skills to the next level.