Layer clipping

Clipping involves positioning one object inside another. The path of the parent object becomes the new boundaries for the child object. Any areas of the child object which lie outside the parent object's path are masked (hidden).

Clipping before
Clipping after
Pixel brush strokes clipped within the fish's vector outline.

About clipping

Any object can act as a parent or child in clipping relationships. Both vector objects and pixel layer content can be either clipped or clipping objects. In Affinity Designer, it is popular to clip pixel brush textures to a vector object's outline (see example above).

When scaling a parent object, child (clipped) objects scale to maintain the correct aspect ratio. Scaling a clipped object has no effect on the parent object. A clipped object can be edited independently from its parent, e.g. adjusting colour, opacity, and/or blend mode.

To clip objects:
  1. On the page, position the object to be clipped so it overlaps the object which will perform the clipping.
  2. Do one of the following, with the object to be clipped being selected:
    • On the Layers panel, drag it on top of the object which is to perform the clipping.
    • On the Layer menu, select Arrange>Move Inside. This moves the object inside the object above it on the Layers panel.
To unclip an object:

Do one of the following:

SEE ALSO: