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.
Clipping in Layers panel
Layers panel showing white brush stroke layer being dragged onto the fish's outline layer (above).

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 color, 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. A blue highlight appears to target the layer.
    • On the Layer menu, select Arrange>Move Inside. This moves the object inside the object above it on the Layers panel.

The clipped object is nested within the clipping object in the Layers panel. The clipped object has become a child of the clipping object.

To unclip an object:

Do one of the following:

To resize an object without scaling its child layer content:

SEE ALSO: