: How to make an acrylic blur using gaussian blur in Affinity Designer I am using Affinity Designer and it lacks an acrylic blur feature. Is there any way to create an acrylic blur using a

@Berryessa866

We can achieve this effect in Affinity Designer in 6 simple steps without leaving the design persona.


Duplicate the background layer with Ctrl + j
Create a shape you want to mask it (in this example a rectangle).
Move the duplicate layer into the rectangle shape to create a layer mask.
Apply Gaussian blur to the duplicate layer from the fx option.
Select the rectangle mask layer and select "Lock Children" checkbox from the context menu at the top.
Now you can even change the shape and size of the rectangle mask without affecting the background layer position.




By checking the preserve alpha option, we can retain the blur effect at the edges too.

Hope this helps!

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@Holmes874

In Affinity Designer one must often jump from vector domain to pixels. This is not an exception.

The basic idea is already told in comments and other answers. It's to make heavily gaussian blurred copy of your image and crop it. Unfortunately in vector domain the cropping also reduces the area where the blur is calculated. You wouldn't get full blur at the edges of the wanted area. You must


make a copy of your image, all layers in the copy merged to the top layer
add layer effect Gaussian Blur
add a layer effect "color overlay". With low opacity it gives to your acrylic plate some plausibility. In the following example the color overlay is white and its opacity is 13%
rasterize the layer, do not copy the layer effects (=apply the effects destructively, not any more editable)
crop the layer to wanted size or make a pixel selection of the wanted area and copy&paste it as a new layer


EDIT: this is based on quessed original. it's much too dark. I have used the right original (by Microsoft) in the addendum. To get the same result the highlights in the right original should be flattened by the curves tool in a photo editor.



ADDENDUM: The questioner wanted a video. Unfortunately my screen recording system makes too large files to upload here. It also has a limited color palette, so the result is inferior for teaching image editing. Hopefully the workflow is understandable. Here's the link

Workflow demo video

As separate screenshot the result is the following:

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@Hamaas979

Edit: I answered this for Photoshop before realising that the OP had asked for Affinity Designer. I'll leave this answer in any case, since it might be useful to someone.

As far as I have been able to ascertain, you seem to be talking about a gaussian blur with a semi-transparent overlay of solid colour. I found this image of the effect.



Anyhoo, here's how I would recreate such an effect in Photoshop:


Open an image to use as the background.
Duplicate the layer, and turn it into a Smart Object using Filter > Convert for Smart Filters
In the layers panel, double click the Smart Object to enter it. Apply a guassian blur using Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur
While still in the Smart Object, add a new layer above, fill it white, and reduce the layer opacity to something like 20%. Close and save the Smart Object.
Below the Smart Object layer, create a shape using the Rectangle Tool, or any of the shape tools, filled solid - the colour of fill doesn't matter.
Select the Smart Object layer and click Layer > Create Clipping mask.
You could also add a drop shadow layer effect to the rectangle.


Example:




Now you can drag the rectangle layer around the image, and the Smart Object will be revealed wherever you drag it.


Example:

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