In Affinity Photo 2 on Mac, confine an adjustment by making it a child of the target group. To affect layers outside that group, move the adjustment above them in the main layer stack. Layer placement provides the documented control.

This walkthrough uses an original arrangement of colored rectangles to make the affected layers easy to identify. It follows the official Affinity Photo 2 desktop documentation; the Photoshop comparison below explains why advice about changing a group’s blend mode needs application-specific context.

What determines which layers an adjustment affects?

Affinity documents two useful placement rules: an adjustment affects layers below it, and an adjustment made a child of a layer or group affects that parent only. Consequently, start by checking the adjustment’s position and parent in the Layers panel. Applying adjustments

For a group-only result, the adjustment must belong to the intended group. For a broader result, place it outside that group, above the layers it should affect. Affinity explicitly supports dragging an adjustment onto a layer or group to restrict its scope, or moving it toward the top of the stack to affect more layers. Using adjustment layers

Use this decision table before changing settings:

Desired result Layer arrangement to use
Adjust one shape Make the adjustment a child of that shape.
Adjust a group of shapes Make the adjustment a child of the group.
Adjust the group and artwork beneath it Put the adjustment outside the group, above both.
Adjust selected objects while preserving others Group the intended targets and attach the adjustment to that group.
Restrict the adjustment to part of those objects Establish the correct parent first, then mask the adjustment.

These arrangements follow Affinity’s documented adjustment and clipping relationships. Layer clipping

Build a simple abstract-shape scope test

Use a new document or a spare document containing no other artwork. The following names and colors are illustrative choices, designed to distinguish group membership from visual position.

  1. Choose the Rectangle Tool and draw a wide rectangle across the lower part of the canvas. Give it a blue Fill and name its layer Outside Blue.
  2. Draw two smaller rectangles above it, one orange and one green. Name them Inside Orange and Inside Green.
  3. Keep part of the blue rectangle visible beside the smaller rectangles, so it remains easy to inspect.
  4. Arrange the orange and green layers above the blue layer in the Layers panel.

Affinity’s shape tools support drawing by dragging, and the rectangle’s context toolbar provides its Fill control. Draw and edit geometric shapes, Rectangle Tool

Select the orange and green layer rows together and click Group Layers in the Layers panel. Rename the resulting group Shape Pair. Expand its arrow and confirm that both smaller rectangles appear inside it while Outside Blue remains outside. Grouping keeps the source layers separate, and the group can later be ungrouped. Grouping

The starting hierarchy should look like this. This is a layer-stack diagram, read from top to bottom:

Shape Pair [Group]
    Inside Green
    Inside Orange
Outside Blue

Use visibly saturated fills for this exercise. A grayscale adjustment is easier to diagnose on orange, green and blue artwork than on shapes that already look nearly gray. The shapes’ exact sizes and color values are unimportant.

Keep the adjustment inside the group

Select one of the rectangles in Shape Pair. In the Layers panel, click Adjustments and choose HSL. In the adjustment dialog, select the multicolored Master channel and move Saturation Shift fully left. Affinity documents this combination as producing a desaturated, black-and-white result. HSL adjustment

Close the dialog, then establish the adjustment’s scope explicitly: drag its layer onto the Shape Pair group row. Inspect the expanded hierarchy and ensure the adjustment is attached to the group rather than to either individual rectangle. Affinity documents dragging onto a group as the way to apply an adjustment to that group only. Using adjustment layers

Place the adjustment above both rectangle layers within the group. The intended arrangement is:

Shape Pair [Group]
    HSL Adjustment
    Inside Green
    Inside Orange
Outside Blue

The expected result, derived from the documented scope rules, is that both grouped rectangles become grayscale while the blue rectangle keeps its color. Toggle the adjustment’s visibility to compare the two states. This is a diagnostic exercise to perform in your document, not a reported application test.

If only one rectangle changes, inspect whether the adjustment became that rectangle’s child. Affinity defines clipping as a parent–child relationship and shows the clipped item nested within its parent. Dragging onto a layer produces a targeting highlight, so confirm the actual parent after dropping. Layer clipping

Let the same adjustment affect layers outside the group

To extend the effect, move the existing HSL adjustment out of Shape Pair and place it above the group at the main document level. Keep Outside Blue beneath the group. The adjustment should now be a sibling of the group, with matching indentation:

HSL Adjustment
Shape Pair [Group]
    Inside Green
    Inside Orange
Outside Blue

This arrangement should desaturate all three rectangles because they are below the adjustment. Affinity’s instructions explicitly allow moving an adjustment to the top of the Layers panel to affect all layers beneath it. Moving the existing adjustment preserves one editable set of settings. Using adjustment layers

If you want the grouped pair and the blue rectangle adjusted while another object stays unchanged, consider creating a new parent group containing only those targets. Apply the adjustment to that parent. Affinity supports nested groups, making this a supported way to express a larger target set without flattening the artwork. Grouping

Should you change Passthrough to Normal?

Affinity Photo 2 documents Passthrough as the default blend mode for groups. Its layer-blending page describes group blending and provides the procedure for changing modes: select the layer or group, then choose a mode from the Layers panel’s pop-up menu. However, that documentation does not establish a Photoshop-style adjustment-scope switch between Passthrough and Normal. Use the documented placement methods above for this task. Layer blending

Photoshop’s documentation is explicit about a different workflow: an adjustment inside a group set to Pass Through can affect layers underneath the group. Adobe instructs users to select the group and change its blend mode to Normal to constrain the adjustment to the group. That is a documented Photoshop procedure; it should not be presented as an Affinity Photo instruction. Tip: Edit a group of layers with an adjustment layer

For the Affinity task, decide which objects should receive the adjustment, then express that choice through parentage and stacking order. Treat any blend-mode experiment as a separate change to the composition’s appearance.

Use a mask when only part of the group should change

Layer scope and spatial coverage answer different questions. Group membership chooses the objects eligible for adjustment. A mask controls where an effect appears across those objects. Affinity supports non-destructive masks on individual layers and groups, and adjustment layers inherently have mask properties. Layer masks

For example, return the HSL adjustment to Shape Pair. Select the adjustment itself, then use the Erase Brush Tool over part of the orange rectangle to hide the adjustment there. To restore it, select the Paint Brush Tool and paint white on the adjustment. Affinity documents both operations for adjustment masks. Using adjustment layers

The intended outcome is a partly colored orange rectangle alongside a grayscale green rectangle, with the outside blue rectangle unchanged. Keep the adjustment selected while editing its mask. Masking the group instead would control the visibility of the group’s artwork; masking the adjustment controls the adjustment’s coverage. Mask position determines its target, and an independent mask can affect everything beneath it. Layer masks

Diagnose unexpected results without flattening the artwork

Check these conditions in order:

  1. Identify the parent. Expand the group and any nested shape rows. Confirm that the adjustment belongs to the intended group or shape.
  2. Check stack order. Ensure the intended targets sit below the adjustment within the relevant scope.
  3. Check the adjustment mask. An existing mask may explain why only part of a shape changes.
  4. Check how the adjustment was created. A pixel selection present during creation automatically limits the adjustment to that selected area.
  5. Change one condition at a time. Toggle the adjustment after each move, using the exposed blue rectangle as the outside-group reference.

The automatic selection mask is documented in Applying adjustments.

There is no need to use Merge or Rasterize to establish these layer relationships. Closing an adjustment dialog retains the adjustment layer; its Merge control combines it with the layer immediately below. Applying adjustments

Rasterization crosses another editing boundary: it converts shape content into pixels, removing subsequent vector editing for that content. Affinity also warns that certain filters and retouch brushes can trigger automatic rasterization. Keep the rectangles as shape layers while solving adjustment scope. Rasterizing

Once the group and outside reference respond as intended, replace the demonstration adjustment settings with the values your artwork needs. Keep the hierarchy explicit: attach the adjustment to a group for group-only changes, move it above outside layers for broader changes, and mask the adjustment when you need a local exception.

Sources