Affinity Photo 101: The Basics Made Easy

1. 00 Intro: Hello and welcome to Affinity Photo Introduction. My name is Alex Tara Dacu, and in the next hour, so I will be teaching you how to use affinity photo. We will go through the interface, we will edit some photos. We will import some row photos. We will convert a negative film from my film camera. We will focus tack some images in order to create that crisp image full of details. We will create an HDR, a high dynamic range image, and we will stage a panorama. All of this in affinity photo. Now, a few words about this particular software. It's a very good replacement of a Dob photoshop. If you don't want to pay a subscription, then this is a one time buy. At the moment that I'm recording this, it's around 47 pounds or 50 euros. Now, enough talking and let's start editing. 2. 01 Affinity Photo Interface: So let's start with affinity photo interface. Now, if you are coming from a Dob photoshop, you'll probably be familiar with the interface. It's similar. The only things that are different are personas. Basically the different options that affinity photo put in the software. Let's see them and how they work. Let's open up an image. And I'll drag in an image here. Basically, you have the toolbar on the left. You have the studio tools on the right or the panels. If these panels are not here, you can bring them from view studio and basically show right studio. Depending on your screen resolution, you can add a left studio as well, and of course, you can drag them from one side to another. Let's say you want the adjustments and the histogram to be on the left and the rest of the options on the right. I have the layers panel here and adjustment panel on the left. If you want to reset this, you go to view studio and reset studio, Now, I was talking about personas. Basically, you have incorporated in the software, bridge camera row, and have another persona called Liquefy, where you have the Lukofi options. So I think you're familiar with Liquefi different part of different options. So let's cancel this one. It's enough with liquefy, you can play with it. Mode focus on the developed persona. Here, this developed persona is going to show up when you open a row image. You open a row image, you get this interface, and you can play with crop, you can crop your image. You can remove red eyes, you can heal, Zoom in zoom out, basically the same options that you have for camera row. You have tone mapping, basically These are some presets and apply some quick options. So you have the black and white, dramatic. You can change to the extreme and you can see that it's adding some presets here. Usually, I don't use this, but there you go, you need to know that there is this option as well if you want. So click yes to reset that. Also, you have the export persona, where you have more options on exporting an image. Say, for example, you want to export this in three slices, just say random slices here, do like this. Snap to the and there we go. You have three slices. There we go. And you have three slices. You can modify the sizes of the slices here on the transform option. But again, I'm not using this option, at least not for the moment. This is the last persona. Let's go back to photo persona and go through all the options that we have here. So let's clear this bit a little. So left studio as well, as I have a big green. Let's take the macro off. We're not going to use it for the moment. And of course, for each individual tool, you have the tool option here on the top bit. So basically, this is the interface. We will go through some of this tool more in depth in the next lessons. So let's jump to lesson number two. 3. 02 Develop Persona: Okay, so let's open a raw image and see what options do we have in the develop persona. So file, open, Image C R two is a row canon file. There you go. Nothing complicated. Basically, opens directly in the software. You don't need bridge or camera row or other bits of software to open this image. Now, let's modify a little bit this image in the developed module. First of all, I want to straighten the horizon and drop a little bit the image. We'll use crop tool or C on the keyboard. And you have the option to straighten the image, and you'll get this lovely level. As in Photoshop, if you're familiar with this tool, click on one side and drop on the other. There we go, you have the image straightened. Now, if you want to crop the image to a certain ratio, let's speak for example, for this image. T six by four should be okay and create landscape image. And should be okay. Now, enter to confirm, and there we go. You have a cropped image with a straight horizon. What else you can do in this software? You can apply some curves, you can make it black and white. And you can do some detail refinements. So for example, you can see brings in a bit of detail, some luminas, lens correction, and of course, this was made on a canon with a lens cannon EF 17 44 recognizes the lens as well. You can diffinge, you can remove the chromatic aberration, and so. Basically, all the options that you had in camera and some of the options from light room, you have in this persona. Now, if I'm happy with this, I develop my image, and it imports it as a layer in the next important persona, that is the photo persona where you can modify, you can dug, you can burn, and you can remove elements. But I will show you that in the next videos. 4. 03 Photo Persona: Okay, so let's continue with the next lesson. We will go through, I think, what is the most important bit of affinity photo, and that is the photo persona where all the magic happens. Now, let's first analyze this image a little bit. What I want to do is to take these cups away, put more emphasis on this bench. Maybe create some spots with dodging born on the grass and just modify a little bit. The colors through some adjustment layers. So all the modification will be non destructive. You can see the progress and you can come back to previous steps. So let's get started. First of all, I want the navigator to be here on top on top, let's zoom in a little bit, at space and modify it a little bit to get the handle. That's it. Ah. First of all, let's duplicate the layer. The way you can do that is right click on the layer and duplicate it, or you can go to layer and duplicate layer as well. Let's zoom in this area. You can use ult and move the cursor. What I want is basically the cups to be gone. So let's select the cup first, and we'll do like this, move it a little bit. And with the healing brush, with I think it's too big. Let's make the width a little smaller around 15 should be okay, opacity 100 flow 100 hardness. Basically it's how hard your tool needs to be. Have more options here. For example, 15 accumulation hardness spacing, that's a different situation. We are not going into dynamic of the brush right now. So I'll to click from where you want to copy the pixels, and as you can see, it started to look a little better. Of course, if you want the photo to look more realistic, you can copy from different parts, and nobody will know. Oops, we click Alt D to diselect, and zoom out. It's like it wasn't there. Of course, you can, for example, free hand, go and add more pixels here. So random pixels, not that much, Alt or command Z. And we can do the same thing on the other side. It's the edge of this one. This is a little bit at an angle. Let's use a different tool right now. We can use the free hand tool to add these pixels here. Wit control key held down, you can select this bit as well. There we go. Now, let's do the same thing. Click on the healing brush. Click on the pixels that you want to copy, and just go nuts. So in a little bit. That's too much. I think on the left side. A d to dissect and you can free throw here. All the modification that I'm doing is with a mouse. You can use also a tablet. Let's see. Let's minimize a little bit this one and you can use the bracket keys to make it bigger or smaller. There we go. Let's click on the hand and be a before After. Light magic, isn't it? Okay. I'm happy with this one. Let's rename this as working layer, and heat enter. Now, what we can do is to add level at a default level, and let's play with the image a little bit. Make this, this will be lighter. I think this should be enough for the moment. And as you can see, already added a level adjustment, We can add some curves as well. So click on the curves and ad just that. Of course, you can play with the green bit as well for influencing a little bit the green areas. Let's pop that in. And there we go. Now, if you want to create a layer where this level adjustments are incorporated, you select all the layers, right click Merge Visible. What it will do is create a new layer with all adjustments created. So let's modify the name of this. Adjustment added layer. So let's use some burn make it bigger. What is nice is if you create, for example, this big brush, you can see how it will affect the image. Basically, right now, it's going to affect only the highlight or you want, for example, midtones, and you can see that it's just bringing some details on, creating a more dramatic sky, like this. And of course, on the Water as well, try to add a few Pets and Bob. Now we can use Dodge as well. Dodge, what it will do. It will lighten the areas that you bring with you touch with this tool. And of course, we can use this, make it smaller. As you can see, there are some layers here of grass that are more lighten. So let's say before and after, before after before, after. Again, you can use this to bring more umph to the image. Okay. Let's add a vibrant layer. And can add more vibrant and more saturation to really make this image pop. You can close this bit. Once you're happy with this image export, select the extension. You can go PNG, JPEG, give, TF, PSD, and it will preserve the layers as well. PDF, FSG, EPS, and so on. What I usually do is export as JPEG and full resolution. Save the image, or as I said, you can go to export persona. You have this image, is a single PNG. You can select the presets here, Retina PNG, single PNG, JPEG, and of course, all the different options here in the slices. You can export the slice lesson images and export. We have the image here, and it's a big image. It has 140 megabytes. So it's a very big image, but it has all the details in. There we go. I think this wraps up this bit of the lesson in the next lesson. I will show you how to convert a 35 millimeter negative film by importing the row image, crop it, invert the colors, and make the basic adjustments in order to create a beautiful image. So see your next lesson. Well, it occurred to me that we didn't talk about masks. What are masks? Well, to explain you better, let me create two new layers, and just add some colors to that layer. Let's say we have this bit, and we can go bucket and other colors inside A D and then we can move it. And let's create another layer like this. Again, with the bucket, select another color, give it a greenish, d2d select. Now, how layer mask works. If, for example, I want to see part of the white layer going through this green layer, I add a mask to this green layer by click on the layer and adding a mask. What happened? Nothing. With the layer mass selected, let's click on the brush. With white. We paint on the Oops. Nothing happened, but I'm painting with white. So what's happening? Let's paint with black. We already have a preview here on what was going to happen. So if I paint with black, What happens, it will show the back of the layer. I'm not painting with white, I'm just painting with black, meaning it is going to hide this green layer, and it will reveal what is beneath. If I paint with black, black will show me what is behind the layer. If I paint with white, it will bring back the green layer. Why is this useful? And how you can use this bit as part of your edit? Well, let's say you want to create a frame, let's say a photo frame. How can you do that? You click on the mask. Let's say quickly. Create a quick selection. O, no mask. And you fill it with what color? Correct, with black. I all d to dis select. There we go, you have a frame in your picture. Simple as that. But how can you, let's say, work with other layers? In the previous lesson, we added the vibrant adjustment layer. So we can see before and after. Can I apply a layer mask to this one? Of course I can. But let's make this adjustment pop out. This is just to show you how layer masks are working with adjustment layers. So click on mask layer. It will automatically link to this vibrant adjustment. Click on the mask and by selecting a brush, you can work this out. So Black as our foreground color. You can make this brush bigger. And you can start painting, and you can see already, how can we use this particular tool? This is nice. Now, if I want to make this brush softer, I'm going to go here and make again, this is a quick edit. If you want to go back and forth, you can hit X and you can swap quickly the foreground and the background color. Now you have white with white, you can bring back the colors and Of course, being non destructive, you can modify it, you can hide it. You can delete it. There we go. I hope you understand a little bit the concept of layers and layer masks because you are going to use them a lot when you edit a photo. See you next lesson. 5. 04 Negative develop: All right, let's continue with our lessons. Let's first close this one. Don't want to save that. And let's import open. Let's import a negative. Now, this is an image that I've taken in Edinburgh on Portobello Beach. First of all, as you so, I've opened the raw image straight into this developed persona. What I want to do here is straighten the image, crop the image, invert the image, so from the negative, we'll have the positive and apply basic auto leveling edit. It I'll show you how easy it is to transform this negative into a full color picture. Let's straighten the image by clicking on the straighten option. And you can choose straight line here, click drag and drop. And there you go, you have a straight frame Now, moving the crop borders here, crop it, and this image has a little bit of bending. Basically when I scanned it, it was not let, but there we go. It is what it is for the moment. Now, once you're happy with the crop, you just hit enter to commit to this crop. There we go. This is a lovely image, but it's still negative. What we can do to this here, we can do, let's say curve layer, and we want to invert colors. The master will affect the red, the green, and the blue colors from this image to invert it, simply click on this bit, move it up. Click on this and move it down. Move it up again until you reach all invert it. Now, if you want to save this preset, you can go and add preset, but you put the name here, invert negative. Ha. Next time when you open a negative, you just click on the preset and we automatically invert it. Now, I'm not going to do anything here because I'll show you a quick way to get this image perfect. Click on the developed option on the top left side of the screen, and now we are back into the photo edit. As I said, this should be something straightforward. So filter, color auto level. There we go. Magnificent. Filter color. Let's add the colors, contrast white balance. To be honest, it looks amazing. Now, if you want to remove the artifacts, you can do it by a stated healing brush, zoom in, and this I know for certain that this is a strain of hair stuck to the film, so we can remove it by simply click drag. And there you go was removed. The rest, the scratches, I will not remove because it will add personality to your image. And to be honest, it looks amazing. Nothing to do here. The only thing that I'm considering doing is just add a crop, so I can crop this image here in photo persona. Let's see what we have. To be honest, I think 16 by nine looks great. You move this around until you find the sweet spot. What I want is basically have it H enter to commit to changes. Let's see how we can split this image into three. First of all, what's the size of our image and we want to slice this image into three? First of all, document resize document. We can see we have 2,651 pixels by 14 91. Let's do some math, 265, one, divided by three equals 883.66 period. We need to split this into three layers of 883 pixels. So go to export, divide this. And it doesn't matter at this moment, how you put them. Because they are all linked, so click on the first and we said 883.6 enter the same with this one, 883.6, and move it there. The next one should be 883.6, and this should be aligned here, and let's export the slices. Basically, whatever is selected here is going to be exported, so export slices. And we can create a new folder here slices, create and expert. I I open the folder, you can see that it created three slices. That should be it. See you on our next lesson where we will focus stack multiple images to create a super detailed photo of a flower. 6. 05 Focus stack : Okay. So in this lesson, we will focus stack some images. Now, what is focus stacking? Let me try to explain by opening an image. Let's say this one that we already worked on. Let me create a quick layer so we can draw some images here. Let me go with red. Usually, focus stacking is used when you want to have a crisp image and focus, let's say front to back, So you can do this in camera by increasing the F stops to, let's say F 16, F 22, but you can increase so much the F stop until the image will become unusable. The way you can do this is by taking multiple pictures with different focus plane. For example, you take this photo focusing first on this plane here. Then you focus a little bit more. This is going to be your second plane. This is going to be your third plane, and so on and so forth, fourth plane. Fifth plane. Then let's say you focus on her head here. It's going to be a next plane. Then you focus on this. Then you focus on the C. On the horizon, and then you try to find some clouds around here. You'll have one picture, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and 11. You'll end up with 11 photos. You want these photos to be merged in Automatically. You'll have this entire image sharp. What we'll do is basically take the first image, number one, number two, number three, and so on and so forth, until we reach number 11, and it will group them together. This will be done automatically. Let me show you how. Let's close this image. You can follow the steps with me. I've attached the images onto this, lesson files. New focus Merge option from file. Let's add the images. You have the focus tack images. You can see that all of the images are CR two. Click and select old images, and click open. Now, an important bit. Old images needs to be in a row. You have 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, and so on and so forth. What's happening, this is a guide, this software will know exactly which one is first and which one is last, and it will focus. H, and let the magic happen. But you can see how this is working, pulling the information one by one from the image. The result is amazing. Let's zoom in a little bit and see what we have here. This is Everything is in focus. Of course, if you want more details, you can take more pictures decreasing the focus planes. I think I've used at this point, I've used a few millimeters, like three or 4 millimeters between the planes because this is a layer. You can adjust the levels, you can do whatever you want with this image and try to edit to look perfect. I can see that the red is a little bit on the frit. Let's increase the red a little bit. Close this. What else? Let's see exposure, exposure is good. Curves. If you want to use curves as well. There are some people that curves are the best way of editing. I tend to agree with them. Let's flatten the colors a little bit. There we go. It's ready to be exported. This is how you focus image. Hopefully, this was helpful. If you have more questions, please let me now in the chat or leave me a message on See you next lesson where we will create a high dynamic range image by merging three images. 7. 06 HDR image: High dynamic range photos or HDR. Well, you want to use this technique when you want to add more drama to your image. As you can see here, this is a more dramatic look of the image. In comparison, I can show you the original photo, and of course, I've attached all the images, so you can follow along. Let me show you the difference between the original photo and the high dynamic one, and you can judge which one is better. As you can see, there is a very big difference. The imaging. First of all, you have more shadows in the image, more depth. It's more crispier, if you can say so. You have more details in the area where you have more light, and of course, you have more details on the dress, on the hat, and so on. So how do you obtain this image. After you've taken the bracketing images, you go and file HDR merge. And again, you can follow me using the images attached to this lesson. Select all the images, click Open. Here, automatically align images. I took these photos handheld. So a little bit of movement in the image could occur between the brackets. It's good to automatically align the images? Let's use the perspective. Move ghosts. Basically, when the images are overlaying, you could have some ghosting or some let's say traceability between the top layer and the bottom layer. You can see some ghosts there, click on automatically remove ghost as well. Noise reduction, I usually, let's say 30%, and tone map HDR image, leave that on as well and at k. And let the magic work. After the software finishes analyzing and overlaying the images, you'll get this persona that we talked in the beginning, the tone mapping persona, and you can start modify the image. You can use the preset as you can. For example, if you like it, there you go, you can use it. But I think this is a little too dramatic for me. But you can modify it. Let's, for example, let's choose this one. Let's try to modify it a little bit. You can work with the exposure, bring the exposure back in. Brightness. Go back. Black point. Use it like this. Tone compression, 100%. Now use the saturation and the vibrance. Bring back to compression, local compression. And of course. Look at these curves. If I disable them, curves, it's everything. Bring back the curves and let's adjust the curves layer. Basically, bring it back in. There we go. It's a little bit more normal. You can play here, find different presets. I have this one. This looks nice. This is more cold, Miami Beach green and DK. That's not good. Let's not for this image. Urban grift. But let's go with the default and put a detailed one. These are more normal, let's say. Detail will bring the shadows more into your image. Let's say if you're happy with this one, click apply. And it will create a layer with all the options attached to it. I hope that this helped you have a better understanding on how HDR is working and how you can create images with affinity photo. 8. 07 Create a pano: Okay, we reach the final lesson. I'll show you how to stitch up this panel. This panel consists of six images that were stitched using affinity photo. You can follow up along using the files attached in this lesson. So let me close this. I don't want to save it. File new panel. And you can add the six images shown here, Stage panel. As you can see, the images are raw images as well. There we go, this is the final result. Hat ok and let the software do its magic. That was fast. Now, let's have a quick look and see if the image was stitched. Okay. Think, it worked perfectly. You cannot tell the difference basically because here it's full of rain. Let's crop this image and try to preserve as much information as we can. Try to find edges. This, like this. There you go. If you're happy with this, enter, and now you should have a full image. From here, we can click apply, and it will take us to our photo persona. Of course, from here, you can apply some adjustment layers to make this particular image look good. Let's look at some vibrant and image as well. I'm going to do a quick edit of this. Let's play with the curves and bring up those values. I'll show you something cool. Basically what I want to do now is bring details here on the bottom part of the image. Now let's add a mask with the mask selected. Let's add gradient. Let's invert the gradient. Move it up, up because this is a mask, you can click on the paint brush and just paint with black. Basically, what we want it is to have more detail on the bottom part of the image. There we go. This is how you stitch up a panel. You can export it. By using the export persona or file common from the photo persona, file, and export. There we go. 8,764 pixels. This is a big image. There we go. This is how you stache up a pano. 9. 08 End credit: Yeah, you've managed to finish affinity photo introduction course. I hope you enjoyed it, and you learned something new. If you need more info, please don't hesitate to contact me by leaving a comment to this class. I will get back to you as soon as possible. Also, I would appreciate if you find time to leave me a review on skill share for this class. It will help me improve quality for future lessons. Until next time, take nice pictures and stay safe.