Welcome to Affinity (by Canva) Level 2 – Pixel Made Easy, a hands-on class designed to build on your foundational knowledge and master professional photo editing, pixel-based design, and digital manipulation. In this course, we focus on essential workflows including masking, RAW development, AI-powered tools, and liquify techniques to help you retouch and create with precision.

You’ll learn how to navigate complex color spaces like RGB and CMYK, master perspective distortion, and use advanced brush tools tailored for artists, designers, and photographers alike. Whether you are removing backgrounds, working with channels, or exploring pixel stretching, everything is explained in a clear, friendly, and accessible way packed with real-world projects to help you practice the techniques.

This course is ideal if you’re comfortable with the basics and ready to explore the powerful features used in high-end retouching, digital art, and professional image composition.

What You’ll Learn

Master the Essentials: Transition between Profiles and utilize the Development area for RAW image processing.
Advanced Manipulation: Use perspective and distortion tools, mesh tools, and liquify to reshape your images.
Selection & Removal: Expertly remove objects and backgrounds using dedicated erase tools and advanced masks.
Color & Lighting: Fine-tune images with gradient maps, exposure tools (saturate / desaturate), and precision dodge, burn, and sponge techniques.
Creative Effects: Explore pixel stretching, symmetry, and gradients to create unique visual styles.
Integration: Bring in external images and learn to non-destructively add images into frames, shapes, and text.
Smart Workflow: Leverage useful AI tools, manage channels, and apply professional blurring and sharpening filters.

Who This Course Is For

Hi, I’m Tim – a designer, former university lecturer, and creative software trainer based in London.

This class is ideal for:

Students who have completed Affinity (by Canva) Essentials.
Photographers and Retouchers looking to master the pixel persona and RAW editing.
Creatives moving from Photoshop to Affinity’s pixel workflow.
Digital artists who want to utilize symmetry and specialized brush tools for more efficient workflows.

Course Projects

You’ll apply these professional techniques through four distinct, practical projects:

Flat Art Photo Poster: Combining photography to create a stylised image.
Professional Brochure Cover: Mastering masking techniques to create unique effects.
Multi-Effect Poster: A deep dive into gradient maps, blurs, and distortion tools.
Wes Anderson Style Image: Using color grading, lighting, cutouts and exposure tools to recreate a cinematic aesthetic.

Tools & Techniques We’ll Use

RAW & Development: Professional processing of raw images
Correction Tools: Dodge, burn, sponge, and AI-assisted object removal.
Creative Brushes: Customizing tools for painting, designing, and retouching.
Non-Destructive Editing: Advanced masking and clipping images to text/shapes.
Transformation: Liquify, mesh warp, and perspective corrections.

Next Steps

By the end of this class, you’ll be confident navigating the deep pixel capabilities of Affinity to produce high-end, professional imagery. Whether you are retouching a portrait or building a complex composite, you'll have the technical toolkit to make your vision a reality.

I can’t wait to see the images you develop - don't forget to share your project results!

Here are your resource files.

Tim Wilson

Adobe Certified Instructor and Expert

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