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Hello @augustya. As far as how to pick the color in the HSL tool, you don't. As @Dan C said, the HSL tool is pretty bad at dealing with greys. There is so little saturation, that hue gets kind of lost in the shuffle. Also, as he suggested, the Selective Color tool is the way to go. What you'll want to do is (i) select the area of skin that you want to correct; (ii) optionally, put it on a separate layer; (iii) apply the Selective Color adjustment to the selected area only. (In my example, below, I've made it a child of the copied "forehead." You could do the same by making a selection and then, with the selection active, adding a Selective Color adjustment. The active selection will mask the adjustment so that only the selected areas are affected. In the Selective Color adjustment, you'll want to deal with Whites, Neutrals, and Blacks (although not in this case). What you're about to do is "add" color to the highlights and midtones of the selected area. In this case, I deselected the "relative" checkbox and made modest changes to the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow sliders for the Whites and the Neutrals. I also shifted the "Black" slider for each in order to lighten or darken the affected tones. Here is a before and after of your photo, and also a copy of the Layers panel and the Whites & Neutrals area of the Selective Color adjustment panel.

I am not an attorney, and my knowledge of copyright law is rudimentary at best. But, I think the gist of it is that copyright infringement requires that the creator is (potentially or actually) deprived of income (or perhaps deprived of non-monetary gain, such as recognition, etc). Taking a photo of the glasses in one’s kitchen and distributing that photo cannot reasonably be construed as depriving the designer or seller of the glasses of income to which he/she would otherwise be entitled. But, now I can download these smiley assets for free whereas I might otherwise have had to purchase them. That, I believe, is the difference. And what has happened here does seem like copyright infringement. Also, copyright protection is by default an opt-out for the creator. Your copyright protects you, and can be legally pursued, unless you specifically say otherwise. You are suggesting that the copyright protection for the smiley badges is an opt-in and, because it was never explicitly stated, that protection is not and can not be assumed. I really think you’re wrong here. So, it boils down to the question, “How likely is it that you’ll be caught?” But, obviously, that’s not the point here.

Hello @stokerg and others. I am currently using the retail version of Affinity Photo 2 (v2.2.0). The issue described above has not been addressed, and remains an issue.

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but the method I suggested above is so simple, and yields good results with minimal clumsy hand painting, masking, or frequency separation.

Hi, @augustya. Try watching this YouTube video by Blake Rudis from f64 Academy. It sounds like it addresses exactly what you’re describing.

@Tom Wang - make a 1-step macro. With a layer (any layer, really) already selected start recording a macro. Open the Blend Ranges panel, dial in your desired curve, and close the panel. Stop recording the macro Save the macro to your Library, naming it as appropriate. You can now invoke that macro to assign that particular blend range curve to any selected layer. You might also want to consider recording a macro that removes the curve (macro = open blend ranges, click the Revert button, close the panel). and save that alongside other blend range curve macros.

I hope these work for you, @James19. Enjoy them, and please come back and comment (or post a before & after) when you've had some time to use them!

1) Make sure you have “Dither Gradients” turned ON in Settings > General 2) Make sure your document is set to 16 bits. This sort of color banding is really common with 8 bit gradients.

The examples above may just be too subtle. Here's' another photo with Original and Enhanced Skin Tones versions. The results may be a bit more obvious.

I have attached a macro category called "Enhance Skin Tones." This is a free download which will help add color and tone to the skin of your portraits. There are 21 different enhancement macros included, grouped for Light, Peach, Tan, and Dark skin. These macros are meant to enhance, not replace, skin colors. The macros are all based on the use of Gradient Maps, and use different dark and light colors along with setting opacity and blend mode for each adjustment. While the skin tone macros are grouped into Light, Peach, Tan, and Dark skin groups (roughly corresponding to Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, and African coloration) they are certainly not exclusive. You may want to experiment using the adjustments from any (or all) of the groups to add different coloration and tone to your underlying portrait. The Light and Peach skin tone macros add a gradient map and set its opacity to 25%. The Tan skin tone macros set the opacity to 30%. The Dark skin tone macros set the opacity to 40%. All of the macros set the blend mode of the gradient map adjustment to Soft Light. You should also experiment with changing the opacity and blend mode of the adjustments, as these will create different effects that you might like. Try using blend modes such as Overlay, Linear Light, and even Multiply. The results can be subtle, but changing the default settings can often make them fairly dramatic. An important note: the macros work best when you have the skin selected prior to invoking the macros. This ensures that the gradient map adjustment uses your selection as a mask, and applies the changes to the skin only. As with all layer masks, however, you can edit the mask (by painting on the adjustment layer in black or white) after the fact. Here is a graphic that includes 4 portraits (labelled as Original versions) along with versions of each of the 21 different skin tone enhancing macros. The enhanced versions are all based on the default settings for the respective macros. Under each example is the name of the skin tone macro used, along with a gradient representing the dark and light colors used in the gradient map adjustment. Remember that these results look very subtle, but your results can be more dramatic simply by increasing the opacity slider. The attached macro category was created in Affinity Photo 2, and probably will not be compatible with version 1. It is a category and therefore should be imported into the Library panel (using the "hamburger menu" at the panel's top right corner). The category includes the 21 skin tone macros, but also includes a macro called "Try All Skin Tones" which will create a group (with sub-groups) that includes all 21 adjustments so you can try them all to see which one you like. There is also a macro called "Instructions - Enhance Skin Tones" which will display on-screen instructions for using the macros. These instructions are placed in a separate layer which you should delete after having read and understood the instructions. [These macros are loosely based on some of the gradients used in a recent YouTube video by Blake Rudis, whose f64 Academy channel has been quite helpful (especially for matters concerning color grading). Blake's videos are exclusively aimed at Photoshop users, but the methods he uses are almost always compatible with similar methods in Affinity Photo. So, a big thank-you to him.] As with all of my Resource uploads, these are the work of 1 person working on 1 computer. I do not pretend to have tested them extensively, but I believe they will function as they are supposed to. Try them and see if they work for you. If they do, they are free for your use without restriction. I have always encouraged users to "pay it forward" and help others in this forum as they themselves become more knowledgeable and adept at using Affinity Photo. This is how knowledge and good will spreads. Enhance Skin Tones.afmacros

The best way to do this would be to use the Mesh Warp tool (or Live Filter). I’ve attached a screen grab (from 2019) which shows the use of the “tool.” You can also use a Live Filter layer version of this now, which is non-destructive. Un-Curve a Horizon.mp4

I also took a stab at this. I'm attaching a JPG and the .afphoto file. I addressed the face, ignored the background, and took some of the darkness and contrast out of the shirt. Like @v_kyr said, pulling detail out of the existing shirt is not going to be possible without some type of AI tool – it's just too blurred. I first made the photo black and white, and worked from there. At the end, I added a very slight color grade to give it back some of the original color cast. See what you think. vpkumar edit.afphoto

Good morning, @v_kyr. I'm out of my league trying to talk about programming, but (1) it certainly seems as if getting Metal support right should be high on Serif's list; and (2) the issues I'm having largely must come down to memory management, since the lag seems to accumulate over time, and seems to clear up incrementally as I close windows or restart the application. Everything I've read (though not really understood) about "memory leaks" indicate to me that that's what happens with flawed memory management.

Hi, @Callum and @deeds. I need to add my voice to this choir. I have had ongoing issues with lagging in Affinity Photo, and it seems to be worse in version 2. I am shooting with a Nikon Z7ii, so I am creating 45 MP images. I normally develop the raw files in Capture One, and use Affinity Photo to finish up using TIFF's exported from Capture One. Response time from AP suffers (sometimes greatly) if (i) there is more than 1 document open at the same time, even as few as 2 or 3 will slow things down quite a bit; (ii) virtually ANY use of live filter layers slows responses down to a crawl, even if only 1 or 2 are used in a document; (iii) longer editing sessions, on the order of 30 minutes or more, show degradation of the response time as the session gets longer. I just recently purchased a Mac Studio with an M2 Max, 2 TB SSD, 64 GB of RAM, and am currently using macOS Ventura 13.4. I am running version 2.1.1 of Affinity Photo, which is the most recent available retail version. I am including a screenshot of my Performance settings, as you requested of @deeds above. Please note that I have turned Metal compute acceleration OFF, and have turned the Display to OpenGL (instead of the Metal option). These settings are definitely better, as using Metal in ANY capacity slows things down to a crawl and makes me want to tear my hair out. But, still, the lag seems to get worse and worse over time, and is really annoying with any documents that introduce any real degree of complexity. I am not tech-savvy enough to even guess what to do next. Do I turn off system stuff that runs in the background (things like Dropbox, Little Snitch, etc)? I'm not at a point where I want to toss Affinity Photo and try to find something else; I am way too invested in AP and way too happy with everything about it other than its speed. I eagerly look for suggestions.

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