smadell

A couple of facts remain. (1) The staff at Serif is limited, and they must set priorities as to what, if any, additional features need to be included; and (2) the lure of AI will entice a bunch of people, but many (perhaps the majority) will have no use for it. I would rather see Serif avoid wasting time on niche projects and spend more time on a more universally-needed project like creating an API for more advanced plug-in availability. If and when Serif opens up an API for others to create, for example, additional studio-like panels then someone will create an AI plug-in for Affinity Photo. Probably a whole bunch of someones. Serif has already said that they are at work putting Javascript and an API into the Affinity suite, but that it will take time. "Be patient" was their advice, and I am sure they mean it. That having been said, though, opening up the application to outside coders will create a much more fertile environment for plug-ins and other add-ons. These may only satisfy a small number of users, but they might be considered deal-breakers for those users who feel they need them. The availability of AI artwork within Photo is, I believe, one such niche market.

Of the 4 steps you mentioned, all but the 2nd one can be done with a simple Batch Job. As to step 2, when you say “add an image to the afphoto doc” is it the same image each time? If so, that could be coded into a macro, which itself could be incorporated into the Batch. The order of things would be important, too, especially if the size of the original image(s) and the added image were not the same, or at least consistent.

This one’s for you, @Old Bruce. No AI needed. In fact, no “I” at all!

Two fairly easy suggestions. The first one is to use a Curves adjustment. The second one is to use a Brightness and Contrast adjustment, along with Blend Options. Curves: Brightness & Contrast / Blend Options

Here's an alternative. Not perfect, but it does allow you to re-shape the radial blur. (1) I started with a photo, similar to the one you used. (2) I duplicated the photo, and applied a radial blur, centered on the middle of the tire. (3) I clicked the "Merge" button, making the radial blur a destructive edit, albeit on a separate layer. (4) Since the radial blur is now a part of the pixel layer, I can choose the Move tool and "squeeze" the blurred layer inward, so that the shape of the blurred tire matches the elliptical shape of the original. (5) Now, it's just a matter of applying a mask to the blurred duplicate layer, so that only the tire remains, and the rest of the non-blurry original is seen. (1) The original (2,3) The blurred, duplicate layer (4) Squeezing the blurred layer inward (5) The blurred layer, masked to reveal only the tire.

@Old Bruce - when the OP said he wanted to stitch images, I assumed he was talking about creating panoramas. On the other hand, I know what they say about “when you assume…”

Absolutely, it does. From the File menu, choose New Panorama… and you'll be able to choose whatever images you think are candidates for stitching. I've got a folder called "Panorama Candidates" which contains 18 individual images that could come together into panoramas. Add them to the dialog box that opens and click the Stitch Panorama button. In this video (below) I've chosen all 18 candidate images, and Affinity Photo has created 2 panoramas from them. They open as separate documents once I hit OK. Two Panoramas.mp4

Is there a layer selected in the Layers panel? There needs to be. Are you working on an Image layer? If so, you need to Rasterize it.

To answer your other questions - here’s a good video by Dave Straker about using the HSL adjustment. And here is a video from Serif about Blend Ranges. https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/342752528/

My answer to you regarding use of Quick Masking only had to do with the method you went on to describe. There are many (better) ways to accomplish what you seem to be trying to do. The first one that comes to mind is an HSL adjustment. Add an HSL adjustment layer above your photo, click the red circle, then click the “Picker” botton on the HSL panel. Use the picker to choose the color (on the photo itself) that you’re aiming to modify. The hue, saturation, and luminance can all be adjusted, and will be confined to the red you have chosen. If there are reds getting altered in other parts of your photo, and you don’t want this, click on the adjustment layer (in the Layers panel) and then paint in black on the areas you want to supress the adjustment; since the adjustment layer has a built-in mask the painted black effectively masks the adjustment from showing up in that area. Also important, after using the picker tool to select the color you eant to modify, you can change the range of the color and the feathering of the color by moving the 4 little circles around the color wheel inside the HSL panel. There should be a good James Ritson video about this that you can watch on the Serif website. It’s way easier tounderstand if you see it happen in a video!

Thank you, @vpkumar - I'm glad this helped.

Never having used Photoshop, I’m not sure how its QuickMask works. But, in Affinity Photo the red overlay in QuickMask indicates areas that are not selected. Painting with white on the QuickMask will remove the red overlay, indicating that these areas have been selected; painting with black will remove the selection. You can also use the Selection Brush along with QuickMask, which will select and snap to edges as well. Also, if you make a selection and then activate QuickMask, the area already selected will show up without the red overlay; you can modify it inside of QuickMask, as above. When you toggle the QuickMask off, the areas that were shown without the red overlay are the ones that are selected. Except for the question of whether red overlays indicate the selected area or the UNselected area, it sounds like the Affinity Photo QuickMask works exactly as you are hoping it will.

This should be a very, very straightforward problem for at least 75% of the way. Very conveniently, your document has black ink on a colored background. As I understand it, you want to work on the background (only) by selecting it. The easy way to get you most of the way there is to use Blend Ranges. Open the document into a layer (called "Background") and immediately click the gear icon at the top of the Layers panel. What you want to do is to show only the blacks and hide everything else. The first screenshot (below) shows you how I've done this. Next, i just put a Fill layer below the "Background" layer so that there is something with the desired color back there. You could use a paper texture, or just about anything you like. Now, you just have some clean-up to do on the "Background" layer (getting rid of the of the errant marks) and filling in some of the missing text, dots, and so forth. Getting to this point, though, should take no more than a few minutes, at most.

@Alfred - I’ve been doing some “tutoring” with a friend who owns Affinity Photo but has been completely bamboozled by it. We started (maybe in the wrong place) when she said, “I need to learn how to get rid of things in the background.” So, we started with Inpainting and this morning we’ll graduate to Cloning. Next up after that will be Blemish Removal and Healing. And, like any teacher who has to stay 1 lesson ahead of the student(s), I figured I finally needed to figure out what the actual differences were among all those very similar tools. So, it’s been on my mind this morning! Turns out there’s a lot of overlap in the function of many of them. (And, before anyone asks, I absolutely hate the Patch tool, and nearly never use it!)

@Alfred - if you want to specify a source for inpainting, isn’t that (more or less) what the Healing Brush tool does?

I'm glad this helped you out. As for deleting the Alpha Channel, I'm not sure if you can actually get rid of it (although, if you save as a JPG the file "probably" doesn't have an alpha channel). But you can (i) fill it with black, or (ii) clear it out entirely. For either of those choices, right click on the Background Alpha channel (in the Channels panel) and choose "Fill" for the first option, or "Clear" for the second option.

I said I was not 100% sure because, although it certainly seems that way, I don’t know the precise math that underlies the adjustment. Even your own post uses the phrase “it appears obvious” (emphasis mine) which tells me that you are not “100%” sure, either! Nevertheless I agree, in a practical sense, that setting Output Black affects all pixels and not just the blacks below that point. I just tend to be cautious about stating things as absolutes.

@AdamStanislav - I just wanted to let you know that I really like your opening lyric. Lara would be proud…

Best guess - your AP Preferences are set up to (a) convert any opened document to your “working color space”, and (b) not to automatically notify you that such a conversion has occurred. You can un-check this auto-conversion option, and make conversions manually and only when you choose.

Good morning, @Mujabad. I also use DxO PhotoLab (as you do) and I noticed your question on the DxO forum. I followed it here, and thought I would give you a hand. There are a number of ways to do what you're after inside of Affinity Photo. I am going to use a black & white gradient as a base layer. The easiest way to lighten up a black point is to use the Levels adjustment. Add a Levels adjustment and bring the "Output Black Level" slider up to the desired point. This will set your black point there. Given the math, I think (not 100% sure) that other pixels will adjust themselves accordingly. You can do something similar in Curves, and this gives you more leeway to leave the other pixels less affected or unaffected. However, since the Curves adjustment uses a Bezier curve, raising one point will sometimes have a compensatory change on other points. The solution to this is to place multiple points on the Curves line, and these additional points are "anchors" which will prevent too much change in the curve other than in the area you want. In the example below, the red arrows represent raising the black point (notice that the leftmost point has been set "up" along the left border, and this can be dialed in precisely using the Y coordinate at the bottom). The green arrows are the anchor points which have the effect of preventing too much change along the rest of the curve. The best way of placing an adjustment so that it ONLY affects a specific lightness range in your image is to use Blend Options (which is similar to Blend-If in Photoshop, although a hell of a lot more powerful). You can access it from the Layers panel, or directly from an adjustment panel. In the last example (below) I am putting a Recolor adjustment onto the gradient (simply because it's easy to see) and then clicking the Gear icon inside of the adjustment panel. The Blend Options panel opens up, and the settings I have used limit the adjustment so that it only allows the Recolor adjustment to be visible when the underlying pixels (the gradient itself) have luminosity values of 25% or less. Affinity Photo is a super-powerful program, and it is undoubtedly capable of doing what you're trying to accomplish.

So we meet again @jonathanm0… As you've undoubtedly figured out, Photoshop and Affinity Photo treat channels quite differently, at least insofar as manipulating/editing them. In order to do what you want, take the following steps: (1) If you are using the Red channel from a single layer, right click on entry in the Channels panel that contains the name of the layer followed by Red. In other words, if your photo is called "Background" then right click on the "Background Red" entry in the Channels panel. It should be the 4th line from the top. (2) If you have more than one layer – perhaps a Background layer and an adjustment or two – right click on the "Composite Red" entry at the top of the Channels panel. (3) Having right clicked on one of those choices, choose "Create Spare Channel" from the drop-down menu. (4) Make sure that the correct layer is selected in the Layers panel. This will be the one with the Red channel filled but with the empty Green and Blue channels. (5) Right click on the "Spare Channel" you just created at the bottom of the Channels panel. (6) Assuming that the layer you're aiming at is called "Background" choose "Load to Background Green" from the drop down menu. (7) Then, right click that same Spare Channel entry and choose "Load to Background Blue" from the drop down. You should now have duplicated the Red channel into the Blue and Green channels. The layer should now be a monochrome image (since all 3 channels are the same). You can go ahead and delete the Spare Channel, as it has served its purpose.

Glad to help. I much prefer using the Flood Select instead of Select Sampled Color (by the way) because Flood Select lets you Add to the selection by clicking multiple times, and Select Sampled Color does not. The Selection Brush is wonderful, too, but in a case like this might be more complicated than is necessary.

Use the Flood Select tool. Uncheck “CONTIGUOUS” and set the Tolerance very, very low (probably as low as the slider will go). Click on the grey you want to select.

Affinity Photo will focus merge pretty much as many (or as few) individual images as you want to throw at it. However, its output is limited to the result (as a single layer). In other words, you will not get the individual component images as masked layers when the merge is complete.

You’re preaching to the choir, @nickbatz. But I suspect you know that!