smadell

I assume you mean “Fit” view to window (as in Cmd-0), but this behavior occurs irrespective of the number of documents that are open. If you look at the first version of my Tower of London photo, you’ll see that it is the only open document. Also, I almost never use the standard versions of the filters, destructive little beasts that they are, and even when I have to do so, certainly don’t leave them open and just sitting there, unapplied. So, that can’t explain my dilemma.

I hadn’t noticed that, @Hangman but, of course, you’re right. The live filter re-opening issue happens with other live filters, such as Gaussian Blur and others. I would have to go back and check to see if it’s the “standard” version of the filter panel that opens up after-the-fact.

Ok, folks. Let's put the "focus in the number field" half of the argument to rest. I've attached a screen recording in which I apply a live filter and clearly remove focus from the Radius field. The value is reflected in the image on screen before the High Pass panel is closed. Upon hitting Command-0 (to return view to "Fit to View") the High Pass panel pops open again. Live Filter Re-Opens (2).mp4

I would respond to the comment by @Old Bruce by saying (i) so what? why should hitting Enter be necessary, especially given that there is no indication it is needed? and (ii) this is a definite deprecation from previous behavior, by which I mean that I have never hit Enter to “apply” live filters, or to apply adjustments. They simply have not needed it, and this behavior is new and (in my view) far worse.

Great, @footeg! I'm glad you like it. Enjoy.

Here you go, @Lee D. This is annoyingly reliable, and happens (it seems) every time. Live Filter Re-Opens.mp4

Glad you got it sorted out. Happy to help!

Your brush itself is set to Soft Light blend mode. It should be set to Normal. (I’m not referring to the Layer blend mode, which you have also set to Soft Light. Rather, you have set the brush to Soft Light in the Context Toolbar.) Note that Soft Light provides a rather muted effect when used on a High Pass layer. This will be compounded when you use a soft light moded brush.

Hope you enjoy it, @tzvi20. Your speed is impressive. The post has only been up for 2 minutes!

I am attaching a macro category called “Seth’s Relighting.” The relighting macro lets you selectively darken and lighten areas of an image to add drama, create areas of interest which draw the viewer’s eye, and make up for flat lighting. It is free for anyone to download and enjoy. The category includes two macros – one for setting up a set of layers and a second which provides on-screen instructions. The macro sets up a series of adjustments, filters, and masks, all of which are enclosed within a Group. In that way, the effect can be turned on or off by quickly showing or hiding the Group. The various layers inside the group are numbered, indicating the best order in which to use them. There are on-screen instructions (the second macro) as well as a video attached to this post. (Feel free to download the video too, if you’d like.) To summarize, the layers allow you to darken the overall photo with a Curves layer, then indicate areas that need highlighting. Both the amount of darkening and the amount of lightening are entirely customizable (and non-destructive). The color of the highlight is also editable. Using the Relighting Macro.mp4 The attached macro category should be imported into the Library panel, using the “hamburger menu” at the top right corner of the panel. The macros were created in Affinity Photo version 2 and, therefore, will not be compatible with version 1. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * As with all of the macros that I have submitted over the years, please remember that I am one person working with one computer (and one iPad). I have tested the macros as extensively as I can, and have been using them in my own work for several months now. However, there is no way to have foreseen all possible scenarios that another user might encounter. I believe that the macros function well, although I cannot make any guarantees. If you like the macro, please keep it and enjoy it. It is free to use in both personal and commercial work. All I ask in return is that you post a comment in the Forum (below this post) and let me know that you are using it and (hopefully) enjoying it. As you continue to get better and better in your editing skills, please try to “pay it forward” by contributing your expertise and your resources to others in the community. Seth's Relighting.afmacros

I'm a big fan of live filters. They slow down my workflow and cause me grief sometimes, but they're great for non-destructive editing. A new bug in v2.2 (which I don't think was present in the betas) is the seemingly reliable re-opening of the last live filter panel used on various occasions. Best as I can tell, the last live filter used will pop open again when the screen redraws. (I find this happens all the time after I sharpen a photo – I zoom in to 100%, apply a High Pass live filter, and close the panel. When I zoom out to Fill Screen level (by pressing Command-0) the High Pass panel will pop back open. Hitting Cancel will close it, and does not seem to affect the settings I set previously. If I have applied two live filters in a document, it seems also to occur with screen redraws and will only re-open the most recently used live filter panel. My system – Mac Studio M2 Max; 64 GB RAM; 2 TB SSD. Affinity Photo retail version 2.2 (Serif store version).

This is not focus merging. Quite the opposite. Best guess is that it’s multiple copies of the same image (or similar images) placed one on top of another, each one offset just a bit from the others with the opacities diminished. Maybe blend modes have been changed, too. I took an image of a Manhattan bridge, duplicated it twice, and then moved the two duplicates by a couple of pixels each. I lowered the opacity of the duplicates to about 40% each. This seems pretty close to what the author accomplished.

Another note: In Photoshop, moving the Whites slider in the Levels adjustment panel tends to move the Midtones slider also (I think!). Affinity Photo does not do this, and relies on you to adjust both the Whites and Midtones (which AP calls Gamma) seperately.

@Furry - if you know Photoshop well, then think of the Blend Ranges panel as the equivalent of Photoshop’s “Blend If” sliders. The graphs in the Blend Ranges panel contol the visibility (opacity) of whatever layer they are attached to - in this case, the Levels adjustment. The leftmost graph (Source Layer Ranges) lets you set opacity based on the luminance of the current layer; the rightmost graph (Underlying Composition Ranges) lets you set the opacity of the current layer based on the luminance of the underlying composition. For me, I usually find that the Source graph works best for Pixel and Image layers, while the Underlying Composition graph works best for Adjustment and Filter layers. I’d suggest one alternative. As you’ve done in Photoshop (and as suggested above) put a Levels adjustment above the image. Open the Blend Ranges panel for the Layers adjustment and drag the node at the top right of the Underlying Composition graph straight down to zero. (Now, the Levels adjustment will preferentially affect the dark tones, leaving the highlights less affected.) In the Levels panel, move the White slider to the left, but also move the Gamma (midtones) slider to the left. You might see a better result doing this. (This would also have been the case in Photoshop.) You might also try pushing the Output Black Level slider from its default 0% to, perhaps, 1 or 2% - this will set your blackest blacks to a minimally lighter shade. In some cases, this can help.

0% flow makes no sense at all to me, since it implies that no paint is flowing from the brush at all. Although you can do this, technically, it doesn't actually paint anything. The Opacity and Flow settings (for brush strokes) work on a per-stroke basis. Setting opacity to 100% sets the maximum opacity you can attain per stroke. Setting opacity to 10%, for instance, means that each given stroke can only attain 10% opacity. In the latter case, you can move your brush over the same point multiple times, but the point will never get beyond 10% opacity. HOWEVER, if you start a new stroke (e.g., lift the mouse button and then press it down again) that new stroke will be able to attain 10% also. If you paint over the same spot again, you will increase the amount of paint on that spot by another 10%. Flow is the rate at which the brush lays down paint. Think about it like you were shading with a pencil - put the pencil at an angle and start to stroke an area back and forth until the area gets darker and darker, the more you do it. Hardness only describes the feathering of the edge of the stroke. We can explain this in words all day long. The only real way to figure it out is to create a new document with a blank pixel layer. Start with a round brush with Opacity, Flow, and Harness all set to 100%. Lay down a single stroke. Now change the hardness to lower and lower values. See the difference - it's the feathering at the edge. Put the hardness back to 100% and start decreasing the opacity. See what happens now. And, with opacity, put down multiple strokes that overlap in some areas. See how each stroke is the same opacity, but it gets darker where they overlap. Do the same for flow. Start at 100% and decrease slowly down to 10, 5, 3, 2, and 1% settings. Again, make multiple strokes that overlay. With a very low flow setting, move the brush back and forth over the same area and see how the intensity of the paint builds up. Last thing: Put hardness anywhere you like. Set opacity down to 25% and set flow down to 5% (random, small-ish numbers) and start laying down multiple overlapping strokes. Because the flow is low, each stroke is light. As you move each brush stroke back and forth you'll see the paint build up. But (and this is important) each brush stroke can never get darker than whatever you set for opacity. In this case, a single back and forth brush stroke with 25% opacity and 5% flow will build up in darkness until it reaches 25% opacity. Then, you can't get darker. UNLESS, you start a new stroke. This second stroke will work the same way, but if you overlap the second stroke with the first, the overlapped area will be darker than the 25% opacity would otherwise allow.

Hello again, @augustya. It seems that we're back to the original issue – getting the "grey" areas out of that portrait-like photo. I'll tell you up front that trying to create multiple masks that seamlessly run into each other is going to be too difficult; you'll always end up with a perceptible border between the masks and you won't like it. There's a better solution, although I'm not sure you're going to like the answer. Bear with me – it's reasonably straightforward. There's an attached video. In a nutshell, you place an adjustment over the entire image (initially, no mask at all) and make your settings. Then, invert the adjustment layer (which effectively turns the adjustment layer's inbuilt mask to all black). Then, use a white paint brush to paint the mask so that the adjustment is revealed in only the areas you want it to. Also, in situations like this I've found that painting with a brush set to 1-3% flow makes the "revealing" easier to control. You can paint over and over an area until the degree of revealing is to your liking. (You should read up on the difference between Opacity and Flow as brush settings, since they are subtle but different.) Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here goes… Painting an Adjustment In.mp4

Good morning, @augustya. Sorry it took so long to respond - I suspect we have a multi-time zone difference! Let me offer a few thoughts after reading your last post. Please note that these are my own feelings, and are certainly not dogma. I have no scientific proof that what I am offering is the best possible advice, but it works for me. 1) A lot of folks routinely make a duplicate of the Background layer immediately upon opening any document. To me, this is wasteful and meaningless. I suspect that the practice goes back to the early days of Photoshop when everything was destructive, and the only way to preserve the original document was to have it on an un-edited original copy. Those days are over. Nowadays, almost everything you can do in Affinity Photo (and in Photoshop) can be done non-destructively. In most cases, duplicating the background layer as a reflex action is unnecessary. 2) You can make a new pixel layer based on a portion of an existing layer by selection a portion of that layer and then (i) choosing "Duplicate Selection" from the Layer menu; or (ii) pressing Command-J (Mac) or Control-J (Windows); or (iii) by doing a Copy and then a Paste. The result will be a new layer containing only the portion of the original Pixel layer that was selected. See the video that follows, in which I will select the model's face using the Selection Brush, then use the Refine… tool to deal with the edges (the hair, especially), and then use Duplicate Selection from the Layer menu to create a new pixel layer. Duplicate Selection.mp4 3) Most of the time, duplicating a pixel layer (or a portion of a pixel layer) is not necessary. I did it earlier in this thread only because it made things easier to visualize. However, when I say that I would not do it that way "in the real world" I mean that I would use a Localized adjustment instead. Rather than making a duplicate of part of a pixel layer, I would make a selection on the original "background" pixel layer and, with the selection active, add an adjustment layer. Doing this will not only put an adjustment layer above the pixel layer, but it also incorporates the selection as a mask within the adjustment itself. You do not have to add a separate mask layer; every adjustment layer already has a built-in mask, and you can use this (i) by painting black or white directly onto the adjustment layer; or (ii) by creating the adjustment layer with an active selection. It is this latter method that I use in the video below. Masked Adjustment.mp4

Hello again, @augustya. With the original photo layer active (selected in the Layers panel) I used the Selection Brush and then the Refine… choice (to manage the selection around the hairline, mostly). In my example, I then used the Duplicate command to create the Forehead layer. This was mostly for the example. In “real life,” I would simply have added a Selective Color adjustment which would limit itself to the selected skin, thanks to the inbuilt mask common to all adjustment layers.

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!