[Exporting for Web]

Hi Everyone,

Quick question about exporting or resizing for web and social media.  Is there any reason not to resize and already edited and exported JPEG when you want to upload it to social media or for publication on a web page?

Asked another way, is there any benefit in quality gained from exporting from the .afphoto file specifically for this purpose?

I suppose I have it in my mind that anytime you are manipulating the already small JPEG export, that this will degrade quality further.

Thanks for the advice!

[Designer Donuts]

Amazing, this is exactly what I needed.  Thank you everyone!

[Designer Donuts]

Donuts.afdesign

[Designer Donuts]

Hello Crew,

Kind of a beginner questions here.

 

I have created 2 donuts in Designer but I want them to appear as brush strokes.  Is there a way to apply a brush to the donut after the fact?  I am hoping to cycle through the brushes to choose the one that suits the design best.

Thank you!

[Embedded Designer Documents]

Ah yes, that was an easy fix.  Thanks so much Walt, saved the day again!

[Embedded Designer Documents]

Hello Folks;

I am having an issue with a document document in Designer that has multiple artboards.  I have placed a separate Designer document in each artboard.  When I double click the embedded document it opens a separate window which allows me to edit that document, which then populates back in the artboard.

The problem I am having is that it doesn't update the original document when you open in separately, and alternatively, when you open the original Designer document and edit it, it doesn't update the one embedded in the artboard.  This sounds very confusing when I type it, but what I am trying to say is that these aren't linked in the way that is seems they should be.

Does anyone know how I can get these properly linked up?

I hope this question made some sort of sense.

Thanks!

[Stack]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

It's best to Open each RAW image individually, and Develop, and export to TIFF. Then use the TIFFs to make your stack.

Given the processing that occurs, I would only use RAW images for File > Open and File > New Batch Job. Unless there were improvements in V2 that I'm not aware of, those are the only workflows that make use of the Develop Assistant processing, I think.

Thanks Walt, I have delved into this.  So it brings another question, I have not done much with TIFF, should I export as TIFF RGB 8-bit or 16-bit?  I presume 16-bit will give a wider colour space, but the massive file size is taxing to the computer of course.  How important is this?

Thanks again, always appreciate the help.

[Stack]

G'day Crew,

Another round of questions for you....

I have tried my first stack, I did a still life of some flowers and took several images with different lightings with the aim of doing a composite and painting in the more nicely lit areas from each photo.

I created the stack and the app brought me straight into the photo persona, I would have preferred to do a raw develop on them beforehand.  I understand how I could do this manually, but I want the computer to automatically align for me.  I clicked on the develop persona to try to go into it and do an edit on one of the photos and it took me there, but was unable to make any changes, I'm not sure why this is.

My basic question is what is the proper sequence to do this in, I imagined that I would do a raw develop that applies to all of the images and then develop and go into the photo persona and do the composite work.  Should I be worried about the raw development?

Thanks, as always, for the help!

 

[Clarity vs Detail Refinement]

Hello Folks,

Would someone be able to describe for the the difference between clarity and detail refinement in the develop persona.  The effects are quite distinctive from each other but I can't determine what each is doing differently and when to use one versus the other, or in tandem.

Thanks!

[Keyboard Shortcut]

Hello Folks,

Does anyone know if it's possible to set the background grey level to a keyboard shortcut?  I find myself adjusting this regularly and would like to do it without having to open the preferences menu.

Thanks!

[Colour in Develop Persona]

Hello Folks,

I have a question about adjusting colours in the develop persona.  I have a fairly good grasp of what I am trying to do with exposure, white balance, contrast, shadow/highlights when developing a raw image.  One thing I haven't quite come to grips with is the best way to handle colour when editing a raw file.

Is it best to have a fairly neutral/true to life representation before developing and moving on to the photo persona?  Or should vibrance and saturation be adjusted earlier rather than later?  I intuitively don't like to raise saturation or adjust  the separate colour channels on the tone curve before developing, for some reason I think that there is more nuanced control of colour in the photo persona.  But I also fear that if I am not adjusting saturation or vibrance in the develop persona then perhaps information is being baked into the image that won't be available in the photo persona. 

I am ready to be wrong on any or all of these points, and I'm sure there is differing opinions on this, but would love to hear some thoughts.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[White to Transparent]

Amazing, many of these worked.

Thanks everyone!

[White to Transparent]

Hello Folks,

Quick question, I am working on some high key sketches and wondering how to turn all of the white in the photo to transparent?

Thank!

[Black and White Points]

Yes but how do you tell when the black is true black?  In lightroom you can click on the black background and it sets that as the black point to ensure that your background is set to black.

I'm sorry as you can tell I don't really know how to phrase the question, I just don't know exactly how far to bring the black slider to the right to set the black point.

 

[Black and White Points]

Gday Friends,

Was watching a lightroom video tutorial and noticed that there is a way within the levels adjustment to set the black or white points to pure black or pure white respectively.  I am interested to do this because I am experimenting with still life photography that is sometimes set against a black or white background and want to ensure that those are not shades of gray.

Thank you as always!

[Line Drawings]

Hi Old Bruce, this is very cool and something I haven't tried.  Would you mind spelling out the steps for me?

[Line Drawings]

I think the gradient map it what will be best for me, it's getting closer, just need to play with the proper adjustments I think.  Thanks everyone!

 

[Line Drawings]

Thank you, these suggestions are doing exactly as I hoped.  But I am having trouble taking the next step into turning it into a nice, simple line drawing.  Does anyone have an idea as to how this might be achieved?  The attached photo was done by duplicating the image layer and changing the blend mode to colour dodge, and then adding a gaussian blur to that.  I came upon this method from our good friends Affinity Revolution.  But this is not quite there for me, I'm hoping for mostly outline and less of the shading.

[Line Drawings]

Good day fine people of Affinity forum.

As always, thank you for your help over the past year, I think you have solved every problem I have posed here thus far.

My question today is about turning black to white.  I am often doing still life photography against a black backdrop.  I would also like to be able to turn all the black in the image to white because I am trying to turn these into line drawings.  I am sure there must be a simple way to do this but can't quite figure it out.

Selecting the subject isn't doing what I want because I am happy for all of the black in the subject to go white in this scenario as well.  Please see my example of a cob of corn. 

The ultimate goal here is to turn this into a black and white line drawing.  Perhaps this isn't the best way to go about this, any help with the question at hand or alternate strategies greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[Tethering]

Thanks Kerro!

[Clipping]

Good Day,

I was wondering if you could help me understand clipping.

Of the three buttons in the upper right hand part of the app in the develop persona, "Show Clipped Highlights", "Show Clipped Shadows", and "Show Clipped Tones", I understand the first two, but I struggle to understand what the clipped tones is telling me.

Would anyone be able to tell me what is meant by clipped tones and how they should be dealt with?

Thanks!

[Color Picker]

Yep, you got it, it was Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen Recording

All sorted, thanks Brian.  Much appreciated!

[Color Picker]

Yes! This is exactly what I've done.

Sorry, do you know what it means "Refer to your operating system's documentation if you need to grant permission at a later time."?

[Color Picker]

This doesn't work for me for some reason, it goes straight to black for both color picker tools,

[Color Picker]

Hi!

Two questions for you regarding the color picker tool.

1. Can you tell me how to save a color picked with the color picker to swatches?

2. I watched a video that showed the color picker in the color panel picking a colour outside of Affinity Designer/Photo (a browser to be specific).  When I try this my color picker goes to black, is there a setting to change this?  Or perhaps this ability has been disabled?

Thanks for your help, as always.