drippy cat

Ah! There you are! Hi mikep. I was looking for the original thread where we had a brief conversation when I released the course so I could add to it. But I couldn't find it. What method would you suggest I choose for announcing new courses? This thread we're posting on is the announcement topic, and I don't want to do more than this because I don't want to start spamming this forum. If I update the course or have anything new to say I'll post here. But in all conscience I wouldn't go creating new threads to announce something I've already announced previously. I may make an announcement in a few days offering discount coupons for the various courses but that comes under the category of something new to say. As for the £ and $ thing, it makes sense for me to set the base price in dollars because the USA represents the majority of my customers and the dollar is more recognised worldwide than sterling. Udemy doesn't let me set the local currency rate. I get to choose one currency when I initially set the price so I think it best to consider my largest audience. But I'm based in the UK. If I log out and search for one of my courses, the price is listed as sterling, not dollars. So Udemy seems to know from my web browser which country I'm in & presents the prices in local currency. It's also in round numbers so I'm not sure that fluctuations in exchange rates will have much of an effect. Then again I'm not the greatest economist the world has ever seen. Cheers, Simon

I'm in the process of making the auto generated captions legible for the Solid Foundations course at Udemy - https://www.udemy.com/affinityphoto-solid-foundations/ which is taking it's sweet time because they are so gloriously creative when transcribing what I say. Here's some epic quotes, along with my duller corrections underneath. I apologise for demeaning the mighty art that the auto generator hath wrought by correcting it so it actually makes sense. But enough! Here's the highlights from what I've done so far... OK so I'm back to commit to my crap. OK, so I'm about to commit to my crop. Come up here to my croping tool. Cocteau or Prossy. Come up here to my cropping tool. Crop tool, or press 'C' Call me Mr Pretentious if you want the whole length. call me Mr. Pretentious if you want, *darling!*. nowadays, you'll see more and more very wide or tool photos from people's camera phones nowadays, you'll see more and more very wide or tall photos from people's camera phones Santa you're very tall and thin ...sending your very tall and thin.. Let's try 5 by 7 and say wow that's got big Let's try 5 by 7 and rotate - wow! That's got big. Now if I come back to my crotch to instead of the third grade. Now if I come back to my crop tool. Instead of the thirds grid in Photoshop Elements once we Crock-Pot image in Photoshop Elements, once we crop our image Let's take this picture into a vanity photo. Let's take this picture into Affinity Photo. So I asked him Manzi and combat straight into if you got to see them always you thoughts straight up So, press ctrl/command + Z and come back to the straighten tool. If you've got sea there, always use that to straighten up We have three day pokes to crop and rotate. We have three .jpgs to crop and rotate Now the ratio I want is 8:44 Now the ratio I want is 16:9 (think about it...) Every foeticide record its own bit of... Every photo site records its own bit of... What's the Shafter goes down on your camera. Once the shutter goes down on your camera, and then come back to the lame ass layer and then come back to the layer mask layer ... I can leave the original text there if you find it more inspiring...

Hi EdD & thanks for the kind words. To answer your questions, I think a complete beginner would find the course a bit too much. That said, I've done a bonus section at the end which includes some videos taken from the Solid Foundations & iPad course on Udemy which cover the absolute basics of layer masks, curves, layer blend modes & what a layer actually is. I also point people to the free 90 page guide plus relevant blog articles on my website. The bottom line is, if someone has digested the Solid Foundations course they should have no problem following along & understanding stuff. That was always the intention of the Solid Foundations course - teach the (well...) foundations & then for other courses go on to more advanced stuff that I know I've taught and people can refer back to the foundations course. At a push I'd say do it before the Little Box of Tricks course. Get a workflow in place first and get comfortable with it because the Box of Tricks course is more about various things that can be slotted into a workflow. As for it being suitable for other subjects, I'd say yes, but with the proviso that I've tried to provide a workflow that's most suited for landscapes. I think possibly the biggest problem with landscapes is a too bright sky and/or a too dark background so it was designed with that in mind. I've also tried to give a workflow that I think is best suited for Affinity Photo users. I might do things differently with another image editor. When I selected the files that people can see for free I was careful to include the overview video (video 3) where I list the steps I repeat through the various photos I develop. That way people can get a clear idea of what the course offers in addition to the intro video. I have to say I'm curious to see what people will make of it. I'm open to feedback on this forum/thread. If I feel it's something people want then there's plenty of other courses I can think of along similar lines. For example Affinity Photo: Developing Portraits or Affinity Photo: Master Layer Blend Modes/Curves etc. This course came about because of one or two members of this forum - hey! Give people what they want! I hope so. I'm also curious about what people make of the section towards the end where I touch upon a couple of the Nik Collection plug ins. This is uncharted territory and more advanced that any of the previous courses. Let's see what happens... Cheers again EdD, Simon

Hi everyone. After being part of a conversation with one of the forum members where they expressed a wish to have a start to finish set of tutorials about developing landscapes I thought I'd do something about it. So here it is: https://www.udemy.com/affinity-photo-developing-landscapes/ I've tried to make it different from the other courses I've done. Instead of presenting a range of tools and techniques, I've made the workflow a priority. You get to develop a series of (downloadable) landscape photos and follow a series of steps to get to the finished photo. There are variations with each photo, but the process is similar each time. I've done this for two reasons. The first is that, given this is a workflow based course, it seems only sensible to practice that workflow repeatedly to make sure people get comfortable with it. The other is that I've chosen different kinds of landscape photos to demonstrate the flexibility of the method. I hope it's of some use to you and thanks for your time, Simon

Hi jniiiice. On the iPad course I give general steps to follow when I do the five walkthroughs which take a picture from start to finish using the basic five steps method. They don't target a particular type of photography although I've tried to use the techniques on different types of photos - a sheep in a field, Someone doing martial arts, a landscape, a bad photo in need of some kind of help and a boy playing with an adult set against a rather light seaside scene. As for more detailed complete walkthroughs, I'm hoping to get a new series out by Christmas which is for the desktop version of Affinity Photo and focuses on developing landscapes.

I've done a 90+ page downloadable guide to what I hope are the basics here - https://theeagerlearner.com/ and I made 3 tutorials on YouTube for people just starting out. The first one is here -

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let you know that I've added an extra hour's worth of new content to the course to tale the course total to just over 9.5 hours. I was very pleased to get good feedback from people who had enrolled on the course. But if there was one area where some students wanted more it was to practice what they had learned. So, just after the 'five steps to developing your photos' section I've added a 'five photos to develop, start to finish' section. I take five photos and work them up from beginning to end so you can see the whole process of developing an image in action. Of course, the photos I develop are available for people to download so they can follow along. That way people can practice and consolidate the fundamental skills before they go on to more advanced topics like selections and layer masks etc. The price of the course hasn't changed. I just want it to be the best possible introduction to Affinity Photo for the iPad that anyone can learn from. Cheers, Simon

Typical jer! Never satisfied! Oo - I just lumped you into the never-satisfied category. I take your point though. The blog post was taken from a pdf I wrote to be a reference for and supplement the layer blend modes video from the 'Affinity Photo for the iPad' course over at Udemy. After I do the 'rather heavy by necessity' video on what they are, I go on to explain some uses for them because yes, you're right. Blend modes in isolation are not much use without practical examples. What I've done in the various AP courses on Udemy is to use blend modes as part of other projects, i.e. set a layer to overlay blend mode when I'm talking about dodge and burn techniques or color blend mode when I'm talking about recoloring a black and white photo. That, as opposed to making the blend mode the main point of the video. To make the blend mode the main point of the videos and do justice to the subject could be a complete course in itself (now there's an idea...) Actually the .pdf & blog should be forming part of a chapter in the upcoming book about Affinity Photo (yes jer! Didn't you know?) & in that I was going to extend the chapter to include practical uses in a similar way to the Solid Foundations course and iPad course. But the book is behind other things in the queue like getting the 1.6 update videos finished for the SF course, adding some extra practice videos for the iPad course, finishing off the trial videos for the Landscape course & assessing that & so on. Pretty busy these days...

Hi Dave! Yes, I took a look at your guide & very complete & informative it is too. I think you have a wonderful resource right there that would be of massive use to anyone using any image editing program.

Hi. Were you posting about this on one of the Affinity fb groups a few days ago? Just in case that wasn't you I posted something which may or may not be partially what you need: 'Ok, try this. Have the two pictures open. On the picture which has the color you want to change, add two blank layers. Choose the color picker tool and set it's average reading to 5 x 5. Take a 5 x 5 sample of the cheek/chin/forehead/any reading which has the mid tones of the face you want to change. Use the brush tool and make a large, hard circle of that color on the lower of the two blank layers. Take another color sample from the target skin tone and put another hard edged circle of color on the upper layer. Make sure the two blobs of color overlap at least slightly. Then add a selective color adjustment layer in between the two layers.By default the color that will be affected will be red which is good since most faces are affected by adjusting the red bits of a picture more than any other color. Use the CMYK sliders so that the color blob that lies under the adjustment layer is affected. The color blob that lies on top of the adjustment layer won't be affected at all. Tweak the sliders until the two colors appear identical & that's your color adjustments done. The layer that has the face with colors you want to change should be under the selective color layer. Because you only adjusted the reds the rest of the layer shouldn't be affected, just the skin tones. If any other part of the picture is red it will be affected by the adjustment layer. The good news is that adjustment layers have their own layer masks built in, so if you paint black onto the areas of the adjustment layer, those areas become invisible so you can mask out the color change on a red jumper, for example.'

No worries at all! Went skiing in A-basin so I owe you. Simon

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let people know that I've put up a blog article explaining what layer blend modes are, how they are grouped together and what they do. I also give an visual example of the different blend modes so you can see the effect they have on your images. Here's the link - https://theeagerlearner.com/your-big-friendly-guide-to-layer-blend-modes/ Hope it's of help to you, Simon

Thanks rafi!

Hi rafi. No. I'm not affiliated with Serif. The closest I am to that is the fact that I used to spend my summers in Nottingham over 20 years ago. The book I'm writing is separate. Actually the first part is available as a free download from my website - https://theeagerlearner.com/ I've written a little more but doing the iPad course suddenly took priority.

Hi Mike. How DARE you criticise my amazing videos! I bring my genius to the great unwashed masses and, and - no problem at all, my friend! I don't know what kind of prima donna would give you a hammering for saying a video didn't meet your needs but I'm too old and ugly to do that. Well, I like to think so. The courses I've produced so far have been to cover a broad base and so it follows that people who have specific needs may end up frustrated. I'll certainly take a look at the Joe Brady tutorial and see what kind of thing you're after. As it is, I've been looking at some landscape RAW files from my collection and having a little think about the possibilities... What I would say though is that it'll take time. As well as doing regular design work for clients I have an Affinity Photo book I have to carry on with and I want to add a few more videos to the iPad course I've just released on Udemy plus other ideas for video tutorials - the list just goes on and on! But if there's an area that people are interested in learning about then it's of interest to me.

Hi, I'd like to cutomise the wet edges of my brush on my PC version of Affinity Photo. But as you can see from the screenshot, I don't have the option to do so. I've checked my version of the software and it's 1.6.0.89. I've checked a number of brushes and can't find the custom dialog box that appears in the 1.6 features video at 00.21. Am I missing something? Cheers, Simon

From the replies I've seen so far it seems that people would like a kind of 'sit next to an experienced user and watch how they work and what they do' approach to a video or series - does that sound about right? If so, It's something I've considered as a course. My main concern with the 'warts and all' approach has been that, for every person who appreciates the learning process when things don't work out well, there'll be another who complains that they only want to see the stuff that works. My other concerns are that it may end up repetitious because much of image processing is, and that I don't know how people would react to me coming out with things like 'Well for this one I'm going to combine the Main Problem Tackled approach with the Develop The Complementary Opposites approach.' I'd be hoping that people wouldn't find it a bit pretentious. They might be expecting hard technique instead of my deep and profound philosophies. But of course I'd be interested to hear what people think about - working title of 'Affinity Photo: The Late Night Developing Sessions'.

Hi Mike. I'd be happy to hear more detailed feedback on how I could make the course you bought better. Fair enough if you weren't keen on the course; I know that I can't please everyone all the time but if there's an area you want to see developed more let me know. It could be others would like the same thing and as it is I'm just about to start the videos for the 1.6 update so that the Solid Foundations course remains current and relevant. Bear in mind that the different courses I offer cover different areas. The Solid Foundations course is for beginner to mastering the basics. The Little Box of Tricks course is designed to go beyond that and offer a series of mini projects covering different effects. The RAW course is for - well - RAW processing. The just released Affinity Photo for the iPad is the broad equivalent of the Solid Foundations course. So it might be a case of which course would be the best place for your suggestions. Now I'll take a guess that you may want to see more things related to Landscape Photography? It's doable, but then we're getting into specialised course territory. As it is I've been considering the idea of that kind of series covering areas such as beauty techniques or compositing techniques. My problems is that I'm self employed and there's only so many hours in the day. I paused working on the Affinity Photo book to work on the iPad course, then there's the 1.6 update videos to attend to etc. But I would be interested to hear your feedback. By the way James, massive respect for the videos you produce. I think they are excellent examples of clear and succinct information and have done Serif a huge service. I agree with your thoughts about the need for videos. I think any software, particularly software that deals with visual matters benefits hugely from visual training aids. & to Mike I would say it's a case of market forces in action. New software comes out and if it has the kind of videos James produces it helps attract customers. Once the software grows in popularity other people (like me, for example) realise there's a customer base to produce training material for. So potential customers realise they will be supported with a choice of training and so they are more likely to invest in the software & so the cycle repeats & hopefully grows which, in the case of Affinity Photo, is a good and deserved thing.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to let people know that I've released an 8.5 hour course about Affinity Photo for the iPad here: https://www.udemy.com/affinity-photo-for-the-ipad/ - it's aimed at beginners and I've structured the course to take you from novice to competent user. I wanted to hold off starting the course until the software went through a couple of updates and the latest iOS was released so that Serif had the chance to get things ticking over nicely. So here it is, and I hope you get a lot out of it. Thanks for your interest, Simon

Oh, I see. Yes, I think you're right. Hopefully in a future version and to be fair I think Serif are very good at developing and listening to the requests of their users.

Hi Alfred! Draw out a shape, then with it selected go to the Layer fx studio on the right. Turn Outline on and at the bottom of the screen you get the dials that let you change the Radius (width), Colour, Blend mode etc.

Quick update. The line properties tool lies in the fx studio. You can do what you want with line there.

Hi Generoso. I out a post up explaining blend ranges here - https://theeagerlearner.com/luminosity-masks-try-blend-ranges-instead/ & smadell is right; they are more powerful than the Photoshop blend if.

Thanks for that Alfred. Actually I may be able to give you something back for it after experimenting. I found that once I altered the width of the line using the pen tool, when I then selected the shape tool again it inherited the properties of the pen tool and I got a line of the same thickness as the one I made with the pen tool. It's a rather clunky workaround but hey! It's a workaround, and one I can put in the tutorial if needs be. Thanks again, Simon

Hi, I can't find where to alter the line width/style properties of the shapes like the Rectangle/Diamond/Crescent Tool or pen tool in Affinity Photo for the iPad. Where would I find them?