drippy cat

Oh stop it, you big fluffy bear of a man!

Hi pixupdate. If you get completely stuck I cover restoring and colourising old photos on my Affinity Photo: Little Box of Tricks course over at Udemy. Unfortunately it's a paid for course so maybe consider it only if no one comes up with a free alternative. ...I'm not exactly salesman of the year, am I? Cheers, Simon

Hi BobsCreek. I've produced a pdf with photos to work along with covering the basics of Affinity Photo. You can find it here - https://theeagerlearner.com/ Cheers, Simon

My first port of call would be a curves adjustment layer. Or try clarity, which boosts the contrast in the mid tones.

Hi everyone, I put up a blog post about using blend ranges in the way people often use luminosity masks. You can check it out here: http://theeagerlearner.com/blog/ Hope it's of some use to you & cheers, Simon

Thanks for that jer! I'm really pleased to hear that the 'why' bit was relevant. I think all to often you get tutorials which explain a tool but you don't get to see how it works with other tools. I've just finished the next two chapters of the main book and one of them is practicing what's been learned from the chapters up until now so people can consolidate the base skills before moving on. Thanks again for the kind words! Simon

Thanks for that Dave, much appreciated. Oh, and I just read your details & by coincidence my 3rd Chillblast (a Photo, like yours) is currently on the makers bench. That'll be a week of setting it up...

Thanks very much for this input jer. It really is a help.

Hi jer and thanks for getting back to me! There should have been another file called Noise01. I've taken a look at it, reduced it's size and resaved the .zip file. Try it now & hopefully all will be well for you. Cheers, Simon

Hi pjglad. Thanks for getting back to me about that. If you take a look at page 54 I address that issue and acknowledge that some programs like Adobe programs prefer to do things the way round you mentioned under the title 'Confession Time'. To sum up what I say there I prefer to work from large changes to more subtle ones, and I've generally found changing the tonal adjustments to have a more profound impact on the look of pictures than white balance. There's no 'one rule fits all' and I'm aware that sometimes changing the white balance dramatically alters the look of an image. But I've found that altering the tone affects the apparent intensity of the colors and I want to know how intense the colors will be before altering the white balance. That said, I welcome reasons why altering the white balance first is a better idea, and I'm certainly not averse to including those in the book. Cheers, Simon

Hi everyone, I've just uploaded a 90 page guide covering the absolute basics of Affinity Photo. If you go here https://theeagerlearner.com/ and subscribe you can download it along with the photos used in the chapters so you can follow along. This guide could be described as the written equivalent of my Affinity Photo: 5 steps to Better Photos course over at udemy. Actually it's the first chapters of a larger book I'm writing which will be the broad equivalent of the Affinity Photo: Solid Foundations course, also at Udemy. But it will be slightly different. I may not cover all the topics from the video course but I will be including written material about using the develop persona to process RAW files, for example. So why do this? Well, I'm aiming to sell the final book and I want people to have a clear idea of what to expect. I also think that if you are going to give something for free as a taster, you should give something good that's going to be of real use to people. It also gives you a chance to give any feedback to me here so I can match the final book to peoples hopes and wishes. So I hope it gives you plenty of useful information and I look forward to hearing any comments you may have about it. Cheers, Simon Foster

Fairly soon (ideally in one or two weeks) I will be releasing a 90+ page freely downloadable book with photos to follow along with in pdf format which covers the 5 basic steps I consider essential to consider when tackling a new photo. It is the first chapters of a larger book I am writing which I suppose is the broad equivalent of my Solid Foundations course at Udemy. I will post on this forum when it is ready. Cheers, Simon Foster

Oh thank goodness! It's always such a relief to know someone is getting something out of one of your courses. Cheers RobNJ!

Thanks for that EdD! Just as a heads up to Chintan, here's a link to the first of 3 youtube videos aimed at someone like yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYwjdx9FJRA . They cover more general principles than RAW processing but hopefully if you go though them it will be of some help. Btw; I agree with the idea that 'how to' is not enough. 'Why to' and 'when to' are equally as important. Cheers Simon

Hi Robchoc. When 1.5 came out I added new videos to cover many of the new features because I think it's important to keep the course up to date. So yes, that's the plan for any future updates. As for Designer, I certainly wouldn't rule it out but not just yet because I have so many other projects going on at the moment. Cheers Simon

I've just added a .pdf file to the first video about layer masks. They are often the thing that people find hard to get their head around conceptually. So I thought it would be an idea to tackle things using 2 different media, video and step by step written with screenshots so you can come at the problem from two different angles.

Hi kunmingjay. The course is aimed at beginners and as such I felt I'd stick to basic concepts. Raw is a more advanced concept than I wanted to talk about on this course, although I do have a course dedicated to just RAW development using Affinity Photo right here - https://www.udemy.com/affinity-photo-raw-image-development/?src=sac&kw=affinity .

Hi everyone, Since the Solid Foundations course was launched last year - https://www.udemy.com/affinityphoto-solid-foundations/ it's become a best seller so thanks very much for that and from the reviews it looks like it's meeting a lot of peoples expectations. But there's always ways to make a good thing better. So I've decided to start a new faq section which I will occasionally add to in an ongoing kind of a way. Sometimes I'd be asked a question and sometimes I'd see a question asked on this forum, and sometimes I'd think 'that might make a good tutorial'. So I've made a start with probably the question I get asked the most which is 'How do I place one image inside another?' and I've made it available as a free to view video, so if you click on the link above and head down towards the bottom end of the curriculum you can view it any time you like. I've gathered together a list of questions that people have asked me and on this forum, and as and when I can add a question that I feel is of direct benefit to many users I will do so. I guess that's my way of saying that I want to build up this section over time and have it be at least the same quality and relevance as the rest of the videos on the course, but I don't want to get into the situation where I'm disappointing people because I'm not quickly producing a video answer to every question that's asked about Affinity Photo. As with previous additions to the course (eg the 1.5 update section) this will not affect the price. The price stays the same. Thanks for your time, Simon Foster

Hi greytail. Just wondering if you found any success with the seam on your image?

Hi greytail. Do you have the Solid Foundations course? If so check out the second of the two videos on equirectangular projections in the 1.5 update section from about 8:05 minutes in. I describe how to do this by fixing a seam in the sky. The seam you have is more pronounced, but there's almost no critical detail like clouds and definitely no hard detail like people etc. In a nutshell, the clone brush tool is your friend. Given the area you are talking about, I'd use a 100% opacity brush with a large size and soft edge to lose the big stuff, then I'd go in at, say, 30% opacity and build up softer areas. Hope that helps.

Yep! Been there, done that, wiped the mess up. Glad I could help EdD. Simon

Hi greytail. If I understand correctly, are you asking if you could use a device that doesn't take 360 photos and then stitching them together to make a 360 photo as per a dedicated 360 degree camera like, for example, the Theta S? If that's the case I can't think of a way offhand to do this. You can turn round with a regular camera while taking a series of photos using File -> new Panorama. But that will extend side to side, not up and down. That may also explain why you get such a strong seam along one of the edges. Also, stitching together a series of photos into a panorama - I believe - is normally done with the camera looking straight ahead and moving side to side. If you point the camera up or down at a significant angle I would imagine you would run into problems where the software isn't expecting to have to deal with an up or down angle as well as side to side. But I may be wrong because tbh I've never thought to try doing it. Maybe one of the technical boys at Affinity could shed some light on this?

Hang on EdD; did you check out lecture 54 entitled 'Layer Effects and Styles' from the Solid Foundations course?

Hi EdD & nice to see you. I can look into that for you...

Hi greytail. Fixing the seams on 360 photos? I cover that in the 1.5 update videos. My personal take is that I'll try things like content aware fills to see if they work (nice when they do, often they don't) but as often as not I resort to the old fashioned way of using the clone stamp tool. As for sky replacement, selections and layer masks are your friend. I cover them on the Solid Foundations course.