If you can snag yourself a copy of the original free Google Nik Collection (download instructions here among other places) Analog Efex Pro 2 should do all you desire. It has almost infinite combinations of retro settings. Works for me in Photo v2 running on macOS Ventura.
If you can snag yourself a copy of the original free Google Nik Collection (download instructions here among other places) Analog Efex Pro 2 should do all you desire. It has almost infinite combinations of retro settings. Works for me in Photo v2 running on macOS Ventura.
You make it (and I think intentionally) sound like they stole from you. That is shameful. No one forced you to buy without trying it first. You make it a point, underlining that your a disabled veteran. Well thank you for your service. I am too, and I don't go around throwing it in people's face, which is asking for, or demanding, they feel sorry for you.
You've been on the internet since 1995, so you have no, none, nada, excuse for not knowing there are trial versions so you can see if it is what you want. I've been around that long too, and I've lost count of how many programs I have tried, using their trials. Not working, can't figure it, too steep a learning curve, then just uninstall and move on.
I'm a hobbyist, not a professional (don't get paid to play), and I've managed to learn how to use Affinity apps. There is a somewhat steep learning curve. It takes puttin' your head down and keep gettin' after it. I've viewed more video tutorials than I can count, read about the same. I didn't know how to use the apps at all, in 2017. That's when I started gluing myself to this forum. Sound nuts? Maybe, but I wanted to figure it out, I still don't have it all figured out, but I've gained enough knowledge now, and been using their apps enough since then, I want to give what I was given.
Coming on here, and posting that the apps are garbage just because you can't figure it out is just rude and wrong!!!
Hi @Maximilian and welcome to the forum.
It's not a 'specific colour", though. It's a range of colours (mostly light-grey-purples). Even in your screenshot I can see the stripes. And the shadow has been cropped off. If it were me, I would delete the entire background to white and then paint in a light shadow using a soft brush.
Your average punter isn't going to be too concerned about its precise placing as they focus on the bottle.
The icons used for 'locked' and 'unlocked' are idiotic. The current icon (a locked padlock) is fine. But unlocked should show an open padlock rather than subtly changing the lighting of the icon.
And I know I'm a noob at this but I would have thought that if the layer was 'locked' then I should be prevented from making changes, but I seem to be able to draw over it when locked. Very unintuitive.
Maybe the Show Clipped Tones button should say 'Show Clipped Midtones'.
I only see clipped midtones if I boost exposure, saturation and/or contrast to very (approaching ludicrously) high levels:
Pro tip: if there's a layer that you intend to have 0% Opacity, the solution is simply to not create the layer/adjustment in the first place. Saves time and complexity, plus it avoids your frustrating scenario completely!
JUST KIDDING. 😁
Yes, that's a bona fide bug.
Not a live one, no. The closest I can get is:
Create a Pattern Layer that fills your entire document. Enable Mirror and fill the layer with a colour. Apply your Procedural Texture as a 'baked in' filter, or Merge Down a Live Filter Layer, and the whole Pattern Layer can then be rotated along with the effect. But the filter effect is no longer editable. 😞
I think you could probably rotate the effect if you knew which of the many functions to use. But it's all a bit of a dark art... 😈
If you regularly use 14.8 cm*14.8cm, single page, then create a new preset. This uses Publisher v2.
File - New...
Whatever the default preset (mine was A3 landscape), in the Layout tab, set Document Units to Centimetres, set Width to 14.8 and Height to 14.8. Check Default master:
Set your other options (Colour, Image Placement etc) as desired:
Now switch to the Pages tab and set the number of pages to 1. Uncheck Facing pages:
Make any further changes you require to margins, bleed etc in the appropriate tabs.
Click the Save Preset as... button (note that my A3 now has an asterisk next to it to show that it has been modified):
Give it a name and click OK:
You'll now have a new preset in your preset list:
Next time you create a new document, this will be the first preset that comes up.
Rinse and repeat for all the card sizes and units you need. You have control...
If you regularly use 14.8 cm*14.8cm, single page, then create a new preset. This uses Publisher v2.
File - New...
Whatever the default preset (mine was A3 landscape), in the Layout tab, set Document Units to Centimetres, set Width to 14.8 and Height to 14.8. Check Default master:
Set your other options (Colour, Image Placement etc) as desired:
Now switch to the Pages tab and set the number of pages to 1. Uncheck Facing pages:
Make any further changes you require to margins, bleed etc in the appropriate tabs.
Click the Save Preset as... button (note that my A3 now has an asterisk next to it to show that it has been modified):
Give it a name and click OK:
You'll now have a new preset in your preset list:
Next time you create a new document, this will be the first preset that comes up.
Rinse and repeat for all the card sizes and units you need. You have control...
If you haven't read my first Procedural Textures tutorial (Affinity Photo Procedural Textures for Absolute Beginners: 101.1) you can find it HERE
In this tutorial we will create a series of basic Procedural Textures. We will build up the skills gradually, one step at a time, and finish by making a Macro which can be used to create silk backdrops like this one:
If you haven’t read my introduction to Affinity’s Procedural Texture filter and want an explanation of what it’s all about, you can read that here. By the end of this first tutorial, you will have a basic understanding of how Procedural Textures work, you will have made a few adjustable textures and you will have a macro for making silk fabric backdrops like the one I showed you at the end of the last tutorial.
We shall be making some simple new presets which you can save into the Basic Noise or Tutorial Textures category you created in the first tutorial. If you haven’t done that yet, open the Presets Manager and create a new category for the presets we’ll make in this tutorial. To do this you’ll need to open the Procedural Texture dialogue and click on the burger icon at the end of the Equations line.
Go to lesson 3 HERE
Before we begin here is a quick reminder of the four basic maths symbols on the keyboard. It's useful to know so that when you see them in an equation you know what they are.
TIP: Look at some of the default Procedural Textures that come with affinity. See a / sign? swap it for * and see what difference it makes.
Maths signs + and – are obvious. * is multiply, / is divide. Note that the multiplication sign is an asterisk * not an x.
The Simplest Texture of All
I promised to start from scratch, so let’s make the most basic Procedural Texture of all.
First, remember that PTs need a filled pixel layer on which to work so create one now.
Create a new blank document 1920x180 pixels (the size doesn’t matter). Create a new pixel layer by clicking on the chequerboard icon at the bottom of the layer palette or go to Layer>New Layer. Fill this layer with your foreground colour through Edit>Fill with Primary Colour (white).
TIP: For this tutorial you will make life MUCH easier for yourself if you create the Procedural Textures as a Live Filter. To do this go Layer>New Live Filter Layer>Colours>Procedural Texture. This can be re-edited at any time by double clicking on the Procedural Texture thumbnail in the Layer palette. Create a new live Procedural Texture filter as above, if you haven’t already done so.
Create an empty equation input box by clicking on the + button at the bottom of the Equations section.
Whoa! What happened there! Your image just turned cyan! (If your pixel layer is white.)
When you add an equation line, by default, Affinity assumes that you only want it to affect one channel. Look at end of the Equation line – only the R button is highlighted.
Really, THIS is the most basic “texture” of all – no maths, no coding! In fact, if you applied this to a photo you would tint the whole image Cyan. Turning on the R, G and B buttons in combinations creates various filters, which you could save as presets, if you wished – but that’s not where we’re going today. Click all the RGB buttons so they are all depressed and your image is black.
Click in the new equation input box and type (or copy and paste) the following:
noisei(x) (Note the last “i” – noisei. I’ll come to why that is important later.) Press the Enter or new line key.
You've created a bar code texture!
Save this as your first texture (you can delete it any time you want, but we’ll build on it as we go). Click on the burger icon and save it in the Basic Noise category you created in the last tutorial.
Save it as Basic Noise 1. If you haven’t created a category, do it by clicking on Manage Presets in the burger icon on the right of the preset drop-down list, then create category, name it as Basic Noise.
So, what’s going on?
The ‘noisei’ bit is the command to tell Affinity to generate “i’” type noise (I’ll come back to that later). Like 99% of procedural texture equations expects some instructions inside brackets afterwards telling it how to generate the noise – Here that is (x).
What’s the x for?
Affinity views your pixel layer essentially as a grid or graph of pixels. It has to plot (generate) the procedural textures from a starting point. This starting point is the top left-hand corner of the image. It then needs to know which direction to go.
Going from left to right is the x direction, whilst going from top to bottom is the y direction. Try changing the x inside the brackets to a y, then press enter to see what happens.
A word about spaces in equations – they don’t seem to matter too much. noisei ( x ) produces the pattern exactly the same noisei(x).
Where’s the noise???
When you typed in the equation you were probably expecting to see a field of pixel noise like this:
The reason why we haven’t got that is because we have only given Affinity an instruction to generate the noise in one direction, left to right (x) or top to bottom (y)
What we need to do is combine both directions, which is more straightforward than you’d think. We just put a comma after the x and then type y, making sure it’s all inside the brackets like this:
noisei(x,y)
Now you’ve got basic noise! Save this as Basic Noise 2.
Take Control
Remember those custom inputs down the bottom? We can them to control how the noise appears.
First, go into the presets and select the Basic Noise 1 you created a moment ago.
Click on the R custom input button at the bottom and fill it in as in this image.
The R tells you what kind of input it is. R means any number including decimals – so you could type 40.05, if you wanted. The letter a name of this input as far as the equation is concerned (I’ll come back to that in a minute). In the next empty box I typed Width (you’ll see why soon), and then I have typed the number 40 as a starting number.
If you’ve entered those, so far nothing has happened. That’s because we need to tell Affinity to look at this input we have just made. Remember that letter a in the input box? Amend the equation so it looks like this noisei(x/a) and press enter. Now you should see a dramatic change in the texture.
The “/a” in the Equation just tells Affinity to look a the a input box and divide the noise by that number. You don’t need to know what the maths is doing, just that by putting /a when you increase or decrease the number in the custom input box by clicking the up and down arrows, the pattern gets wider or narrower. Save this as Basic Noise 3.
Open the Basic Noise 2. you created earlier. Add two R Custom Inputs. Call the first (a) one Width as before with a starting value of 80, and the second (b) one Height with a starting value of 40.
Now you have a size-controllable noise maker. Play with it for a while. Don’t forget that if you like a particular combination (say 5 wide and 90 high) you can save it as a sub-preset via the burger icon on the right of the custom inputs box.
Add Colour
So far, we’ve only used one equation line, which already is beginning to make some interesting patterns and designs. But if we add another couple of equation lines, we can really mix things up.
Re-open the Basic Noise 3 preset we made earlier. The line reads noisei(x/a), and we’ve got one custom input which is assigned to the “/a” part. All of the RGB button are on.
TURN OFF the G and B buttons, so only R is on.
Now add two more equation lines by clicking the + at the bottom of the Equations section.
Still nothing! That’s because the new controllers have been assigned the letters b and c. Edit the G equation, taking out the letter a and substituting for the letter b. Do the same with the B line, but make the a a c.
Make the starting numbers for the R, G, and B 9, 11 and 13. When press Enter after typing in 13 you should end up with this:
You can save this as a preset if you wish.
Notice how I have renamed the custom inputs to Red Width etc.
By adding /ya, /yb, and /yc to each equation line we can get resizable, overlapping coloured squares.
Note that I have renamed the custom inputs and put different starting numbers. You can save this one too, if you like.
A whole lot of noise
I promised you a satin filter Macro. I also said that I would explain what the last “i” in noisei is all about. One look at the help page for the Procedural Texture will tell you – there’s more than one kind of noise! There is noise (without the i), noisesc, noisesin, noisecs…. Dozens of them if you include the harmonic noise ones.
We’re going to play with cubic noise. The command for this is… wait for it…. Noisecubic.
Re-open Basic Noise3, the one like this:
Edit the equation so that instead of noisei(x/a) it reads noisecubic(x/a). Make sure you delete the last “i” of the noisei.
You should have soft, blurry lines like this:
Save this a preset called Soft Cubic Noise Lines. The default width value is 80
Make a Silk Background Macro
Close the Procedural Texture dialogue.
Delete the live filter layer and accompanying pixel layer.
Before you start recording the macro, change your foreground colour to any colour other than white. This will be the default colour for your silk background. You will be able to change it after you run the macro.
Open the Macro tab which is found at View>Studio>Macro.
Click the record button (red dot).
Create a new layer via Layer>New Layer.
Fill with foreground colour via >Edit>Fill with Primary Colour.
Add a new Live Procedural Texture Layer via Layer>New Live Filter Layer>Colours>Procedural Texture.
Select the Soft Cubic Noise Lines preset you just made.
Close the Procedural Layer dialogue (X top right corner).
Add a new Fill Layer via Layer>New Fill Layer.
Change the Layer blend mode to Average.
Press stop recording button (square).
Save the Macro as Silk Background by clicking on the icon with three squares and a tiny +.
You now have a fully editable silk background texture. To test it out, delete all the layers in the layer palette so that you have a completely empty document.
Run the macro.
You should have two layers: A fill layer, which when selected, you can simply click any colour in your colour swatches to change the colour. A pixel layer beneath it with a live Procedural Texture filter. You can change the Procedural Texture by double-clicking the white thumbnail with the hourglass symbol in it. You will then be able to change the width of the silk folds.
One Final Tweak
If you want to make the Soft Cubic Noise Lines preset click-draggable, you can edit the equation and add the letter “r” before the “x”. The equation will then read noisecubic(rx/a). If you have the Procedural Texture dialogue open, you will be able to drag the texture sideways.
If you wish to replace your Soft Cubic Noise Lines preset with this draggable one, click the burger icon on the right of the preset drop-down list. Select Replace Preset. Scroll down the drop-down list until you find Soft Cubic Lines. Click OK.
Here’s what the texture macro looks like blue and with a width of 15
Next tutorial is HERE
Brilliant workflow, @Lisbon, but…
… you don't even need to rasterize anything:
after you have duplicated all your ellipses: Layer > Geometry > Merge Curves = you'll get a single vector Curves layer
mask your pixelated image with the Curves layer (a.k.a. vector mask)
Hi @Le0nard
This is complicated. Watch this video before continue reading. It's a PS video but it will give you a better understanding of what we're trying to replicate in A.Photo.
The first step is to pixelate the image (Filters > Distort > Pixelate).
On my example, i decided to make the "square pixels" 40px wide. For best results, this value varies and not all images look good with this technique.
Next you need to create the "round pixels" but first i recomend watching a video about the function "Power Duplicate"
Your first "round pixel" must have exactly 40px wide and centered in the middle of the "square pixel".
After Power duplicate you must have something like this. I grouped all the "round pixels" and applied "Rasterise".
Load your "round pixels" as a selection (Ctrl + Mouse_click on layer thumbnail) and add a mask to your background.
This was my final result. I used black as background colour.
To convert to B&W add a B&W adjustment set to Colour blend mode.
To restrict the shades of gray to... lets say 15, add a Posterise adjustment set to 15 levels.
The posterise adj. set to 15 on a B&W image does not convert the image to 15 shades of gray. What it does is set the maximum number of possible shades of gray to a value of 15. (If it has 13 shades probably no one will notice 😀)
First of all, thank you @Old Bruce, @walt.farrell, @h_d, @Lisbon so much for your answers!
@h_d This looks also nice but isn't exactly what I'm searching for! But maybe I can use it another time! 🙏🏽
@Lisbon Wow, THAT'S IT. Absolutely. This looks actually great. I'm too busy this afternoon but I will try all these steps tomorrow. Thank you also for sharing these helpful videos! Because I really need to advance with my affinity knowledge and skills..
I will share my further experiences with my project and I'm sure asking for more help!
Leonard
h_d got a reaction from loukash in Affinity Photo - Plugins or similar for period colour film look?
h_d got a reaction from Starbase1 in Affinity Photo - Plugins or similar for period colour film look?
h_d reacted to Kenneth Weidlich in Startup configuration
h_d got a reaction from Maximilian in Find and replace a specific colour in a picture
h_d got a reaction from Jung21 in How to rotate Live Procedural Texture in Affinity Photo?
h_d got a reaction from Clare M in Default to cms for Document Units?
h_d got a reaction from Old Bruce in Default to cms for Document Units?
h_d got a reaction from Le0nard in Convert photo to image with round pixels (limited color palette, resp. gray tones)