rmar

I found this tutorial helpful when dealing with trees. If you can make a mask of the trees you can use that mask to only affect the trees. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdZ9H7eYWvo

Here's another fun way to use NIK (replace references to photoshop with Affinity Photo) You can use NIK to do some really easy fixes to a color image. You don't have to use it for B&W exclusively. More experienced AP users might not need this but it works great for me. https://blogarithms.com/2013/02/06/sfxpro-for-color/ http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/using-silver-efex-pro-for-colour-prints/

You're welcome. I'm still a rookie so all I can share are things I've already researched myself.

I try to follow this path http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-photo-editing-workflow.htm and then i usually break the rules anyway :) One thing I had to learn to do was make a duplicate of the original photo and do all the work on the duplicate leaving the original as a place I can return to if I mess things up. I came from Lightroom and this wasn't a concern. In Affinity and other layer type editors the duplicating step seems to be the first on the list (the nondestructive workflow seems to make this obsolete now but I still make a duplicate to do all my work). Recently, I found a really picky method that makes sense to me technically but I'm not sure of it yet. It goes back to ~2011 and uses the Lab workspace plus RGB in a way that's supposed to setup your editing better. Affinity Photo has a Lab workspace so his ideas should work here even though he uses photoshop If you want to pull your hair out like me, here are the two websites I'm looking at. If you can get the main website video on Chapter 3 to play you will see what I mean. http://www.moderncolorworkflow.com/video-demo main website http://geraldbakker.nl/PPWF/index.html overview edit: you can also use the free NIK plugins with Affinity Photo. NIK has a recommended workflow as well https://support.google.com/nikcollection/answer/3000890?hl=en

I use the NIK plugins to do this. They work in Affinity. They're free so I haven't played much with Affinity's tools. That's all I can add. Is this similar to what you are trying to do? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESamxjp-b18

You can try using the Lab channels like this guy shows in photoshop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxVOAOW7rvg&feature=youtu.be&t=1433 This is a tutorial for Affinity portrait retouch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqbB4q588MU another for affinity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuaH4RfgF50 Just search google for affinity portrait or retouch you will find several of them

I found these videos today and figured there might be other rookies out there who could benefit from them. In the videos he is using photoshop but I see no reason this information would not be useful to Affinity users. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBh3DE2OIOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SjiqEj2xBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJYHxy9H0eE&feature=youtu.be&t=1483 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBNmA1nu-pQ&feature=youtu.be&t=1135 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMYyaWXTDug (really interesting info for printing among other things) Hope it helps someone

oops totally missed what sep2 stood for. :)

You can get the 10 zone histogram using NIK Silver Efex Pro 2. The NIK plugins are free now and there is a good Affinity tutorial on how to install them. Hope that helps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS7qmmdmVk0 NIK install for windows machines Silver Efex Tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyBDgIxPKc0 for anyone who's wondering what this is all about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31y3h_3Wxj8 one use for it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESamxjp-b18

You can also use the free NIK plugins in AP. They have an app just for B&W conversion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKECfD_lK_o I found this tutorial helpful when trying to wrap my head around printing vs monitor colors https://www.printelf.com/cmyk It seems like printing company websites have more info on the subject.

If you're in the US, you can do this the simple way. Edit your photo in AP, save it, then go to this website https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/passports/photos/photo-composition-template.html The tool is on the rhs of the page "start photo tool"

You might want to look at the vectorscope. It has an indicator that (i think) helps you align things in the region of skin tones. Look at the line labeled "I" this article explains it better than i can. He is talking about skin tones in video but the concept is the same to me. http://shootdatapost.com/blog/2009/6/30/painting-hd-cameras-pt-2-skin-toneshtml

The way I think of a RAW file is that it's just unprocessed sensor data from the camera. The only thing that needs done to "that" data are simple adjustments for exposure and/or noise in order to bring out as much information as possible from the sensor. After that is done, the real magic (the idea in your head of what you want your image to say), is done in the Photo Persona, where anything goes. I don't believe you are working with a jpeg at that point, more like a TIFF file with all the information still intact but enhanced by the RAW Develop Persona. Getting to the output/export portion is what decides the final file type. JPEG if that's what you need or TIFF or whatever. I'm sure more experienced people will chime in soon and give you better examples. p.s. If you ever get into drone videos you should check out this guys youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/fhagan02/videos. I've helped my son test a lot of drones that he built. He's moved beyond diy drones at this point but the youtube channel I linked is full of good information on the hows and whys of shooting drone video no matter what software you use or what drone you fly.

I like them. They have the HDR look but not in the extreme like so many others I've seen.

Does this video help clarify what you would like to see as a feature in Affinity Photo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJmx6HBt6Mc My guess is Affinity could do it but I'm betting it would be in a major version upgrade. There is a free version of the software in the video in case you want to try it and see if it is the feature you want added http://x.photoscape.org/ I can see how this would be a useful addition. You might want to start a new thread in the feature requests page, maybe use the above software as your example.

You probably can use AP for noise reduction but you can do that in Photoshop, Lightroom, and others. Even so, a lot of people will still purchase Topaz Denoise because it just works well. NIK Dfine might not be the latest and greatest but it's completely free now (I paid over $150 for the NIK suite a couple years ago and still use Dfine).

How much is a used copy of Lighroom going for these days? If you can find one cheap enough, why not use it for the mass production part of your workflow and Affinity for all the rest? I have LR4 but I never wanted to spend the $$$ on photoshop. When Affinity Photo showed up for Windows I jumped on it :)

Thanks for sharing the tutorial, and special thanks for the English subtitles :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0JSTF8SGi4If your camera allows timed shots you might be interested in this method too

I'm not sure but I think you can do something similar to this in AP It's a really nice method for getting the color from negative scans.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy7c2ikUhcM I use this method and this particular tool to scan mine using a DSLR http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Convert-Film-Negatives-with-a-Digital-Camer/ This is part of a discontinued kit that works great for holding 35mm film flat. I tried plenty of diy holders from youtube but I settled on this tool for the low cost and ease of use. https://www.photosolve.com/main/product/xtendaslide/carrier_film.html

I've never done it but I did find this software recently http://a-sharper-scaling.com/ It seems like a good place to start if you can't do it all in Affinity.

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Kodiak, Is there any chance you can get into more detail (in a new thread perhaps), your raw converter process? I have the free raw converter that Nikon provides for their raw files. I also have Lightroom4. I understand that LR4 uses something similar to Adobe Camera Raw. Should I be using the raw converter provided by Nikon for my nef photos and Sony Image Data Converter for my Sony photos? Very confusing :)

Thanks for providing this.