My favourite thing to do with any half decent photo editing program is to create composites. I luv 'em!
I like these - especially the guitar, not seen anything like that before, so in my mind it's original.
As for myself, I like to bring together images that, by themselves are quite ordinary, but once brought together possess a comic absurdity in a reality situation. That's what I aim for.
We have 2 specific videos regarding the Liquify persona, here and here which should hopefully help you to understand the basics of the mode, as well as workflow implementation.
Unfortunately I'm not quite the creative type, so I don't use the mode personally, but what sort of issues are you having here?
In my composites I try to color match all the elements with curves first, sometimes adding "Average Blur" of the duplicated background on top of that (set to Color blending mode and with 25-30% opacity). Works quite well. Then I drop some basic shadows and highlights on my objects that I can tweak later if needed. Making it all look believable and interesting takes a lot of time, but it's worth it.
Also, for creating shadows I would recommend this video. It was really helpful for me (like many other Photoshop tutorials that translate well to Affinity Photo).
That aside, I like the concept of your image Jules and it definitely put a smile on my face.
I would normally begin by cutting out all the components I need.
Select a background (in this case it was a photo I took while at Waterloo Station.
Then I would use the 'channels' in an attempt to colour/tone etc.. match (as best I can) all the elements.
After that I use anything that looks good; lots and lots of adjustment layers, brightness, HSL, contrast.
I don't know if that explains to any degree but that's how I go about it.
Hi Phil, the resampling methods are ordered by sharpness. For photographic purposes you can safely ignore Nearest Neighbour. Bilinear will produce the softest result, whereas Lanczos 3 non-separable will produce the sharpest (the difference between separable and non-separable is very slight). Bicubic is somewhere in the middle and will probably suffice for the majority of your images.
One reason to use a softer resampling method might be if your image has lots of high frequency content - from excessive noise to very fine detail like chainlink fences and difficult patterning in architecture. Using a sharper resampling method may exacerbate these parts of the image, and may even produce resampling artefacts (though they are more noticeable in video content to be honest - stills, not so much).
As always, experiment! But for a good safe bet with most of your images, try Bicubic. Hope that helps!
Hi BrokenT,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Check this post from James Ritson (the author of the video tutorials) for an explanation about the different resampling modes. Let us k now if you still have trouble understanding them.
I finally figured out how to blend in patterns correctly, so here is a set of Wood, Leather, Cork, Stone, Crust, and Cookie styles. The patterns make the file size too big for the forum, so here's a link to download it from my site.
Sorry for the previously broken link. You can find this and others at https://dscape-llc.com/affinity
The title says this is a business card tutorial. But this is a very simple tutorial for creating anything in Affinity Designer (AD hereafter) destined for print using a business card as the vehicle. Some of the details may well be different--such as the DPI values, page size and/or bleed amounts.
The size of the business card is a standard US size, but the document could just as easily be for a postcard/mailer, a standard letter/A4 flier or brochure, or a large poster. It doesn't matter as the principle of set up and how to deal with bleed in AD is the same for all these types of documents. The only variances would be the page size and, depending on the spcifications obtained from wherever you will have this printed and trimmed, the bleed amount.
As a design gets larger, often times the bleed amount will be different than this tutorial. One should always obtain the specifications for the job from the print establishment that will be doing the printing.
These first few paragraphs take far longer to write than setting AD up for this tutorial. Once you have done this, you can apply this to any print job. If you spot something here that is in error, incorrect or something that does not make sense, please feel free to post your comments/questions. I likely left out some of the **why** I do things the way I do...
If AD is not running, start it up.
Create a new document using File | New (or cmd/ctrl + n) and the Document Setup dialog will appear.
Type in the values below.
Select the Color tab and and change the Color Format to CMYK 8-bit if it not already. For the Color Profile you can feel free to leave it as is.
A note about color profiles. One should use the CMYK color profile as specified by your print establishment. The defaults for your region are likely acceptable choices, but one should make note of their specifications prior to creating your print document if at all possible. This will aid in bringing any RGB elements into the proper color space when creating the PDF you will eventually be making to give them. CMYK colored elements do not have this requirement as regards setting up a print document, though the conversion of rich blacks (black made from more than only the black component of the CMYK colors) can and will have their "recipe" altered.
Select the Margins tab and type the values below for the margins.
For most print work we should always use guidelines for indicating the "Safe Zone." This is especailly true when designing small-scale print work such as a business card because the perception of how close something is to the page edge can be misleading. The Safe Zone is an area on the design that we want indicated so nothing of importance will be so close that there is the possibility it can be trimmed off. So with business cards, it is easy to get text so close to an edge that the small variance in the trimming process can accidently trim off text or just cause the balance of space around the card appear off.
Because we do not need to use the margins for anything else, usign them to indicate the Safe Zone is a handy option and negates the need to drag out and position ruler guidelines. Generally the Safe Zone is equal to the amount of bleed, which is the next tab.
Select the Bleed tab and type the values shown below for the bleed values.
Now press the OK button and your page will appear. AD at the time of this writing does not have means of displaying the bleed amount. It is there, though, and any element that extends off the page and goes past this bleed amount we set will itself be limited to the document bleed amount.
It is helpful to be able to see this bleed amount, however. Until such time as AD does display the bleed amount, we will create our own "bleed guide."
Select the rectangle quick shape from the toolbox (or press the M key). Draw any size rectangle on the page. Its size doesn't matter as we are going to size it and position it properly using the Transform panel.
Got your rectangle drawn? If it is not still selected, select it now. Remove the fill and make the outline color Red or another color that will standout on the pasteboard.
Display the Transform panel and make sure the Proxy--the little square with 9 little squares on it--has the top left corner selected if it is not already. In the screen shot below you can see it is the one that is a bit larger than the others and is white. Now type in the **Negative** values below for the X/Y fields and positive numbers for the H/W fields and press Enter after entering the last value.
Please note if you created a page a different size than this tutorial, you will need to make your own adjustments to the rectangle size. Unless you require a different amount of bleed, the offset for the X/Y should be OK as is.
Here's where those values come from. Our Business Card is 3.5" x 2" in size. We set up the document to have 0.125" of bleed on all four sides. So our rectangle has to be 0.25" larger in both the H & V fields so that there will be 0.125" of empty space all around the page. By setting the X & Y to be equal to our bleed using negative numbers, your rectangle should be around your page like the screen shot below.
I would also suggest locking this bleed rectangle. You do this by selecting the rectangle and clicking on the Lock Icon at the far right of the Layers panel. This will prevent accidental selection and moving it.
Now save your business card layout for later use. If this were a completed design file, when we would go to export as a PDF, we should turn off the ability to see the bleed rectangle so it does not get exported. You shut off the ability to see the rectangle by selecting it in the Layer panel and uncheck the checkbox to the right of the object in the layer panel.
BTW, there is nothing preventing you from variations on this theme. Some buiness cards are made in the vertical orientation. Here is the design page oriented vertically.
Now all one needs to do is to add design elements. That part is up to you. Do remember that while we have dealt with a small publication size here, everything here is adaptable to any print project.
If desired, we can go through how to put the above into practice as well.
Take care, Mike
BrokenT got a reaction from DannyBCreative in (AP) Bigby - Photo compositions, manipulations, posters etc.