mur_phy

check to see if there is a mask that you might have active instead of the background layer as the inpainting tool needs to work on the actual pixel layer. Also, check to see if the pixel layer you want to work on is actually selected as it is easy to get working and not notice you have not selected the layer you want. Have done both of the above and have seen tutorial creators do the same. Easy just to get busy and not notice what layer you actually have highlighted.

Thanks silver for the link. I have saved it and as usual created a folder and will view the videos. I also have purchased the Affinity Photo Workbook but have not spent much time as I am involved in other stuff too. Trying to learn ON1 RAW 2018, Luminar 2018 and Aurora HDR 2018. While I find that HDR done in Aurora is the best with ON1 being second best as far as results are concerned, it is extremely slow compared to ON 1 load/process time. So far I have not had great success with Affinity HDR processing. I know folks have been looking for Affinity tutorials and yet I have seen no one mention those done by Carl Surry which are nicely done and he keeps finding new topics to discuss. He is involved in a FB group but all the tuts are also available on youtube.

No Joy!! Interestingly, in neither W10 startup in Task Manager nor in C Cleaner Startup is BD available which seems unusual but even when using End Task (another way to disable BD) while UAC activates, nothing further occurs.

thanks for the info but turning off BD did not change things but this time trying two ways, neither brought up the UAC. Will turn off BD in startup this time and reboot and report the result.

I get a message to update to 1.5.2.69 and have downloaded the .exe of 281 MB but having tried to run the executable have had no success. First tried the simple double click but the rotating circle went on and on and on. Rebooted the system. Tried to use "run as administrator" and after accepting the UAC warning for W 10 Pro ZERO occurs. Tried again to use the double click and after UAC the result is the same -- simply a blank background screen which is visible normally. Have tried a new d/l also and run as admin. Same result after approving UAC. Not sure what the issue may be but wonder if someone from AP can communicate directly with a solution. I have installed hundreds of programs over the past 21 1/2 years of computing experience and this is a first. TIA

just a suggestion -- like Real Estate -- location, location, location -- with computers it is Backup (BU), BU, BU. Now that you have the original files and 3 BU drives keep at least one BU off premises. Personally, I have a BU that happens continuously whenever any action is taken on the computer followed by 2 monthly BU's and one of those is kept off premises. I think that my last purchase was a 4 TB drive for about $200 Can. Someday I will have to adjust the other two but as they only have data and not the o/s/programs they don't have to be as large a capacity. Also, if you do take a trip for a few days or more, then secure the continuous BU drive after you have shutdown the system. HTH

ok, so after the effect of more exposure to the whole area except for the subject, then simply reduce the amount of exposure where the full amount is not required by painting with the paint brush tool making sure black is selected to remove the density as required by adjusting opacity and feathering? I opened your image in AP and selected the background but the paint brush tool only gives a + shape but the undo brush tool, giving a circle did change the background. To get exactly what is needed would require adjusting the opacity and feather so that there is a blending transition. By looking at the two layers, it seems that global adjustments were made to the whole image and then the copied selection layer with all but the subject transparent due to it being the upper layer shows the subject properly with the background layer as adjusted showing also. The order of doing the adjustments would seem to be to do the density first followed by the gaussian blur. Did you use the selection brush and select the subject and then invert and delete the background and then copy that selection to the adjusted background layer? I also imagine that this selection could be saved and if necessary at sometime be added to any background via paste or Place. Hopefully I am getting an understanding of the process and can remember but if I did understand the process, I will add this to my .rtf file I have to try to learn AP. Thanks Carl for the assistance. If I have messed up my thinking, please let me know one way or the other.

Not sure if anyone read my edits but I was able to just use the burn and blur tools to accomplish what was desired but was also looking for other alternatives and that is one idea Carl. Then I got to thinking -- if I can select the subject, then by inverting the background would be able to be adjusted separate from the subject. The only issue then would be that only part of the background needs to be affected. Your method seems to have done the trick although the selection was just a bit rough but not really visible in the final image. Thanks for the info. I just had thought that a gradient would work too but I just have to learn more about doing this so I can get it straight in my mind as to what is needed in any specific circumstance.

Hi IR Ok, I can give before and after. The image was taken by another retired pro and he did work on it himself but there were things I thought could be improved. We do this sort of thing all the time and are in constant conversation as we have known one another for over 30 years. I may work on the image again as there is a highlight area that I would like to adjust. While I did figure out my issue with the burn and blur which I use a lot I am still hoping to find alternatives that might work more quickly and I know I will have to do reviews of some of the video links I have saved and probably make some notes. Anyway I am attaching the two images and my adjustments have been renamed to "edited" before the rest of the file name. TIA just watched another video and it looks like there are quite a few steps I had forgotten. With the video from the Affinity producer it would have been good to know why certain choices were made. Relating to the image edited above, the initial photographer liked what was done. he had done some facial retouching prior to sending the file to me be we did discuss some of the highlights being a bit strong and the fact that the direction of light left the facial features a bit flat. Personally, I usually would light the subject with a cross light and be sure to turn the head toward the light and tilt toward the high shoulder.

I seem to be still having a difficult time with making adjustments with AP. I have viewed every tutorial I can find but must be either forgetting things or not finding things in the program that are supposed to be there. Often I like to tone down and/or blur a background and just when I think I have things figured out, time between the last editing I do and current workflow, I must be forgetting the steps to follow. I thought a burn/blur tool would do the trick and while it worked with some backgrounds I have used for other projects, the current project of the outdoor portrait is not doing the same result. "Well, it does work better if I had not for some reason forgotten that I had changed the opacity of the brush" -- at least that issue is solved but the others are still a bother. Next I thought, a gradient would possibly be the method. Tried the tool but not successful there either as the exposure adjustment still covered more area that desired. Quick Mask was not effective either or I just don't know what to do as I found the whole area turned red whereas I thought until I painted, there would be no mask. I have watched some videos and tried using overlays or gradients in Develop but was unable to control the gradient to just cover the area I wanted to work on. The overlay did nothing at all. There has to be something that is straight forward and simple to accomplish the task at hand but so far I have been unable to solve the issue. Perhaps someone will have info and I will try to add it to my notes for the future. Oh, all attempts have been to adjust the background layer although the image has been straightened, cropped, and some basic adjustments done to levels, exposure and brightness. TIA MW

Maybe complete instructions could be done regarding what Chris has said about creating the file in the first place as I find that Document>transparent background does not create anything and File > New provides a dialogue box but not sure what items need to be changed if any from the default settings. I have saved the other info so just clarification as to how to get to the point of saving the signature file would be good. Also, not sure what a .svg is but if that is the file type to be used, that is fine. Just was curious.

It would be nice to have a transcript of the video and I have mentioned this to other video creators. I like the idea of the arrow to where the instructor is placing the mouse. In addition, a pause in speaking allowing the student to find the spot and then be able to follow further would be most helpful. Sometimes when instructors have done things so many times themselves, it is easy to either miss a step in the instructions or move along so quickly, the student is not able to follow.

Not an answer but I too wish the icons were bigger and I also wish I could re-arrange then as some I use more often than others and can't always remember the Keyboard shortcut although I have a sticky note with most of the ones I use. I just don't do enough editing being retired etc to keep the CRS at bay.

V & RCR -- I will put this info into my files later on but I have a lot of other stuff to do at the moment. One is to check out the Fuji X T20 and drop into a couple places tomorrow/today to see if they have stock. However, I was able to complete the project and will attach the completed photo. One thing that did happen strangely was that after I attempted to work on an area of the last part which was the knife on the stand and I had used a filter mask to remove the background (oh, this was not an easy one -- wish AP had the device that ON 1 has to prevent the mask from running into an adjacent area) and then I noticed that the butt area of the knife could look better with a bit of the use of the sharpening tool. I selected what I thought was correct -- little icon next to the mask and clicked on it and got a message to the effect that the Assistant had rastorized the image and then I could not get anything to do with the mask as even when choosing the paint brush I did not get a circle but just cross hairs. There as also a bit of a mistake in the area that I thought I had cleaned up originally but upon looking at the result in Faststone Image Viewer it was apparent. What I did discover that I could use the in-painting tool and also the clone stamp tool and accomplished most of what I needed to do. I just don't know exactly what caused this situation nor how to avoid it in the future. Thanks so much for the replies and I will try to spend some time by creating another set of images as a test to see if I can get the color picker to do what I want. The method I used was not bad but not as easy nor as accurate as I might like on other occasions.

hi V -- as mentioned in my earlier response, I did discover the Outline and that does exactly the job I needed done. It just was not something obvious and I was looking for the word "border" in the list which is not there. I have used color picker with another program (DIP 2006) and simply by clicking on the eyedropper, the mouse pointer would change to a dropper and one could select the color from any source but when I tried that with AP, that did not occur so not sure of the technique with this program. Any ideas related to this would also be useful. Thanks for the ideas. MW