hanshab

same thing i did that multiple times. i will try downloading the app again. if i can find out how to do that

I hope I am the only one that has experienced this: I think there is apparently a super big problem in 1.9: MASKING NO LONGER WORKS!!!!!] if you do an adjustment to a pixel layer and try to use the brush to paint in or out the effect using black or white on a normal or inverted mask that is attached to the adjustment layer, or if you add a new mask to the adjustment and try to paint in or out the adjustment using brushes on the mask this no longer works. This is a giant big deal as most of my macros no longer work. If i am the only one how can i fix this thanks for your support. Otherwise the release is very good !

thanks serif for the update1 Unfortunately I missed the fix for the 8 special blend modes to provide a layer fill capability which is sorely needed. Can anyone tell me what is going to be done about that thanks

you can also use a horizontal curve ,then use the picker to pick areas you want to brighten or darken. This way you do not create a pixel layer ( which would have to be rasterized by the way) My preferred approach is to use a 50% gray layer but the horizontal curve also works

very good work as always smadell. I played with your macro on some landscapes and there are many different effects you can get with your macro just by varying the adjustments. In my playing around I added a paper texture to give it a painting look. They way I have done water colors is the standard way by going to a black and white adding water color splotches, then adding a levels adjustment and playing with blend modes to get the watercolor effect. thanks for your work

here is a good description of why sky replacement is not done by most professional photographers. this is in addition two what I said above. I look at sky replacement as a crutch it takes away from the experience of a magical moment that really happened.

there are 8 blend modes in Affinity photo that do not work correctly. That is because they require a Layer-FILL capability. Although they give some results these results are disappointing in Affinity. I wonder why Serif even included them without the layer fill capability. I use the fill slider much more than opacity in photoshop and they are not the same. I really need that to work in Affinity Please!!!!! see here similar to ones already cited.

this is not a new issue I have been experiencing this for some time. Often I click ten or twenty times on the macro and it does not open.... the way to fix is to right click on the macro, select edit macro then execute the macro.

do you have to run big sur OS with 1.8.6?? that is the only thing I can think of. I do not download OS for at least 6 months after release so the bugs can be eliminated. Is there a way to back up to 1.8.4??

you can do a lot with LUTs which Affinity already has. You can even infer LUTs.. which is great... I wonder if you tried that yet. works great on skies and even when you replace them, ( you still need to adjust them due to brightness contrast and color.) On that note I very very seldom do sky replacements most professional and serious photographers that I know would not do that. . But I do have some LUTs that I apply.

you might try backing out big sur... I would not run it for at least 6 months after first release after number of fixes are made... It has known problems. I am not updating to big sur.

1.84 to 1.86

I appreciate all the hard work but I noticed that my Tiff files with adjustments look different. Especially noticeably are the results of live filters whether unsharp mask, high pass or inverted bilateral blur. The images look worse, very grainy. When I apply my macros on non processed images i notice that the filter response for the above functions is much more severe to the point of having to process the images over again with totally new settings over those I had "dialed in". For unsharp mask I have to back the Factor slider way down and reset the tolerance... Also frequency separation i notice behaves the same way makes my images worse unless I reprocess. ( I understand how Freq sep works) On a separate note we still need a layer fill capability to make the 8 special blend modes correctly. Many of us have been waiting long for this improvement. I am running Catalina latest version. Not sure if this is just me or if it is a desired result. so I thought I would ask. I am going back to 1.8.4 for now. Thanks for your consideration.

getting desperate for a layer FILL capability..... developers please help make the 8 special blend modes work. Thanks

bump again

Ai does not really work well yet, it takes preconceived scenarios and tries to make your picture fit the scenario. It takes away your vision and creativity and if you look at Luminar's version, it does not always (often) give you good results. . It may be ok for beginners but its not at the state yet where I would feel comfortable with it.So much for my view, other folks might have different ideas, but I want me to be in charge of creativity....

the layer fill mode to complement the special 8 blend modes is desperately needed, you cant get these 8 special blend modes to work correctly without it!! Please help us be more creative, developers thanks

another bump

I totally agree with Smee Again. I really miss the ability to use fill in Affinity Photo. It really does behave just like general opacity although it should not. I used the fill all the time in photoshop with the 8 special blend modes and thought It would work the same in Affinity since I could not find the actual algorithms used in affinity. I hope Serif makes the fill work the way it does in photoshop..... There is one question I have what is the purpose of the fill slider in FX in Affinity if it works the same as the general opacity. Was this a placeholder for later development? Otherwise why have the slider at all. thanks

I think the Fill slider in FX does not work correctly with the 8 special blend modes that are supposed to work with fill. IF this is so can it please be fixed soon?? It seems to work exactly as the opacity slider? I would appreciate hearing from Serif on this. thank you very much.

Hello Dave, nice video you always do such a great job.. The Color Burn and Color Dodge Blend Modes do not use the Opacity slider to control their effect. These two blend modes use the FILL adjustment to control how much they apply themselves to the image. (These are two of the eight blend modes that work with FILL) You can use Opacity to subdue the effect, the effect of these blend modes and their algorithm is tied to Fill, but they do require a bit of finesse to use. Their effect is best seen with color fill layers. You can use any color for the fill but I use complementary colors mostly, sometimes adjacent colors, but not often. The fill controls the projection of the colors while the opacity only fades the effect. Further, color burn leaves the blacks and the whites alone from the underlying layer so that blacks will be black and whites will be whites. When you use opacity this is not the case it fades all the colors. Moreover if you decrease the fill in color burn then you will be applying the effect to less and less of the underlying layer. Therefore if you set the fill to about 15% you are affecting only the shadows and darks when using color burn.When using color dodge it also keeps blacks as black but adds color and lightens. Whites will of course stay white here as well. The fill essentially allows you to specify where the effect is applied. If you reduce the fill in color burn to the recommended 15 percent, you are typically targeting the shadows only, if you raise the fill then you will start affecting the lower midtones as well, as you keep raising you will be affecting the highlights also. But note that the whites remain white always. The same can be said for color dodge. The only difference is that it works on the lights so if you set the fill to 100% you are targeting shadows highlights and shadows. (whites do not change) As you decrease the fill you target less of the shadows and midtones until you reach 15 percent when you target the highlights only. So it is the opposite of color burn. You might even try the above and then invert the top layer... Its interesting what you get....have not been able to prove it yet but you might try it . Would be interested in what you think... Watch the video below and go to minute 6:20 for color burn and then go to minute 11:34 for color dodge. In Affinity Photo this works in RGB but does not work in LAB. I think there might be an error in the software, but it definitely does not work there.Try the experiment with the test chart below it really shows up there. ITs interesting to note that the description and algorithm in wikipedia does not describe this effect nor how Fill interacts. I have not yet found the actual implementation of color dodge and burn in Affinity Photo nor in Photoshop but am still looking for the implemented algorithm.

no there is not but there is a nice tutorial on how to remove shine. here it is

Pop and Sharpen with intelligent high pass filter Here is a more intelligent way of sharpening with a high pass filter. The high pass filter does not work well with very bright and very dark pixels. It introduces undesirable artifacts for those type of pixels. The first thing this macro does is add a brightness/contrast layer and the contrast is reduced to make these very bright and dark pixels move toward middle gray. I set the macro to reduce the opacity by 0% but you have the ability to change this to whatever value you want. (You may wish not to apply any contrast reduction as the high pass filter will be applied to the midtones only.) This helps eliminate some of the intensity plateaus / white halos. You may or may not need to add this reduction based on the contrast of your picture. I merge this layer down into the pixel layer. The macro then applies the high pass filter. The high pass filter generates a 50% gray level and then looks for high frequency components which are defined as rapid changes in brightness in adjacent pixels. Hence it basically looks for edges. It then brightens those pixels adjacent to the edges above 50% gray and darkens those pixels on edges below 50% gray. You can adjust the radius which determines the pixel depth adjacent to the detected high frequency edge that are modified. Keep the radius about 10 or less pixels and adjust to make sure that artifacts such as halos do not appear. I find 10 pixels the absolute maximum upper limit but typically use 0.8- 1.2 pixel. This upper limit can be adjusted based on the picture and how much you decrease the contrast in the brightness/contrast layer defined above. Then the blend mode is set to linear light but any contrast specific blend mode such as overlay, soft light, hard light, and vivid light will also work. Linear light has the biggest effect and soft light the least effect. I typically do not use soft light for this. Linear light provides the most sharpening but you could see halos, then comes vivid light which may still create halos then hard light, overlay and soft light I found that vivid light sometimes still shows some halos depending of course on the radius but they seem to disappear with the hard light blend mode. The blend modes above do not address 50% gray pixels which the high pass filter ignores. These are the only blend modes you should use for this macro. Pick which one works for you. To control this effect even more, blend ranges are set to apply the filter to the midtones only. Then the Fill is set for the linear light blend mode in the high pass filter to 100%. You can adjust the Fill. The higher the Fill, the higher the amount of sharpening so here is an embedded soft way to decrease the sharpening without changing the high pass radius. Next a black mask is applied to the high pass filter. Advanced users never sharpen the entire picture but only selected areas to draw the viewer into the picture. When the macro has run, the user needs to select the black mask and paint with a white brush set to appropriate opacity, fill and hardness and paint over the areas that you want to sharpen in the picture. If you do nothing, no sharpening takes place. You again can reduce the amount of sharpening here if you set the fill and opacity to less than 100%. The macro then pops the picture by applying curves in the LAB color space and offsetting Ao and Bo. You can adjust Ao and Bo to taste within the curves adjustment. You can adjust the lightness also to taste. The macro then also creates a selective color adjustment and Levels adjustment that you can adjust to taste to further enhance the picture. These adjustment layers are picture specific, so no adjustments are made to them. It is up to you to go in and adjust them to taste. intelligent high pass sharpen and pop.afmacro

you are welcome

Sharpen with Bilateral Blur Here is a sharpening technique I learned from Calvin Hollywood. He does this in Photoshop. He calls it Freaky Amazing Details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV9u0Wu8L0M It creates a group of a duplicated pixel layer and sets the group to blend mode overlay. Because the macro capability of Affinity Photo is not extensive enough, I had to find a workaround to his approach to include the base and duplicated pixel layer into a group. He then sets the group to overlay blend mode. Then the top child layer blend mode is set to vivid light blend mode and the layer inverted. Then he applies Surface Blur to the layer which is the same as Bilateral Blur in Affinity Photo. Bilateral Blur is an edge preserving blur filter that also reduces noise and graininess. The radius determines the area size and the threshold addresses the tone values of adjacent pixels used in the equation. It determines how much deviation is required form the pixel being modified in order to include it in the blur operation. Keep the threshold around 7-10 and radius between 5-12. The macro does a merge visible of the result as I don’t want to keep multiple copies of pixel layers to save space on disc. You can delete the working layers if you wish. I like this approach because it does not create the halos that unsharp mask and high pass often creates and you can sharpen pretty intensively without seeing artifacts. However, when driving the parameters high you can run into the several artifacts: intensity plateaus that lead to images appearing like cartoons or introduction of false edges so don’t drive the adjustable parameters too high. Note that the bilateral blur filter is very computationally intensive. You can find the definition of bilateral blur here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateral_filter sharpen with blur.afmacro