James Ritson

Hey all, just wanted to share a few of the (many) photos I took during my holiday last week in Malta. We previously went to Malta in May of this year and liked it so much we went back! This time I brought some camera gear that I didn't chance taking last time, including a tripod, flash gun and portable light, so I was able to get some shots I would have previously struggled with. First up is a long exposure panorama of Valletta from Sliema Bay: Valletta at Night by James Ritson on 500px.com Then, on our last night, having wound down and packed all my gear up, we were treated to one of Malta's occasional thunderstorms. I quickly unpacked and went up to the rooftop of the guest house to capture several long exposures, which I then composited into this: Thunderstorm in Mellieħa by James Ritson on 500px.com We also got a ferry across to Comino, which was absolutely packed with tourists. A short walk later to the more arid areas, however, and I saw some tiny lizards: Suspicious Lizard by James Ritson on 500px.com Now, my partner is a bit of a poser (something she'll admit herself), but she doesn't usually like standing around to be photographed in the UK because it's quite cold. Give her some blistering heat, however, and she'll model all day! Test of Strength by James Ritson on 500px.com We ended up doing quite a few photoshoots (I've only edited two or three images so far): Not Impressed by James Ritson on 500px.com Rabat Arch by James Ritson on 500px.com And finally for now, we visited the National Park which is an interesting little place in itself, but I discovered what seemed to be a disused rail yard across the road. I got a few photos of the area, but this one jumped out at me because of all the textures: Rusty by James Ritson on 500px.com Anyway, just wanted to share a few photos, I'll possibly add some more when I get around to editing them (there's quite a backlog...) - thanks for looking and hope they give you some ideas!

Hey Shu, apologies for the late reply. I've been experimenting to find an equivalent approach in Photo, and I might need to suggest an approach and see if you could reply with more information. Apologies if this isn't the correct solution - if it isn't, a contextual example would really help to get a feel for what you're working with. Your usage of the term speed might suggest you're working with 3D render material? My best suggestion would be to experiment with blend ranges. Arrange your layers so that your greyscale layer is masked to the second layer (click-drag and offer it to the second layer until you get the vertical blue bar). At first, this will do nothing. Select the clipped greyscale layer, then click the cog icon next to the blend mode dropdown to access blend ranges. From here you have fine control over the tonal range blending, which means you should be able to achieve the bright/dark area blending using the greyscale layer as your speed mask. You can do this in a linear fashion to achieve the linear interpolation you're after, or use logarithmic spline curves. I've attached a screenshot to try and show what I'm referring to. Hope that helps, let me know if it's what you're after!

Greetings all from Malta! Just dropping in to say I've put live three new videos and added them to the first post. They are Retouching, iOS 11 Drag & Drop and On-Screen Modifiers, and here they are for easy access: Retouching (Frequency Separation & Retouching Tools) Discover Photo for iPad's range of retouching tools, including: Automated Frequency Separation Blemish Removal Tool Healing Brush Tool Patch Tool Clone Tool Inpainting Tool Watch: Vimeo / YouTube iOS 11 Drag & Drop See how to use iOS 11's new Files browser and its drag-drop functionality to import images into Photo - including dropping multiple images in for stacking, HDR merge, panorama stitching and more. Watch: Vimeo / YouTube On-Screen Modifiers Learn how to enable and use on-screen modifiers with the iPad version of Affinity Photo. They behave the same way as traditional modifiers (Ctrl, CMD, Alt) but are touch-based. Watch: Vimeo / YouTube Since I recorded the iOS 11 Drag & Drop video, I'm aware that the developers have added several cool drag-drop additions, so once I return next week from holiday I'll look into re-recording the video and keep you updated when it's ready. Hope you find the videos useful!

Hey Ian, the best way to achieve this is to: Use a Channel Mixer, Curves or Levels adjustment (depending on how you want to blend). On these adjustments, you can set the colour model to CMYK or LAB if you're working in RGB (and vice versa). So you could add a Curves adjustment, switch to LAB, then tweak the Lightness curve. This method is completely non-destructive. Alternatively, if you wanted to emulate the Photoshop approach, you could: Edit>Copy, then File>New From Clipboard to duplicate the image into a new document. Document>Colour Format>LAB to convert to LAB16. On the Channels panel, ignore the Composite options and find the layer channels below them (usually Background Lightness, Background AOpponent etc). Right click Lightness>Create Greyscale Layer. Select this greyscale layer, Edit>Copy (or CMD+C), then paste it into your original RGB document (Edit>Paste or CMD+V). If you wanted the composite Lightness channel pixels (rather than the isolated greyscale channel), do the same as above, but look at Composite Lightness instead, right click it and choose Load to Pixel Selection. You can then Edit>Copy this and paste it into your original document. Hope that helps!

Power spectral density represents the document view in the frequency domain, so it will give you an idea of the frequencies your image is made up of. It's useful for examining the complexity of your document - more "noise" and scattering on the graph represents more high frequency detail; so sharp pixels, noise, etc. It's also useful for identifying FPN (fixed pattern noise) and periodic noise, which you can remove with the FFT Denoise filter. Outside of some edge cases like astrophotography star stacking, image cleanup, etc it has somewhat limited use, but it's handy for analytical purposes. You could theoretically use it to gauge pre-processing for images to increase compressibility; for example, examining the results of denoising and other convolutions. Hope that helps!

Hi, have you tried checking the Texture Only option on the context toolbar? The patch tool does tonal and textural blending by default, and in this case it's not producing the expected result. Even with tonal matching, the result you're getting looks quite odd - have you got any other work going on in this image/document? What does your layer structure look like? Also, if you try right clicking the layer you're working on (usually named Background) and choosing Rasterise, does this alter the patch tool behaviour at all? Thanks and hope to hear back from you!

Hi, it sounds like you've downloaded the trial of Affinity Designer and are watching Affinity Photo videos (Designer has fewer tools in the main Draw Persona). Both apps have all features available for their trial versions, so you just need to work out which app you're after - Photo for image/photo editing or Designer for art/vector/design work. Hope that helps!

High pass sharpening isn't covered specifically in any of the official iPad tutorials but I did do a walkthrough of an image edit that uses it as a final step. Check out this video at around 11:50 - It covers adding a live High Pass layer, then setting its blend mode to linear light to achieve the sharpening effect. Hope that helps!

Hi kazu, You should be able to use ^ as a power operator (e.g. SR^1.2) - is this not working for you? Additionally, you can use other bracketed operators such as sqrt, abs (for rounding), and you can currently use sq and sin as interpolation curves. Hope that helps, let me know if you have any further questions!

Hello, all of the official tutorials typically refer to "iCloud Drive" when accessing files from cloud storage - the ability to add files from other cloud storage services is explicitly covered in the Opening & Saving video here: Photo taps into Apple's general storage support, so all you need to do is have the relevant cloud storage app installed - whether that be Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. The above video briefly shows you how to access these at 0:49. You can however always stick with Apple's iCloud Drive, and you can purchase extra space for this by going to your iPad's Settings, then under your account choosing Manage Storage. Although Apple Photos uses iCloud Drive to store your images, Affinity Photo can access the Photos layout separately (via "Import from Photos") as it's more user-friendly. Hope that helps.

... and again to say I've added the latest video, "Portrait Panoramas".

It's also worth pointing out that the help for both apps is available online (currently in beta) in this thread here, with some improvements including page printing and language switching: Alternatively, you can jump straight to them using these link shorteners: affin.co/designerhelp affin.co/photohelp

... and another bump to let you know I've posted a new video on using polarisers!

Hi Frank, check out the tutorial on removing lens flares - it uses frequency separation, and you can use the techniques to do the same with some sun flare: Hope that helps!

Hello, just a bump to say I've added "Big Stopper Effect" to the video list

OK, is there any way you would be able to share the file to see if I can help further? If it's sensitive and privacy is required you could always private message a link on a sharing service (or we can send you a Dropbox link to upload it). Let me know!

Hey Alex, have you tried flattening your document before converting to 16/8-bit? The issue might be with an adjustment or live filter behaving differently when you convert the colour format. Are there are other details you could give us? What does your layer structure look like?

Hey nimbus, as Lee said, the more comprehensive tools for this sort of job are in the Photo persona - you can however use the Blemish Removal Tool (shortcut key L) in Develop as a quick way of replacing dust spots. Hope that helps!

Hey all, I'm really happy to announce that I've just released the first few videos of my passion project, the Shooting Series! What it's about I love photography and video - I'll often go out and shoot specific material for use in the Affinity Photo tutorials to demonstrate certain features, and this has fed into my desire to cover a mixture of well-known and esoteric shooting techniques. It's my goal, then, to produce a video series that looks at all kinds of weird and wonderful photographic techniques - from shooting for stacking (long exposure simulation, noise reduction) to light painting, "big stopper" effects, portrait panoramas, focus stacking landscapes.. the list goes on. I'm constantly gathering material and planning/scripting videos, but I've just put the finishing touches on a few of the videos and felt it was about time to share them. Where applicable, I'll also be providing sample materials to download. Additionally, I've also put accompanying articles up on my website that provide some additional tips and insights. Long Exposure Water - Watch on YouTube - Read article In this video we're looking at the popular technique of using long exposure times to create shots with blurred motion; in this particular case, we're focusing on water. When you shoot water with long exposures, it takes on a smoother, "flowing" and sometimes ethereal appearance. In the video, I cover the use of both variable and fixed Neutral Density filters, as well as square filters with a filter bracket. Burst Stacking - Watch on YouTube - Read article - Download sample images Here we're exploring the use of stacking in post to create a long exposure look from a burst of images. It's a very esoteric technique, but can prove very useful in certain circumstances: you could, for example, find yourself in a situation where you want to achieve a long exposure look to some water, but don't have either a means of stabilisation or any ND filters to cut down the light for a slower shutter speed. I've also provided a ZIP archive with image samples for two of the compositions so you can stack them and see the effect. Big Stopper - Watch on YouTube - Read article - Download sample images In this video we're taking a look at setting up the camera for a "big stopper" effect with landscapes, as well as exploring stacking in post production to both enhance and emulate the effect. Also provided is a ZIP archive with image samples for two of the examples so you can experiment with stacking them. Polarisers - Watch on YouTube - Read article In this short and sweet video we're taking a look at polarisers, examining their benefits and caveats. Portrait Panoramas - Watch on YouTube - Read article Check out how to capture more vertical space in your panoramas by shooting in portrait orientation. --- Hope you find them interesting and useful!

Hi vibuboneru, you can do all sorts of work with channels in Affinity Photo. The video you've linked to covers packing greyscale information into separate RGB channels. You can certainly do this in Photo: Channel Packing Additionally, you can isolate individual channels and perform filter/tool operations on them: Editing Single Channels And for a general overview, this is actually for the iPad version but the functionality is exactly the same as the desktop version: Channels (Affinity Photo iPad) Hope that helps!

Hi kamone, you can use nearest neighbour resampling which should give you the sharp-edged result you're after (XBR and HQX, whilst useful, won't give you the result you want). Nearest Neighbour resampling is under normal document resizing, so on the resize dialog all you need to do is set Resize to Document - look for the Sampler option and set that to Nearest for nearest neighbour resampling. Hope that helps! Also worth noting is that XBR and HQX both only work as intended with proper 1:1 pixel art created from scratch - that is, every pixel is unique and represents itself. Images that have been downscaled or are "emulated" pixel art end up looking odd and "painterly" when upscaled with these filters.

Hey MikWar, the differences you're noticing are fairly expected - Apple Photos applies a slightly different tone curve and it adds some sharpening which you can't control. The SerifLabs RAW engine applies its own tone curve (which you can disable) and adds some default noise reduction which you can also tweak. It doesn't add any additional sharpening - that's left up to the user. You should find if you move across to the Details panel and play with the Radius and Amount sliders under Detail Refinement you'll be able to make your image "pop" a little more. Alternatively, if you'd prefer the result Apple's RAW engine gives you as a starting point, you can change the RAW engine through the Develop Assistant - click the "tuxedo" icon on the top toolbar and you can change the engine from SerifLabs to Apple Core Image RAW. Any RAW files you decode in the future will then use the Apple engine and you'll get much closer to the results you see in Photos. Hope that helps! If you're interested, here's some additional video material that covers accessing the Develop Assistant and gives you a bit of insight into what to expect from the SerifLabs engine: Raw Development Quality Maximising Raw Latitude Salvaging Underexposed Images

Hello all, just a bump to let you know the first post has been updated with three new videos: Changing Eye Colour, Panoramas and Hiding Tricky Skies. The new videos are of course available in-app too!

Just to add to Lee's post, have you tried adding the .ocio extension once the files are actually on your iCloud Drive? The Photo iPad app actually registers ".ocio" as an extension with iCloud Drive, so you should be able to dump the folder onto your cloud storage then rename and convert it to a package. Apologies as I only realised this after doing the video (I only added the extension once the folders were in the iCloud folder). I'll have to look at revising the video or adding an on-screen note.

I can definitely confirm (been using that camera since January!), but I suspect support was just edged in not long before launch, so I'll add it to the list.