James Ritson

You should have two snapping guides (they'll be red and green) show up as you try to line your image up at the centre of the canvas. They're not present all the time, they appear when you're dragging content around using the Move tool (pointer) and you near a snapping "candidate" (eg the centre of the document). Hope that helps, let me know if they're not showing up. Also, I've found in one of my videos that there's an example of the snapping guides, see the Transform video at 4:13 - https://vimeo.com/171918701 - the logo gets dragged back to the centre of the page and you'll see the two guides. Hope that helps!

Hi Sharkey, two methods spring to mind: 1) Use the crop tool to increase your canvas to the size you want and apply it, or use Resize Canvas from the Image menu. The space around your image will of course be transparent at this point. Go to Layer - New Fill Layer and it will create a pure solid layer using the colour in your primary colour slot (usually white). Just drag this layer underneath your image layer and you're done. 2) Kind of the same thing, really, but you can create a new document from File - New and either use a page preset or punch in your desired dimensions. You can choose to have a solid white fill for the background (uncheck Use Transparent Background). Then just copy & paste your image onto the new document. Don't forget you can turn on snapping (the red and white magnet icon) to ensure it's lined up dead centre. [Edit] Forgot to mention, but if you're copy/pasting your image, don't forget to flatten it first so it includes any additional layer work. The tutorial MEB linked above is another method but it doesn't approach it by resizing the canvas; instead, it uses a clipping mask to crop into the image (probably not what you're after!), the benefit being that you can easily resize the border and change its aspect ratio.

Hi Tom, I was down in Cheddar last week, lovely place! Sounds like you want to be using frequency separation. It's typically used for portraiture but you can use it in any situation where you have complex textural information. There are three videos that cover using frequency separation: Frequency Separation, Nature Portrait and, most importantly for your case, Removing Lens Flares (as this demonstrates you can do it with any imagery, not just portraiture). If you were willing to attach the image in question it would be easier to help you with this specific case, but generally speaking, you'll probably want to remove the black spots on the low frequency layer, leaving the fine detail intact on the high frequency layer. The high frequency layer might however contain some colour information, so some work may be required on this layer too - or it may not! Depends on the image. Hope that helps, let me know if that's enough to work with!

Hi Timber, you can use various Javascript + WebGL implementations. All you need to do is export your unmapped equirectangular image from Photo (100% quality JPEG is usually sufficient), ensuring it is 2:1, or 360x180 - so you make your edits, then use Remove Projection to return the image to its unmapped form. You can then use the exported image in these viewers. One such viewer is Marzipano - it even has a Marzipano Tool where you can upload your image and it will optimise and generate image tiles, then provide you with the required output files to embed it on your web pages. Another good implementation is Pannellum, which requires a manual approach but also works very well. As far as VR solutions go, I'm not overly familiar with them yet. I imagine you'd need a program that will convert the 360x180 image into a stereoscopic representation - not sure if any open source solutions exist. I'll do some investigating. One final thing - because Marzipano splits the image into tiles, you can bypass WebGL's texture resolution limit for a single image, which can be anywhere from 2048x2048 to 8192x8192 depending on the device. This means you could provide a huge image file and ensure it remains crisp and sharp on a variety of devices - pretty useful.

The answer is: probably, but with varied and inconsistent results - really, it depends on the size of your subject and choice of lens or focal length. By physically moving the camera, you're causing changes in perspective that make alignment more difficult, and more often than not this difference in perspective can change the subject's shape and appearance between exposures. You can also end up with a "starburst" background effect as a result of the subject's size and position changing - again, as a result of altering the perspective. For complex and/or larger objects, using focal variation is typically the best way to ensure a good result. The magnification may change between focal lengths, but crucially, the perspective will not, and this will make the initial alignment much more successful. A lot of lenses exhibit focus breathing (especially macro lenses as they have a huge focus range) and this can sometimes result in soft-edged artefacts during the focus merge. You can however use Photo's clone sources panel to correct these areas fairly easily (the panel pops up when focus merging is complete and the clone brush is automatically selected).

Just imagining Justinberg - coding raster-based software by day, cooking methamphetamine and blowing up drug kingpins by night..

Justinberg? :ph34r:

Having a wider variety of learning material can never be a bad thing! It's up to the individual user to determine which video set and teaching approach would benefit them most. Simon's tutorials go comprehensively into concepts and, as he's said, tend to look in more detail at the whys and hows in an image editing context rather than a per-app basis. The in-house videos will tend to look very closely at specific features, functionality and operations or techniques that may be unique to Photo. A large-ish part of my job within Serif is to produce these in-house Photo videos and uphold the quality standards expected of them. External users produce tutorials either as their living or as a hobby, so it does make sense that they charge for their hard work to try and recoup the costs of making them. It's down to personal opinion but I think Simon's tutorials are incredibly reasonably priced considering what they offer. The in-house video tutorials will always be constantly improving, updating and covering new features as they roll in via updates, but having community members who work hard to produce training content will always be invaluable and appreciated, as they are supporting the software and making it more accessible to a wider audience. Hope that helps!

Hi Marksy, this is probably because of Vimeo's "adaptive streaming" feature they introduced a few months back (a source of frustration if I'm honest about it). What you're seeing is the video dropping to a lower quality version for 5 or 10 seconds to "match" your bandwidth. Most of the time the bandwidth determination seems very hit and miss, so even with a decent connection you end up with a lower resolution stream for a short while. The only way around it is to click the "HD" icon and manually choose your resolution to stream at. 1080p or 2K should provide enough clarity. Hope that helps!

Hey, I'll take a look at this next week when I'm in the office. I have a couple of ideas about how this can be done but will need to have a bit of a play to be sure. Have you managed to download all the videos now without any further issues from Vimeo? Regards, James

;) ;)

Memes are definitely doable ;) Although I have to ruin this post with a technical tip: when you add Outer Glow in the Effects panel, click the Cog icon and set the blend mode to Multiply. It's set to Screen by default which won't work with a pure black colour.

Hey Ezra, saw the first couple of these as they were uploaded last week, nice work! (And thank you for supporting Photo with tutorials, keep them coming :))

Hey there, are you painting onto a new pixel layer? If so, with the layer selected, you could go into the Effects panel (might be abbreviated to FX depending on your screen size) and enable Colour Overlay. You can then change the colour and opacity, and additionally, if you click the cog icon the dialog will allow you to change the blend mode as well. Hope that helps!

Hmm, that sounds bizarre. Just temporarily, have you tried flattening your image (Layer - Flatten) and seeing if the issue persists? If you do this though please make sure to save a copy! Are you able to provide any information about your layer structure, use of filters/adjustments, etc? Thanks

Hi, that little dot/cursor is actually where your clone source currently is. Have you tried alt/option-clicking on the area you want to clone from? You should then find that cursor moves to the correct location. Hope that helps!

Hi Mike, no, resampling algorithm shouldn't make a difference, the black tiff issue only seemed to happen after the latest OSX update, but as you say, it's mainly tiffs exported from Photo that are affected. We'll have to look into it in more detail. Thanks for your comments though, especially since I've realised there's scope for a tutorial on placing images!

Hi Mike, in answer to your questions: If you want to place multiple images onto a document, you can use File>Place and navigate to your images to insert them as "embedded documents". This means you can also double click them on the Layers panel to edit them, and the changes will update on the document you've placed them in. Another approach to take is where you open the images separately - just click-drag them onto the Photo icon on the OSX dock. Select the image in Photo, use Cmd+A to select all, Cmd+C to copy, then move over to your blank document. Use Cmd+V to paste the image on. You can then click-drag it around, scale/transform/rotate it, etc. [Edit] Actually, looking through the tutorials, your query has made me realise there's a lack of tutorials that really cover placing images into documents. I'll try and do a video that covers this in the coming week! Regarding the black .tiff issue, there's an ongoing look at what might be causing that. Are you exporting to an 8-bit or 16-bit tiff? (It should say on the File>Export dialog). Could you try exporting to 8-bit and see if you have the same issue?

Hey p_mac, I don't have Photo in front of me over the weekend so I'll have a look when I'm back in on Monday. What you're asking seems like it should be achievable though. Will keep you updated! The way the video is structured, you would be able to watch the first half without any problems (the image used is just a landscape photo I took). There's then a significant warning before I switch over to the image with the spider in it - enough time to stop the video before you see the spider (or kill it with fire :)). Hope that helps!

Here's the third and final tutorial for this week, Making Images Pop. This short video looks at increasing local contrast via the live Unsharp Mask filter and adding a Lighten blend mode. This combination helps bring out some subject separation with busy or tonally flat images. Please be aware that an image of a garden spider is used from 2m11s onwards (there are warnings in the video and description) if you're averse to arachnids!

Glad it worked for you, Warren! Elsea, downloadable practice files are something that need to be discussed internally, the hope is that something might come of it, do stay tuned! Here's tutorial two of three, Changing Eye Colour. It covers two techniques that you can use to alter colours in a subject. One is an adjustment-based masking approach, the other a pixel-based blend mode approach.

This is the point I was making: there are customers who are, as of today, using the software professionally because their workflow does not require certain functionality - functionality that Photo currently doesn't have but likely will in the future. Requirements for professional work clearly differ depending on the work you are doing and the processes you are used to. I apologise if you've been given the impression that your opinion doesn't matter. Like every other customer who posts on the forum, it does matter very much. In response to your previous tone where you called a poster's response "bullshit", I just implored you to try and appreciate that it's still very early days in Photo's development cycle. Every customer is going to have different requirements - professional or not - and just because requested features or improvements have not appeared thus far doesn't mean they haven't been noted. The developers and staff spend a considerable amount of time on the forums taking note of user feedback - it is all paid attention to. I don't think there is a need to label people who would find use out of the new features being offered as "nerds goofing around with images". The new additions to 1.5 are going to benefit professional and amateur users alike. As a broad example, 32-bit editing isn't just for tone mapping merged HDR images. That would be the most common use for it, but having unbounded editing and OpenEXR/Radiance support is going to benefit 3D/digital imagery pipelines, as well as more refined editing of high dynamic range documents using layers, masking and all the other tools that Photo offers. These are all very much professional-grade workflows and requirements.

Hello all, to tide you over until the weekend here's one of three new tutorials: Edge Detection for Masking This covers creating a mask from the Detect Edges filter and using it for various purposes (anti-aliasing, line thickening, etc).

Hi Warren, I've just tried to download the originals for those, and you're correct, there's no extension - very odd. The file however should be complete, you can just add the .mp4 extension onto the end. If you find the file in your downloads folder, you can select it, hit return on the keyboard to rename it, then add .mp4 to the end. Finder will ask you if you're sure you want to add the extension - just click Add. As for showing the videos, fill your boots as they say! I hope people find them helpful.

Sorry that Photo doesn't meet your workflow needs at the moment. Please try and appreciate that everyone has different requirements (some more esoteric than others) and it is a balancing act between trying to accommodate these requirements and working on fixes and new features. Just as an example, there are numerous people using the software that do not find the feature set lacking, simply because their workflow differs from that of others who make use of specific tools or features. There is also the small matter of the Affinity products not being clones or trying to mirror other popular software. Some issues may be due to deliberately different behaviour. In this case, we're trying to make it easier for people to learn through concise in-app help and the large number of video tutorials - both of which are always going through revisions to improve them. Hi balor, do stay tuned as this early beta only contains a small amount of macro functionality - subsequent betas should gradually include more flexibility.