James Ritson

If you're going to be using gradients (especially with blend modes) and live filters like Vignette, you'll see reduced banding if you work in 16-bit. If you're just adding a few adjustments and doing some layer work you likely won't see any benefit. Any operation or filter that produces subtle gradations can usually benefit from working with increased precision. Hope that helps!

Jornerik, I think it's all relative. I was able to achieve defringing results using your raw file that I felt were fine. All of the fringing around the buildings was gone and unless you zoomed in past 100% there was no visible fringing in the branch detail. My benchmark is basically "how does it look at 100%?" (or, if you're using a retina panel, 50%). It's really about finding a balance between the three sliders (Tolerance, Radius, Edge Brightness Threshold). I appreciate it's more manual work: Photo is still in the early stages of development. All of the power is there but it needs some manual work to really harness it. A great example of this is the RAW development: there's actually nothing horrible about it, it's simply that people are used to raw developing software cleaning up their files for them. Believe it or not, your raw files actually look a lot closer to Photo's output than you think. Chrominance noise especially is always present, even in larger sensors. Photo doesn't automatically remove it, therefore it's left to the user to decide how much denoising to apply. It's the same with sharpening and lens artefact correction (distortion, fringing, CA). We do provide the option of using Apple's Core Image Raw decoder, which does some automatic sharpening, noise reduction and lens correction. It's always worth trying that and seeing if you prefer the output. Photo's CA reduction is more intended for extreme lens issues (see the tutorial video here for some really bad CA examples: https://vimeo.com/133350551) - for most cases I stick to the defringe filter. Hope that helps!

Hi pipkato, do stay tuned as I have a photo restoration video planned for the not too distant future. For now, however, here are two new tutorials: Scaling and Transforming - a basics video looking at how to scale and transform layers. Modifiers - a guide on using modifier keys with different tools. Thanks, James

Hello, just trying to ascertain what the main issue is here, are you able to actually open the Help by going to Help - Affinity Photo/Designer Help? Everything about the apps is concisely documented so you should be able to find what you need. If you're not getting search results, try opening the help and then using the search box in the help window rather than the one on the top menu - do you get any results from this? Hope that helps!

Hi again, thanks for attaching the files, I managed to defringe areas of the image which I thought you would be referring to, see the attachments for full-res versions: Any chance you might be able to provide the original RAW file? That way I can help further and see if we can get some good results! Thanks, James

Hi Jornerik, I've not had an issue with removing fringing or CA from photographs, but then the CA filter is for very specific purposes. You might find the Defringe filter is more suitable for the majority of cases. Have you got a sample image you might be able to upload? If you have a look at the Defringing and CA video (https://vimeo.com/133350551) that should give a clearer indication of which filter you'd want to be using. Also check out using the Live Defringe filter (https://vimeo.com/161043323) which might help with selective defringing. Hope that helps!

Hi, we've currently got a tutorial on correcting equirectangular distortion that uses the mesh warp tool here: https://vimeo.com/170633074 - it should hopefully give you an idea of what the tool can be used for. Hope that helps!

Hi Drew, I just put this one up today, hope it's of use! Panorama Distortion Correction It's for equirectangular distortion, but you should be able to adapt the technique to non-panoramic images. Thanks, James

Add another one to that list! Panorama Distortion Correction This covers how to correct equirectangular distortion, especially with panoramas that have architecture in them.

Hey all, Two new tutorials for you with more to follow soon! Removing Lens Flares (using Frequency Separation) Custom Tone Curve Thanks, James

Why thank you!

Hey all, I figured since most of my photography ends up in tutorials, and so is usually unfinished or edited differently, I would share some properly finished images! We visited Derbyshire this bank holiday and fortunately the British weather was kind to us. Here are a few images from the trip (edited in Photo of course): Lumsdale Falls 01 by James Ritson, on Flickr Lumsdale Falls 03 by James Ritson, on Flickr Mam Tor 02 by James Ritson, on Flickr Mam Tor 07 by James Ritson, on Flickr Lumsdale Falls 02 by James Ritson, on Flickr Mam Tor 04 by James Ritson, on Flickr You can see all of the images above plus others not shown here on my Flickr album here: https://flic.kr/s/aHskASur94 Thanks! James

Hi Markus, this is because the default raw engine (SerifLabs) does not do any noise reduction, sharpening or other corrections by default. What you are seeing is actually closer to your camera's output than what you see in Preview, which has various enhancements applied to it. There are two ways around this. One is to apply some light noise reduction (try chroma/colour reduction) and sharpening in the Develop persona. The other is to change Photo's raw engine to Apple Core Image. You can do this by clicking on the tuxedo icon on the top toolbar when developing an image, then changing the engine from SerifLabs to Apple Core Image RAW. Next time you develop the image you will notice a difference; the Apple engine does some noise reduction and sharpening, so that might be a good option for you if you prefer how it develops your raw images. Hope that helps!

Hi Ben, Have you checked out the stickied In-house tutorials threads in the Tutorials forum? They present all the tutorials in a structured format, which sounds like exactly what you're after: Photo: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10119-in-house-affinity-photo-video-tutorials/ Designer: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/10815-in-house-affinity-designer-video-tutorials/ There's also a Beginners series coming very soon for Photo; can't commit to a specific date, but the core videos are complete and I'm investigating producing a few "further learning" videos. Additionally, I'm always going back to revise and improve existing videos. Any updates to those are announced in the In-house Photo thread linked above. Hope that helps!

I did three or four 4K videos but have settled on 2K, as encoding 4K and doing complex operations on Photo was a little too taxing for the Macbook we record on. There are some odd phrases dotted about in the videos, I hope non-English speakers aren't too puzzled! Thank you for the feedback, look out for more videos in the near future..

Hi Ben, With quick masking, just double check you have the brush colour set to white (there's an annotation on the video). White adds to the selection, black erases, and you can use tones in-between to vary the strength of the selection. Other than checking that, quick masking should work fine. Let me know if there seems to be another issue and we'll look into it! I'm also slowly going through older videos to see if they could do with re-recording, so I'll look at adding more detail to the Quick Mask video. Thanks, James

... and hot off the heels of those videos come two more: Clipping vs Masking Mirror filter Additionally, I've updated the Cutting out video, making it easier to follow and going into more detail with the procedures: Cutting out Thanks, James

Hello all, To those who are still struggling with cutting out an image and either exporting it or pasting it into another image, I've updated the video tutorial that was linked to above. It now has better pacing and detail of the procedures is more thorough: Cutting Out Hope that helps!

Hey all, MBd already found one of them, but here are three new videos for you: Colour grading with shapes Enhancing Camera Phone photography Infrared Emulation Enjoy!

We're not trying to pass the tutorial videos off as a substitute for a user manual; many people find them useful and they're a very powerful way of quickly illustrating techniques and key features. We are currently working on a user manual for Affinity Designer, and one for Photo will be coming in the near future. Producing a detailed, comprehensive book that justifies its price takes time and a lot of hard work. Rest assured, we are working on them. In the meantime, we endeavour to keep the help updated, and all the tools are documented there. If you don't have time to watch video tutorials, a quick search of the help is the best way to quickly check how a tool works. Hope that helps.

Hi gordo, Just bumped that thread you linked to, as far as your camera goes (think you have a Sony A7 model?), it may just be a case of some more vigilant defringing (it's a powerful filter if you balance the settings correctly). Regarding the Fuji camera decoding, that is a separate issue. I believe that the X-Pro models will be better supported in an upcoming 1.5 beta (proper X-Pro2 support is being added). For now the best recommendation is to use Apple's Core Image decoder via the assistant menu. Thanks!

Hi gordo, Apologies for the bump, I've just found this thread as you linked to it from the sticked Photo Beta thread. For the alignment issue, I suspect this is because using the SerifLabs engine retains a slightly higher pixel resolution than other RAW engines, therefore if you compared it to an output from Adobe Camera Raw, or indeed Apple's Core Image Raw, it wouldn't align. You can see this for yourself; develop a RAW image using the SerifLabs decoder and note the pixel resolution listed in the top left. Now access the assistant settings (click the tuxedo icon on the top toolbar) and set the decoder to Apple Core Image RAW. Cancel the development and open the same raw file again. This time you should note a different, slightly lower pixel resolution. As for the artefact issues, the most recent screenshot definitely looks like something I'd tackle with defringing; try a very low edge brightness threshold (but not at 0% as it'll have no effect then) and a high tolerance, then check "Also remove complementary hue". Set your colour correctly on the hue slider and this will usually remove most of the fringing in the image if not all. As Tony mentioned earlier in the thread, ACR does a lot of automatic processing, some of which you can't disable. It's a divisive approach, perhaps, but Photo's Develop persona lets the user determine everything manually, down to noise reduction and lens artefact removal. If you were to use the Apple Core Image RAW decoder, that includes a few automatic adjustments including noise removal and lens distortion. Have you given that a try to see if it improves the issue? Hope that helps!

Hi Digbydo, Once you've done your retouching work there are a couple of ways you can go on to do further work. One approach is to simply use adjustment and live filter layers above the two frequency layers and mask them - that way, for example, you could use a recolour adjustment to change the colour of the eyes. Bear in mind that you don't have to add separate layer masks to adjustments and filters - they already contain their own masks. Just paint onto them with black/white to alter the mask. The other approach is to go to Layer - Merge Visible. This will create an editable pixel layer at the top of the layer stack which contains all the work you've done so far. You can then paint onto this, use Liquify, etc to achieve the results you're after. Hope that helps!

Hi Timber, thanks for posting, hope these answer your questions: Stacking automatically aligns your images and is a quicker process, that's all there is to it! Manual exposure merging involves aligning the images by hand then masking specific areas. It's more precise but also more time consuming. HDR is a different beast entirely. With exposure merging you're simply merging exposures in an 8-bit or 16-bit integer document to "average" the exposures. HDR will work in 32-bit floating point and you'll be able to use tone mapping and exposure fusion to achieve the results HDR is more typically associated with. Yes, you can stack any image format that Photo supports, including RAW. Stacking RAW files takes a little longer as Photo has to decode them first. TIFFs are lossless (I'm a quality control freak!). No, you can just add your RAW files straight into the Stacking file dialog, no need to spend time developing them beforehand. None, it just takes a little longer. It's worth noting that your RAW files will be decoded using whichever RAW engine you've chosen in the Develop persona (see video Maximising Raw Latitude for more info). Hope that helps! Thanks

How complex is your document, do you have several adjustments/live filters/pixel layers? It might be worth flattening your document first (Document - Flatten) then converting to CMYK to see if you get the issue. This is not a solution, just a workaround, but it may help indicate what could be going wrong. Thanks!