James Ritson

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.

Hey csp, amongst your comments you mentioned the shadows and highlights adjustment - have you tried the filter version accessible from either the Filters menu or as a live filter layer? It behaves more closely to what your expectations would be. Having said that, I regularly use the highlights slider in Develop to compress or pull back the highlight detail, but I do it in addition to removing the applied tone curve and adding my own via the Curves adjustment. Combined with this method, the highlight slider actually becomes very powerful. Might be worth a try? This video details it:

Hi Mike, no worries, this is known about, it happens on certain devices (eg a 5k iMac) but not on others (like a 21" iMac with Intel Iris graphics). Might we be able to ask after your machine's specs?

Hi Val, this is due to some filter previews, namely denoising and defringing, changing depending on your zoom level. If you zoom to 100% (keyboard shortcut Cmd + 1) then click Develop, you should see the developed result is exactly the same as the preview. Some other software simply does not preview certain filters at all (again, denoising and defringing) unless you are zoomed to 100% for this reason. It might be worth Photo having an explanation on the interface somewhere when using these filters, as this issue is being brought up more frequently. Hope that helps!

The Macros panel is document specific in the sense that you can only record and edit a current macro in one document. I don't have Photo in front of me at the moment but I imagine that if you switch to a different document the panel contents won't transfer across. Recorded macros can absolutely be used globally for any document, I believe they work off layer names - like how every opened image's base layer is called "Background" by default. Hope that helps!

Hello, rather than using quick masking you could try following the approach in the Selective Sharpening video, it involves adding a live high pass/unsharp mask layer, inverting it, then painting back in the areas you want to affect:

Hey, have you tried previewing and applying the effect with your zoom set at 100%? Certain filters, including noise reduction, scale with the preview size, so for a true representation you'll want to be at 100% zoom. Hope that helps!

Hi Five, would you be able to try this? Open a raw image, make your adjustments, add some noise reduction if you wish. Now, before you click Develop, zoom to 100% (you can use Cmd+1 to do this). Now try clicking Develop and see if you observe any difference. Let me know if this seems to alleviate the issue!

Good afternoon all, Here's another couple of tutorials, I quite enjoyed preparing these as they involved dabbling with something I haven't touched in a long time (I used to work with 3D engines quite heavily): Enhancing 3D Renders #01 Enhancing 3D Renders #02 Bit of a departure from editing photography, but I hope they will be of use to people! Cheers, James

According to Photo's lead developer there should be a beta sometime this week! Being a beta, some features won't be functional or complete, but from prior testing the dust and scratches filter will certainly be functional. Hope that helps.

Hi Tim, there isn't a filter in the current Mac App Store build (1.4.2) of Photo that will automate the process of removing those speckles (random artefacts I suppose you could call them!). There is however a new Dust & Scratches filter coming in Photo 1.5 that should be exactly what you'd need to remove those. There should be a 1.5 Beta of Photo available soon that you could download and try out. For the speckles in the image you attached you would typically use a small radius and tolerance. Any fine detail loss could then be restored by going back over key areas with the Undo brush set to a low-ish opacity. Sorry that there isn't a specific filter to help you out right now, but there will be in the near future!

Hi, are you referring to Photo or Designer? Regardless, there's a huge amount of tutorials for both, including some beginners videos to get you started: they're on the website and the Tutorials forum here. See In-house Affinity Photo Video Tutorials and In-house Affinity Designer Video Tutorials for more information. At the moment, Photo has a specific beginners video series, but both apps have a "For Beginners" video that runs through the basics. Hope that helps!

Seconded, thanks for putting so much into developing your courses, they're a brilliant resource for people.

Glad to hear you're able to continue downloading. I'm not really sure what causes the Vimeo downloads to stop working sometimes. All I can suggest is trying a different version of the download, so if Original doesn't work, try 1080p or 720p. The quality won't be as good but it's better than nothing to watch!

When you say failed links, is that the download link that Vimeo provides? If so, have you tried downloading after registering an account and logging in? Several people have reported issues downloading the video files - the ability to download them is out of our control, but please let me know if you're still struggling with Vimeo and I'll see what I can do!

Hi Edo, the base look of that image was an "infrared" emulation, I've done a video on how to achieve that here: On top of that, it's a channel mixer adjustment to bring the purples out, diffuse glow filter, gaussian blur with an overlay blend mode (and low opacity), then finally a curves adjustment that lifts the absolute black point and gives the shadows a "toe" curve. The other important factor was the lens used, though! Think it was a Jupiter-9 (old M42) 85mm; very soft rendering. Hope that helps..

No problem! Just to clarify with the creative painting tutorial, the part you're most likely to want to use is: 1) Create a new pixel layer, set the blend mode to Overlay or Glow and use a low-ish opacity (lower for Glow, higher for Overlay). 2) Set your brush hardness to 0% and use a colour of near white. You can give it a bit of a tint by dragging one of the R, G or B sliders down slightly. 3) Paint away over brighter areas of the image to add a "diffuse" effect. 4) Tweak opacity if needed to reduce/increase the effect.

Hi Edo, there are three tutorials off the top of my head whose techniques you can use for a soft, dreamy look: Diffuse Glow Filter Creative Painting Diffuse Glow (this one uses gaussian blurring and blend modes) If you take the above techniques and apply them to portraiture you should be able to achieve a wide range of soft effects. Hope that helps!

Hi Kevin, yes, you can edit layer masks using all the conventional tools - paint brush, eraser, gradient/fill tool, clone/healing brush etc. No detaching required! Additionally, all adjustment and live filter layers you add inherently have their own mask, so you don't need to add separate layer masks to them in order to mask their effect. There's a tutorial video on Layer Masks here which will allow you to see some of the functionality: https://vimeo.com/130972598 Hope that helps!

Hi Donato, you're right, thanks for the feedback!

Hi chubbix, looks like this could be chroma noise, Photo doesn't automatically apply noise reduction when developing raw files. See this video for more details and it will hopefully help (it's a good primer on raw editing anyway): And more specifically this video on raw noise reduction: Hope that helps

Hey all, just to point out that there's a new stickied thread at the top of this Tutorials forum called "Affinity Photo Beginners videos"! It's a set of (currently five) videos aimed strictly at beginners, fully subtitled, with practice files for the videos that require them. You can see that thread here: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/22003-happy-birthday-photo-affinity-photo-beginners-videos/ Thanks!

That's odd, using noise reduction should remove that noise pattern - I know what you mean by Tetris-like, it's characteristic of the SerifLabs engine. If you bring the luminance and colour sliders up for noise reduction do you notice any difference? (Make sure to preview at 100%) Also, if you switch to Apple's Core Image engine, make sure you close and re-open the file, the change won't take place until then.