James Ritson

Hey all, I've slowly been posting new videos over the last week, so here are three new ones for you!
Using Adjustment Layers on Masks - YouTube / Vimeo HSL Tonal Separation - YouTube / Vimeo Nighttime Architecture Workflow - YouTube / Vimeo The Nighttime Architecture video is a standout; it's a 17 minute complete walkthrough of an image edit from start to finish - I took the photo during a recent trip to Bern, Switzerland and got a few interesting shots, but this one came to life with a bit of editing and careful treatment of colour. Let me know if you find these workflow-focused videos useful!

Hey Jayvin, yes, you can achieve what Sean is doing very easily within Photo, it's all done through the HSL Adjustment. You can target individual colour ranges and tweak hue shift, saturation and luminosity.
 
There are many other ways you can isolate and edit colour in Photo besides this approach, but you can certainly do exactly what you're asking. Hope that helps!

Hi Mike, thanks for your comments, I do really appreciate your feedback as it's something we are aware of (and have been for some time now). In an ideal situation with more time, we'd have already been able to provide a more comprehensive, structured beginners course. I have produced an initial set of beginners videos that take you through the absolute basics (opening, saving, adjustments, filters, exporting etc), but from your comments it sounds like there's nothing for the skill level past that point where it focuses more on A to B workflows.
 
I know Simon's (Drippy Cat) video courses have received some great praise and he offers some great structured learning, which is what we struggle with as the in-house videos tend to be a mixture of new features, specific techniques, genres, etc. What did you find was the issue with his videos? I'm sure he would appreciate the feedback as he's pretty active and is constantly working on new material or revising it.
 
The problem we have with our video structure at the moment is that there are plenty of really useful techniques, many of which I'd say could be suitable for beginners to digest, but they're almost "hidden" in videos that cover a particular feature or workflow aid. This is something that we have plans to address, but can't really provide a timeline for. Ideally I'd like to knuckle down and produce a few more of what we call "Projects" videos, where it's a workflow demonstration that covers the start to finish of an image edit. I'm a keen landscape photographer too so I have plenty of ideas to pool from for this subject!
 
Sorry I can't offer more in the way of a resolution at the moment, but we are aware of the gap in the learning material we provide and it is something we're hoping to address. In the meantime, if you had any specific areas you were struggling with, I could try and point you towards videos that would cover those areas (as I mentioned previously, it's not always obvious by the video title). Do let me know, perhaps in this thread, and I'll do my best to help. Thanks!

Hi John, I take it you mean that when you launch the Designer Beta, it tells you it has expired? This is because the current App Store version is newer (since 1.6 was officially released), so you would simply need to update it through the App Store and run that version. The beta version validates against the official version - if it's older, it won't run.
 
In the future, when a newer public beta is released, you'll be able to download it and run that once again. For now, though, there's absolutely no reason to try and run the beta since it's actually an older build than the App Store release. And just to confirm, you shouldn't have to pay anything further than your initial purchase of the app. Hope that helps.

Hi John, I take it you mean that when you launch the Designer Beta, it tells you it has expired? This is because the current App Store version is newer (since 1.6 was officially released), so you would simply need to update it through the App Store and run that version. The beta version validates against the official version - if it's older, it won't run.
 
In the future, when a newer public beta is released, you'll be able to download it and run that once again. For now, though, there's absolutely no reason to try and run the beta since it's actually an older build than the App Store release. And just to confirm, you shouldn't have to pay anything further than your initial purchase of the app. Hope that helps.

Hi John, I take it you mean that when you launch the Designer Beta, it tells you it has expired? This is because the current App Store version is newer (since 1.6 was officially released), so you would simply need to update it through the App Store and run that version. The beta version validates against the official version - if it's older, it won't run.
 
In the future, when a newer public beta is released, you'll be able to download it and run that once again. For now, though, there's absolutely no reason to try and run the beta since it's actually an older build than the App Store release. And just to confirm, you shouldn't have to pay anything further than your initial purchase of the app. Hope that helps.

Hi John, I take it you mean that when you launch the Designer Beta, it tells you it has expired? This is because the current App Store version is newer (since 1.6 was officially released), so you would simply need to update it through the App Store and run that version. The beta version validates against the official version - if it's older, it won't run.
 
In the future, when a newer public beta is released, you'll be able to download it and run that once again. For now, though, there's absolutely no reason to try and run the beta since it's actually an older build than the App Store release. And just to confirm, you shouldn't have to pay anything further than your initial purchase of the app. Hope that helps.

Hi Grazer, you can indeed do this in Photo. There are several approaches, one involving the Channels panel and blend modes, but here's something that is closer to your calculations approach. In this example we'll add the Red and Blue channels together, invert the blue channel and add an offset - seems this is used for alpha selections of hair?
Duplicate the image layer you want to create an alpha mask from. Uncheck/hide the original (so you can preview the alpha effect) Filter > Apply Image Click Use Current Layer As Source, then check Equations to enable channel equations In DA (Destination Alpha), you can type this: SR+SB to add red and blue channels together Now we need to invert the blue channel, so your equation becomes: SR+(1-SB) Finally, to add an offset to the overall result, we can type: SR+(1-SB)-0.2 Click Apply and you'll now have a pixel layer with a modified alpha channel. At this point, you can either work on the pixel layer or go to Layer > Rasterise to Mask to convert it to a mask layer (which you can then drag inside other layers to mask them). Hope that's what you're after and that you find it useful. In theory, you should be able to achieve most if not all of the Calculations behaviour using the channel equations in Photo's Apply Image dialog. Bear in mind that values in channel equations go from 0 to 1 and are in float. You can use expressions like lerp(SR, SB, 0.5) to linear interpolate between two channels, and as seen above use bracketed notation to isolate expressions.

Hi Grazer, you can indeed do this in Photo. There are several approaches, one involving the Channels panel and blend modes, but here's something that is closer to your calculations approach. In this example we'll add the Red and Blue channels together, invert the blue channel and add an offset - seems this is used for alpha selections of hair?
Duplicate the image layer you want to create an alpha mask from. Uncheck/hide the original (so you can preview the alpha effect) Filter > Apply Image Click Use Current Layer As Source, then check Equations to enable channel equations In DA (Destination Alpha), you can type this: SR+SB to add red and blue channels together Now we need to invert the blue channel, so your equation becomes: SR+(1-SB) Finally, to add an offset to the overall result, we can type: SR+(1-SB)-0.2 Click Apply and you'll now have a pixel layer with a modified alpha channel. At this point, you can either work on the pixel layer or go to Layer > Rasterise to Mask to convert it to a mask layer (which you can then drag inside other layers to mask them). Hope that's what you're after and that you find it useful. In theory, you should be able to achieve most if not all of the Calculations behaviour using the channel equations in Photo's Apply Image dialog. Bear in mind that values in channel equations go from 0 to 1 and are in float. You can use expressions like lerp(SR, SB, 0.5) to linear interpolate between two channels, and as seen above use bracketed notation to isolate expressions.

Hi Grazer, you can indeed do this in Photo. There are several approaches, one involving the Channels panel and blend modes, but here's something that is closer to your calculations approach. In this example we'll add the Red and Blue channels together, invert the blue channel and add an offset - seems this is used for alpha selections of hair?
Duplicate the image layer you want to create an alpha mask from. Uncheck/hide the original (so you can preview the alpha effect) Filter > Apply Image Click Use Current Layer As Source, then check Equations to enable channel equations In DA (Destination Alpha), you can type this: SR+SB to add red and blue channels together Now we need to invert the blue channel, so your equation becomes: SR+(1-SB) Finally, to add an offset to the overall result, we can type: SR+(1-SB)-0.2 Click Apply and you'll now have a pixel layer with a modified alpha channel. At this point, you can either work on the pixel layer or go to Layer > Rasterise to Mask to convert it to a mask layer (which you can then drag inside other layers to mask them). Hope that's what you're after and that you find it useful. In theory, you should be able to achieve most if not all of the Calculations behaviour using the channel equations in Photo's Apply Image dialog. Bear in mind that values in channel equations go from 0 to 1 and are in float. You can use expressions like lerp(SR, SB, 0.5) to linear interpolate between two channels, and as seen above use bracketed notation to isolate expressions.

Hi Grazer, you can indeed do this in Photo. There are several approaches, one involving the Channels panel and blend modes, but here's something that is closer to your calculations approach. In this example we'll add the Red and Blue channels together, invert the blue channel and add an offset - seems this is used for alpha selections of hair?
Duplicate the image layer you want to create an alpha mask from. Uncheck/hide the original (so you can preview the alpha effect) Filter > Apply Image Click Use Current Layer As Source, then check Equations to enable channel equations In DA (Destination Alpha), you can type this: SR+SB to add red and blue channels together Now we need to invert the blue channel, so your equation becomes: SR+(1-SB) Finally, to add an offset to the overall result, we can type: SR+(1-SB)-0.2 Click Apply and you'll now have a pixel layer with a modified alpha channel. At this point, you can either work on the pixel layer or go to Layer > Rasterise to Mask to convert it to a mask layer (which you can then drag inside other layers to mask them). Hope that's what you're after and that you find it useful. In theory, you should be able to achieve most if not all of the Calculations behaviour using the channel equations in Photo's Apply Image dialog. Bear in mind that values in channel equations go from 0 to 1 and are in float. You can use expressions like lerp(SR, SB, 0.5) to linear interpolate between two channels, and as seen above use bracketed notation to isolate expressions.

Official Affinity Photo iPad Tutorials
New to the latest update of the app (1.6.9), we've got a brand new set of tutorials that follow a more structured approach. You can access them from the Tutorials option in-app or by following this link:
https://affinity.serif.com/tutorials/photo/ipad They are sorted into categories:
Basic Operations Advanced Corrective and Retouching Creative Tools Filters and Adjustments Export Persona Just some quick info about the new videos:
They're all shot in 4K resolution (supported on desktop machines) for extra clarity. There are localised subtitles for all the languages supported by the app (English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Japanese).  
Hope you find them useful!
James

Hi Mike, thanks for your comments, I do really appreciate your feedback as it's something we are aware of (and have been for some time now). In an ideal situation with more time, we'd have already been able to provide a more comprehensive, structured beginners course. I have produced an initial set of beginners videos that take you through the absolute basics (opening, saving, adjustments, filters, exporting etc), but from your comments it sounds like there's nothing for the skill level past that point where it focuses more on A to B workflows.
 
I know Simon's (Drippy Cat) video courses have received some great praise and he offers some great structured learning, which is what we struggle with as the in-house videos tend to be a mixture of new features, specific techniques, genres, etc. What did you find was the issue with his videos? I'm sure he would appreciate the feedback as he's pretty active and is constantly working on new material or revising it.
 
The problem we have with our video structure at the moment is that there are plenty of really useful techniques, many of which I'd say could be suitable for beginners to digest, but they're almost "hidden" in videos that cover a particular feature or workflow aid. This is something that we have plans to address, but can't really provide a timeline for. Ideally I'd like to knuckle down and produce a few more of what we call "Projects" videos, where it's a workflow demonstration that covers the start to finish of an image edit. I'm a keen landscape photographer too so I have plenty of ideas to pool from for this subject!
 
Sorry I can't offer more in the way of a resolution at the moment, but we are aware of the gap in the learning material we provide and it is something we're hoping to address. In the meantime, if you had any specific areas you were struggling with, I could try and point you towards videos that would cover those areas (as I mentioned previously, it's not always obvious by the video title). Do let me know, perhaps in this thread, and I'll do my best to help. Thanks!

Hi Mike, thanks for your comments, I do really appreciate your feedback as it's something we are aware of (and have been for some time now). In an ideal situation with more time, we'd have already been able to provide a more comprehensive, structured beginners course. I have produced an initial set of beginners videos that take you through the absolute basics (opening, saving, adjustments, filters, exporting etc), but from your comments it sounds like there's nothing for the skill level past that point where it focuses more on A to B workflows.
 
I know Simon's (Drippy Cat) video courses have received some great praise and he offers some great structured learning, which is what we struggle with as the in-house videos tend to be a mixture of new features, specific techniques, genres, etc. What did you find was the issue with his videos? I'm sure he would appreciate the feedback as he's pretty active and is constantly working on new material or revising it.
 
The problem we have with our video structure at the moment is that there are plenty of really useful techniques, many of which I'd say could be suitable for beginners to digest, but they're almost "hidden" in videos that cover a particular feature or workflow aid. This is something that we have plans to address, but can't really provide a timeline for. Ideally I'd like to knuckle down and produce a few more of what we call "Projects" videos, where it's a workflow demonstration that covers the start to finish of an image edit. I'm a keen landscape photographer too so I have plenty of ideas to pool from for this subject!
 
Sorry I can't offer more in the way of a resolution at the moment, but we are aware of the gap in the learning material we provide and it is something we're hoping to address. In the meantime, if you had any specific areas you were struggling with, I could try and point you towards videos that would cover those areas (as I mentioned previously, it's not always obvious by the video title). Do let me know, perhaps in this thread, and I'll do my best to help. Thanks!

Hey everyone, to coincide with the release of version 1.6, here are some new tutorials! It's a mix of new 1.6 features, revisions to old videos, and general tutorials covering functionality and techniques. Hope you find them useful!
 
Quick Toggling Panels - YouTube / Vimeo Quick Inpainting Crooked Horizons - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Live Editing - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Roll Correction - YouTube / Vimeo Light UI - YouTube / Vimeo Brush Stabilisation - YouTube / Vimeo 3D Relighting with Normal Map Passes - YouTube / Vimeo Uplift Epic Skies (1.6 Bonus Content) - YouTube / Vimeo

Hey everyone, to coincide with the release of version 1.6, here are some new tutorials! It's a mix of new 1.6 features, revisions to old videos, and general tutorials covering functionality and techniques. Hope you find them useful!
 
Quick Toggling Panels - YouTube / Vimeo Quick Inpainting Crooked Horizons - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Live Editing - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Roll Correction - YouTube / Vimeo Light UI - YouTube / Vimeo Brush Stabilisation - YouTube / Vimeo 3D Relighting with Normal Map Passes - YouTube / Vimeo Uplift Epic Skies (1.6 Bonus Content) - YouTube / Vimeo

Hey everyone, to coincide with the release of version 1.6, here are some new tutorials! It's a mix of new 1.6 features, revisions to old videos, and general tutorials covering functionality and techniques. Hope you find them useful!
 
Quick Toggling Panels - YouTube / Vimeo Quick Inpainting Crooked Horizons - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Live Editing - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Roll Correction - YouTube / Vimeo Light UI - YouTube / Vimeo Brush Stabilisation - YouTube / Vimeo 3D Relighting with Normal Map Passes - YouTube / Vimeo Uplift Epic Skies (1.6 Bonus Content) - YouTube / Vimeo

Hey everyone, to coincide with the release of version 1.6, here are some new tutorials! It's a mix of new 1.6 features, revisions to old videos, and general tutorials covering functionality and techniques. Hope you find them useful!
 
Quick Toggling Panels - YouTube / Vimeo Quick Inpainting Crooked Horizons - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Live Editing - YouTube / Vimeo 360 Roll Correction - YouTube / Vimeo Light UI - YouTube / Vimeo Brush Stabilisation - YouTube / Vimeo 3D Relighting with Normal Map Passes - YouTube / Vimeo Uplift Epic Skies (1.6 Bonus Content) - YouTube / Vimeo

Hey all, just letting you know that I've re-recorded the iOS 11 Drag & Drop video to include the new functionality that made it into the recent release of Photo. The Vimeo link remains the same, but here's the new YouTube link: https://youtu.be/MYKju_Y1C-Y
 
@p_mac, using the gradient tool on a pixel layer remains a destructive operation (since the result is immediately rasterised once you switch tools) - in the video I added a pixel layer because I often forget to use a non-destructive fill layer and old habits die hard  - apologies as it was improvised and I just wanted to quickly demonstrate the gradient tool's modifiers.

Official Affinity Photo iPad Tutorials
New to the latest update of the app (1.6.9), we've got a brand new set of tutorials that follow a more structured approach. You can access them from the Tutorials option in-app or by following this link:
https://affinity.serif.com/tutorials/photo/ipad They are sorted into categories:
Basic Operations Advanced Corrective and Retouching Creative Tools Filters and Adjustments Export Persona Just some quick info about the new videos:
They're all shot in 4K resolution (supported on desktop machines) for extra clarity. There are localised subtitles for all the languages supported by the app (English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Japanese).  
Hope you find them useful!
James

Ah, the issue is working within the constraints of the forum software unfortunately (including image limits per post for the YouTube/Vimeo icons!). Hmm, this will require some more thought...

Hey all, just a quick post - during a dry spell I rerecorded Live Perspective Projection (better example) and did a new video on Dual Perspective Correction. Here are the links:
 
Live Perspective Projection
Dual Perspective Projection
 
They've also been updated/added to the first post. Hope you find them useful!

Hey all,
 
The Photo for Windows beta has proven incredibly popular, and I appreciate that, like with any software, there's a learning curve and the requirement to invest time in understanding the software's functionality and idiosyncrasies.
 
With no firm commitment to delivering them consistently (that bit is important to note  ;) ) I'd like to share some example editing/workflow videos. My aim is to demonstrate Photo's feature set and, hopefully, help viewers understand how the tools and features they're accustomed to using in other software can translate to Photo's implementations.
 
If you haven't caught them already, it's also worth noting that there's a huge set of video tutorials for Photo available at http://affin.co/PhotoTuts - around 165 at last count.
 
Here they are:
 
Hadrian's Wall
 

 
Link: https://vimeo.com/191642138
 
This video focuses on:
Raw noise reduction and dithering Marquee selections from tonal ranges Layer masking Blend modes Blend ranges Channel duplication/loading to alpha mask Live filter layers Configurable layer behaviour  
Tiled Building
 

 
Link: https://vimeo.com/191981432
 
This video focuses on:
Accurate selections using selection brush tool Saving selections to spare channels Loading channel information into a layer's alpha mask Live brush previews Creative painting with blend modes Dynamic brush resizing on the fly Live Lighting filter Live filter layer mask painting Fast history scrubbing  
Portrait Retouching
 

 
Link: https://vimeo.com/194985128
 
This video focuses on:
Automated Frequency Separation Healing Brush and Clone Brush Merging visible layers Live filter layers Live brush previews and blend modes Changing/adding colour tones Changeable workflow behaviours via Assistant dialog Live scrubbing History panel  
Monochromatic Architecture
 

 
Link: https://vimeo.com/194986066
 
This video focuses on:
Adjustment Layers Live brush work with live previews Painting & Erasing Live filter layers Non-destructive noise/grain addition  
Canary Wharf
 

 
Link: https://vimeo.com/203283705
 
This video focuses on:
RAW development Tone Curve option Apply Image with channel equations Black & White adjustment with Multiply blend mode to knock out sky colour Pixel painting to enhance colours Curves tonal adjustment Live Unsharp Mask filter for final sharpening  
Banded Demoiselle
 

 
Link: https://vimeo.com/203294769
 
This video focuses on:
Creating selections with the Selection Brush Inverting a selection Masking an adjustment using a selection Tweaking layer opacity Live Lighting filter with blend mode Live High Pass filter with masking White Balance for tinting  
I'll keep you posted as further videos appear. Hope they prove helpful to you!

Hey Mike, there are no technical advantages/disadvantages, no quality implications or anything of that nature. Simply put, you can use the Develop persona to apply various adjustments and corrections to a JPEG image if you prefer its workspace, then continue to edit in the Photo Persona for access to the wider array of tools. Hope that helps.

Hey, thanks for posting, I do a lot of landscape photography so will chip in here:
RAW files: on the surface, you would be forgiven for thinking there's not a lot of wiggle room for tonal manipulations. What I tend to do, however, is disable the automatic tone curve that's applied. Once you do this, developed RAW files appear slightly duller since only gamma correction is applied. From here, the Highlights slider is much more powerful, and you can use Curves and other adjustments to completely shape your image how you want tonally. Here's a video where I disable the tone curve option at the start and go on to develop the RAW file. I actually comment on the fact that there's a lot of workable dynamic range considering the camera (Panasonic GH2):   
Lens corrections: the iPad version of Photo uses Apple Core Image RAW exclusively, and there's definitely automatic lens correction applied. If your images look corrected in Photos (or you know that your lens is supported by Core Image RAW), then you'll be good to go. Currently on the iPad version the mask preview support is lacking. On desktop, you can Option/Alt-click to isolate the mask but you can't do that yet on iPad unfortunately. Copying a mask to another layer: you can either Select the mask, go to the Commands menu (three dots), Duplicate, then tap-drag the duplicated mask and drop it inside whichever layer you want. Select the mask, go to the Channels studio. Select Mask Alpha, tap three dots then Create Spare Channel. You now have a spare alpha channel which you can "load" into any layer. E.g. you could load it into another pixel's alpha channel, or create a new mask and load it into that. Masks via colour ranges: Select the layer you want to base the colour range off. Either: Tap the Selections Persona (lasso icon, top left). Now on the Commands menu (three dots) choose Select Hue Range and you can choose from reds/greens/blues. Go to the Channels studio. Tap the three dots next to the layer name's Red/Green/Blue channels and choose Create Mask Layer. Alternatively, you can also tap the three dots next to any composite channel (which is the channel makeup of the whole document) and choose Load To Pixel Selection, which will give you an active selection you can create a mask from. Wall of text, sorry! The one thing I would also point out is that adjustments and live filters inherently have their own masks, so you needn't clip mask layers to them. For example, simply select the actual adjustment, then you can manipulate its mask straight away with the Paint Brush Tool, or by looking on the Channels studio (you can invert it, load other channels into it, etc).
 
Hope that helps!