Dazzler

To answer this, there is no minimum, but to explain it better you need to understand how it works. So it's working on the law of averages, whereby if you take a single pixel on the image and it had some noise (random value between 0 and 255 for example, although in reality it would be across three channels and unlikely to hit the extremeties of the value range). For the sake of simplicy let's imagine the orignal image without noise should be the value 127. So if the noise on the original image changes the value to 254. You now need another image with noise at a value of 0 to bring that back in line to where it should be ((254 + 0)/2 = 127). Of course noise isn't likely to be that severe, but it's very unlikely that with 2 images the two noise values would cancel each other out perfectly, but in theory the end result of two images should be closer in truth than either one of the images alone. Obviously, the more images used in the process the more they are likely to smooth each other out. In theory, each noisey value should be biased towards the original 'correct' value, so after adding them all up and dividing the result you should be pretty close to the true value. So yes you can do it with any number of images, but the more the merrier. Two images is unlikely to make a lot of difference, but you may see some improvement. Two should still be better than one. However, there must be a point at which adding more images also becomes fairly pointless. The difference in quality between using two and three images will be greater than the difference in quality between 45 and 46 images. The next problem is capturing the images without capturing movement in the image, fine for studio type still shots but not so easy in other situations.

Add a curves adjustment, then under the histogram there is a dropdown selection for the channel (normally set on Master), switch it to blue. Then, just click and drag on the middle of the line in the histogram and drag down a bit ... it's a live preview so you'll see immediately the effect this has on the image. The histogram is showing the levels in the image ranging from shadows on the left to highlights on the right, and you'll see a peak (or maybe several peaks) where most of your image is sat in that range. You can create several points on the curve and drag them around to affect maybe only the darker areas or create an s-curve to enhance or reduce contrast in a particular tone range. By choosing blue channel you'll only be affecting the levels of the blue, therefore having an effect on the hues in the image, pulling down making it less blue and pushing up increasing the blue and making the image cooler. By using curves you can leave the white area alone, whereas colour balance will have a more general effect.

I don't know whether it's just me having a 'forgetful brain' day or what, but is there a way to move the contents of an individual channel? I have a photo where there is for some reason an obvious offset on one of the colour channels (green I think) and I want to shift it back into position, but for the life of me can't seem to do it! I just need to shift the green channel down a bit. Affine is sort of worknig but way too severe ... 1% is way too far. I've tried typing lots of other values (-0.05 etc) but this seems like a really hard way of doing it. Surely there's some way of just moving by dragging a channel contents around? The defringe tool isn't working here either - I think it's not quite the same thing.

I suppose you can have alternative masks at different opacities stored in a layer and switch between them. That's about all I can find at the moment.

I'm inclined to agree with you Laganama. Although, I'm wondering if there's a use case for it behaving that way.

I haven't noticed that before but it makes sense now you've pointed that out - thanks dutchshader. If you want to get 50% layer opacity you can do it on the circular mask layer that is inside instead - or you can use colour as done in the video, although I prefer the opacity done with the layer settings as I find it easier to interrogate later on.

Check you have your snapping turned on (the magnet button should be depressed), and then if you click the little arrow next to the magnet, check you have 'snap to object geometry' checked. That seems to do it for me.

There is a further step you could take to make this more of a 'standard' vector without utilising the 'erase' layer mode (you may find layer modes can be a bit of a problem with certain printers etc, so I normally remove them if possible). You would select all the small curve layers, then from the menu choose Layer > Exand Stroke. Now the strokes will be shapes with a fill rather than single lines with a thickness. You can now use the Add or Subtract functions quite easily to subtact these shapes from the circle (you'll may need to pull the inner layer back out to the top level to be able to combine it with the circle). I tried this, doing an add first of all to join all the little lines into one shape, then selected the circle and the lines layer and chose subtract to remove the lines layer from the circle leaving the shape you wanted without any funny stuff going on anywhere. There was one little hiccup where the end of one of the lines went beyond it's curve that it joined to, but this can be cleaned up easily enough, either choosing a different end cap setting in the stroke options or by simply editing the end result and removing the little nodes in the damaged area. I think fiddling with the stroke end cap options to avoid the overlap in the first place would probably be the best method.

Here's your file back with those edits done ... so you can see what I've done, and how much simpler the end result is. You will probably need to reposition the inner bits to your liking using the Move Tool, scaling it to fit etc. yarn-logo.afdesign

Ok, first of all, looking at your design this should be fairly easy to create using vectors alone, without the need for pixel layers. As always with graphics software there's normally several ways to achieve the same result, so what I say may not be the best or fastest method. So first of all, get rid of the pixel mask, that isn't necessary in Designer, as the circle itself can be used to clip the other items by simply dragging the other layer within it (be careful when you drag - note that the blue highlights change position as you drag it over or around another layer, and each of these positions has a different effect when you release). What you want to do is simply drag your curves within the circle so it's just a nested layer within it (so the blue highlight should be showing from the bottom of the purple circle layer with a gap on the left hand side). Once this is placed like that all the inner parts will be clipped by the 'parent' layer - the circle. Secondly, get rid of the pixel layer masks within the individual curves - you won't need any pixels here! Once you've done that (you may want to delete the masks one at a time to keep track of what goes where and edit the curves each time), select one of the indivudal curves and switch to the node tool. Where you want the curve to stop and go 'under' the other curves, simply hover over the curve at the intersection of the two curves and you should see a highlighted yellow confirmation that let's you know it's snapping to the intersection. Click to add a point here. Then add another point in the same way where you want the curve to begin again. Then you can select one of these points and choose 'Break Curve' from the context menu at the top of the screen. Then do the same for the other point. (you can actually select both points and do the break curve in one go). You should notice now in the layers panel that your curve has now become three curves. Simply select the one that is the middle of the original curve and delete that layer. Do this for all the remaining curves and you should be good to go, with totally vector, scalable shapes that are very clean and accurate. Hope that helps!

Oooh didn't know about that ... that's kind of neat. I like the way you can adjust the modes (add, subtract, intersect etc), for each internal layer too. I'm now wondering if you can 'flatten' a compound object back out to a non-compound shape - ie. the result as a single vector layer. EDIT: Yes it's right there in the context menu - convert to curves! Nice!

In the stroke properties there's a 'scale with object' tickbox for that.

There are probably a few differences between Mac and PC. On PC it is indeed under Edit > Preferences. There are also other preferences that may have made a difference in how things are appearing. It is frustrating when you are learning this stuff, and often involves a little bit of playing around with the tools and looking in the manual. With the selection brush you should indeed see dots (aka marching ants!) as you make the selection, however if the area that has automatically been selected as your paint the selection happens to go beyond the outside of your viewport then you may not see them. Also, check you are on the correct mode at the top where the tool options are ... you should have 'Add' depressed (darker), not 'Subtract'. Subtract is used to take away from an existing selection, so if you start with that you won't be seeing anything happen as there is no selection to take away from. To remove the black background from a moon picture you can use the Selection Brush Tool, which should work nicely with a clean background, then use the selection as a mask to make the outside transparent, or firstdefence's method is a good and fast workaround where you know the colours aren't too varied. It can fall over in other situations though, so it's a good idea to persevere with learning the selection tools and they will come in handy later for other subjects where you don't have that consistency of colour in the background. You can start to see the problem on the dark side of the moon as that method actually turns the shadow into the blue colour, which may not be what you want. A third method is to draw a shape (circle in this case) over the object, get it aligned (you can turn the opacity of the shape layer down to make it more transparent so you can see it's alignment over the subject) and then convert the shape to a selection by holding CTRL (CMD on MAC) and clicking on the shape layer picture in the layers panel. That will give you a perfect circle selection that will include the shadow of the moon. Selecting the moon layer and pressing CTRL(CMD) + J will duplicate the selection area into a new layer, so you'll end up with just the moon on a layer. You can now turn off the original moon layer and you should have a moon on it's own layer with no background. You can then put whatever you like behind it on another layer.

You can just rasterise the layer. Turn off preserve FX to rasterise them too, so they become part of the image, and you end up with a pixel layer, that you can then crop with the vector crop tool.

I actually think once you've got your head around it, that this is quite brilliant! So, as your original request stated if you just want to use the pen tool then adjust a few points then return to drawing you can do so without even leaving the pen tool, just hold CTRL (CMD?) down in the pen tool allows you modify the existing points, then release to continue from where you left off still within the pen tool (no need to select the end point again). That's pretty neat. If, you have come back to an existing curve later, after doing a million other things, you simply select the last (or first) point on that curve using the node tool, switch to the pen tool and just draw away, no need for having the 'Add new curves to Selected Curves' option. However, if you want lots of separate curves in one item then use the 'Add new curves to Selected Curves' option to draw curves and they will become part of that layer (note that 'curves' appears in the layer panel description rather than 'curve'). If you then want to split those curves into their own layers so you can join them etc. then you can do that with the menu option layer > geometry > separate curves. The opposite is to merge curves into a single layer whic is just above it in the menu.

Publisher, Designer or Photo?

One thing I can think of that may be stopping you moving something is a locked layer (unlikely if you've just pasted something). Check in the layers panel that there isn't a padlock showing on the layer you are trying to move. If there is, then uncheck the padlock symbol at the top of the layers panel. That would also stop you transforming things so, so I'm still a bit confused as to what is happening for you, and what crosshair you are seeing, as with the move tool I don't an arrow unless I hover over the handles or edges.

Which Affinity software are you using? ..and what is it you are pasting in? In theory you should simply click and drag on the object (not the handles) to move it? That seems consistent across all packages.

The Windows desktop scaling factor is working with my Affinity products. That's if we're talking about the same thing - as in right click on desktop, choose display settings, then adjust the percentage under scale and layout. My monitor isn't 4k though, so it looks like I've dropped back to the mid 90s when I do that! There's also a custom scaling option that lets you put in values greater than 175%! I'm not going to try that, I may never get back again!

Oh wait a minute - there is a function ... 'separate curves' does exactly that! Layer > Geometry > Separate Curves That would've been nice to have on a right click context menu on the curves layer. Not that it's something you need that often I guess.

Great video. Interesting that if you stay on the pen tool the end node doesn't need to be in the blue state to continue, but if you go to a different tool and come back to the pen tool it seems to only work if the end node is blue - if it's just the red surround you seem to get a new curve happen (but it does feel very conditional, as in sometimes it does one thing and others it doesn't). Also, once you get a 'curves' layer (note the plural there) where there are several curves in that layer it gets really difficult to join them back into one curve again - although it is possible - somehow! - I just did it when testing but trying again now I'm having problems! Would be nice to be able to separate those curves onto their own layers easily so you can join them back into a single curve using the join curves tool.

OK, I've done some further testing with the pen tool and the node tool and I've discovered a few things that are interesting. So, first of all the purpose of the 'Add New Curve To Selected Curves Object' is not to join the new curve to the existing curve, but more to make it part of the same shape object (think of that as a single layer that can contain several curves - ie if you click on it with the move tool they all get selected, although they may not be connected together). So, following on from what I said about continuing with the pen tool, it is a little bit sensitive to the situation at hand. For a gauranteed continue on from the end of a line with it being the same line you need to make sure that the end node is in the correct state (should have a blue inner). If it doesn't then switch to the Node Tool, select it, then switch back to the pen tool - your next action is to plot the next point on the curve.

It sounds like you are creating a new object rather than continuing from the original one. Make sure your existing curve is selected using the move tool, then switch to the pen tool. If the end node has a white centre then you may need to click it first to make it blue and then continue drawing.

I just did a quick test on Photo 1.7.2.471 (Windows) and my detail refinement stays put when I develop, however I don't have any RAW files here to test it on, only jpegs, if that makes any difference?

Aaah so that's what the coverage map does! I did play with that a few times and wondered what it did, but couldn't see anything happening - now I know .