Petr Stanicek Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 TBH, I'm confused. There's a bunch of tutorials for astrophotography, but none about such a basic task like processing scanned drawings and paintings. I know the workflow in Photoshop, but many tools are missing in APhoto and I have no idea how to set up my workflow here. I need to process about 100 TIFs with a children book illustrations and I have no idea what's the best way to make a 100% white background around the illustration (if the scanned paper is not a pure white), how to assure there are no remaining pixels around (obviously you can't see them on screen, but they appear in print) etc. How to setup the picture for print, for Publisher import etc. The Workflow section content in tutorials is kind of weird to me, like if APhoto was created for any other use but prepress… Did I do a mistake if I dropped the Adobe suite (I have used for 25 years) and switched to Affinity one? Is this tool intended for astrophysicists more than prepress users? In fact, can professional prepress be done with Affinity, for real? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 Hi and welcome. Could you upload one example file so we can check what the best workflow can be? Certainly Affinity apps can be used for all named purposes. You may need to unlearn some PS workflows and learn how new (sometimes better) Affinity workflows. Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. My posts focus on technical aspects and leave out most of social grease like „maybe“, „in my opinion“, „I might be wrong“ etc. just add copy/paste all these softeners from this signature to make reading more comfortable for you. Otherwise I’m a fine person which respects you and everyone and wants to be respected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 27, 2022 Author Share Posted June 27, 2022 (edited) Of course. A sample attached. Downsized to JPG – the original is A4 600dpi CMYK TIFF. All illustrations are similar to this one – watercolor on a white carton, either completely faded to white background (text to be wrapped around in Publisher), or with 1, 2 or 3 sides to be cropped/bleeded. This particular wolf will bleed up & right, text will flow around to the left and below. Edited June 27, 2022 by Petr Stanicek NotMyFault 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 27, 2022 Author Share Posted June 27, 2022 So, what I need to achieve: make the background/paper 100% white make it transparent make the remaining illustration fade smoothly make sure there is no darker pixel around In Photoshop, I would just click the background to select "white" ie. in the curves tool, then smart-erase the background, select the picture with lasso and completely erase everything around, and then I'd play with mask fine-tuning to blend these fine shades in the bottom and top-left sides. I can cut the lights and make the yellowish background white using curves or levels just by my eye in APhoto, but I'd like to have a more sophisticated workflow, ideally a makro-like steps to preprocess all pictures the same way first; and then just focus to detail retouching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 27, 2022 Author Share Posted June 27, 2022 FYI, the background color is mostly CMYK 0-0-5-0, so it's maybe just about adjusting the white point… I'm missing a live information about the pixel under the cursor, ie. to see the pixel color as I move the cursor around. I couldn't find such a feature in APhoto. In fact, there are so many unfamilar features in the menu and I have no idea what to use them for, what typical workflow and usecase they solve… Where is a complete manual?! I can see only a quick start guide. I'm soooo disappointed. Maybe it's broken…? There is a "picker" button in Curves – it does nothing. I found "Select sampled colour" in the menu – there is a slider, and it does nothing. Disappointed and confused. AlanPC 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 2 hours ago, Petr Stanicek said: I know the workflow in Photoshop, but many tools are missing in APhoto and I have no idea how to set up my workflow here. I need to process about 100 TIFs with a children book illustrations and I have no idea what's the best way to make a 100% white background around the illustration (if the scanned paper is not a pure white), how to assure there are no remaining pixels around (obviously you can't see them on screen, but they appear in print) etc. Well that's no easy task at all, especially then for 100 files here! - The general problem with scanned in drawings on paper is, that there are often then many parts (pixels) in the main drawing, which then have the same color tone values as the surounding paper background has. So a realy good seperation of the background paper and the drawing is often difficult to get at all in APh. - Further APh isn't functional as smart and rich as PS in many algorithmic aspects, so one often have to go other ways here for APh. Let's take your above sample drawing, in order to get whiter whites instead of pastel yellow tones there, one can perform an selective color change for the white color. BUT then parts of the drawing would also get whiter and not only the background. So you would have to make some sort of selection first, which then only affects the background and not possibly parts of the drawing. - Not sure if just performing a visual (catch by eye) lasso selection would be always a good way here. However, there are different ways possible to get some decent separate parts selection and I will show just one of them here. When doing portrait work (cutouts) I often have to fight with similar problems in terms of having images/shots with same/similar colors parts of the main subject & the background. And in order to get then some halfway decent distinguishing selection, it's often helpful to get/generate the selection itself then instead from a sort of B&W silhouette like represention of an image. Then taking that selection over to the real color image and performing the needed tasks with that selection there. For example see these short screencast videos (...the second one is slightly more detailed and shows the threshold usage, which I missed to show in the first one) ... Capture1.mp4 Capture2.mov These hopefully might give you some ideas for APh, though there might be even better ways to get around those selection problems! Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 32 minutes ago, Petr Stanicek said: I'm missing a live information about the pixel under the cursor, ie. to see the pixel color as I move the cursor around. I couldn't find such a feature in APhoto. Use the Info panel ! Quote The Info panel provides continuous data readings using samplers. These can sample from the current position of the cursor or from a placed target position. Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 (edited) 13 hours ago, Petr Stanicek said: make it transparent 13 hours ago, Petr Stanicek said: maybe just about adjusting the white point… You can't achieve transparency with just such a colour adjustment. Also I guess you don't want the paper white to get modified inside the illustration (neither brightened nor transparent, e.g. around the nose). Here is a quick way: using the Flood Select Tool (1 %) –> then create a mask from the resulting selection. To soften the edges a Blur Live Filter is applied to the mask. Edited June 28, 2022 by thomaso added for clarification: "just such a colour" Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 27, 2022 Author Share Posted June 27, 2022 4 minutes ago, v_kyr said: Use the Info panel ! Oh, thank you! At least this, it will help a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 27, 2022 Author Share Posted June 27, 2022 Thanks @thomaso – I can do it this brute way, just erase/mask the background manually. What I need is probably a white point shift. Thanks @v_kyr as well, great effort! However, cleaning the background is the second step I need to do. The first step has to be make the background as white as possible. I think it's ok if the color of picture is shifted with it – because the original paper was white, the yellowish tone should be treated as an scanning error and the entire image should be shifted. In other editors (incl. Apple Photos) I would select a White Point tool and click the background to adjust the color space, and then slightly cut the lights in histogram. Alas, I can't find anything like White Point in AfP and the histogram (Levels) is not clickable and I don't understand how to handle it. Please understand, I had worked as DTP professional for many years (but many years ago) and I did a ton of collages in Photoshop. I understand the image handling pretty well – I just don't understand Affinity Photo. I've been using AfDesigner for many years and I like it, switching from Illustrator was easy for me. But AfPhoto is so different from Photoshop and I'm not able to do even simple tasks… There is no manual, and tutorials don't cover all features. It's… weird. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 27, 2022 Author Share Posted June 27, 2022 In fact, let's simplify my problem to this: How can I shift colors of the image, so that a selected color – i.e. CMYK 0-0-5-0 – becomes white? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomaso Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 It seems you want a White Balance adjustment. Its picker lets you achieve it with 1 click. Quote macOS 10.14.6 | MacBookPro Retina 15" | Eizo 27" | Affinity V1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted June 27, 2022 Share Posted June 27, 2022 9 minutes ago, Petr Stanicek said: The first step has to be make the background as white as possible. I think it's ok if the color of picture is shifted with it – because the original paper was white, the yellowish tone should be treated as an scanning error and the entire image should be shifted. In other editors (incl. Apple Photos) I would select a White Point tool and click the background to adjust the color space Yeah it's slightly different in APh, though you can adjust the WB too there, one way is via ... screencast-wb.mp4 Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 13 minutes ago, Petr Stanicek said: There is no manual, and tutorials don't cover all features. It's… weird. Well there is no official manual and the online help is at best something which gives you at least an overview about what is avalable in APh. - Instead of an official manual you would have to buy some book then, either the Affinity Photo WorkBook, or some third party book which tells you everything about it (there are some good comprehensive german language ones for APh, though don't know if there are good english ones too). I'll list you here some APh references you might want to look after, including some of the better structured older tutorial videos. The APh Online help Affinity Photo: Video Tutorials (from MEB's website IMO the better ones ***) Affinity Photo for desktop tutorials (the newer ones) Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 28, 2022 Author Share Posted June 28, 2022 Thank you both, yes the White Balance picker could be it. The first problem was, the picker did nothing when I tried it. I restarted APh and it works now. OK. However, I don't get white background this way. If I just click with the picker, a CMYK 0-0-5-0 pixel becomes 1-0-4-0, that's it. I can move the sliders manually and click and try, but still have not a solid white. The same way I can use Brightness&Contrast or other tools, I can just try randomly. I'd prefer a more exact method… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 28, 2022 Author Share Posted June 28, 2022 44 minutes ago, v_kyr said: I'll list you here some APh references you might want to look after, including some of the better structured older tutorial videos. Thanks! I knew and checked the official info, Online help and Affinity tutorials. I didn't know there are other tutorials than those linked on Affinity website. And I also would like to buy a book – if I knew there is a book to buy… I'm going to watch those other tutorials now. Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 28, 2022 Author Share Posted June 28, 2022 Common, this makes no sense at all… An original background pixel has a 4% of yellow. The RGB values seem plausible (even if Color Meter shows slightly different value). Then Highlights are applied. The background color becomes visibly brighter, Color Meter shows almost white – but APhoto says 12% yellow. 🤯😵🤪 This must be a bug, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 28, 2022 Author Share Posted June 28, 2022 It seems there would be only one way how to solve this… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chiyonosake013 Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 Not to just ask the obvious, but have you looked through their in-app help file? There’s a huge amount of information there that’s not part of the quick start guide. They break down all the functions in there if you know what you’re looking for. Granted I’m on my iPad, but this help is readily available on both MacOS as well as Windows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petr Stanicek Posted June 28, 2022 Author Share Posted June 28, 2022 Chiyonosake013, of course I did. It's not easy to find specific info there, but I'm trying. However, I couldn't find how to solve this problem. Or description of all features and menu items… Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl123 Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 If you check YouTube you can sometimes find tutorials there for things you may not have considered that may help get you nearer to your goal, if you tweak them Quote To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotMyFault Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 5 hours ago, thomaso said: You can't achieve transparency with an adjustment only Ok if i object? If you allow to use a combination of 2-3 adjustments, or blend range, you can transform selected color ranges into transparency. channels mixer can do that. other adjustments in combination with blend ranges can do that Quote Mac mini M1 A2348 | Windows 10 - AMD Ryzen 9 5900x - 32 GB RAM - Nvidia GTX 1080 LG34WK950U-W, calibrated to DCI-P3 with LG Calibration Studio / Spider 5 iPad Air Gen 5 (2022) A2589 Special interest into procedural texture filter, edit alpha channel, RGB/16 and RGB/32 color formats, stacking, finding root causes for misbehaving files, finding creative solutions for unsolvable tasks, finding bugs in Apps. My posts focus on technical aspects and leave out most of social grease like „maybe“, „in my opinion“, „I might be wrong“ etc. just add copy/paste all these softeners from this signature to make reading more comfortable for you. Otherwise I’m a fine person which respects you and everyone and wants to be respected. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dazmondo77 Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 I've ran into the same problem - just thought I'd share my workflow which details how I now deal with this sort of thing - It's fairly simple and, as recommended above, it used blend ranges, which you can copy to clipboard and bulk paste (paste style: ⇧⌘V) to all your pix, easiest way I've found is to make a large pub page or designer artboard and drag all you tiffs onto the page and select all and paste style which applies the blend range to all. I then make a filled vector shape over the chosen pic then add a gaussian blur to the vector (from FX) then duplicate the selected Tiff, then group the duplicate with both the original and the vector path then go to blend range on the duplicate and reset then drag the vector path to the right of the duplicate to create a fully tweak-able mask, you can then copy the vector masks to all you pix, then tweak away - another thing I've found useful is to create a white vector background so you can change the colour to see how tweaks are going better. See vid which probably gives a better idea of the description: Screen Grab 2022-06-28 at 8.55.41 am.mov Quote Mac Pro Cheese-grater (Early 2009) 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon 48 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 ECC Ram, Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5, Ugee 19" Graphics Tablet Monitor Triple boot via OCLP 1.4.3 - Mac OS Monterey 12.7.3, Sonoma 14.1.1 and Mojave 10.14.6 Affinity Publisher, Designer and Photo 1.10.5 - 2.4.0 Betas 2.5.0(2430) www.bingercreative.co.uk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v_kyr Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 8 hours ago, Petr Stanicek said: And I also would like to buy a book – if I knew there is a book to buy… There are several, for example Serif's own Affinity Photo workbook is available in english & german. It's sold by Serif, Amazon ... and so on. Review - The APh Workbook And this is a very comprehensive ~1039 pages one in german ... Just do a Google search after the APh book topic, in order to see available books about it! Quote ☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan ☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted June 28, 2022 Share Posted June 28, 2022 1 hour ago, v_kyr said: There are several, for example Serif's own Affinity Photo workbook is available in english & german. It's sold by Serif, Amazon ... and so on. They are no longer available from Serif; only from Amazon, eBay, etc. But yes, they are very nice and useful books (though they are not manuals, and do not attempt to explain everything). v_kyr 1 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. Laptop 2: Windows 11 Pro 24H2, 16GB memory, Snapdragon(R) X Elite - X1E80100 - Qualcomm(R) Oryon(TM) 12 Core CPU 4.01 GHz, Qualcomm(R) Adreno(TM) X1-85 GPU iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 18.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sequoia 15.0.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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