Official Affinity Photo (V2) Tutorials

[James Ritson]

Hello all, we're proud to announce that alongside the V2 launch of the Affinity apps, we've produced a completely new set of video tutorials to compliment the apps. These tutorials are all produced in-house by our Product Experts team.

We've worked incredibly hard on these videos, and feel they represent a huge jump in both technical and presentational quality. Hopefully you all agree! The old V1 videos—now considered legacy—are still available on YouTube, consolidated into one playlist. The link for this playlist is available at the bottom of this post.

Hope you all find the new tutorials useful!

What's New (Overview of V2)

• What's New in Affinity Photo 2
• What's New in V2 of Affinity Photo for iPad

Basics

• Interface Overview
• New Document
• Placing Images
• Transforming Layers
• RAW Development
• Resizing and Resampling
• Undo, Redo and Undo History
• Cropping
• Exporting
• Input Mouse Wheel Scrolling
• Aligning, Distributing and Unifying Layers

Advanced

• Blend Options: Ranges, Antialiasing and Fill Opacity
• Non-Destructive RAW
• RAW Tone Curve
• Layer States & Queries
• HDR Merging and Tone Mapping
• Panorama Stitching
• Panorama Source Image Mask Tools
• Liquify
• Layer Effects (New: 27/06/24)
• Power Duplicate
• PSD/PSB import, export and smart object functionality
• Keyboard and Mouse Brush Modifier
• Tool Cycling
• Studio Presets
• Scope Panel
• Stock Panel
• Channels
• LAB Colour Model
• Stacking: Object Removal
• Stacking: Long Exposure Emulation
• Export Persona
• Focus Merging
• Batch Processing
• Macros
• Luminosity Blend Mode
• OpenColorIO Setup and Usage
• HDR PNG Import and Export
• Black & White versus Channel Mixer
• Tone Mapping for Local Contrast Enhancement

Layers

• Mask Layers (Updated: 18/01/24)
• Groups
• Clipping and Masking Layers
• Compound Masks
• Soloing Layers
• Linked Layers
• Luminosity Range Masks
• Hue Range Masks
• Band Pass Masks
• Layer Colour Tagging
• Pattern Layers
• Pattern Layers for Plans & Diagrams
• Masking Adjustment & Live Filter Layers
• Using Fill Layers

Tools

• Configuring the Tools Panel
• Artistic and Frame Text Tools
• Paint Brush Tool
• Clone Brush Tool & Sources Panel
• QR Code Tool

Filters and Adjustments

• HSL
• Black and White
• Invert Adjustment
• Split Toning
• Colour Balance
• Lighting Filter
• Normals Adjustment
• Unsharp Mask
• High Pass Filter
• Clarity
• Gaussian Blur
• Median Blur / Dust & Scratches
• Procedural Texture: Non Destructive HDR Tone Mapping
• Displace Filter
• Haze Removal
• Recolour Adjustment
• Vibrance Adjustment
• Defringe Filter
• Zoom Blur
• Radial Blur
• Pixelate and Posterise

Corrective & Retouching

• Inpainting
• Manual Lens Correction Profiles
• Transforming Selections

Workflows & Techniques

• Basic Image Edit
• Basic Compositing
• Lock Children Layers for Masking
• Colouring and Annotating Plan Diagrams
• Basic Architectural Visualisation Edit
• Basic Edits with the Develop Persona
• Elevation Rendering Workflow
• Archviz Composition Workflow
• Digital Collage
• Infrared Emulation
• Creating Volumetric Light
• Unassociated Alpha and Alpha Render Passes
• External Linking for Compositing
• High Dynamic Range Workflows (best viewed on an HDR supported display or device)
• Wildlife Editing Example
• Non-Destructive Orton Effect / Diffuse Glow
• Perspective Compositing
• Activating and Using Nik Plugins (New: 29/08/24)

Astrophotography

• Astrophotography: Stacking One Shot Colour Data
• Astrophotography: Stacking Mono Data
• Astrophotography: File Groups
• Astrophotography: Linear Fit
• Astrophotography: Remove Background
• Moon Processing Workflow

iPad Tutorials

• RAW Development
• Adjustment Layers
• Filters and Live Filters
• Mask Layers
• Exporting
• Placing Images
• Command Controller
• File Management: Loading & Saving
• Basic Compositing

 

Legacy V1 Tutorials

• Desktop
• iPad

[Christophe07]

The video on Digital Collage seems to be misplaced. The link goes to Manual Lens Correction Profiles. 

[James Ritson]

2 hours ago, Christophe07 said:

The video on Digital Collage seems to be misplaced. The link goes to Manual Lens Correction Profiles. 

Thank you for letting me know, I've corrected the link.

[Scapa]

Hey James,

Thanks for another set of great tutorials. Always loved them. One thing though: Can we please have them back on the affinity website? That was such a clean and clear overview with the well sized thumbnails. YouTube Playlist are - sorry - a mess, at best. Not to forget, Googles never ending experiment with changing the UI and UX of the YouTube Website. Using the Playlists I find it way harder to find what I'm looking for + more clicks than necessary (Click on basic > new page opens > first video starts playing > disturbs from searching through the playlist). 

Again, nothing wrong with the content itself, great as always. Same goes for the new Suite itself. Great work!

 

[James Ritson]

10/11/22: Added Basic Image Edit

[James Ritson]

7 hours ago, Scapa said:

Hey James,

Thanks for another set of great tutorials. Always loved them. One thing though: Can we please have them back on the affinity website? That was such a clean and clear overview with the well sized thumbnails. YouTube Playlist are - sorry - a mess, at best. Not to forget, Googles never ending experiment with changing the UI and UX of the YouTube Website. Using the Playlists I find it way harder to find what I'm looking for + more clicks than necessary (Click on basic > new page opens > first video starts playing > disturbs from searching through the playlist). 

Again, nothing wrong with the content itself, great as always. Same goes for the new Suite itself. Great work!

 

Hi Scapa, for V2's release we decided to try going directly to YouTube as it allows us to iterate quicker on video work and be more reactive to what users are after—it was one in several factors contributing to these new videos moving forward. Hopefully for the meantime the list provided on this forum will help you find what you're looking for?

[loukash]

7 hours ago, Scapa said:

Not to forget, Googles never ending

… greed for harvesting user data!

[Scapa]

Quote

Hopefully for the meantime the list provided on this forum will help you find what you're looking for?

James, better than nothing and I understand your reasons, but still the old tutorial page was such a comfortable, lovely and warm place from a users perspective. I can't see myself coming to either the list in the forums or the YouTube playlists regularly which in the end leads to me using the products less often. I realize, though, that it may just be me who is truly missing browsing the old page to either get inspiration by the thumbnails or just to have a nice Sunday morning with a cup of coffee and watch you guys show some magic 🙂

[jmwellborn]

@James Ritson  I am finding the YouTube videos for Photo rather fuzzy and a bit hard to see.  They were as clear as a bell on the Affinity site.  Specifically, I was watching the Invert Adjustment video just now, which is quite cloudy.  Fabulous information though!!

[loukash]

4 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

I am finding the YouTube videos for Photo rather fuzzy and a bit hard to see.

For me, the default Quality setting shows as "Auto 480p". You may want to change it manually to 1080p – or whatever resolution makes sense on your display – using the cog button.

[Keith Palmer]

The power of the hue range mask is very clear from the video. But I'm not clear how the luminosity blend range mask in v2 differs from an ordinary mask with the blend range cog employed in v1. Can you please advise me? Thank you.

[James Ritson]

39 minutes ago, Keith Palmer said:

The power of the hue range mask is very clear from the video. But I'm not clear how the luminosity blend range mask in v2 differs from an ordinary mask with the blend range cog employed in v1. Can you please advise me? Thank you.

Hi Keith, in some ways it doesn't—both use a weighted intensity calculation to blend tonal range, but "Blend Ranges" was obscure terminology for users when they were expecting to find luminosity masks.

However, it does have some advantages over blend ranges:

• You can save and load presets
• It has an additional gaussian blur option, which as demonstrated in the tutorial creates a nice edge-contrast effect
• It's a mask layer, so you can paint on it as well, and also drop it into a Compound Mask to combine multiple masks together (e.g. you could have two luminosity range masks that 'intersect' with one another)

Hope that helps,

James

[Keith Palmer]

Thanks James, appreciated. I've yet to come to grips with the idea of compound masking, but will work on it!

[Don Caron]

Hallo, ich spreche hier Affinity Photo V2 auf dem iPad an.

Leider ist es mit meinem englisch schlecht bestellt, die Videos helfen mir nicht weiter. Was fehlt, wäre eine generelle Einleitung zur Bedienung, ich komme mit der Bedienung auf dem iPad überhaupt nicht zurecht, nicht bei den primitivsten Sachen, ist ganz anders beim PC. Mir reicht die Anleitung als Text in Englisch, gibt zum Glück sehr gute Übersetzungsprogramme.

D.C.

[Komatös]

Hallo @Don Caron

Vielleicht hilft dir das Videotutorial. Ist zwar für die V1. Aber Grundlagen sind für beide Versionen.

 

[Don Caron]

generell, wie kann ich die Arbeitsumgebung auf hell umstellen, dunkel mag ich überhaupt nicht.

ansonsten, danke, hilft weiter. trotzdem, mit text komm ich immer besser weiter.

[myclay]

Hallo @Don Caron

Hier ist die Info fürs Ipad;

https://affinity.help/photo2ipad/de.lproj/contents.xml?page=pages/Workspace/uiAppearance.html?title=Ändern der App-Oberfläche

 

 

Edit; das hier ist für den PC;
geh mal bitte oben auf Bearbeiten>Einstellungen

in den Einstellungen auf Oberfläche und dann Hell auswählen.

 

[Don Caron]

18 hours ago, myclay said:

Hallo @Don Caron

Hier ist die Info fürs Ipad;

https://affinity.help/photo2ipad/de.lproj/contents.xml?page=pages/Workspace/uiAppearance.html?title=Ändern der App-Oberfläche

 

 

Edit; das hier ist für den PC;
geh mal bitte oben auf Bearbeiten>Einstellungen

in den Einstellungen auf Oberfläche und dann Hell auswählen.

 

 

[Don Caron]

Danke!

[Don Caron]

ok, ok, auf dem PC hab ichs hinbekommen, IPad nicht, aber ist ok, kann mit dem dunklen Rand leben. Das meiste wird eh am PC gemacht. danke nochmal.

 

[Waltarus]

Awesome James!  Best tutorials ever.

[gonecamping75]

Please do a video on setting the white balance using a grey card or colour checker. If you have one photo with someone holding a colour checker. Can we use the one photo to set the colours on the rest of the photos. All videos I find it’s seems to be guesswork. Can you please make a video on V2.

[Lisbon]

I havent watched all the videos yet but the technique for adding haze is really nice.
Thank you James.

[Pyanepsion]

When will the videos be available in languages other than English?

[Waltarus]

16 hours ago, Lisbon said:

I havent watched all the videos yet but the technique for adding haze is really nice.
Thank you James.

I saw that too!  I had been trying to figure out a way to do that for quite a long time.