darkening and blurring backgrounds of an outdoor portrait

[mur_phy]

I seem to be still having a difficult time with making adjustments with AP. I have viewed every tutorial I can find but must be either forgetting things or not finding things in the program that are supposed to be there.

 

Often I like to tone down and/or blur a background and just when I think I have things figured out, time between the last editing I do and current workflow, I must be forgetting the steps to follow.

 

I thought a burn/blur tool would do the trick and while it worked with some backgrounds I have used for other projects, the current project of the outdoor portrait is not doing the same result.

 

"Well, it does work better if I had not for some reason forgotten that I had changed the opacity of the brush" -- at least that issue is solved but the others are still a bother.

 

Next I thought, a gradient would possibly be the method. Tried the tool but not successful there either as the exposure adjustment still covered more area that desired.

 

Quick Mask was not effective either or I just don't know what to do as I found the whole area turned red whereas I thought until I painted, there would be no mask. 

 

I have watched some videos and tried using overlays or gradients in Develop but was unable to control the gradient to just cover the area I wanted to work on. The overlay did nothing at all.

 

There has to be something that is straight forward and simple to accomplish the task at hand but so far I have been unable to solve the issue.

 

Perhaps someone will have info and I will try to add it to my notes for the future.

 

Oh, all attempts have been to adjust the background layer although the image has been straightened, cropped, and some basic adjustments done to levels, exposure and brightness.

 

TIA

 

MW

[Callum]

Hi Mur_phy,

 

Would it be possible for you to provide an example of the effect you are trying to create in Affinity so I can be sure I know exactly what you are looking for?

 

Thanks

C

[mur_phy]

Hi IR 

 

Ok, I can give before and after. The image was taken by another retired pro and he did work on it himself but there were things I thought could be improved. We do this sort of thing all the time and are in constant conversation as we have known one another for over 30 years. I may work on the image again as there is a highlight area that I would like to adjust. 

 

While I did figure out my issue with the burn and blur which I use a lot I am still hoping to find alternatives that might work more quickly and I know I will have to do reviews of some of the video links I have saved and probably make some notes.

 

Anyway I am attaching the two images and my adjustments have been renamed to "edited" before the rest of the file name.

 

TIA

 

just watched another video and it looks like there are quite a few steps I had forgotten. With the video from the Affinity producer it would have been good to know why certain choices were made.

 

Relating to the image edited above, the initial photographer liked what was done. he had done some facial retouching prior to sending the file to me be we did discuss some of the highlights being a bit strong and the fact that the direction of light left the facial features a bit flat. Personally, I usually would light the subject with a cross light and be sure to turn the head toward the light and tilt toward the high shoulder.

[carl123]

If you are just looking to burn and blur the background why not just use a Live Filter Layer (Gaussian Blur) for the blur and a Brightness/Contrast adjustment for the burn.
 

e.g. Use the selection brush to copy the lady to a new layer then add the relevant adjustments to just the background layer.
 

The benefits of this approach is that it is quick and the adjustments can be easily tweaked to get the look you are after.
 

Quick example attached so you can see the layer arrangements

burnblur.afphoto

[mur_phy]

Not sure if anyone read my edits but I was able to just use the burn and blur tools to accomplish what was desired but was also looking for other alternatives and that is one idea Carl. Then I got to thinking -- if I can select the subject, then by inverting the background would be able to be adjusted separate from the subject. The only issue then would be that only part of the background needs to be affected.

 

Your method seems to have done the trick although the selection was just a bit rough but not really visible in the final image. Thanks for the info. I just had thought that a gradient would work too but I just have to learn more about doing this so I can get it straight in my mind as to what is needed in any specific circumstance.

[carl123]

Remember the adjustment layers are effectively masks and selective areas of the adjustment can be removed just by selecting the adjustment and painting in black over them.

 

You can also add a gradient to the adjustment if you want to

[mur_phy]

ok, so after the effect of more exposure to the whole area except for the subject, then simply reduce the amount of exposure where the full amount is not required by painting with the paint brush tool making sure black is selected to remove the density as required by adjusting opacity and feathering? 

 

I opened your image in AP and selected the background but the paint brush tool only gives a + shape but the undo brush tool, giving a circle did change the background. To get exactly what is needed would require adjusting the opacity and feather so that there is a blending transition.

 

By looking at the two layers, it seems that global adjustments were made to the whole image and then the copied selection layer with all but the subject transparent due to it being the upper layer shows the subject properly with the background layer as adjusted showing also. The order of doing the adjustments would seem to be to do the density first followed by the gaussian blur.

 

Did you use the selection brush and select the subject and then invert and delete the background and then copy that selection to the adjusted background layer? I also imagine that this selection could be saved and if necessary at sometime be added to any background via paste or Place.

 

Hopefully I am getting an understanding of the process and can remember but if I did understand the process, I will add this to my .rtf file I have to try to learn AP.

 

Thanks Carl for the assistance. If I have messed up my thinking, please let me know one way or the other.