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14.5 hour Affinity Photo course released at Udemy


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Hi everyone,

 

Just to let you know I released my latest course. It's called Affinity Photo: Beginner to Pro via Reference and Workflow and is designed to answer one question: 'I've learned some of the tools with Affinity Photo, but how do I actually enhance an image, start to finish?'

 

I take you through the development of a series of photos using a variety of workflows. We start with a simple workflow that's just right for beginners then move on to more advanced workflows as the course progresses.

But there's a problem. Learning the when and why of an effective workflow is all well and good. But it's hard to learn the tools when you're learning about the workflow and it's near impossible to learn about the workflow when you're learning about the tools.

 

So I've done both. This course is divided into two sections. You get hours of tutorials which cover various workflows and approaches to developing photos. But you also get a huge reference section which covers the various tools that Affinity Photo has to offer. If there's a tool I'm using in the workflow videos, there's a video explaining just that tool in the reference videos. Two ways to learn Affinity Photo. Reference and workflow.

 

The course comes with a special introductory price. If you enter the coupon AP_BEGINNER_PRO  right under the video on the landing page where it says 'Have a coupon?' you can get the course for $11.99, which is even cheaper than the sale price Udemy is offering it for.

 

By the end of the course you will have seen and followed along with various effective workflows, start to finish. You will gain the confidence to tackle your own images, be able to select which workflow suits the photo best, and one day soon you may well be looking at one of your own photos which you've enhanced, and thinking 'That looks fantastic! I did that...'

 

I think it's only fair to say why this course is different to some of my other courses. For starters it's the longest Affinity Photo course I offer, but there's more to it than that. Affinity Photo: Solid Foundations is the original comprehensive introduction course that I created. It was designed to be the general purpose course that I'm sure people are familiar with - explain how to use the tools, give people exercises to consolidate their knowledge, talk a little around technical matters like how an image gets into your camera and so on.

 

Then there were courses like the RAW course and the Little Box of Tricks course which focussed on particular areas of image editing such as creating special effects.

But it was after a conversation I had with someone on the Affinity Photo forums who really wanted tutorials that concentrated on how to enhance a photo from start to finish. His field of interest was landscape photography so I released Affinity Photo: Developing Landscapes. It was different to the other courses in that it concentrated on the workflow. I was unsure about how it would be received because it was different to anything I'd done before. I was pleased that it got good ratings and comments at Udemy, so then I decided to do a longer and more general course which had workflow at it's center and so we now have Affinity Photo: Beginner to Pro via Reference and Workflow.

 

I realised from the Developing Landscape course that it needed a reference video section in a one tool/one video format as well as the workflow videos. If I didn't then I'd spend far too much time going into detail about what a tool does while I was also trying to explain a workflow. It would just get too confusing. So the new course is split into two sections. The workflow at the beginning, which is the primary intent of the course, and the reference section which is intended to supplement the workflow.

 

Now, if you already have the Solid Foundations course, you will already have seen most of the tools covered in the reference section and I wouldn't advise you to get the new course if a tool reference was all you wanted. But what I would say is that around 6.5 hours of the new course is devoted to various different workflows and I take a series of pictures from start to finish so you can see how the various different tools in Affinity Photo fit together to improve a picture. There are other courses about Affinity Photo at Udemy for the same asking price that are shorter than just the workflow section of my new course. So I believe I'm offering good value for money.

 

I hope that clears up any questions, but click on the link at the top of this post and go to the landing page for the course. There is an introductory video that explains what the course is about. That may help you further to decide whether to use your coupon to take advantage of the introductory price. Now, one last thing - Udemy are offering their own introductory price for the course. With the coupon you can get it for cheaper. Just enter BEGINNER_PRO_INTRO into the coupon field for the better price.

 

Thanks for your time,
Simon Foster

 

 

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Thann you @drippy cat will Heck thar. 

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  To use the coupon (Thank you!!) I found you have to click on the blue "Have a coupon?" that's on the page you get when you click the link Simon gave in his post above. If you put it in your cart, go to check out and add it on that page Udemy has already put in their own coupon code and the one given here won't work. The course looks great and it's a great idea to have the reference separate.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Simon, I have been thinking about how to learn image editing software since I started using AP in the initial release. I completed your Solid Foundations but continue to be frustrated by a lack of materials that fit my learning style. Your recent YouTube video on patching the big frame image gave me some ideas that I would like to share (not now in final text form, may take a few days since it could reach several pages). If you would like to contact me directly, you can use lcorwin34 {at} gmail.com; if not I will probably post to this forum.

I bought the new course at the site discount but have not yet explored it.

AP 1.7.3, MacOS 10.14.6 (usually latest of each, but not going to Catalina until more issues are resolved)

Mac Mini, Late 2012, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB; HD replaced with SSD

 

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  Len, like you I find learning AP a struggle, and no doubt partly due to my own "divergent" learning style but also I think because of available learning materials. I'd be very interested in your ideas(and have a few of my own).

 

Ann

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It seems there should be a way to communicate directly, but I don't know how. I don't want to post a long piece here before editing it for coherence. I'm still short of an outline. Let's look into direct messaging via this forum, or you can use the email in my earlier post. Or I may have a piece worth posting in a week if other responsibilities don't prevent. I'm working my way through Simon's new course and may look at his earlier ones after the Foundations one. One thing I have found by looking at video tutorials by different people (I think the Affinity series is all by James Ritson) that they often do a similar task in rather different ways. Also I have looked at Photoshop books and Adobe help since the basic mathematical operations are the same even though details differ. Only one I found has the deep and broad perspective to be useful for Affinity; that is by Margulis, but though interesting to read it is at, at least, journeyman level and I am still mired in apprentice level after a couple of years reading and viewing tutorials. Practicing more would help, I know.

AP 1.7.3, MacOS 10.14.6 (usually latest of each, but not going to Catalina until more issues are resolved)

Mac Mini, Late 2012, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB; HD replaced with SSD

 

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50 minutes ago, LenC said:

It seems there should be a way to communicate directly, but I don't know how.

You can send a private message to another forum user by clicking on their name or picture in a forum post, if that's what you're asking about.

-- Walt
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@AnnH

I think you will find the discussion at the link below useful. It has references to many free materials, video and text, and others, with some suggestions, e.g.: start small, practice much.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/53381-how-to-start-in-affinity/

AP 1.7.3, MacOS 10.14.6 (usually latest of each, but not going to Catalina until more issues are resolved)

Mac Mini, Late 2012, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB; HD replaced with SSD

 

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On 14/05/2018 at 4:05 PM, LenC said:

I don't want to post a long piece here before editing it for coherence.

 

Why not work on a draft in TextEdit (or whatever) and then copy and paste it here when you’re happy with it? :/

 

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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On 5/15/2018 at 10:37 PM, LenC said:

@AnnH

I think you will find the discussion at the link below useful. It has references to many free materials, video and text, and others, with some suggestions, e.g.: start small, practice much.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/53381-how-to-start-in-affinity/

  Been there. It would be a big help if all the tutorials weren't video, I find it's the most difficult way to learn. Other programs have many written-often with still pictures-tutorials that clearly show the steps in the process. An example would be what Rick Peterson does with Photoshop Elements tutorials on his website. He does do the video but underneath has it written out. Topaz does a lot of written ones as well.

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Yes Simon, I have the PDF. I think that the basics are covered well, the huge gap for me is between the very basic information and more advanced techniques and their application. I realize more advanced is a vague term but beyond the basics its hard to find tutorials that aren't more confusing than helpful. And they're pretty much all video. I have begun to think that AffinityPhoto is mainly geared toward those who have a lot of photoshop experience but for whatever reason want to get away from Adobe. I can see the tutorials working well for those people.

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Hi Anne. I do think nowadays that many people nowadays prefer video as a tutorial format because it's very visual and most closely emulates the feeling of sitting next to someone who is using the software. But that's not to ignore books as a valid format. I think things like Photoshop have more books out because it's a much older & more established product. I remember when the only tuition you could get for Photoshop was in book format. Then broadband came along and...

 

The .pdf I wrote was as originally intended a prelude to writing an expanded version and made as a commercial offering. But Serif bought out their book & so I though it best to hold off working on that idea for now since I thought it would make sense that people prefer an offering from the developers rather than and independent like me. But it's not something I've shelved permanently.

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13 hours ago, drippy cat said:

The .pdf I wrote was as originally intended a prelude to writing an expanded version and made as a commercial offering. But Serif bought out their book & so I though it best to hold off working on that idea for now since I thought it would make sense that people prefer an offering from the developers rather than and independent like me. But it's not something I've shelved permanently.

Good to hear that you are still considering this. I would like to see an Affinity book other than the Serif one.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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4 minutes ago, AnnH said:

I think video tutorials are actually more audio than you might think.

 

Easily tested by watching with the audio muted, which often doesn’t work very well unless there are lots of subtitles!

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Simon, apologies for no reply. Must have turned off my notifications. Too busy in interim to draft anything. To Simon and anyone else still following this thread: I have been looking over two books by Dan Margulis, Professional Photoshop (2006) and Photoshop LAB Color (2005). I bought inexpensive second-hand copies; one even came with the CD! These are the first books I have encountered in the image processing world that talk convincingly about why you would want to do various manipulations and that provide printed examples that show the differences in results and the curves or other techniques needed to get there. Furthermore, if you work to follow him, you will learn to develop your vision in several dimensions. His ideas can mostly be applied directly in Affinity Photo. However, his work has some limitations. Working in high-end letterpress since before Photoshop was created, he mostly likes to deal with an image and the process of making it into something that can be printed, i.e., he is concerned primarily with color quality and sharpness. He prefers global techniques to masking. He is mostly talking to experienced, regular, relatively advanced users of Photoshop, so he will only intermittently be directly useful to a newcomer. However, the second book, on the LAB color space, turns out to have several introductory chapters written for relative beginners that show that this seemingly advanced technology is actually quite easy to use for color correction and sharpening. Perhaps someone will be able to use him as a sort of model for an introductory work. Not everyone likes his writing style, but he is generally very clear, and has obviously put great effort into his study and teaching.

There's more about him online, including articles old and new: some links in this thread: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/22011--/&/topic/22011-learn-lab/?p=103168

 

AP 1.7.3, MacOS 10.14.6 (usually latest of each, but not going to Catalina until more issues are resolved)

Mac Mini, Late 2012, 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5, 8 GB; HD replaced with SSD

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/20/2018 at 4:25 AM, LenC said:

LenC, there is a Photoshop plugin based on Dan Margulis' work called Curve Meister (http://curvemeister.com)    

It is an amazing program and I really hope it will soon be available for Affinity as well.  I can't do without it in terms of esp colour correction, mask creation and in general really curves on steroids. You may enjoy looking at it.

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  • 1 month later...

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