Workbook Exercise

[Bigwillt]

I recently bought the Affinity Photo Workbook after moving over from Adobe CC. I am an amateur photographer and could not see spending the money on something I only use occasionally. 

My question is about the Refining Selections exercise. After selecting the model and refining the selection around her hair, now what? As I understand selections, I should now be able to lighten or darken the background without affecting the model, or vice versa but whenever I try to make any adjustments, the entire image is changed. 

The exercise creates a pixel layer with a mask and the original image is not selected. In the other selection exercises, you can change the intensity of the sky without changing the landscape or add some contrast to a building but I don't see a use for this.

What am I missing?

[Dan C]

Hi Bigwillt,

Welcome to the forums

When refining a selection and changing the output to New Layer with Mask, any adjustments you wish to make must be nested within the new layer and mask, if you only wish it to affect the previously selected area.

After refining your selection, leave the output on Selection and select apply. You should now see the 'marching ants' selection over your image. If you create a new adjustment layer with this selection active, a mask will be automatically created so that the adjustment only affects the selected area, I hope this helps!

[Bigwillt]

That makes sense but I guess my next question is when and why would you want to create a pixel layer with a mask? I'm trying to understand how that would be useful.

Sorry if it seems I'm being difficult. Layers are still new to me. I usually just adjust brightness and contrast and maybe shift white balance or colors a little.

[Wosven]

You can need a new layer with mask when you need to blur the background, for example.