Window Pulls in real estate photography

[mblue]

I cant figure out how to do window pulls for real estate photography on Affinity. In Photoshop using a mask in darken mode it's easy to paint on the detailed window of the outside View from a flash shot. Because the surrounding areas of the window are highlighted by The Flash, in darken mode only the window detail is copied and it's as simple as 1 2 3. Doesn't seem to work that way in Afinity is there some kind of work around?

[TEcHNOpls]

I checked some random tutorial on YT and there is nothing I see that needs a workaround. Can you post some examples of how you tired to do this?

[SDW]

Darken mode in Affinity does not work the same way as Photoshop's darken mode.  The same goes for On1, no joy for RE photogs who do window pulls.  Luminar darken mode does operate the same as PS but has no auto layer alignment like Affinity and PS do. For real estate photographers who do window pulls, Photoshop is still the only game in town if you wish to use just one program.  First company to "fix" my problem of having layer alignment AND a proper (a la Photoshop) darken mode wins me away from PS.

Quickly how it works, is the photographer takes an ambient, then another same image a stop or two down with a flash outlining the window. Stick them as layers with flash shot on top and a black mask. In the mask, brush white around the window.  In PS and Luminar any pixels that are brighter than the underlying pixel stay black in the mask.  Since you have lowered your exposure of the outside it gets painted in and voila! You have a mask and can control it from there.  Need more detail? Rich Baum has a bunch of videos on YouTube.

Now, some re potogs might chime in and say window pulls look fake. And some really, really do because some make a perfect inside and a perfect outside in bright daylight hours. That is not realistic to the eye so, I don't do that.  If I want a bright inside, my outside is always brighter (during the day) and if I want the perfect view outside my room will be on the darker side. Not too dark though just enough to be believable.

[Thomas123]

On 10/27/2019 at 7:29 PM, SDW said:

Darken mode in Affinity does not work the same way as Photoshop's darken mode.  The same goes for On1, no joy for RE photogs who do window pulls.  Luminar darken mode does operate the same as PS but has no auto layer alignment like Affinity and PS do. For real estate photographers who do window pulls, Photoshop is still the only game in town if you wish to use just one program.  First company to "fix" my problem of having layer alignment AND a proper (a la Photoshop) darken mode wins me away from PS.

Quickly how it works, is the photographer takes an ambient, then another same image a stop or two down with a flash outlining the window. Stick them as layers with flash shot on top and a black mask. In the mask, brush white around the window.  In PS and Luminar any pixels that are brighter than the underlying pixel stay black in the mask.  Since you have lowered your exposure of the outside it gets painted in and voila! You have a mask and can control it from there.  Need more detail? Rich Baum has a bunch of videos on YouTube.

Now, some re potogs might chime in and say window pulls look fake. And some really, really do because some make a perfect inside and a perfect outside in bright daylight hours. That is not realistic to the eye so, I don't do that.  If I want a bright inside, my outside is always brighter (during the day) and if I want the perfect view outside my room will be on the darker side. Not too dark though just enough to be believable.

Perhaps that was true in an older version. You can do window pulls in Affinity Photo when setting the layer to darken mode (not the mask like in PS)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDfLxuHUNjI

Edited June 21, 2020 by Thomas123

[kirkt]

You cannot set a mask to Darken or any of the other layer blend modes, in PS or in AP.  (Note: in AP, you literally can set a mask to Darken mode, but what is it darkening or blending with?).  A mask is just a grayscale image that controls layer opacity.  To composite the Window Pull, you are simply setting the Window Pull layer's blend mode to Darken and then painting in white on the inverted (black) mask to reveal the Darken effect in the area of the Ambient, blown out window.  The bright, flash-illuminated edges around the window in the Window Pull are lighter than their Ambient counterpart, so the Darken layer does not appear in these areas, as intended, making painting the mask a pretty straightforward, loose process.  If shot correctly, you almost do not even need to mask the Window Pull in Darken mode, but most images have a large FoV, so there will be areas in the Window Pull outside of the window area that will comp into the Ambient without a mask, requiring you to paint a loose mask for the window.

It works just like PS.

Kirk