PHOTO-EDITING MASTERCLASS
With Affinity Photo you can combine images using layers. Rod Lawton explains how to use layer masks effectively to make them blend perfectly
This photograph of a fishing boat on a shingle beach has nice colours and an interesting composition but a rather plain sky – so let’s try to replace it with a different sky in Affinity Photo.
Of course, there are many programs that can do this for you now using the power of AI, but you don’t always need artificial intelligence to combine images successfully, as a little human intelligence can do just fine. Besides, this is a chance to explore the many different masking tools in Affinity Photo, including the new Live Mask layers and Compound Masks. These can work alongside regular layer masks, which you can create with Affinity Photo’s gradient and brush tools.
You can think of layer masks as being like transparent overlays that control which areas of the layer are visible. Where the mask is black, that part of the layer becomes transparent and the layers below come through. Where it’s white, the layer is opaque and covers up what’s below. Masks often include shades of grey, which create partial transparency.
Each layer can have one mask, many masks or no masks at all – it’s up to you. They are shown as small thumbnails alongside the image layers in the Layers panel. You can click the small disclosure arrow next to the layer panel to expand the list and take a closer look.
The appearance of layers also depends on blend modes, in other words how they interact with the layers below. There’s a lot more to explore here, but that’s a whole subject in itself and will need a separate detailed a
