Project four: Affinity Photo
James Paterson transforms a cityscape into striking art with a mix of blending and selection skills in Affinity Photo
BEFORE
AFTER
With their angular lines and bold shapes, architectural photos and cityscapes are the perfect subject for a creative makeover in Affinity Photo. In this project we explain how to transform the iconic New York skyline into a bold array of painterly splashes and drips. This involves a cunning combination of selection skills and layer blending tricks.
We begin by preparing our photo of the city, converting it to black and white and boosting contrast so that we have a bold foundation to work with. Once done, we use the Pen tool to isolate each vertical street, so that we can apply different colours to each. This helps to tailor the painterly effect to the image, as the streaks of paint we add will match up with the shapes we create for each street.
You can find lots of free photos of paint streaks online, but there’s something to be said for making your own. Here, we painted a few colourful streaks of watercolour paint on a piece of white paper. We kept the streaks in loose, vertical lines then photographed the paper at a low angle. This way, the streaks of paint could match up with the straight lines of the New York streets in our photograph.
From here, we can finesse the effect with simple layer skills, adjusting colours and positioning each piece in the puzzle until everything fits together perfectly.
1 Blow out the sky
Open the image then grab the Selection Brush. Check Snap to Edges then paint the sky and background details. Click Refine and increase the Border to improve the selection edge. Hit OK then click the Adjustment icon and pick Levels. Drag in the White Level to blow it out.
2 Trace around a street
Add a Black and White Adjustment. Next zoom in close and grab the Pen tool. Click to add anchor points and make a path that follows the shape of one of the streets, including the tops of the buildings, then complete the path. Click the Fill option and give it a random colour.
3 Make street shapes
Right-click the layer and choose Rasterize. T
