AFFINITY PHOTO
Master the features of Layers in Affinity Photo and learn how to use them for all sorts of essential editing tasks. James Paterson shows you how
DOWNLOAD PROJECT FILES TO YOUR COMPUTER FROM: http://downloads. photoplusmag.com/pp219.zip
Layers are one of the most powerful features in Serif’s Affinity Photo, yet for many they can be rather a tricky feature to master. In this project we’ll explore a host of essential layer skills, from tonal adjustments to compositing, masking, retouching and more. We’ve crafted a simple composite image here, replacing the rather dull sky in the original image of Lindisfarne with a more dramatic sky from another shot. Like pieces of clear acetate stacked on top of one another, layers allow you to build up an image from several different elements. These could be pixel elements – like the separate sky and land blended here – but they can also be other things like tonal adjustments, which affect all the layers below. So they’re not just essential for composite images like this, they also allow you to craft images to your liking while keeping each element or adjustment independent from all the others. This means you are free to go back and fine-tune at any stage, or take your image in multiple directions.
After using a selection to isolate the original sky here we’ll use a layer mask to hide it then drop in another image. Once done, we can use Adjustment Layers to perfect the tones, a retouching layer to remove the people and a filter layer to add a vignette. Open up the supplied land_before.jpg and sky_before.jpg starting images from the download link (see left) or open up your own images and follow along to see how you can use layers in Affinity Photo.
STEP BY STEP MASTER ESSENTIAL LAYER SKILLS
Make a simple composite image and get to grips with essential layer skills in Affinity
Open the two images supplied (or your own landscape and sky). Grab the Selection Brush tool and check ‘Snap to Edges’ in the options. Paint over the sky to select it (hold Alt and paint to go back). Go to Select > Invert Pixel Selection. Click the Refine button and increase Border Width. Set Output: Mask and hit OK.
Go to the image of the sky, hit Cmd/Ctrl+C to copy then go back to the other image and Cmd/Ctrl+V to paste. In the Layers Panel, drag the sky layer below the land layer. Grab the Move tool and use it to position and resize the sky layer to fit with the other image. Right-click and use Tra
