Book Image

Professional Image Editing Made Easy with Affinity Photo

By : Jeremy Hazel
Book Image

Professional Image Editing Made Easy with Affinity Photo

By: Jeremy Hazel

Overview of this book

In this book, you’ll explore the Affinity Photo program through practice-based learning as you make popular photo edits, learning the tools and techniques in conjunction with the workflow concept. Instead of comprehensive description of the tools, you’ll learn through practical application and understand why they work, not just how they work. This is neither a technical manual nor a workbook but a project-based hybrid approach that provides a deeper understanding of how to use each tool to achieve your goal. Starting with the fundamentals of navigating the interface, understanding layers, and making your first edit, this Affinity Photo book gradually increases the complexity of projects. You’ll go from single-layer edits, composites, and RAW development to putting together a complex composition using the tools that you've learned along the way. Additionally, you’ll learn the best practices used by expert photo editors for a flawless finish. By the end of this book, you’ll have a good body of work, be able to evaluate the edits you want to make, and achieve desired results with Affinity Photo.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
1
Part 1: Foundational and Navigation Basics for Affinity Photo
7
Part 2: Fundamental Concepts Used to Create a Simple Edit
13
Part 3 : The Practical Applications of Affinity Photo
19
Part 4: Finishing Your Edit and Building Your Own Artistic Palette

Blend modes and their uses

The idea of blend modes comes after your understanding that there are layers in digital art (information covered in the first fundamental chapters). Blend modes are meant to be used to experiment in an artistic, fun, creative way. Relax and explore the various color effects. Most users only use about five common blend modes (Multiply, Overlay, and Screen, to name a few), so once you realize that layers are like sheets of paper, we can begin to understand what a blend mode does, and this is why the book is structured the way it is. To explore blend modes, you have to understand the following:

  • Layers
  • Luminance

I find it beneficial to understand what a blend mode is trying to do by using the following phrase:

The blend mode of a layer tells the layer how to interact with the layer below it.

When you set the blend mode, you are telling the layer what to show and what not to show underneath the layer. For 99% of blend modes, this is done...