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

Understanding layers

All digital art programs are based on a concept called layers, and all digital art comes from a unique combination of layers. Think of layers like sheets of paper, so these sheets are stacked on top of one another to form the image.

Layers are handled in Affinity Photo in the Layers studio tab (see Figure 3.1). Remember, if you do not have this panel, you can turn it on by going to Window | Studio and then checking the box next to the Layers panel. This will most likely place it on the right-hand side of the screen (as shown in Figure 3.1). I am going to click and drag my Layers panel out of the studio and place it in the workspace for ease of viewing during this book (if you want to follow along, just click and drag it out into the workspace):

Figure 3.1 – Studio overview

Figure 3.1 – Studio overview

Let’s begin by opening a new document. I am going to open up our first downloadable image (refer to Figure 3.1). I am going to go to File | Open...