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

Professional tips, tricks, and important points

Masking is an essential skill; much like in basketball, you have to be able to pass, dribble, and shoot the ball. So, while it may seem complicated, it is simply a matter of practice and knowing the application of the technique, usually through practice, practice, practice.

As a professional, I use brush masks constantly for compositions, and I can give you the following tips to help you along your way:

  • Always use a soft brush. No matter how precise you are with the stylus, a hard-lined brush will show up as a bad mask. If you need a hard line, use a vector mask.
  • You can always check the preview (remember the white square) to see how the mask is being shown.
  • Take your time creating vector masks; do the fewest number of nodes to capture the detail, but realize that your viewer will not be looking as closely as you are, so a bad mask is not the end of the world, and it does not have to be perfect.
  • I use a bold red...