in today's video i'm editing this image to produce this finished landscape photo hello i'm
robin whalley and welcome to lenscraft today i'm completing a typical edit of a landscape photo
from start to finish using only affinity photo and i'll be sharing every step with you along the way
i'm starting by opening the original raw file in affinity photo because this is a raw file affinity
immediately switches me into the develop persona now an important point to remember when using
develop persona is that it's a destructive edit whilst it doesn't damage the original raw file
it does lock in your adjustments to the image once you leave the develop persona you can't return to
change your adjustments because of this i want to limit my adjustments to the essentials in
the develop persona my aim is to create the best quality starting image that i can
i'll then apply the rest of my adjustments in the photo persona using non-destructive editing
techniques what i don't want to do is try to produce a finished image in the develop persona
to help me maintain the image quality i'll turn on the clipping warning indicators in the toolbar
then if any of my adjustments cause clipping i'll see the areas highlighted on the image
you might have noticed that this image is looking a bit flat and lacking in contrast
that's because there isn't a tone curve applied to it at the moment sometimes this flat starting
position works well but sometimes people struggle with it and don't know what's wrong
if you're experiencing this you can correct it in the assistant options which you can open from
the toolbar in the tone curve section i can select to automatically apply a tone curve
notice how this immediately improves the image now i can correct the exposure and tones in the image
to create a good histogram i'll increase the exposure by around 0.5 so the shadows aren't too
dark i'll also reduce the black point slider to minus 2 as the shadows look a little bit blocked
up the only problem with these adjustments is that they're causing some clipping in the bright
areas of the sky i'll correct that in a moment but first i want to set the colour profile for
the image i'm producing the default is the srgb profile which is a little small for a landscape
photo like this so i'll change it to adobe rgb this will help to preserve a wide range of colors
in the image during editing in the lens tab i want to apply the chromatic aberration reduction
in case there's any coloured fringing in the image you'll also notice that there isn't a lens profile
selected for this image to correct any lens distortion the image was shot using a fujifilm
lens but unfortunately affinity photo doesn't have a profile for this
but because the lens does have a reasonable amount of distortion at 16 millimeters which i can now
see in the image i'm going to select another lens profile from the list i've previously
looked through these and found that the 16 to 55 xf 2.8 produces a reasonable correction
so i'll select that next i'll correct the problem with the sky using an overlay to reduce the
brightness using the gradient overlay tool i'll select the sky i can then reduce the exposure in
the sky by minus 0.5 which effectively removes the adjustment i applied earlier to the overall image
the sky now looks better but i can still see some clipping in the red channel in the histogram i'll
fix this using the highlight slider reducing it by around 50 percent the image is now looking
about right as a starting position to take into the photo persona for editing but before i do
i want to apply a small amount of sharpening to do this i need to select the master in
the overlay section as it's not possible to sharpen individual areas of the image
then i can zoom to 100 magnification to apply my capture sharpening to sharpen the image i'll
use a low radius of around 10 percent and then increase the amount until it looks about right
all i'm trying to do is sharpen the rocks in the foreground to bring out some of the detail
what i'm not trying to do at this stage is create a very sharp image i can also see there's a hint
of noise in the sky on the left so i'll apply a small amount of luminance noise reduction around
10 should fix it i don't want to apply too much of this though or it starts to soften the image
i'm now happy with the adjustments to the raw file so i'll click the develop button this produces a
new image from the raw file using my settings and it switches me to the photo persona to continue
editing the first task is to remove some of the parked cars you can see in the distance
and on the road over on the left side of the image you can see that there are several parked cars
that need to be removed start by adding a new empty layer to the image to use for the repair
there are a few tools i could use for this but the clone stamp tool is probably ideal
you'll find it in the tools palette over on the left after selecting the clone stamp i can
change the settings in the toolbar so that it's sampling the current layer and below
this allows me to sample an area of the image and use it to make a repair on the new layer
to make the sample i just hold down the option key on my keyboard and click on the sample point
notice the clone stamp shows a preview of the repair which allows me to line it up when it
looks right i can click to apply it i can then work along the road sampling and removing the cars
after removing the unwanted cars if i turn off the layer you can see the original image is unchanged
all the repairs were made to the new layer making this a non-destructive edit
the next adjustment to the image is to correct the tones using a levels adjustment layer
i'll add the adjustment layer by clicking the icon at the bottom of the layer studio panel
and selecting the levels option now i can move the black level to the right until it touches
the edge of the histogram this spreads the image tones across the entire tonal range i could do
the same with the white level but it looks about right as it is now i can move the gamma slider to
the left to lighten the image a little which also opens the shadows the advantage of making this
type of adjustment in the photo persona is that we're using a separate layer if i later decide
it's too strong i can adjust it further or reduce the opacity setting of the layer if i had made the
adjustment in the develop persona and then later wanted to change it i couldn't after correcting
the image tones i want to look at the colours using a selective colour adjustment layer i can
use this to target each different colour range in the image and then adjust it when i adjust the
reds and move the black slider left and right you can see the areas of the image that it's affecting
this helps me to understand which areas i'll be adjusting with my changes so that i can watch
them more closely now i'll increase the magenta and reduce the yellow component of the reds when
i'm happy with that i'll select the yellows where i can increase the magenta reduce the cyan and
increase the black slightly using this approach you can work through each of the colour ranges in
the image when it comes to the whites you're affecting the brightest colours in the image
most of the whites in this image are in the sky which i'd want to darken by
increasing the blacks i'll also reduce the yellows a little and add some magenta be very careful when
adjusting the blacks neutrals and whites because these can easily create unwanted colour shifts
all that i'm going to do with the neutrals in this image is reduce the cyan by a couple of percentage
points to warm up the light slightly again because this is an adjustment layer i can turn it off or
reduce the strength of the effect using the opacity slider next it's time to adjust the
image contrast with a curves layer i'll add the new curves layer by selecting the curves option
from the add new adjustment layer icon i don't want the adjustment to affect the darkest tones
in the image so i'll add a point on the curves in the shadow area this pins it to limit how much it
moves then i'll darken the shadows and lighten the highlights using two more adjustment points
as with the other adjustment layers this is a non-destructive edit so i can turn it off and
adjust the opacity to control the strength of the effect the problem now is that i don't like
how this is affecting some of the rocks and i want to remove that effect in those areas i'll do this
using a soft paintbrush to paint on the adjustment layer mask with black i'm also using a low opacity
setting for the brush so that i need multiple brush strokes which helps to blend the effect
the rocks are now looking good but i want to enhance them further by emphasizing the gritty
surface to do this i'll apply a clarity adjustment to the image using a live filter layer you'll find
the live filters in the layer menu there select new live filter layer and then sharpen and clarity
this attaches the new filter to the layer that we had selected in the layers studio panel which
in this example was the curves layer the problem now is that if we use the filter where it is it
won't have any effect to fix that i can drag and drop it onto the background layer the background
layer is a pixel layer containing the image and so we can see the effect of the clarity filter
now if you have multiple pixel layers in an image you may find the filter effect is hidden by one
of those the solution is to detach the filter from any layer by dragging it to the top of the
layer's stack a lot of people don't realize that it then acts like a regular layer in the image
now one of the advantages of the live filter over the regular filters is that you can double
click them to adjust their settings with this image i'll push the clarity slider all the way
to the right for maximum effect then i'll invert the layer mask to turn it black which hides the
clarity adjustment using a soft paintbrush and white i can then paint over the rocks to add the
clarity of the adjustment back in i'm doing this with the brush set to zero hardness and
an opacity of around thirty percent when i finish painting in the effect on the rocks if it's too
strong i can reduce the strength using even a clarity slider or the filter opacity at this point
the image is finished but there are a couple of other things i can do one of those is try applying
a lut luts are adjustment layers which you can use to load lookup tables these look up tables will
remap the colours and tones in an image to create different effects they're used heavily in the film
industry for special effects like adding a green tint in a horror film or turning day into night
they're also very useful in still photography for color grading images to create atmosphere
affinity photo comes with a small collection of luts which you can access when you add
a lut adjustment layer but you can also buy more online after adding the new look layer
i can select from the luts that i have installed which i purchased from the affinity photo website
for this image i'll add one named ellie this creates a nice color in the image
but it's a little too strong so i'll reduce the layer opacity until i get the look i want
you find that a lot of the looks are too strong at 100 percent and need to be reduced like this
this lut produces a nice subtle color but it's removed the blue haze on the horizon in
the distance to bring this back i can paint on the layer mask using a soft black brush
keeping the blue haze helps to create a feeling of depth as the light on the foreground rocks no
appears warmer than the distant horizon as a final step i no want to add a subtle vignette i could do
this with the affinity photo vignette filter but i don't particularly like that instead i'll show
you how i create my own using a curves adjustment layer start by selecting the elliptical marquee
tool from the tools palette we'll then use this to draw an ellipse which will become the vignette but
before i draw the vignette i'll set the feather to 1000 pixels to give the vignette a soft effect
now i can draw the ellipse selection on the image after that i can add a new curves adjustment layer
which converts the selection we made into a layer mask i'll then clear the selection using
the select menu and choosing the deselect option next change the blend mode for the curves layer to
multiply which darkens the selection as this is the reverse of what we want we can invert it by
pressing command and i on the keyboard finally i can use the opacity to control the strength
of the vignette although the finished vignette looks quite good there's a further adjustment
we can make to improve it if i select the curves vignette layer and click this cog icon at the top
of the layers panel it opens the blending options dialog this allows you to control which tones in
the image are affected by the adjustment layer and by tones i mean how light or dark a pixel is
what i want is to stop the vignette darkening tones that are already very dark in the image i
can do this by dragging the left point of the line and pulling it down to the bottom at the same time
i'll move the point on the right of the line into the center this limits the vignette effect in the
darkest areas of the image but at the same time it allows the vignette to appear in the lighter
areas if you want to know more about the blend range options watch this video next it explains
what these lines do and how you can use them to do all sorts of things including luminosity blending