this video is the first part of a course designed to help new affinity photo users quickly learn
photo editing it does this by explaining the essential 20% of affinity photo features
that you need to know because i'm covering the essentials in this video be sure not to skip any
parts because you'll miss important information let's start with opening the image for editing
when you first launch affinity photo you'll see this splash screen appear there's an option to
the bottom left to hide the screen if you don't want to show it in the future personally i like
to leave it visible because it sometimes displays important news offers as well as helpful tutorials
there's also an option to create a new document but we'll do that from the menu instead so i'll
click the close button before we can do any work in affinity photo we need to either create a new
image or open a photo to edit if you're a photo editor you'll probably start by opening a photo
rather than creating a new document but please follow the next steps and don't skip ahead
we need to cover some important points before we get to photo editing to create a new image which
affinity photo calls a document we select the new option from the file menu this displays the new
document dialog where we can select from different presets that come with affinity photo these are
set to create popular document sizes which you can also refine and save as your own custom presets
you'll see the presets are grouped into tabs along the top of the dialog to make it easier
to find the one you want for example if i pick the web tab i can choose the preset to create
a 1920 by 1080 sized image over on the right of the dialog you can then see the page width height
and resolution in dots per inch you can also change these settings before creating the document
as well as changing other settings like the color space i'll change this example to be an rgb 16-bit
image and i'll set the color profile to be adobe rgb and because i might use these settings for a
future document i'll save them as a new preset by clicking the plus icon at the top the new
preset then appears in my presets tab where i can right click on it with my mouse to rename it
now we can click the create button to produce a new document with the settings we entered
we now see a white empty document where we can add elements to create our image or design on my
mac computer i'm using a magic mouse which has a touch surface on the top that allows
me to scroll around the document you may have something similar on your computer if you find
you accidentally de-center your document and want to get it back on screen find the navigator panel
and click in the center the navigator panel is a way to move around the document where it falls
outside the visible area of the screen it also has a zoom feature allowing you to zoom into
or out of your image while you're editing in affinity photo you should think of the document
as being a container holding the individual parts that make up a photo we call these parts layers
and they appear in the layers panel which is on the right side of my screen if you look at
my layers panel you can see that it's empty as there's nothing in my document but if i add some
text using the artistic text tool you can see that it creates a new layer in the layers panel
we'll be returning to look at layers in detail later in the course and we'll also be using some
of the different tools from the tools palette throughout the course i'll now delete the text
layer from our document by dragging and dropping it onto the dustbin icon at the bottom of the
layers panel after that i'll select the view tool which shows a hand icon and is at the top of my
tools palette this gives another useful way to move around the document by clicking and dragging
as well as creating a new empty document we can open existing images in affinity photo you can
do this by clicking the file menu and then the open option this displays a dialog where you
can navigate around your computer's hard drive to select the image or images you want to open
affinity photo can open a wide variety of photo formats including jpeg tiff png and photoshop psd
files it's also possible to open multiple files at once by holding down the command key on your
keyboard and clicking each file that you want to select if you're using a windows pc you would use
the control key for this you can also hold down the shift key to select all files between two
points in a file list after selecting the files for editing click the open button affinity then
opens and displays the images although we can only see one image displayed at a time the other images
are arranged as tabs along the top of the screen just below the toolbar you can switch between the
different images by clicking the tabs earlier we said images in affinity photo are made up of
layers and you saw a text layer being added if you look over to the right of my screen in the
layers panel you can see this image has a single layer called background now even though i opened
an image that image is still held as a layer in a document the reason you can't see the white
document is that it's the same size as the image the background image is hiding it if i hide the
background image layer by clicking the tick box to the right of the layer you can see the document
notice that the layer is highlighted in blue which indicates that layer is selected or active if i
click below the layer the blue highlight vanishes and the layer is no longer selected it's important
to understand which layer if any is selected because it can affect other things that you
do in affinity photo for example if i click the edit menu you see that the copy options disabled
that's because there isn't anything selected in the document so there's nothing to copy
now if i click the layer to select it the copy option becomes available let's use this to copy
the background layer of the image to the computer clipboard then we can switch to the new empty
document we created earlier now using the edit menu i can paste the image onto the document
notice that the background image layer we copied now appears in the layers panel also notice that
the image doesn't fill the document as it's a different size and shape this means that unlike
in the document where we copied the image we can see the white edges of the document now currently
the document has a white background but we can change that to make it transparent if i click the
document menu you can see there's an option for a transparent background clicking this changes
the white area replacing it with a checker pattern to show that it's transparent back in the document
menu the transparent background option now has a tick next to it click this again and it toggles
the option off now ideally we want the image to cover all available space in the document the
first way we could do this is to resize the photo to fit the document space you can do this with the
move tool in the tools palette on the left of the screen it's usually the second icon from the top
and shows a single arrow when you click the move tool you'll see a blue box appear around the image
if you move your mouse pointer inside the box you can click and drag to reposition the image on the
document now the other thing you can do with the move tool is to resize the image you'll see there
are circular handles in the corners and on the edges of the box when you click and drag a corner
handle it resizes the image keeping the width and height in proportion unfortunately the image
still doesn't fill the document because it's a different shape we call this the aspect ratio and
unless the aspect ratio of the document and image match you'll always have unwanted space the only
way to fix this is to make the aspect ratio of the image and the document the same in this example we
can click and drag the center handle on the edge to stretch the image until it fits the document
now let's undo that last change because i want to show you the other method of making the image
fit the document to undo the last change click the edit menu and select the undo option you'll notice
this stays undo transform because transform was the last action performed on the image
it's also possible to use the keyboard shortcut of pressing command and z together if you have
a mac if you're using a windows pc you would hold down the control key and then press said
this time i'll change the document size to fit the image by removing the unwanted
area of the document we can do this using the crop tool in the affinity photos tools palette
when you select this it displays a grid with drag handles in the corners and along the edges
you can click on the corner handles and drag it until the grid is only covering the image
the rest of the document then shows in grey and will be removed when we apply the crop after
sizing the crop we can't see the unwanted area of the document anymore and we can apply the change
let's now undo the crop we've just made we can use the edit undo command again for this
and keep repeating this to undo each change in the order we made it but there's also an easier way to
undo multiple changes using the history panel when you make changes to a document in affinity photo
affinity records your actions as editing history the history panel allows you to look at each of
these changes and select the position that you want to use for example we can go back to when
i initially pasted the photo onto the document and using the position slider we can go back
to before this when i first created the empty document earlier we looked at the navigator and
layers panels and just now the history panel these are examples of what affinity photo calls studio
panels the studio panels show valuable information and in some examples include tools you can use to
edit your image you can arrange the studio panels into groups as well as move them between different
groups for example i can click and drag the history panel to dock it with a different group
it's also possible to drag the history panel away from the groups so that it
becomes free-floating because of this flexibility is quite possible your copy of affinity photo will
be arranged differently to mine i've published a separate video explaining this in more detail
and i'll include the link to that in this video's youtube information
now if you can't see a studio panel you want to use click on the view menu and then the
studio option this lists all the available studio panels with a tick mark to the left of some the
tick mark indicates that studio panel is currently visible somewhere in the affinity photo interface
if i click the scope panel which isn't currently visible you'll see that it's then displayed
when i click the scope option a second time it's hidden again we'll be covering some of the studio
panels and their features later in this course so far we've looked at a simple example of creating
a new document and opening existing images we've also looked at copying and pasting images into a
document as well as how to resize and crop them everything we've done has been in what affinity
photo calls the photo persona affinity photo has several of these different personas which you can
use for editing your photos you can think of them as being different layouts for special purposes
the photo persona is the default persona for general editing tasks to switch to a different
persona you click the persona icons to the top left of the toolbar just below the menu
the other personas in affinity photo are liquefy develop tone mapping and export other than the
develop persona we won't be covering these in this course as you don't really need them for
most editing tasks if you want to know about different personas i have another video which
explains them i'll include a link to that in the youtube information for this video
to switch to one of the other personas you usually need to have a pixel layer selected
in the layers panel a pixel layer is a quick way of saying a layer containing an image
you may also remember we said earlier the layer is highlighted when it's selected
if i don't have a pixel layer selected and i try to switch to the develop persona i see this error
message it's only when i select the image layer that i can access the develop persona no affinity
photo switches me into the develop persona which looks similar but slightly different to the photo
persona whilst there are still tools in the tools palette on the left there are fewer icons and the
tools are different also over on the right side there are different studio panels although some
also appear in the photo persona let's just cancel this and return to the default photo persona
this is where you will do the bulk of your editing and it's also displayed when you
first open affinity photo the only time this doesn't happen is if you open a raw file raw
files are special files produced by some cameras and smartphones they contain the image data from
the camera sensor and need to be developed before you can edit them in the photo persona
the process of converting a raw file into an image you can edit is done in the develop persona let's
open a raw file now by clicking the file menu and using the open recent option this is a list
of files that i've recently used in affinity photo and it's constantly updated as i work it allows me
to shortcut using the open command and having to search through different folders for my image file
here i can select a raw file that i've previously edited in another video demonstration
because this is a raw file affinity photo switches me automatically into the develop persona and i
don't need to click on the icons at the top of the screen now i can make changes to the raw file
image you can see that there are different sliders on the right arranged into different groups
for example i have an exposure slider in the exposure section which i can use to
make the image brighter or darker i can also move the black point slider left and right
to make the darkest areas of the image lighter or darker below this the contrast slider can
be used to increase or reduce the image contrast making light pixels lighter and dark pixels darker
then there's the clarity slider to emphasize detail in the image and we have the saturation
and vibrancy sliders to enhance the colors as i make different changes to the image you can
see the histogram responds to the adjustment the histogram is extremely important and shows
me valuable information about the image i'm editing when i see the graph extend all the way
to the end of the histogram i know that i might have a problem with something called clipping
when clipping occurs it means that detail in the image is being damaged because the pixels
are becoming either too bright or too dark in this example you can see the histogram extends all the
way to the far right this tells me a lot of the pixels are becoming too bright and so i need to
darken them one way of doing this is using the shadows and highlights controls by dragging the
highlight slider over to the left i can recover the brighter pixels in the image notice how the
histogram changes to reflect the adjustment you'll also notice the sky is now looking more colorful
that's because when the pixels become too bright they'll lose their color and ultimately turn white
one important point about the develop persona that i want to stress is that you shouldn't try to
make all your adjustments there this is a common mistake people who are new to affinity photo make
you should only apply basic changes like correcting the exposure and colours in an image
and ensuring there's no clipping in a histogram after making your changes click the develop button
to convert the raw file into a regular photo this doesn't change the raw file but it produces a new
image with the settings you chose you'll then find yourself back in the photo persona where you can
edit the image further do remember once you've clicked that develop button there's no going back
whilst your original raw file isn't changed any adjustments you make in the developed persona
become locked into your photo watch what happens when i reopen this image using the develop persona
notice that all the adjustments i applied to the sliders before are reset any changes i make now
are added to the original adjustments i've already applied to create the image it's impossible to
return to the starting position when this happens in photo editing it's called a destructive edit
and it's something we try to avoid that's why you should only make basic corrections to raw files
in the develop persona and you probably don't want to use it to edit regular images at all
let me give you an example using the tones tab to convert the image to black and white
when i click the develop and i return to the photo persona my image is now black and white
then if i return to the develop persona i can't adjust or undo the black and white conversion
a much better way to convert my image to black and white would have been using something called
an adjustment layer in the photo persona this would allow me to make a non-destructive edit
to the image which we'll look at in the next video if i've already published the next video
in the course you'll see it here and you should watch that next but if i haven't published the
next lesson here's a link to my video explaining the different affinity photo personas and be
sure to subscribe so that you're notified when the next video in this affinity photo
course for beginners is released thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next video