in my last video i headed over to Yew Tree Tarn in the lakes but then i ended up taking most of my
shots on tom heights at the end of the day in that video i showed how i shot this image but then used
capture one and photoshop to produce this after that video a few people wanted to know can this
be done in affinity photo the answer is yes and in many ways it's a better tool for this sort of work
i'll be showing you how and why in this video and i'll use it to go from this shot to this in the
last video i had the camera set up like this getting as near as i could to the foreground
for this shot i just rotated the camera through 90 degrees to be horizontal the tripod position
is exactly the same and it's never changed if you didn't see the last video i was using the fuji xt3
with the fuji 10 to 24 lens the lens was set at 10 millimeters and i didn't use any filters after
i took the shot i imported the raw file to capture one for processing that allowed me to go from this
starting image to this the changes i applied are the same ones that i talked through in my other
video after processing in capture one i can export the image as either a psd or 16-bit tiff file
ready for editing with affinity photo both formats preserve the image quality well an affinity photo
works with either with the image open in affinity photo i'll start by duplicating the background
layer i'll be using this to make the foreground look much closer to the camera than it is
in photoshop i use the transform tool to apply a destructive edit to the pixels of the layer
in affinity i can do the same thing with the perspective filter in the filter menu
the same filter is also in the toolbar on the left of the screen but i'm not going
to use that instead i'll add it as a live filter which means that it's non-destructive
but before i can apply the perspective filter i need to select the foreground i don't want
my changes to affect the entire image so i'll select the area that i want them to apply to in
the last video i use the lasso tool to select the foreground drawing carefully around the heather
this time i'll just use the rectangular marquee tool to show you how much you can get away with
although it is better to use the lasso tool i'll just click the marquee tool in the tools palette
and then i'll draw a rough selection around the foreground now i can add the perspective filter
to the image as a new live filter using the layer menu you'll find it under the distort heading then
i just need to click and drag the handles in the bottom corners of the frame to change the
perspective the amount of perspective distortion i can play this way is absolutely crazy i could
never achieve a shot like this using just a wide angle lens but i do have a problem look at the top
edge of the selection i made it's now completely obvious where it cuts into the background
the way i'm going to fix this is by adding a layer mask to the perspective live filter
although the filter already has a mask that's being used i want to use a layer mask to keep the
two separate because it gives me more flexibility to make other changes when i select the filter and
add a mask it doesn't attach itself so i need to drag and drop it into position on the filter now
i can paint on the mask using the brush tool with a soft edge i'm starting with a large brush and
painting with black by painting on the mask along the hard edge i can blend the two layers together
now it's looking good but i'm going to zoom into 100 for a closer look when i do that i can see
some softness in areas that aren't blending well i can then use a smaller brush size to
paint these in and out using black and white paint if you want to switch between black and
white whilst you're painting just press the x on your keyboard it toggles the brush between using
the foreground and background colors okay that looks good and i could leave the editing there
but i'm not going to because i want to create an extreme wide angle effect
the way that i'm going to do this is by using the liquify filter which is another live filter what
i love about these live filters is that they act like smart objects in photoshop and they allow you
to keep making adjustments i can add the liquify filter to the same layer as the perspective filter
and continue to edit the image if you're going to make quite large changes as i am you might want to
use a large mesh setting the mesh size together with the brush size helps control the changes
i'm starting with the pinch tool to paint over areas that i want to enlarge
it's a great way to enhance the foreground to make it look like it's inches from the camera
the other tool i want to use is the push tool by clicking and dragging i can use it to enlarge the
mountains but look what happens if i try to adjust something here the image isn't
changing that's because the layer mask i used to blend the adjustments with the original image
is affecting it i can fix it though by creating a new layer consolidating all the other layers
now when i apply the liquify filter to that layer i can distort the entire image
let's compare the image now with the original background layer you can see the filters are
producing an amazing perspective change that's just not possible when using a wide-angle lens
alone these live filters are non-destructive so i can reopen them and keep refining my changes
this is how you can make amazing perspective changes in affinity photo if you haven't seen my
previous video showing my processing in capture one be sure to watch it even if you don't use
capture one i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another video