hello i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft last week i received an email from someone wondering
how to use the affinity photo gradient tool he wanted to use it to create a neutral density
filter effect in the photo persona by drawing a gradient whilst the affinity developed persona
includes an overlay tool for this there are benefits from being able to use the gradient
tool in the photo persona for example it can be used after developing the raw file
if you realize the exposure balance isn't quite right but you can also use it to adjust the image
color at the same time in this video i'll be looking at how to achieve both of these things
using a simple gradient and blending modes in the photo persona this is the landscape photo
we'll be editing as you can see the foreground rocks are quite dark whilst the sky is a little
too light i'll start by adding a new fill layer to the image using the layers menu
this adds a new layer to the image which is filled with a solid colour it also activates the gradient
tool in the tools palette which we'll be using to draw our gradient at this point before we draw
the gradient we can change the background colour of the layer using the colour swatch this allows
me to demonstrate the effect of the multiply blending mode using a white background when i
change the blending mode of the layer to multiply you'll see that the white layer vanishes that's
because white is what we call the neutral colour the neutral colour of a blending mode is one that
doesn't cause a change to the image but watch what happens if i change the white to a dark gray
it darkens the image and the darker the gray the darker the image becomes until eventually it turns
black if you look at the blending mode drop down list you can see that it's divided into groups the
top group all darken the image in some way but each produces a slightly different result they
also all have white as their neutral color whereas for other blending modes it might be gray or black
now we know this we can use the information to draw our gradient using the gradient tool
i'll just return the layer to the normal blending mode so that you can see the gradient when i draw
it with the gradient tool selected i can see its controls in the affinity context sensitive toolbar
here i want to set the context to be filled so that the gradient fills the layer with
the colour i set we can then also set the type of gradient we want to draw as this will mimic
a neutral density graduated filter we want to use a linear gradient you can also use the same
technique to draw out a vignette using a radial or elliptical gradient now we need to set the
colour of the gradient by clicking on the colour swatch and selecting the gradient tab this is
where we can define the gradient and the colour we want to use on the left we have the gradient
starting color and on the right the finishing color to set the color click the end point
and then click the color swatch in the dialog in this example let's start with a dark gray
by setting the red green and blue sliders to 50. because all three of these colors have the same
value it produces gray i can then select the other end of the gradient and set that color to white
the line in the center controls the blending of the gradient between the two ends
having defined the gradient i can draw it onto the fill layer notice the colour above my starting
point becomes the dark gray we defined then below the end point of the gradient the colour is white
this produces a uniform gradient between the two colours but if i click the center point i can
drag it along the gradient line to control the gradient blending now even though we've picked
our colors and drawn the gradient we can still change them if i click the starting point of the
gradient to select it i can then change the color in the color studio panel the panel has several
ways to represent colour which you can access in a drop-down list because we want to use gray in our
example the easiest way to change it is using the grayscale option with the colour point selected
i can move the grayscale slider left and right to change the shade of gray if you decide to use the
grayscale adjustment do remember that it's showing the percentage value of white in the color setting
it to 50 doesn't produce the same shade of grey as when we used the rgb sliders earlier they're using
a value range from 0 to 255 you can see this if i change the color panel to show the rgb controls
now let's change the blending mode from normal to multiply this darkens the top part of the image
where we set the color to gray but it doesn't have any effect on the lower part of the image where
the gradient was white unfortunately the blending mode we've chosen has left the image looking a
little flat and there are some better options one of these is the colour burn which produces more
intense colour as well as darkening the image the default settings look terrible but there are a few
simple changes we can make to improve things the first of these is possibly the most obvious and
is reducing the opacity of the layer to reduce the strength of the effect the second is that
we can change the blending range of the layer to control how it blends with the layers below it
when i click the cog icon at the top of the layer panel it opens the blending range dialog
if i don't want the layer to affect the dark area of the sky i can move this point on the
left down i might also add other points which i can then position to control the effect
if you're unsure how to use the blending range controls i've published a couple of
videos which explain them i'll include the links in the youtube video information for this video
the other change we can make is to the color so far we've been blending with grey because
that doesn't change the hue of the image color but perhaps the image would look better if
we did adjust the hue we can do this by selecting the top point of the gradient
and then changing it with the rgb color controls now we can modify the individual color channels
this shifts the color of the image when we're using the color burn blending mode
we can also change the lower color of the gradient to fine-tune the overall
color balance of the image after adjusting the blending ranges and colour balance you may want
to tweak the layer opacity again now everything i've explained in this video is based around a
simple technique of using gradient tool with blending modes it's extremely powerful and
you can control it using four variables there is the colour used in the gradient the layer opacity
the blending ranges control and of course the blending mode of the layer
experiment with these and you can create some extremely powerful editing effects
i hope you found today's video helpful if you have please take a moment to share it with
other affinity users i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another
video