Hello, I’m Robin Whalley. Welcome to Lenscraft. In this week’s
Affinity Photo tutorial, we are going to be looking at masks. And I’m going to show you how to create
a simple Luminosity Mask using some of Affinities selection tools.
Introduction music
Before we start using complex techniques like Luminosity Masking I need to explain
simply how Masks work in Affinity Photo. To demonstrate this, I’m going to
apply an effect to our image that’s easy to see. First, I duplicate the image to a new layer
and then I set the Blending Mode for the layer to Screen.
Notice how this brightens the entire image.
Next, I’m going to apply a Gaussian Blur filter to the new layer.
This creates a bright, glowing effect across the entire image. Let’s rename the layer to call it “Blur Effect”.
Now I’m going to add a mask to the layer effect using the shortcut at the bottom of the Layers panel.
You can see the new empty mask is attached to the layer but it’s not yet having any effect on the image.
To see an effect, we need to paint on the mask using black point.
Start by selecting the Affinity Photo Brush tool.
Check the brush is set to paint using black paint in the colour panel.
Now click the mask attached to the layer to ensure it’s selected.
If I now paint over the tower and pier, you’ll see the Effect layer is hidden where I paint.
If I hold down Option on my keyboard and click the layer mask, it’s displayed in the preview rather than the image.
Click on the image to view it again.
If I toggle the mask off
this allows the effect to be seen across the entire layer. What the mask is doing is hiding the Effect layer
where the mask is black. Where the mask's white, the effect of the layer is seen.
The mask I’ve just created is a little like a pixel layer and I can apply adjustments to it as I can a pixel layer.
For example, I can apply a Gaussian Blur filter to the mask to soften the edges of where I painted.
I’m now going to delete this mask but I’ll show you a simple way to create a Luminosity Mask using similar techniques.
For this example, I’m going to create a mask from the shadow tones in the image. First click on the
Background layer so that you’re working with that and not the effect layer.
Now create a selection of the photo’s shadow tones using the Select menu.
The selection shows up as what we call marching ants. Click the Effects layer now to select it.
Then add a new mask to the layer using the icon at the bottom of the layers window.
This time when you add the mask, it converts the selection into a black and white mask.
You can see this by holding down the Option key and clicking the mask as we did before.
Now I’m just going to clear the selection using the Deselect icon in the toolbar.
As before, the white areas allow the effect to be seen and the black areas will be hiding the effect.
This is actually the inverse of what I want so I'm going to invert the mask by holding down Cmd + I on my keyboard.
This hides the layers effect from the darkest areas of the photo but allows it to be seen in the lightest.
Again, we can apply a Gaussian blur filter to the mask to blend the Effect layer with the image.
You can also use the same approach to make selections of the red, green or blue colours in the image.
Although this is a very simple example it's also quite powerful and you can apply the techniques over and over again
using different selections. I hope you’ve found todays video helpful. If you have, please click the like button and please share it with others.
I’m Robin Whalley. You’ve been watching Lenscraft. I’ll see you next week for another video.
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