hello i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft i'll start today's video with a quick plug for my new
affinity photo book that i've just published it's called affinity photo how-to and i'll include
details of it in the youtube video description now if you watched last week's video you'll
know that i showed how to do exposure blending with adobe photoshop this has prompted a few
emails and comments asking how to do the same thing in affinity photo so this week i want to
show a similar process for exposure blending using affinity photo as i explained in last week's video
the first step is to select and process the raw files you want to use for the exposure blend
you then need to process these using the same settings but adjust the exposure and perhaps color
to suit what you need from each image today i'm not demonstrating the raw conversion again because
i want to concentrate this video on the exposure blending in affinity photo if you want to know
about the raw processing step take a look at last week's video i'll include a link in the youtube
video description the images i've selected and processed for this video were shot in snowdonia in
wales back in 2016. i've selected two images and edited one to optimize it for the sky in the frame
and i've edited the other image to optimize it to use for the foreground i've then converted these
to tiff files which i then opened in affinity photo for editing currently both images are open
separately in affinity so my first step is to combine them into one image as separate layers
to do this i'm just going to use the copy option in the edit menu to copy the darker image which
i'll be using for the sky i'll then switch to the lighter image and select paste from the edit menu
now i can rename the layers to be sky and ground so that i don't get confused later
usually i like to have the darker layer on top so that i'm painting in the darker exposure but this
is really just a personal preference my next step in the process is to align the two images
whilst i shot these with the camera on the tripod there's still a risk of movement between the two
frames there are a couple of ways that i could align the image but in this video
i'm going to show how to do it manually i'll start by selecting the move tool from the tools palette
this allows me to grab one of the layers and then drag it to reposition it
but importantly it also allows me to move the layer using the arrow keys on my keyboard
now i'm going to change the blending mode of the top layer to difference
this highlights any differences between the two layers now the areas i'm interested in
are along the edge of the hills where the sky and land meet when i zoom in on that area you
can see that there's a white edge where the two images don't line up accurately
to fix this i'm going to nudge the sky layer into position with the arrow keys on my keyboard
aligning the layers helps me present any ghosting along the edge when i paint in the sky
with the layers aligned i can return the blending mode of the layer to be normal
my next step is to hide the sky layer using a mask to do this i'll select the layer in
the layers studio panel and then click the add mask icon at the bottom of the panel
this adds a new white mask to the layer i can then invert this mask by selecting it
and then pressing command + i on my keyboard if you're using a windows pc
that's ctrl + i once the sky layer has been hidden by the mask you'll only see the ground layer
the next step is to select the sky as with most things in affinity photo there are several ways
to do this for this video i'm going to use one of the colour channels in the image
but you could also use luminosity masks or the selection tools i've previously published videos
explaining these techniques so i'll include links to those videos in the youtube video description
to use one of the color channels in the image i need to switch to the channel studio panel now
i can select each of the color channels in turn to see which one i want to use what i'm looking
for is a channel that creates a good separation by having a light sky area and a dark ground
i could probably use any of these channels but i like the red one because it has a natural feel
where the distant hills are fading out to create a selection from the channel i can right click on it
with my mouse and select load to pixel selection in the pop-up menu now i can return to viewing the
color image rather than the individual channels by clicking the reset icon in the channel studio
panel in the next step i'm going to paint in the sky by painting onto the mask attached to the sky
layer using white if you want to hide the marching ants once you do this you can select the show
pixel selection option in the view menu this menu option toggles the visibility of the marching ants
off and on when you hide the marching ants like this even though you can't see them the selection
remains in place to paint on the mask i'm going to use the paint brush tool which i have set to white
i'm going to start with the brush opacity set at around 70 percent and i want the hardness set to
zero percent to produce a soft edge to the brush this helps to blend the brush strokes making the
exposure blending look more natural i can then paint over the sky which is too light to reveal
the darker sky layer i'll also paint over the lake to reveal the darker exposure in that area
after making a couple of passes of the sky down to the horizon i'll reduce the opacity of the
brush to around 20 percent now i'm going to switch to black and reduce the size of
my brush to paint over the transition zone to improve the blending in that area this helps
me keep the distant hills lighter than the nearer foreground to emphasize a feeling of depth in the
image
once i've finished i'll remove the selection using the deselect command from the select menu
as a final step i'll add a curves adjustment above the ground layer
i can then use this to fine tune the tones in the ground
then i'll add a second curves layer adjustment above the sky layer because i want to prevent
this adjustment from affecting the ground layer i'm going to attach it to the sky layer
when i right click on the new curves layer i can select the mask to below option in the pop-up menu
know when i apply the adjustment with the curves it only affects the sky layer
whilst i like the effect this has on most of the sky i think it's darkening the top
left too much as well as a couple of areas in the transition zone to prevent this i'll just
paint on the curves layer mask using black to hide the effect in those areas of the photo
with the blending complete i can then finish the rest of my editing
i hope you found today's video helpful if you have please share it and don't forget to look
at my new book i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another
video