I shot this Panorama in the late District about 10 years ago whilst I liked the scene I've tended to
ignore it because I've never been happy with the color so the other day I decided to try
color grading to give it a different feel using Luts in Affinity photo I'll start by adding a
new Lut adjustment layer to the image you can do this in the layer menu under the new adjustment
layer option or by clicking the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layer Studio panel you
can see this adds the new look layer at the top of the layer stack looks are used a lot
in the movie industry to produce a different atmosphere in films and they work great for
color grading still photography the next step is to load the alert that we want to apply to
the image by clicking the load look button this opens a dialog where you can navigate and choose
the look that you want to use the only problem you might find is that you can't see the effect
of the Lut until it's loaded I've already tested a few alerts with this image and pick one that I
want to use from the look pack I purchased on on the Affinity Store I'll put the information
for this in the YouTube video description in case you're interested plus these are typically used
for color grading portrait photography I also like them full landscape and Street Scenes I've
already downloaded the Pack to my hard drive which are the files that you can see the one I want to
use with this image is called Lucia then when I click open it applies the look to my image now I
like the effect but I want it to be more intense one way I can do this is duplicating the layer I
just need to right click on the layer in the layer Studio panel or I can use the keyboard shortcut
command and J on a Mac which is control room J on a Windows PC it's also possible to change
the Lut in the second layer which creates a different effect I'll just switch it to use
the Lucia version 2 Lut we can then adjust the opacity of the two layers to refine the effect
they produce now if you find that you hit on a good combination that you might want to use in
a few future Affinity photo allows you to export it as a new alert all you need to do is click the
file menu and choose the export Lut option this opens a dialog where you can name the new Lut
select the format and choose the quality when you click on the export button it opens a dialog where
you can navigate to the folder that you want to save for look to I'll delete the second layer now
because there's another option I want to share for intensifying the effect and I select the Lut in
the layer Studio panel I can change its blend mode you can select any of these for different effects
but I like to use the contrast enhancing modes like soft light and overlay I like the effect
this is produced in the center of the image but the foreground rocks are now too dark one way to
deal with this is to reduce the opacity of the look layer whilst that looks better I don't like
how it affects the center of the image another alternative if you're using Affinity photo 2
is to add a hue range mask to do this select the look layer in the higher Studio panel then click
on the layer menu and choose the new live mask layer and then the Hue range I can then click
and drag the selection range around to the Reds and oranges on the color wheel as I do this you
can see the effect has become more intense in the Hillside and less on the foreground rocks
what's happening is that the Hue range mask is limiting the colors affected by the Lut but this
does give me another problem which is the sky notice that it's created a hard cut off our
transition where the sky turns blue the way that I'll fix this is adding a layer mask to the layer
to do this I click the icon at the bottom of the layer Studio panel which adds the new mask I can
then drag it using my mouse and drop it onto the layer now I'll select my brush tool and set it
to use black with a soft Edge I can then paint out the sky to hide the effects of the alert I'll also
paint on the mask around the foreground rocks but using a lower opacity this is to reduce the
strength of the look there as I don't like the Rocks when they're too dark what you might not
realize though is that the Hue range mask still works with the area of the image where the look
is visible now earlier I set the blend mode of the layer to Overlay saying that the contrast
blend modes work well to better understand the overlay mode and get some more ideas on
how to use it or watch this video next thanks for watching today and I hope you enjoyed the
video don't forget to subscribe and please share it with others I'll see you soon for another video