in this video i'm going to show you how to add realistic atmospheric effects like fog
to an image using affinity photo i'll be using a simple overlay image to add the fog
overlay images work by showing just the fog rain snow or whatever on a transparent background
then when you add them to your image they allow the image to show through creating the effect
you can find free overlay images of fog and other effects on the internet with a quick search
but i'm going to use a set of overlays that i've already purchased from the serif website
because i've purchased my effects from serif i'm able to download them directly into affinity
photo from my account when i click the icon for my account in affinity photo it opens a dialog
showing my purchases this is where i can download my overlays if they're not already downloaded
you can see from this that i've already purchased several overlay packs that include fog rain and
snow effects the one i'll be using in this video is atmosphere by james ritzen i think james has
done a great job with these overlays and they're of a very high standard as my overlays are already
downloaded to affinity photo i can close the dialog the place to find the downloaded overlays
is in the asset studio panel it's quite possible your assets panel isn't visible at the moment
if you can't see it in the interface you can display it from the view menu by selecting studio
and then assets this is also where you can import any overlays you've downloaded from the internet
click the menu icon at the top of the panel and then you can pick the import assets option
to select them at the top of the assets panel is a drop down where you can select
the asset collection you want to use today i'll be using the jr fogger mist collection
you can see the different overlays have been grouped in the assets panel under the headings
of fog and mist now if you want to create the most realistic atmosphere in your photos
you need to pick the right type of image to start with i shot this image a few days ago on a misty
morning it means that adding more fog to the scene is going to be believable if i tried this
with a sunny summer's image shot midday it would probably look false without me doing a lot of work
to add the fog overlay i'm going to click and drag it from the assets panel and then drop it
onto my image after that i can click and drag the handles on the size of the overlay to resize it
in this image the trees are on a slope so it might look better if the mist was angled slightly
you can do this very easily by clicking and dragging the rotate handle at the top of the layer
this allows you to rotate the image to any angle that you want to use with the overlay in position
let's look at the mask that it comes with by default these are turned off so let's check
their effect one at a time the first one fades the fog from the top of the frame and the other
fades it from the bottom for this scene i think the mask to remove the fog from the foreground
is all that's needed but even using these masks you'll find situations where they don't work well
rather than changing the default mask on the overlay we just need to add a new mask to it
in case you weren't aware affinity photo lets you add multiple masks to the same layer
as well as preserving the original mask it means you can adjust settings like the overlay and blend
mode for each mask separately currently the mist doesn't look entirely convincing because it covers
all of the trees ideally it would be nice if it appeared to pass behind the trees nearest to the
camera we can do this with some selective masking to hide the overlay from those trees i'll start
by turning off the fog layer so that i can see the original image i'm going to use this to select the
trees so that i can paint through the selection and onto the mask layer if i go to the channel
studio panel i can check each color channel in the image to decide which one's best to use
what i'm looking for is one where the trees are clearly separated from the background with this
image i could use any of the color channels but i'm going to pick the blue one i can then load the
channel as a selection by right-clicking to load a pixel selection you then see the marching ants
appear on the image showing the selections being made now for the important part this selection is
the reverse of what i want to use because the light areas are selected but the darker trees
aren't to invert the selection i'm going to use the select menu and choose invert pixel selection
with that done the matching ants are now getting in the way so i'll hide them using the view menu
this hides the marching ants but importantly the pixels are still selected we're now ready to start
painting so let's turn on the fog layer again so that we can see the effect as we paint i'll
select the brush tool to paint with and set it to be black with a soft edge to the brush
i'll then click the layer mask to be sure that it's selected then when i paint i know i'll be
painting onto the mask and not the image now i can paint over the trees where i want to hide the fog
this creates a more realistic fog effect and gives the scene a feeling of depth
if the effect looks too strong you can adjust the opacity of the mask which reduces the overlay
effect alternatively you can adjust the opacity of the overlay which you could also do to make the
effect stronger now there are a few other options to try if you want to produce different effects
one is to change the blending mode if i switch the overlay from the screen
to the add blending mode it creates a different effect as do the other blending modes
another option is to duplicate the layer to create a stronger effect you can then adjust the opacity
of that layer as well as trying different blending modes with it now this image was taken using a
telephoto lens and a long focal length it creates a flat perspective in the scene which compresses
depth and it means the overlays are easy to work with but what if we used a wide angle lens and
wanted to add an overlay we would then need to change the perspective of the overlay to match
the wide angle lens the way to do that is to distort the perspective of the overlay using
affinity photo filters if you want to know to do that watch this video next it explains how
to change the perspective of an image to create a wider field of view using affinity live filters