in this video i'm going to show you how to add a stunning orton effect to images using affinity
photo not only that but i also explained the best way to apply the effect to make photos look more
appealing hello i'm robin whalley and in this video i'm going to show you how to create the beautiful
orton effect using affinity photo software this is a great way to give your photos a unique look that's
ideal for landscape and woodland photography so let's get started with editing this evening
scene i recently shot in the peak district it's an ideal subject for applying the orton effect because
of how it will enhance the light and colour in the image to produce this digitally i'm first going to
duplicate the image layer i can do this by right clicking on the layer in the layers studio panel
and clicking the duplicate option in the menu i'll then rename the new layer to be glow just double
click the name on the layer to enter the new name the other change we'll make with this layer is to
the blend mode which is in this drop down at the top of the layers panel be sure you have the glow
layer selected and then change the blend mode from normal to screen this is going to make the
image appear brighter and overexposed to better judge the effect reduce the layer opacity down
to around 50 percent we can come back to refine this later we now need to blur the glow image
using a gaussian blur filter affinity photo has two gaussian blur filters which are a regular
filter that's applied directly to the image layer and a live filter adjustment layer we want to use
the live filter adjustment layer because it allows us to continue to adjust the level of the blur in
future to add it click the live filter icon to the bottom of the layers panel then in the list
choose gaussian blur we'll start by applying a blur with a radius of about 20 pixels which we
can refine later this is enough though to create a softening effect in our image but because we've
lowered the layer opacity we can still see the sharp layer below it something else that you might
want to use is the option to preserve luminosity without this your glow won't extend all the way to
the edges of the frame but it can also reduce the glowing effect so it's best to experiment
we can now close our gaussian blur filter dialog and add a new layer to control the glow contrast
we can do this by adding a new levels adjustment layer click the adjustment layer icon at the
bottom of the layer studio panel and select the levels option from the menu because the new levels
layer is being added above the other layers it's going to affect all of them we only want it to
affect the glow layer so we need to attach it to that layer click on the levels layer in the layers
studio panel and then drag it with your mouse dropping it onto the glow layer if you've done
this correctly it should appear slightly inset below the glow layer now we can move the white
level to the left to lighten the image further and do the same with the gamma level also moving it
to the left because the two adjustments we've made are on layers attached to the glow layer
we can continue to refine their effect we can also refine the overall strength of the effect
by changing the opacity of the glow layer itself that the filters are attached to whilst this has
produced a basic glow effect we can make it look much better the best method of applying an orton
effect to an image is selectively based on how bright or dark the area of the image is
an easy way to do this is using the blend ranges control which we can access by clicking this small
cog icon at the top right of the layer studio panel each layer in the layers panel has its
own blend ranges control so be sure you have the gaussian blur layer selected when you use this the
control allows you to hide or show the filter's effect based on how dark or light each pixel is
the left of these two grids controls the currently selected layer and where it's applied when i click
and drag the left side of the line down to the bottom it removes the blur from the darkest pixels
but it leaves it in place for the light pixels we do this because we don't want to produce a
glow in the dark areas of the image because that can look messy you can also use this technique
with the levels layer if you want to control where that's applied don't worry if you don't understand
the blend range controls i'll share a video at the end of this one that will explain them in detail
now although we've created a soft focus effect across the brighter areas of the image it's
affecting the sky too much to remove it we'll add a mask to the layer now we can paint onto the mask
using a soft paintbrush and black paint to hide the effect i have the paint brush set to
a hardness of zero percent to produce a soft edge i also have the flow at 10 percent allowing me to
build up the paint gradually and keep the effect looking natural i'll also remove the glow from
the rock because i don't like it there in a moment i'll show you a great special effect to take this
even further with the image but first we need to refine our adjustment if i turn off the glow layer
you can see the effect that it's already producing now let's change the glow layer opacity to 100
to make it easier to judge the change we're going to make we can then adjust our level of
glow easily by changing the blur radius after that we'll reduce the opacity down to 50 and we'll use
the levels to refine the contrast and brightness even further you can use all three levels to do
this after that we change the glow layer opacity to set the strength of the effect overall
now for that special effect i mentioned once you're happy with the look of the glow layer
duplicate the layer now select the duplicate layer and at the top of the layers panel
change the blend mode from screen to be vivid light this makes the glowing areas of the image
light up with color you can also use the linear light blend mode for an even stronger effect
then you can adjust the overall opacity to change the strength of the glowing light and we can also
use the blend ranges which we touched on earlier at the time i didn't explain the blem range's
controls fully which is why you need to watch this video next it explains exactly what the controls
do and how they work and just how powerful they can be don't forget to subscribe if you haven't
already i'm robin whalley thanks for watching today and i hope to see you again in another video soon