Affinity Photo Tutorial For Beginners - Top 10 Things Beginners Want To Know

hello my friends I hope you're having an outstanding day my name is Ezra Anderson and today we're going to learn at the top 10 things beginners want to know how to do an affinity photo if you're new to this program this is the one video you need to get started so go ahead and download the photos we'll be using today in the video description and let's jump into affinity photo and get started the first thing beginners want to know is how to open images inside affinity photo it's very simple to do this all you need to do is come up to the top to file and then scroll down to open then you just need to click on the picture that you want to open if you want to open multiple images you can hold down shift and click on other pictures then we can come down here and press open we can see up at the top of affinity photo that all of our pictures have opened the inside at different tabs by just clicking on these tabs you can move between the different pictures you've opened and if you ever want you can just hover over one of the tabs and press on the X to close that picture the next thing beginners want to know is how affinity photo is organized over here on the left side we have all of the tools you need to edit your pictures whenever you click on one of these tools you'll have different options appear up here at the top these options at the top are called the contextual toolbar depending on which tool you have open you'll have different options inside the contextual toolbar over on the right side of affinity photo we have our studio inside of the studio we have different panels like the histogram panel color panel and the adjustments and layers panels throughout this video we'll learn how to use a couple of these panels and a few of the tools over on the left side if you ever want to add or remove some of the panels from your studio all you need to do is come up to the top to view and then scroll down to studio then you can turn any of the panels off or on by simply clicking on their name and if you ever want to reset all of the panels to the way they were when you first opened affinity photo you can down to the very last option and select reset studio affinity photo also gives us the option to customize our tools over on the left side we can do this by coming to the View menu and then scrolling down near the bottom and selecting customized tools now we can click and drag on any of our tools to remove them from the tools area for example if I didn't want this healing tool all I would need to do is click and drag on it over here and then it would disappear I could do the same for the node tool and the rectangle tool if I wanted to add any new tools all I need to do is click and drag on them and place them in with the other tools you can also change the number of columns down here but if you ever want to reset it back to normal just press on the reset button I'm also going to change mine back to one column when you're done customizing your tools you can press close finally up at the very top left we have the different personas of affinity photo right now we're working inside the photo persona which is where you'll do most of your work when editing photos we also have the liquify persona the develop persona the tone mapping persona and the export persona persona is just another word for different workspaces inside affinity photo you can see if I click on the liquefy persona then we have different tools and panels but if I come to the export persona then I'm given a new set of tools and panels depending on which persona you're in you'll have different tools for editing your pictures as I said before you'll typically be working inside the photo persona now that we've taken a look at affinity photos interface the third thing beginners want to know is how to crop pictures to drop any photo we'll need to use the crop tool to activate the crop tool you can either click on it down here or you can press the letter C on your keyboard then you simply need to drag on any of these handles to bring in the crop when you're satisfied with your crop you can either press apply up here at the top or press ENTER on the keyboard the great thing about cropping inside affinity photo is your original picture is still there all you need to do is press C for your crop tool and then you can bring the handles back out to reveal your picture once again another great feature of the crop tool is it allows you to straighten your pictures I'm going to press C for the crop tool and then I'll come up to the contextual toolbar and select straighten then you just need to click and drag on the part of your picture that should be straight in this case we should have a straight horizon line so I'm going to click and drag to draw a line going across the horizon then when you release the mouse your picture will automatically be straightened to match the line that you drew you can also rotate your picture by hovering your cursor on the outside corner while you're cropping your picture once your cursor turns into these two arrows you can click and drag to rotate your photo then you just need to press ENTER to confirm your rotation cropping and straightening pictures inside affinity photo really is as simple as that the four thing beginners want to know is how to remove imperfections from a photo in this example we're going to remove these poles that are sticking out of the water but before we remove them we're going to duplicate our image over here to duplicate our image you can press command or control-j you can see that we now have two copies of the exact same picture the reason we do this is so that we can work non destructively this means we'll keep the original image safe by working on a copy of it so now that we have a copy of our image we can make as many changes as we want to the picture and the original image will always be safe with our duplicate copy ready to go our next step is to remove these polls from the water to do this we're going to use the in painting brush to find the in painting brush you can click and hold on this band-aid icon and then select in painting brush tool in painting is smart content removal all you need to do is paint over the part of the picture you want to remove and then affinity will automatically remove it so for this example I'm just going to paint over these poles and then affinity will remove them from the picture almost like magic affinity photo has removed this imperfection if you'd like to see a before and after all we need to do is turn off the duplicate picture that we made earlier in this example to do this we'll come over here and turn this checkbox off now we're looking at the original picture but if we turn the checkbox back on we can see how the duplicate photo looks with the imperfection removed in this next example we're going to continue using the in painting brush but this time we're going to use it to remove some small acne from my chin but before we make any changes to the photo we're going to work non-destructively by duplicating it remember that the shortcut for this is command or control J next we need to zoom in to the photo so we can see the acne more clearly if you'd like to zoom into your photo you can come up to the top menu and select View zoom in or zoom out if you want to zoom out of your picture however I strongly recommend you memorize the shortcuts command or control - or command or control + to zoom in and out I'm going to practice using these shortcuts now to zoom into the photo to zoom in I'll press command or control + then to move around the picture all you need to do is hold down the spacebar and click and drag before we begin in painting I also want to highlight a couple of options that you can change in the contextual toolbar generally when you're working with the in painting brush you want to change the hardness from 80% to 100% so I'm going to click and drag to highlight the ad and then type in 100 then I'll press ENTER to confirm 100% hardness you can also change the size of your brush over here depending on how big the imperfection is you'll want a different sized brush because we're working with very small imperfections we'll want a smaller brush size I'm going to change the brush size to just 30 pixels a great shortcut to change your brush size are the bracket keys underneath the equal sign on your keyboard if you press the right bracket key then your brush size will get bigger and if you use the left bracket key then your brush size will get smaller after you've set your brush to 100% hardness and in appropriate width all we need to do is begin painting over the acne to remove it from the photo then to see the before and after we're going to uncheck our duplicate layer to see the original photo and then we'll see it with the acne removed by using the in painting brush it's extremely easy to remove imperfections from a photo but as great as this tool is it doesn't always do a perfect job but the first time you paint over something if that's ever the case with you just try painting over the same area again and generally it will do better the second or third time the fifth thing beginners want to know is how to use adjustment layers adjustment layers allow you to non destructively change the colors of your photo to apply an adjustment layer we need to press on this icon down here it looks like a black and white circle after you click on this icon you have many options for different adjustments that you can apply to your picture as an example let's try applying a black and white adjustment as you can see it's automatically turned our picture black and white it's important to note that every adjustment layer works differently but in this case we can use these sliders to determine how bright or dark certain colors become in our black-and-white picture for example if we bring the red slider to the left all of the reds in our photo will become a darker but if we bring it to the right then they will become lighter I thought it looked better darker so I'm going to bring this slider back to the left if we come to the cyan we can change how bright or dark the cyan is in our picture you can continue this process for the rest of the colors when you're done adjusting your black and white photo you can exit out of this dialog box by pressing on the red circle up here and just as we saw earlier in this video we can see a before-and-after by turning this layer off and on if you ever want to change how your black and white adjustment looks all you need to do is double click on this icon right here and then the dialog box will reappear and you can continue making adjustment it's to use adjustment layers effectively you need to know that every adjustment layer only affects the layers beneath it so in this case because our picture is beneath the adjustment layer it's being affected but if we were to move our photo on top of the adjustment layer then the adjustment layer would no longer affect it to see how this works I'm going to click and drag on the photo layer and place it above the adjustment layer you can see our photo layer is now above the black and white adjustment and is no longer being affected so if you want an adjustment layer to effect your picture you need to make sure the adjustment layer is above your photo which you can do by just clicking and dragging if you ever want to delete a layer all you need to do is click and drag it down to the trashcan over here as another example of how adjustment layers work let's try enhancing the colors of this picture I'm going to click on the adjustments icon and then select brightness and contrast with this adjustment layer I'm going to increase the brightness and also increase the contrast then I'll exit out of this dialog box to see a before and after I'll turn this layer off and on but it looks like this adjustment layer is a little too strong so let's go back into that dialog box by double clicking on this icon and then bring the brightness and contrast not quite so high now I'll exit out of this box again and see a before and after a general editing tip for you is to make small changes to your pictures beginners tend to make big changes and makes their pictures look fake and unrealistic the more subtle your changes are the better your editing will become as a final example of how to use adjustment layers let's come back to the adjustments icon and then select HSL with an HSL adjustment we can increase the saturation of the colors in our picture all we need to do is click and drag on this slider then I'll exit out of this box and see how the HSL adjustment is improving our photo if I want I can hold down shift and click on this other layer and then turn them both off and on at the same time here is the original photo and here it is with the enhanced colors there are many other adjustments that we could use to continue enhancing our photo but we don't have time to learn about all of them right now if you'd like to learn more about adjustment layers I'll leave a link in the video description for our complete beginners guide to affinity photo we spent an entire chapter learning about the most important adjustment layers and how they can improve your pictures if you really want to learn affinity photo I strongly encourage you to enroll in our beginners course the sixth in beginners want to know is how to use masks a mask hides or shows parts of a layer a white mask means a layer is totally visible while a black mask means a layer is completely invisible to see how this works let's try applying a mask to our photo first make sure that you have this layer selected then we're going to press on the mask icon down here it looks like a Japanese flag you can see that we've applied a white mask to our photo remember a white mask means everything is visible but if we paint black on the mask then the layer will become invisible first I'm going to click on the mask icon to make sure we have it selected then I'll come over to the left side and select our paint brush inside our color panel we can see that we're painting in black so as we paint black on our mask the layer will become invisible this transparency indicates that there's nothing there this is because we've painted black making our layer invisible fortunately we can paint white whenever we want to reveal the layer once again just press on this arrow right here to switch your color from black to white and then begin painting in white you can see as we paint in white our picture is revealed once again and just like any other layer we can turn a mask off and on by using the check box I no longer want this mask though so I'm going to click and drag this layer to the trashcan now that we understand the basics of masks let's see how they apply to adjustment layers I'm going to come to the adjustments icon and select black and white then I'll exit out of the dialog box the great thing about adjustment layers is they come with a pre-built mask all we need to do is have an adjustment layer selected and then we can paint in black or white to hide or show it I'm going to switch my color to black and then begin painting you can see that the black and white adjustment layer is invisible in all of the areas that I've painted it because the black and white is invisible it means all of the original color is being shown from the layer underneath if we wanted to be more precise with our painting though we'll need to zoom in to our picture remember that you can press command or control + to zoom in then we can continue painting to make the black and white adjustment layer invisible if you ever paint too much like I did down here all you need to do is switch your color from black to white then as we begin painting and white the black and white adjustment layer will be shown once again when you're painting on a mask I also recommend you change your hardness from 80% to 0% if you're painting in 100% hardness then your brushstrokes will be very harsh and noticeable but if you're painting with 0% hardness then you can blend the areas of the picture that have the mask black or white by using a 0% hardness and switching your color between black and white you can paint precisely on a mask to apply a layer exactly where you want it just make sure you have the right layer selected before you begin painting for example if we took our original photo and applied a mask to it then it would make a difference whether we had this mass selected or this black and white adjustment layer if we have the black and white adjustment layer selected and then we begin painting and black will be hiding the black and white adjustment but if we have the mass selected that's applied to our background photo and then we begin painting in black will hide the original photo one of the most common mistakes that new users to affinity photo mate is having the wrong layer selected so make sure you have the right layer selected before you begin painting the seventh thing that beginners want to know is how to make selections the easiest way to make selections is to use the selection brush tool with this tool all we need to do is paint across the part of the picture that we want to select as we paint affinity will automatically detect the object that we're trying to make a selection up let's try painting a selection across the moon if you ever select too much when using this election brush you can always change the mode from add to subtract appear in the contextual toolbar if you're in subtract mode and anything you paint across will be removed from your selection you can also change the width in the contextual toolbar depending on if you're trying to select a bigger or smaller object if we zoom in to our photo though you'll notice that our selection is not perfect you can see that it's looking jagged along the edge of the moon I'm going to zoom back out so we can see the entire moon by pressing command or ctrl 0 now that we've seen how our selection isn't perfect we're going to refine it by pressing refine in the contextual toolbar as you can see we have quite a few options in the refine selection dialog box in this example though we want to increase the smooth slider this will remove all of the jagged edges from our selection now we have a nice smooth selection going around the moon once you're satisfied with your selection you can press apply with a selection made we can apply an adjustment layer to only the part of the picture that we have selected to see this I'm going to come to the adjustment icon and then apply a recolor adjustment as you can see the recolor adjustment is only being applied to where our selection was this is because a mask has been applied to the adjustment layer we can see over in the layers panel that our mask is white in the center where our selection was and then black everywhere else as we've already learned a white mask means the adjustment layer is being applied as it is here and a black mask means the adjustment layer is not being applied inside the rest of the photo I'm going to exit out of this recolor adjustment and then deselect by pressing command or control D because our adjustment layer is being applied by using a mask we can use the paintbrush to continue refining where our adjustment layer is being applied I'm going to press B for my paint brush and now anywhere that I paint in white the adjustment layer will continue to be applied I'm going to change my color from black to white by pressing X on the keyboard and then I'm going to use the right bracket key to make my brush width a little larger now as I begin painting in white my adjustment layer will be applied wherever I paint by using selections and the paintbrush you can be very precise in the areas that a mask is applied I think our mask was already looking good though so I'm going to undo my paintbrush stroke by pressing command or control Ziya the eighth thing that beginners want to know is how to change the background of their photos to change the background the first thing you'll want to do is make a selection of the part of your picture that you want to keep we could make another selection of this moon or we could use a shortcut to reload the selection we already made because we used our selection to make this adjustment layer if we hold down command or control and then click on the adjustment layer mask icon it will reload our selection this is a very helpful shortcut to remember now that we have our selection made we're going to apply a mask to our photo remember to have the right layer selected and then apply a mask just as before our has become white wherever our selection was and black wherever we weren't selected now we can press command or control D to deselect if all you want to do is remove the background and you're done just make a selection of what you want to keep and then apply a mask but if you want to get your picture a new background we can copy and paste this layer into a different picture first we need to open another picture I'm going to use the shortcut command or ctrl o to open a new picture then I'll select the desert photo and press open coming back to my moon picture I'm going to select the layer of the moon and then press command or control C to copy then I'll come back to the desert photo and press command or control V to paste it as you can see we've only copy and pasted the moon because that was the layer we had selected it if we wanted to copy and paste the recolor adjustment layer then we would need to have not layer selected but because the moon is all we wanted I'm going to come back over to the desert photo now we can move and resize the moon layer by using the move tool you can find the move tool over here or press V on your keyboard now we can move the moon wherever we want or resize it by using any of these handles if you want the selection box to disappear you can click anywhere outside of the photo or click off of the layer down in this area we've now successfully added this moon to the desert photo the ninth thing that beginners want to know is how to add text to their photo adding text is very easy to do in affinity photo all we need to do is select the artistic text tool then we can click and drag to specify how big we want our text to be then you can begin typing if you want to modify your text first press escape to exit type mode then with the text box still selected we can change the text by using the contextual toolbar let's change the font we can also change the font size from the contextual toolbar we can also make it bold italicized or underlined and if we come over to the color panel we can change the color of our text then with the move tool we can resize and position the text if you ever want to continue typing all you need to do is select the artistic text tool and then click anywhere inside the text box then you can continue typing and of course you can always risa lect the move tool to position in your text box and finally we are to the tenth thing that beginners want to know how to save and export their work if you want to save this affinity photo file so you can continue to work on it later just come up to the top to file save as this will save your document as an affinity photo file so you can continue working on a later date but if you're completely done with your picture and want to export it you can scroll down to select export as you can see affinity has a wide range of formats that you can export your document into the two most common formats are PNG and JPEG JPEG is useful because it will export your picture into a small file size but PNG is useful because it allows you to preserve a transparency since this picture doesn't have any transparency let's export it as a JPEG right now you can see the estimated file size is 1.8 megabytes if we wanted to make that even smaller we could either change the size up here or lower the quality by lowering the quality just a little bit you can dramatically lower the file size let's try lowering the quality to 95% by just slightly lowering the quality you can see that we've almost cut our file size in half now that we have a very small file we can export our file now all you need to do is give your picture a name and choose where you want it to be saved then just press on the Save button to export your file congratulations you made it to the end of the video you now have all the skills you need to get started an affinity photo if this program still seems a little confusing though be sure to enroll in our complete beginners guide to affinity photo in the video description it's designed to take your experience with affinity photo from looking like this to looking like this be sure to enroll and I'll see you in the next affinity revolution tutorial

Channel: Affinity Revolution

Views: 637,467

Keywords: affinity photo, tutorial, beginners, top 10, beginners want to know, basic, easy, quick start, guide

Id: Yn8kwOQhMJA

Length: 33min 9sec (1989 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 02 2018