FIX NOISE
Duplicate the layer
Open the shot in Affinity and head to the
Photo Persona (if you open a Raw you can
also apply noise reduction in the Develop
Persona’s Detail panel). First, duplicate the
‘Background’ layer with Cmd/Ctrl+J to
make a copy, we’ll then apply our noise
reduction to this to keep it non-destructive.
Select the subject
Set the Luminance to 50% and Luminance
Detail to 20 then click Apply. Next, zoom
out and grab the Selection Brush tool. Paint
over the subject to select her, then click the
Refine button and increase Border Width to
roughly 35% to improve the selection edge.
Set Output: Mask and click Apply.
Invert the mask
Go to the Layers panel, highlight the
mask thumbnail on the top layer, then go
to Layer>Invert, thereby hiding the effects
of the noise reduction over the subject,
so that it only appears over the blurry
backdrop. Next, highlight the ‘Background’
layer, then duplicate again with Cmd/Ctrl+J.
Zoom to actual pixels
It’s best to judge noise reduction settings at
an actual pixel view, so grab the Zoom tool,
then right-click over the image and choose
100%. Initially our image here was very
noisy as it was shot at ISO22,800. Go to
Filter>Noise>Denoise. Begin adjusting
the Luminance slider to fix the grainy noise.Quick Tip
Denoise can be applied non-
destructively as a Live Filter
layer (go to Layer>New Live
Filter) but it won’t act as
strongly as if applying the
noise correction directly to
a pixel layer.Fix the noise
Setting Luminance to around 50% here
fixes the noise in the dark background,
but at the cost of detail in the subject.
Increasing the Luminance Detail slider
can help to combat this, but it can also
introduce artefacts into the soft areas.
Instead we’ll mask out the noise reduction.4
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Make a subtle fix
Highlight the middle layer, then go to
Filter>Noise>Denoise. Apply more subtle
noise reduction – we used Luminance 20%,
Luminance Detail 70%. Finally, if you like, you
can paint in stronger noise reduction over the
smooth areas of the subject – simply highlight
the layer mask and paint white.6