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Use Affinity to
touch up snaps
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these days pride themselves
on the quality of their
cameras.The ubiquity of a camera in
yourpocket has all but wiped out the
compact camera, and the images
produced by phones, especially with
new tricks like smart background
blurring, cannot be denied.
There are some things, however,
that you just have to fix after the
photo is taken. Automated settings
sometimes get fooled, and produce a
result that’s too dark, too bright or
too yellow. Likewise, spots of dust on
the camera lens or sensor can make
themselves known in the final image,
requiring removal in software.
We’re using Affinity Photo here,
Serif’s pro-grade image editing app.
It’s more than enough to fix common
compositional problems in your
images, and you can get a free trial
from http://bit.ly/AfPhotoTrial1 To o d a r k?
Getting an image that’s too dark is still pretty common.
We often find that, when preparing an image to be printed on
an inkjet printer, it needs to be much brighter than we would
have it if it were just being displayed on a screen. Use File >
Open to get your image in Affinity, and make sure the Layers
palette is visible on the right.2 Adjustment layer
You can apply fixes directly to the image, but if you apply
them as an Adjustment Layer you can come back later and tweak
them, or turn them on and off. Click the Adjustments button at
the bottom of the Layers palette (a shaded circle) and select
Levels. A window should appear with a histogram and five sliders,
and a new layer should settle into place atop the Layers stack.Step-by-step 7RXFKXS\RXUSKRWRV
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The Crop and
Selection Brush
tools are here.HEALING
The Healing Brush
tool is down here.FILTERS
Filters get a whole
menu to themselves,
at the top.M
Anyonecandoit
Straightforward
Trickyin partsWindows 10
Windows8.1
Windows^7At a glance
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32 |^ |^ March 2020