MacLife UK – August 2019

Master the Inpainting tool

Remove objects and replace edge details lost when cropping and straightening

REQUIRES

Affinity Photo

YOU WILL LEARN

How to hide or replace

content, and crop and

straighten a shot to

improve composition

IT WILL TAKE

15 minutes

HOW TO Replace edges and remove objects

Open an image

Choose File > Open to find shot that

needs to be recomposed. For max control over

image editing, shoot with an uncompressed

camera raw file. Raw files automatically open

in Affinity Photo’s Develop Persona.

Straighten the horizon

Click on the Crop icon in the Tools

panel. Set Mode to Original Ratio. This keeps

the cropped shot the same shape as other

photos from your camera. Click the Straighten

button. Draw a line following the tilted horizon.

THIS SHOT WAS taken before

the cyclist disappeared around

the bend. It was a quick shot so

it wasn’t carefully composed.

As a result of this, the photo suļers from

a tilted horizon and is blemished by bins

in the foreground.

AL·nity Photo’s Crop tool enables us to

straighten wonky horizons and lose ugly

edge objects such as the bins, but

performing the operation can create

transparent edges at the corners of the

frame. We could crop in tighter to lose the

transparent edges, but then we’d chop oļ

the top of the castle.

By using AL·nity Photo’s Inpainting

Brush tool, we can brush over transparent

edges and they will automatically be Ľlled

with appropriate pixels, such as sky or

trees. The Inpainting Brush can also

sample unwanted people and hide them

with a patch of adjacent pixels. We can

even repair holes in the castle wall in

a few strokes. GEORGE CAIRNS

Create

86 AUG 2019 maclife.com Image rights: Serif.