Enhancing Low Light Imagery Tips & Techniques (Affinity Photo)

[@alexfurer]

WOW! That black and White adjustment on the church building blew my mind. Yeah, baby, I'd say "go for it"! If Affinity adds photo cataloging and a seamless workflow from archive to print ready, I'm in. I am looking at Affinity for my CG work, because it has a much better understanding of modern color management and working with exr files. Obviously that's how I found your channel :) Thanks for all the work you put into and for the clear and calm way you pass your knowledge.

[@Patricksstrategy]

Bravo James. As always your expert commentary with no word redundancy and great precision combined with your Affinity Photo expertise make a combination that no one can rival. Thank you so much.

[@JamesRitson]

Thanks Patrick!

[@alexanderson4156]

Well said Patrick - as ever, James is the man!

[@RodolfoVanzini]

Thank you James, very much appreciated. As always.

[@WisdomOfInsecurity]

This is, by far, the best tutorial i've seen so far, learnt a lot. Thank you!

[@enthusiaticbeginner]

Marvellous, James!

[@mikeames8339]

I would call this an advanced tutorial...and that's not a bad thing. Thank you!

[@gregoryjamesboyce]

So enjoyable and so informative. Every now and then you chuckle about something, and that little human touch seems as though you're right here in my office in Canada doing a private tutorial. Thanks for sharing your expertise!

[@Gill3D]

Yet another super tutorial. Thanks very much, James.

[@JamesRitson]

You're welcome!

Very nice tutorial, James. I'm already looking forward to the next tutorials from you.

[@JamesRitson]

Thank you, hoping to do some more live streams soon :)

[@vinr]

One video so many techniques to learn about

[@joelrollins2841]

Great tutorial! Thanks, James.

[@JamesRitson]

Thanks Joel :)

[@simonpayne7994]

It is very interesting to see how a real expert goes about subtley improving his night pictures. However, my main problem shooting night scenes is blooming. As I filmed and photographed a christmas light show, I discovered that in the photo image all the high power color LEDs hat a white disk in the middle of a narrow colored ring along with a halo of colored fog around them. Looking at the photo as a whole the LEDs appeared desaturated - due to the white disk in their middles. Enlarged one could see what was actually happening. On that I investigated the problem and saw that this even happens on headlights and backlights of cars at night. To my astonishmint I found out that practically all modern digital photo sensors have this problem. Even worse, no matter how low you underexpose, you cannot really get rid of the problem.

[@piotrsieradzki8679]

It's a very practical knowledge! Thanks a lot.

[@JamesRitson]

Thank you, hope you find it useful!

[@Toxorz]

Yes! I've been after this 😁 thankyou kindly!

[@JamesRitson]

No worries!

[@craigozancin]

James, would you do more with the RAW edit in version 2, now that it is non-destructive?

[@harvardkarbodie]

I'm late to this video, but maybe someone can reply. Twice in this tutorial, he has a selection made, but before doing any work within that selection he does a Ctrl-D step which makes the selection disappear, but THEN does work within that selection! Unless I'm not following it, I don't see why the work that he does after removing the selection doesn't affect the whole image. It does that whenever I'm working with selections!

[@zoulhhh]

Wow. Thanks so much. (Why the hell is this account not exploding?) Btw, I wished you‘d make tutorials like this for iPad. Yes, one can adopt it but it is all slightly different and that distracts from the actual learning process.

[@PierGiorgioZuccaro]

Hello, thanks for your excellent and simple explanations, very useful to understand better and better how to use the sw. A question that I hope you can answer and give a solution. In the photo of the church the "banding" strips are evident in the sky, how can we remove or decrease them as much as possible? Do you have solutions with steps with Affinity ?, Thanks.

[@JamesRitson]

Hi Pier, the banding is more due to the video compression, it wasn't evident whilst I was editing the image. One way of reducing banding is to add synthetic noise into the areas (essentially, dithering) but this of course becomes problematic when you have to compress your image data anyway! It should be less of an issue when actually editing your images in 16-bit precision-if it still persists, you could use a live Add Noise filter and mask it selectively to the problematic areas...

[@PierGiorgioZuccaro]

@@JamesRitson Thank you, you have been very kind in taking your time to answer me, I take note of the solutions you wrote to me and I will try to apply them to a development done and one to be done. I renew the congratulations for your macros in addition to the great work you have done for the Astro. How can I be the subject of some things I want to do. See you soon.

[@xzenor]

With taking down the highlights in the developer mode (around 2:06) do you never use "Show clipped highlights/shadows/tones" options? the 3 buttons at the top right.

[@JamesRitson]

Hi, not particularly-generally I haven’t found a great need to visualise clipping outside of perhaps checking intense colours that may be outside the range of sRGB (in which case I’ll usually switch the output profile to ROMM RGB). Highlight clipping is generally easy enough to see on the histogram, and shadow tone clipping is usually less of an issue anyway unless you’re intentionally pushing the black point or applying excessive contrast, neither of which I’ll do at the development stage anyway. Hope that helps!

[@simon8723]

Thanks. Applied to the iPad version too?

[@simon8723]

Also, wouldn’t hdr stack not remedy much of this?

[@JamesRitson]

@@simon8723 hi, not particularly-HDR would give you more dynamic range and better SNR, but the tone mapping and subsequent retouching would be another workflow altogether...

[@Scott-wf2wp]

wow. Very cool, thanks for sharing with such clarity.

[@fritzheigl4556]

at 3:48 you use a key-shortcut you create a selection "based on luminosity". I can´t find the menu-item for that action. Any advise?

[@JamesRitson]

Hi, there is no specific menu item-if you’re recording a macro and make a selection from the current layer, there is a checkbox option for a luminosity selection, but apart from that you have to use the keyboard modifiers..

[@alexanderson4156]

Fritz, The Help (F1) entry for "Layer Masking" includes the following information: To create a luminosity mask: 1. On the Layers panel, click on the layer's thumbnail with the Ctrl and Alt keys pressed. 2. From the Layers panel, click Mask Layer. To edit a pixel mask: 2. Do one of the following: ◦To 'erase' from the mask, paint on the page using the Erase Brush Tool. ◦To 'restore' the mask, paint on the page using the Paint Brush Tool. A white fill completely restores, while greyscale fills partially restore the mask by varying amounts. ◦To apply a gradient mask, select the Gradient tool from the Tools panel and drag across the layer. Adjust the gradient colours from the context toolbar.

[@fritzheigl4556]

@@JamesRitson 1. Thanks for your quick answer. 2. I wonder if this is good usability-design.. (invisible features, only accessible via "secret" shortcuts) why not add it to the menu: "Select / Tonal Range / .." ?

[@billyxxx81]

Hi James, I love the way you teach, very clear and precise. Thank you so much for this valuable content! I've really learned a lot of new ways to develop my low light images.