My favorite Color Grading tools in Affinity Photo

[@ma14.27]

This blew my mind, I've been wondering for years how to control the colors in darker/lighter areas of an image. I'm glad I'm finally looking into this stuff.

[@brgphotography]

Wow! Thank you so much for the comment! I’m really happy you found the video so helpful!

[@johnhuntley5591]

another very good clear demonstration. Thanks

[@brgphotography]

Thank you! You’re very welcome!

[@freshy3106]

Helpful tutorial. thanks! HSL and Color Balance are my favorites. Seem to get mixed results with selective color.

[@brgphotography]

Yeah. They all kind of do similar things, but they do them in different ways so you get varied results. Glad you liked the video!

[@tikevangogh7227]

Love it. Great video, thank you.

[@brgphotography]

Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@ianwatson3393]

VERY useful summary and clear explanation. I will now be much more systematic and subtle! Thanks - also for the lack of hype!

[@brgphotography]

You’re very welcome! Haha. Yeah. I don’t have the energy to do the whole “This tool changed everything!” hype KZbinr thing. 😅

[@colemyst]

Thank you, this was really helpful.

[@brgphotography]

I’m really glad to hear that!

[@alexsierra611]

Fantastic video! I learned a bunch! I was kinda stuck on color balance for a while but now I’m gonna play around with the other tools

[@brgphotography]

I’m glad to hear that! I think once you have a firm grasp on how the RGB color system works, it allows you to unlock more power out of the adjustment layers, like curves and selective color. Then for things like skin tone and white balance, you can use the scopes to make sure your colors are accurate.

[@Mike_Mandigo]

Very informative. Thx Ben!

[@brgphotography]

You’re very welcome! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@annharrison1701]

Always look forward to your tutorials! Very informative and easy to understand.

[@brgphotography]

Thank you for the kind words! 🙏🏼🙏🏼

[@rankevmas]

Great tutorial. Learnt a lot. Thanks Ben!

[@brgphotography]

Thank you! I’m glad you found it useful!

[@luiseliasrodriguez4327]

Great and extensive video about color, thanks.

[@brgphotography]

I’m glad you enjoyed it, thank you!

[@weddingbells100]

Great video and very informative must have a play at the different ways to colour grade, many thanks

[@brgphotography]

Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, there are so many way to color grade in affinity.

[@aharoni1000]

Great Tutorial, bringing it smoothly from theory to technical practice, and creative applications. thanks a lot - you got a new sub :)

[@brgphotography]

Thank you very much! I’m really happy to hear you say that. Sometimes these concepts are difficult for me to understand, and these kind of “physical” examples help me understand them. So I’m glad to know that it also helps other people! And thank you for the subscription! I really appreciate it !

[@mikelockwood2104]

excellent tutorial - thank you

[@brgphotography]

You’re very welcome. I’m glad you enjoyed it!

[@michaelleski7480]

Brilliant video!

[@brgphotography]

Thank you so much for the kind words!

[@pro-lapser]

Color balance seems to be the one closer to the "color grading" option in Lightroom from what I could see

[@brgphotography]

Interesting. I’ve never used Lightroom, but I imagine the tools are similar. Just named different.

[@pro-lapser]

@@brgphotography I'm not very savy with LR so I don't know all the tools, but yeah, HSL and curves are just the exact same name and all, the other ones I have no clue if they have a LR equivalent besides the aforementioned one. Pretty good video man, thanks for making it, I'm looking to jump ship but I was unsure as color grading is essential to my photo editing style but now I know I have no reason to stay with assdobe

[@brgphotography]

@pro-lapser “Assdobe”. 😂😂😂

[@divusiulius7539]

Before I get started… Thank You. Sincerely Thank You. As for keeping this “Simple”, there was nothing simple about this. This was chocked full of great stuff and you obviously have the chops - “experience to demonstrate just how versatile and extensive Affinity Photo and You are at Color Grading. You could spend a 1/2 hr on each method on Color Grading that you demonstrated in this tutorial. Affinity needs to pay you for your prowess and in demonstrating Affinity Photo. Wow. I actually have to watch this a few times just to make sure I have a full grasp on each of these methods. Again, Thank You. I learned a lot here.

[@brgphotography]

Wow! Thank you very much for the kind words! It really means a lot. Especially since I feel like I’m still learning and discovering different ways to do things all the time! As far and the video goes, I really wanted to make sure that people realize once you understand how color works, you can really unlock the power of a lot of the color grading tools. And many of the tools do the same thing, just in different ways. I actually want to make a part 2 to this video at some point because there are some other lesser used tools, that can also offer some creative color grading possibilities. Again, thank you for the wonderful comment. It really makes me happy that I’m able to share what I’ve learned and pass it on to others. 🙏🏼

[@i.h.2546]

Fantastic. Thanks a lot!

[@brgphotography]

You’re very welcome!

[@art_by_adrian2913]

Another excellent video thanks so much for taking time to make these for us, I do have a few request lol the biggest one is a suggestion, have you thought about a retouching people with tattoos video? Theres nothing on google or youtube AT ALL, also how do I get all the macros you use lol for sharpening skin etc? I use your dodge and burn on every single edit I do, thanks again I'm going to manually come back here to check for any response because youtube doesn't notify me at all

[@brgphotography]

Hey brother, thanks for the comments. That’s a really good idea. I’ll have to see if I’ve got any photos that have heavy tattoos, and could try to offer some tips on how to remove them. I actually don’t really use sharpening for skin. Though I do have a little sharpening I add when I export for instagram. Actually putting that video together now, so should be out soon!

[@sf-gt9co]

you're a legend

[@brgphotography]

Haha. Still learning myself, but I appreciate it. 😅

[@aharoni1000]

question - is selective color the closest tool to DCTL? or is there ways to get even more specific with playing around with very specific colors in the images?

[@brgphotography]

That a good question. I would say there isn’t anything similar to a DaVinci color space transform, or DCTL, since those seem to operate more in the background. But selective color, and HSL (and isolating a particular color) would probably be the best tools for drastic color transforms. But in think the biggest advantage of working with a still image over a video, is we can mask individual parts of the image to adjust and change the colors as extreme as we would like.

[@benjaminparks8032]

Good explanation of color grading techniques in Affinity! I like Lightroom, but Affinity's tools are impressive!

[@brgphotography]

Thank you! Because I always shoot in RAW, I use capture one to dial in my exposure and white balance, and make sure they are correct, but then use Affinity to do the create part.

[@000CloudStrife]

You should have waited and actually done a video on proper theory. Rgb deals with light which color is part of. So not the full information. Many who follow this channel will get mislead as not everything is explained. For example the true complement of red is green. You should have also mentioned the most important part. Affinity does not have a good color interpretation compared to photoshop. Even less than capture 1. Capture one is still king when it comes to color.

[@brgphotography]

Those are valid points, and but I didn’t want to get too into the additive vs subjective color models too much, and maybe confuse some views. Could probably make a whole video about how light and the additive color model work vs the subtractive one. Also, I’d like to hear where you see the limitations on affinity’s color interpretation. Actually I do use Capture One to process my RAW photos and make adjustments to skin tone, white balance, and color, before bringing it in to Affinity photo (will eventually make a video about that process.) So by the time I’m working on in in affinity photo, most of the heavy lifting has been done. Thank you for the input!

[@000CloudStrife]

@@brgphotography you have to use both additive and subtractive so for clarification maybe the video should be titled something different. As for color I am mentoring with the best retoucher in the world or voted top 10 every year. We went over Affinity and she showed me all of the faults affinity has. She did say it had promise at first. She quickly learned that colors aren’t produced the same way as c1- photoshop is better at color representation and rendering. The software is too slow compared to the others. You can’t do high end work at a bigger scale. I can keep going. Oh let’s not forget the obvious one. They said they don’t want to compete with the others.

[@brgphotography]

Well, if you are staying in the digital world (web, video, instagram, etc…) you only need to really worry about the additive color system as the subtractive system is used for print. Also red is only complementary to green in the RYB color model, which is less accurate than the CMYk color model. RYB color model is kind of a simplified version of CMYk mainly taught in art class in school, but also used by artists putting physical paint to canvas. But as equal parts of CYB don’t create a neutral color, it’s a little less accurate than the CMYk. Again this is only really relevant if you are working in physical media (the subtractive color model.) That’s really interesting. I would love to hear more about the shortcomings she found in affinity photo, as knowing its limitations is important so that you can (if you need to) work around them.

[@000CloudStrife]

@@brgphotography except you don’t. Knowing how color and light works both ways improves your work. It also goes beyond just western theory. Take semiotics into account across cultures and that’s how you become one of the top .1% in photo and editing as they are part of the trifecta of being a photographer. Not only will the work look better on the web but the advanced theory will be beyond what many understand.

[@brgphotography]

I totally agree. Learning as much as you can can only improve your work. I’m always trying to learn and better my understanding of color, and comments like yours push me to further deepen my understanding. So I appreciate your insights.