Affinity Photo 2 Blending With The Luminosity Range Mask

[@Patricksstrategy]

Robin, All your instructional movies are excellent but this one is truly exceptional. So if viewers want to blend sky and land photographs perfectly this is a must watch. An additional benefit is, because of using RAW the quality of quite dull skies can be transformed amazingly due to the additional pixel information that RAW images have over JPEG. An essential movie for landscape photography.

[@RobinWhalley]

Wow! Thank you. I'm so pleased that you like this technique and see the potential.

[@chrisbartlett8146]

Thanks for this tip. At the moment I have only used the colour masking which works very well.

[@RobinWhalley]

The colour masking is also excellent. These tools seem to make editing easier and the results better.

[@PondersEndModelRailway]

great video, thank you

[@RobinWhalley]

Glad you liked it! Thanks

[@joelrollins2841]

Very clever. Thanks for sharing this tip.

[@RobinWhalley]

Glad it was helpful! Thank you

[@javiervvgarcia9650]

Brilliant and simple🙌

[@RobinWhalley]

Glad you think so! Thank you

[@MK-ni6gs]

Excellent video, thank you!

[@RobinWhalley]

You are welcome!

[@timculler1454]

Nice work as usual, Robin, and very helpful! One question: can you achieve the same kind of results using Nik control points , which seem easier to use . Thanks for all your outstanding work? Tim

[@RobinWhalley]

Yes and no. There are differences in the effects but the Nik selection tools are effectively Luminosity Masks.

[@florentd.5817]

Hi, your image look well exposed. Can we do something similar with two dng (a light and a dark expositions). HDR is not good enough in AP with hight contrasted fusions with 3 photos (i have old fuji xt1) Also it's work fine with this kind of lanscape but for interior house with big highlight window, can we use this method.Thanks for your sharing.

[@christophermason7735]

Excellent. Thank you. So much better than HDR

[@RobinWhalley]

Glad you like it. Thank you

[@wernerrohrmann9347]

Hello Robin, thank you for all your great tutorials on Affinity Photo. 👍💪I'm still a beginner and am still struggling with the program.😫😤 What I noticed is that when you open the "Profiles" - "Output Profiles" Menu in the Develop Persona, you have many, many more profiles to choose from than I do. I only have 14 different profiles to choose from. Why do you have many more?

[@RobinWhalley]

Thanks, I'm glad you like the tutorials. Regarding the profiles, these are loaded from the computer operating system. I have a lot of additional colour profiles that have been installed to my Mac which is why I have so many options. Most of the time you are best sticking to using sRGB, Adobe RGB or if you are on a Mac the P3 profile. That's all you need for photo editing.

[@ThomasEisl.Photography]

Great video - thanks for your effort!

[@RobinWhalley]

My pleasure. Thank you.

[@christophermason7735]

Hi Robin. Please can you show us how to do the same thing, only with hand held exposure brackets. I can’t figure out how to follow this procedure and align the individual raw embedded images in the layers section

[@RobinWhalley]

I'll add it to my list of possible future videos. Thanks

[@mauricehalfhide3982]

I can't wait to try this out! Thanks!

[@RobinWhalley]

I'm glad you liked the video and I hope the technique well for you.

[@mdbedelsohn4307]

Hello Sir, thank you for your video! My apologies for being a noob..but why not doing this within DXO Photolab? Could you please elaborate what advantages there are there in using your method?

[@RobinWhalley]

To answer your first question, PhotoLab doesn't have this feature. I think your second question assumes one product is better than another, but that's not what I'm trying to show. I'm simply trying to explain how to use a feature in Affinity Photo.

[@JulesMoyaert_photo]

Excellent! Thank YOU!!!

[@RobinWhalley]

You're welcome.

[@jed1947]

Embedding the RAW layer into Photo and popping back to Develop was a revelation to me! I had wanted to see more about using the new luminosity mask, but I learned a lot more than that. If you don't mind, what monitor, especially size, do you use? Do you calibrate to different color profiles with different editing programs? Thank you.

[@RobinWhalley]

The monitor I recorded the video on is a 27" 5K Apple Retina iMac. I use a Datacolor SpyderX Pro calibration unity to calibrate it along with my other computers. You should calibrate for the screen rather than the individual applications.

[@richardturner81]

I do like this way of editing images. Dxo exports to affinity photo 2 seems to give lots of flexibility and good results. Nice video. Out of interest Robin do you have a preferred system for editing? Would you tend to just stay in photolab for instance or use affinity photo as well for most of your work?

[@RobinWhalley]

I've tended to do most of my work in PhotoLab and then switch into Photoshop because of the Luminoisty Maksing tools. With the new releases of Affinity Photo I'm now using it more. I'll typically start in PhotoLab and then export a DNG to Affinity Photo. I have it on my list to cover this in the future video.

[@iandobson8846]

What are the benefits of luminosity masking compared to a straight masking to adjust the exposure etc.?

[@RobinWhalley]

When you lighten an area of an image using a regular mask, you affect all the tones in that area. It doesn't matter if the pixels are light or dark, you affect them all. But when you use a Luminosity Mask, you can control which tones you want to affect. For example you could lighten just the midtones but not affect the shadows. In my opinion it creates a better, more natural effect.

[@iandobson8846]

@@RobinWhalley Thanks for the reply Robin. I have just purchased the new Affinity deal. I've mainly been using Luminar Neo recently and that doesn't seem to have the feature.

[@RobinWhalley]

@@iandobson8846 No, I haven't seen this feature anywhere else. The nearest is in paid Luminoisty Masking plugins for Photoshop. You can also do something sinilar using the Blend Ranges controls in Affinity Photo but it's not as visual and more difficult in my opinion.

[@Eigil_Skovgaard]

Could this be done with the Link option (as long as the raw file rests in the same folder) - I feel the file size is building up with the raw file embedded (already enlarged by dxo in this case). Where is the xmp or the equivalent file in Affinity holding the raw editing - and is it readable as a text file? Finally, and please excuse my beginner questions - is there a way to convert raw editing made in Adobe to work in Affinity's Raw Persona?

[@RobinWhalley]

Thanks for the questions. Yes you can use the link file option providing you don't move the RAW file. It will keep the file size down as you say. If you use this option, I would be tempted to merge the layers to a new consolidated pixel layer once you've done the blending. That way if you do break the link to the RAW file you still have the image you created. Affinity Photo doesn't use XMP or external information files. I strongly suspect the editing data is held within the RAW layer whether that's a linked RAW layer or embedded. I'm not quite sure what you mean by RAW editing in Adobe but there are a couple of things you can do that might work. 1. Export the edited file as a DNG file. You can then open that in Affinity Photo for editing in the Develop Person (I don't think this is what you are getting at). 2. Save your file in the Photoshop PSD format which Affinity Photo can read.Quite how it will handle your RAW editing I'm not sure because I don't fully understand the question.

[@Eigil_Skovgaard]

@@RobinWhalley Thank you. The PSD format could be an option as it at the same time facilitates the use of Bridge as a file organizer (as far as I have understood). My somewhat imprecise question is this: Is there any way to convert the content of the xmp files to render the same result in Affinity raw? Masks excluded of course.

[@RobinWhalley]

@@Eigil_Skovgaard Not that I know of. It's probably best to ask that one on the Affinity Photo forum. Someone like James Ritson at Affinity would know if there is.

[@capturesintime7080]

Can I ask... If I have two exposure bracketed images... Is this a possible simple way to blend them together... exposure blending is something I really need to know how to do in affinity... but im really struggling to find a video for affinity photo two that simply shows me how to exposure blend two photos of the same scene together... I appreciate you have another video for this and ive watched it a few times but I always get lost with it... this potentially looks an easier method. Id just raw edit both images bring them into the photo persona and then blend them as you have here right?

[@RobinWhalley]

There are a few methods of doing what you are trying to do in Affintiy Photo. You can use the Blending Ranges feature, Luminosity Range Mask or Painting through a Luminosity Mask. Which is best will depend on the images you are trying to merge. Here are a few of my videos that demonstrate the process: Blending Rnages: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q5K9fJSvhr-hY8U Painted Luminosity Blending: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mWbCmXmqnNxph68 Another: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gnbagIx3lK6teLM This video that you have commented on is the Luminosity Range Mask. Hopefully one of these will help.

[@capturesintime7080]

@@RobinWhalley thanks so much for the reply… what guidance can you give on what method to use when? I think its that aspect that confuses me the most.

[@capturesintime7080]

@@RobinWhalley i really want to keep my post processing as simple as i can… is there one method you can recommend to learn first that works for the most part in all situations. Generally i try to shoot in a single exposure but pre sunrise or post sunset are mostly the situations id prob want to use this for or just for scenes where the sky is very bright and the foreground in shade for instance.

[@RobinWhalley]

@@capturesintime7080 There's never one technique that's guaranteed to work every time. The nearest you will find is painting through a luminosity selection as I did in kzbin.info/www/bejne/mWbCmXmqnNxph68.

[@capturesintime7080]

@@RobinWhalley thanks…. Ill start there and then add in the others! You have been a real help… i defonately need to tackle this issue as its something ive wanted to know for a few years now… but as soon as i get away from the basic global editing i do get a bit lost… especially when adding multiple layers with masks… i get the logic of it but the practicality of doing it has me lost

[@ianmcginley9196]

Hi Robin I was an early adopter of affinity all 3 apps several years ago. This time I can't link DXO to export to affinity 2. I am well aware of the issues with MSIX v MSI and I have to export to affinity 1 , save it and then open with affinity 2. It's ponderous. I have scoured the affinity fora for this and details of fixes but haven't been able to make it work. I love the software and will definitely stick with it but wanted to ask if you had any easier workarounds. thanks

[@ianmcginley9196]

Using windows 10 BTW

[@RobinWhalley]

I don't use Windows so I don't really know what to advise. On a Mac, I simply select to export the file to an application and then set Affinity Photo 2 as the application. After that I select my format (DNG usually) and then export. Affinity then launches and opens my file loading it to either the Develop Persona or Photo Persona. I'm assuming your issue relates eitehr to the Windows version specifically or to a Windows limitation. Sorry

[@ianmcginley9196]

@@RobinWhalley thanks for the reply

[@chrisbartlett8146]

Hi Robin You said you sent the DNG file from DXO photolab to Affinity photo 2 but I can not find a workable path to Affinity photo2 Can you Help?

[@RobinWhalley]

I just chose the Export to Application option by clicking the small export icon to the right of the "Export" button. Then in the Export dialog I selected the Application I wanted using the Browse button.

[@RobinWhalley]

@@chrisbartlett8146 I'm using Apple which is probably why I don't have a problem. Nice woraround though. I will try to remember it. Thanks of sharing.

[@metternich05]

Not nearly as advanced as Lumenzia but a great step in the right direction. Right now about the only thing preventing me from fully converting to Affinity Photo is the luminosity mask workflow. Vanilla PS is not better but if complete with Lumenzia it's still way ahead.

[@RobinWhalley]

That's true but then you can still do most of the things that you can with Lumenzia if you know how.

[@mihaimihai7505]

Better use AEB from start. Solve all edit...

[@RobinWhalley]

You’ve missed the point of the video. This is one way to use the Range Mask. It was intended to show how the mask works.

[@ianwatson3393]

I am out of breath !

[@RobinWhalley]

There was a lot to fit in.

[@paulreid7761]

Really brilliant video. Thank you.

[@RobinWhalley]

Glad you enjoyed it. Thank you