Hi, I’m Robin Whalley, a UK based Landscape Photographer and Author of over 20 books on Photography and photo editing.
This channel is all about how you can shoot great landscape photography and how to edit your photos for maximum effect. Every week I publish a new video. Sometimes I'm out in the field shooting landscapes. Other times I'm explaining how I edit my photos with tools like Photoshop, Lightroom, On1 and the Nik Collection.
I want to share with you how easy it can be to improve an image with the right tools and approach. If you’ve learned how to watch a video on You Tube, you can learn how to shoot breathtaking landscape photography.
Robin Whalley Landscape Photographer & Author
P.S. If you can’t find what you’re looking for on my channel, then contact me. It might just be covered in my next video.
Really enjoy your channel, it's always clear and concise. I've switched from Lightroom and Photoshop to Darktable and Affinity Photo so your videos have been very helpful. One issue I have since moving from Adobe is printing. I used to let Photoshop handle the colour management instead of the printer so I look forward to you covering this in another video if this is something you're still planning on covering.
Thanks. I work hard to make the videos clear and concise, so it's nice to hear this. Printing is a big topic. I've already done a couple of long Webinar sessions with Datacolor, which should help ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5Sd9S9beh6U.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VUDQtKwAnGE.html Don't be fooled by the fact that I am talking about printing with DxO PhotoLab, as it still applies to Affinity Photo. The feature you used in Photoshop to manage the colour is part of the print driver, even though it appears in a Photoshop dialog. In fact, if you go to the "Printer Options" section of the Print dialog in Affinity Photo, you will be able to access and configure your printer, including turning off colour management. If you use an Epson printer, you can use the Epson ColorSync feature to match a colour profile here as well. If you want to learn about soft proofing in Affinity Photo, watch this. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Lb8_yxRK7gA.html
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?
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.
great tuto. why not using silver efex pro ? i am surprised you could have the right WB so easily in LRC because temp slider cannot go so low and requires adobe dng editor and creating a profile or use the CLIR profiles or presets made by Tomee Lee Jones (sold by Kolari now)
Silver Efex is great for the Black and White conversion, but it doesn't have an option for the Haltion effect. For that, you need to combine it with the Color Efex filters. I've done videos in the past, but I may do an updated one soon. As for the white balance, It wasn't as close as perhaps it looked in the video. I do have some IR Camera Profiles that I've created to fix the problem but you can do it for yourself very easily. I demonstrate how in my Colour Infrared video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9kYiVLe93R0.html
Just looked exposure x7 site and it looks nice. Does color efex make similar halation ? I see a bundle with snap art which could be a substitute to end of life impression. What do you think ? Do you have tuto on snapart ?
FINALLY! So many other videos are showing me how to create masks using the selection tool, but I wanted to do this the way I used to do it in Photoshop so I could save the path! Thanks so much for sharing this, Robin.
Huh, you need to reviews of a load of these other plug ins - never seen Exposure X7 before! Always just used SilverEfex. Oh, and Protech are awesome, had all my IR cameras (and most recently my Z5 full spectrum) done by them!
Its a very simple workflow - I achieve a similar halation effect in Nik Color Efex by applying the Glamour Glow filter to highlights only, but the simplicity of this approach is very appealing. Only one problem - is Exposure X7 still being developed? It missed the last annual upgrade cycle ...
Yes, you can do something similar but with more work in Nik. I've done a video about it in the past. As for Exposure X7, I contacted the company a few months ago to ask the same thing. They assured me they are still supporting and developing the Exposure product.
Robin, Great commentary, analysis and explanation. I would call this mentoring, a concept that is not understood in photography courses. So thanks for your views point on RAW processing.
There is a Document menu in the latest desktop version of Affinity Photo and it works just the way that I demonstrate in the video. Are you using the iPad version by any chance as that's diffferent?
You click on an infrered film preset. I'm not sure how much simpler it can be. Everything else I showed was what I do trying to get the best results I can. If you just want to create effective B&W infrared photos, the preset is all you really need.
@@RobinWhalley I was referring to all the steps you showed in your editing process. I have the IR preset and frequently use it. Having an IR -converted camera can really change the game.
You're welcome and I hope you find it useful. I also don't think its the Mac software to blam for profiles not working. I think Adobe changed the way the profiles work in their software.
Not really, although you could use it for that. It's aimed at anyone who takes photography seriously and wants to produce the highest quality images whether they are pro or amateur. A good example is if you want to enter a photo competition or produce prints or are part of a photo club. But it all you want to do is post small images on social media, it probably isn't the right tool.
You can use it as a standalone editor or you can install it to other compatible editors like Lightroom, Affinity Photo and Elements. All of these are detected during the installation. It's also possible to add other applications to install the plugin during the installation.
@@RobinWhalley Thank you. I tried to put the plugin I want to use inside the affinity photo plugin folder but it isn't detected. The plugin I would like to use is Grain2Pixel_SE_v5.3.8.9 but it probably can't be used. I also checked "allow unknown plugins to be used" but it doesn't change.
@@PaoloDurandetto It might not be a "true" plugin in the original sense. Adobe changed what they call a plugin recently to include extension panels but Affinity Photo doesn't support these. That's why we can't use extensions like TK Actions in Affinity Photo. I suggest contacting the company selling the plugin to explain that you want to install and use it with Affinity Photo to see what they suggest.
Just like I demonstrate in the video by adding a text box and then entering the information to that. If you are asking how to have Affinity to automatically pick up the information from the photo then I'm not aware of any way to do that at present.
Why does a radial gradient fill outside the dragged extend with a solid colour? In Photoshop it's transparent but this is not the case in Affinity. Gradient implies that the colors fade from the strongest colour to secondary then to nothing. Although I can see that Affinity is powerful, it does some nutty stuff with layers and gradients.
When Adobe upgraded the Gradient tool a couple of years ago they made the Gradient layer work a lot like the Affinity Photo gradient. This allows you to continue adjusting the gradient and transition. Where Photoshop is better is that it has presets you can select between. It sounds like you have been using the transparent to black preset which Photoshop then defaults to. In Affinity Photo the default is the White to Black transition. To make this transparent to black you just select the Gradient editor, click the white swatch and set the Opacity to 0%. It isn't nutty, it's just a different way of working.
The Pen Tool in Designer is only for drawing I believe. I don't use Designer very often but I don't recall being able to make selections with its Pen Tool.
Wonderful explanation. I've been using curves for years, but never knew exactly how and why things worked, I just experimented until I got the result I wanted.
Thanks so much for this and several other DXO centric tutorials! Have 2 questions: I'm a long time Fuji and LR 6 user. ( I refused to join the subscription model and stuck with Lr 6. Which worked fine as I didn't feel the need to upgrade my Fuji camera bodies once they got to 24mp. ) Just upgraded one body and now I need to upgrade my SW. DXO looks like the best available for printing Fuji Raw files from what I'm seeing. Do you have any other strong candidates? Also, is there a way to easily reference and learn what all the controls do and how they operate in DXO 7? My understanding of Lr6 is pretty solid but much of the DXO controls aren't named similarly and there are names that don't really explain functionality? .... Hope that makes sense
I don't follow your point about printing Fuji RAW files. DxO is excellent for processing Fuji RAW files and it has a good printing feature. If you want to stick with LR, try processing Fuji RAW files using DxO PureRAW. You will need to test this but it may be that the DNG files produced by PureRAW can be read by LR6. If you are interested in PhotoLab, then there is a guide available on the DxO website. userguides.dxo.com/photolab/en/
When I look at the compatibility list, Lumix G9 only seems to have Pure Raw V1 support. Are saying that Pure Raw 4 will process images from my G9 with full Deep Prime functionality (XD2)?
Where is Affinity located? I can’t find a corporate website. Do they operate out the back of a van? After searching for information on this company and coming with nothing but smiling twenty year olds I couldn’t possibly take them seriously.
Affinity is a brand created by Serif. Serif has been around for decades but was recently acquired by Canva which is worth billions. I have no idea why couldn’t find this and as for lots of smiling 20 year olds, that’s not what comes up when I search.
Hi Robin. I’m returning to photography, now I have more time andI have used Affinity in the past but there weren’t many tutorials available. I remember some of your original ones, but these updated ones are on another level. Thank you.
This is a particularly useful video, Robin... thanks! I have created Import presets I use, and sometimes use Adobe's Adaptive Presets (for the sky in particular), but I did not realize we could create our own custom Adaptive Presets... with an adjustable Amount slider! These form an excellent starting point for editing an image, and are a great timesaver.
Glad it was helpful. I see these sorts of Presets being sold for a lot of money, often with a lot of marketing hype surrounding them. I'm sure there are many people who benefit from them, but there are many more who can create them for themselves with a little help. Good luck.
I'm glad you liked the video. I wanted to do this because I've been receiving many emails and adverts trying to sell me "amazing" Lightroom Presets. There's nothing special about these; they are just Lightroom Adaptive Presets, so I wanted to share how people can create their own.
@@RobinWhalley I think the smartest thing Adobe did from the beginning was opening up Lightroom to make an ecosystem of plugin/preset products. (It helped kill Aperture.) But too much of it is trash, or easy to duplicate on your own. I do appreciate your videos and I own a couple of your Amazon ebooks.
I cannot get TK Plugins or to work with Affinity photo and CLiR infrared Plugins...Well the only thing I know it that the latter goes into a folder called CEP in PS. Sad TOO cause I really was ready to switch
I wasn't familiar with CLiR so I checked their website. This looks to be an extension panel rather than a "traditional" Photoshop plugin, especially given the CEP folder (CEP stands for Common Extensibility Platform). They are written in a different lanuage and use a different arrchitecture to traditional Photoshop Plugins. Adobe has confused things in recent years by calling some of these extension panels Plugins. They are built on web technologies because I'm guessing Adobe wants them to integrate with the mobile versions of their software. I'm not really up to date on this so some of my comments may be wrong.
@@RobinWhalley Thanks for explaining this to me. I really appreciate the explanation. I use it for infrared photography and it helps tremendously. But It seems I cannot make the switch.
No, it doesn't have a photo browser or Catalog like Lightroom. You can open multiple images in it for editing, and they exist as separate tabs, but I don't think that's what you mean.
This was excellent. I'm just starting with Affinity and was worried how masks would perform after coming from PS, but it looks like I wont have any problems now I have seen your tutorial. Thank you
Thanks. I have found quite a bit in common between the two packages, having worked with Photoshop since 2000 and Affinity Photo since its launch. If you have a lot of experience with Photoshop, you should be okay, but don't assume everything works in the same way. There are some differences, and I've found them annoying at times in the past. If you hit problems using the selection tools, see my Affinity Photo book "How To Select It." It should help.
An excellent video, Robin. I would like to see how to do this using Affinity Photo. Actually, I develop my RAW files in OM Workspace, so I'm not sure how any of this would apply.
I don't use the OM Workspace, so I can't say if there are any similar pitfalls to avoid. Also, with Affinity, I have found the tools more forgiving, and I haven't spotted anything to avoid.
@@RobinWhalley Hi Robin, I tried DXO PureRAW 4 yesterday and it is much better for developing raw files than OM Workspace. The output from PureRAW has lower noise and sharper details. It's almost like I got better lenses. My images always looked a little soft, now I know why.
I know it's a subjective preference, but it's driving me bananas that I cannot (as far as I can tell) invert the display of the quick mask so that it shows selected areas like you can in Photoshop. I also cannot change the color or opacity of the quick mask. If you're masking off a red object it becomes difficult to tell what you're doing. When I look at this example in my mind the trees are what's selected with the transparent red color, not the sky.
As far as I know, only thing you can change with the mask colour is making it Black, White or Transparent. That's in the dropdown to the immediate right of the Quick Mask icon in the toolbar. Using Black may make it more obvious but it makes it more difficult to edit at times.
Yes. In Affinity Photo you can create Macros to automate things. In my opinion the Macro system isn't as extensive or flexible as the Photoshop actions but you can still do a lot with it.
Whatever approach you use you still need to keep in mind the limits of the camera. With my M43 systems it seems easier to recover highlights while with the Fuji it's easier to recover shadows. This makes the M43 better suited to exposing to the right than the Fuji system in my opinion. But with either approach you can't exceed the camera limits. When I'm shooting landscapes, I still like to use filters to balance the exposure of the sky and ground irrespective of the camera. With woodland I don't use filters because I don't need to. It's really about understanding your system, so you know how it's likely to perform in different conditions and then you can decide how best to expose it. I also try to take into account the work that I'm likely to want to do in post processing.
Really enjoyed this…excellent tutorial and thank you. I hope I am wrong about my only complaint but, I think that the horizon is crooked. Maybe my eyes. 🤷
The horizon in the image is accurate. The landscape does slope off to the right. If you look at the trig point it's vertical. That's the only true reference in the image that we know will be level (unless the rocks have moved). I'm glad you liked the video.
Hi Robin, I'm enjoying watching the content of your Affinity Photo videos but the background music is driving me crazy! I'd much prefer to just hear your voice especially when you're explaining something complex where I need to concentrate!
I only did a few videos with music to try it out. After that I decided I didn't like it and dropped it. I like to keep trying things on RU-vid or my style won't develop.
