Are you ready to improve your skills and knowledge of Affinity Photo?

If you ever find yourself wondering how to do something in Affinity Photo, then this book is for you. It doesn’t matter if you are a novice or advanced Affinity user, you are likely to discover something you didn’t know by reading this book.

In Affinity Photo How To you will learn how to perform common tasks such as how to crop a photo, how to sharpen an image or how to create a mask. But in doing so you will learn much more than just a collection of simple techniques.

Each chapter of the book focusses on a different activity, and using instructive exercises, explains how Affinity Photo works. Importantly, it links what might seem unrelated activities together, to build your understanding and editing skill in Affinity Photo. By the end of this book, you will find you are delving deep into Affinity Photo to perform tasks such as easily creating complex selections and masks.

Here are just a few examples of what you will learn:

• How to customise almost every aspect of the Affinity interface.
  

• How to control the many different options when exporting an image, like colour space, bit depth and image resolution.
  

• How to edit images using different colour formats for example RGB and CMYK, but how to do this without changing the image format.
  

• How to easily add layer effects including shadows, outlines, and glows.
  

• How blending modes work and how you can use these with different Affinity Photo tools like the Paint Brush.
  

• How to use the Refine Selection dialog to greatly improve the accuracy of a selection automatically.
  

What may seem like a simple topic will probably delve much deeper into Affinity Photo than you imagine.

Accompanying the many exercises in this book are sample files. You can download these from the author's website, allowing you to follow along in your own copy of Affinity Photo.

Packed with tips and advice, this book is a valuable resource for all users of Affinity Photo.

Revealing the Powerful Photoshop Masking techniques of the professional image editor.

In this clearly explained book, Landscape Photographer Robin Whalley reveals a powerful collection of Photoshop techniques. Tools enabling you to create complex and impressive photography in minutes. You don’t need to spend hours in Photoshop once you understand a few simple techniques.

Photoshop masks are one of the most powerful and flexible editing tools you can use. They make possible complex adjustments. Adjustments that can transform a photograph. Take the cover of this book for example. The image was taken in the middle of the day. And yet it’s been transformed into a moody nigh time scene. All of this was achieved using masks and is explained step by step for you to follow.

• Produce detailed and complex masks in minutes not hours.
  
• Create detailed Channel Masks, allowing you to replace a boring sky or change a colour.
  
• Quickly generate Luminosity Masks to target adjustments on the highlights, shadows or midtones of an image.
  
• Make complex selections using the latest Photoshop CC tools as well as traditional techniques. It doesn’t matter how old your version of Photoshop is, there will be techniques you can use.
  
• Quickly clean up masks with a simple brushing technique. This enables you to beautifully blend adjustments, essential in creating realistic photography.
  

The complex subject of Photoshop masking has been distilled into this easy to use book. Featuring many examples, you can follow along using the actual image files supplied on the author’s website.

Harness the Power of Photoshop Layers in Your Photography

Concise, easy to follow steps makes learning Photoshop a snap

If you want to achieve professional results, use professional techniques. Layers, Layer Masks and Blending Modes are the tools of choice amongst professional image editors.

In this concise book, Landscape Photographer Robin Whalley guides us through these essential tools and techniques. Specifically designed to meet the needs of the photographer, this guide is packed with easy to follow examples and advice.

How this book will help you

The book is arranged into three sections:

• Section 1 explains how to work with layers and how you can apply their power to your photography.
  
• Section 2 looks at using masks together with layers. You will learn how to easily target adjustments onto precise areas of an image. You will also learn powerful techniques to create complex masks with ease. The section concludes with a detailed example, combining two images seamlessly into one.
  
• Section 3 examines how Photoshop blending modes can be used with layers. It will help you quickly understand the different blending modes, what they do and how you can use them. Several blending mode recipes are presented to reinforce your understanding of the different modes. The section concludes with a powerful demonstration of blending modes, combining photography and image textures into beautiful digital art.
  

To support the book’s many examples, Robin provides the images. These can be downloaded from his website, allowing you to practice on your own computer. This is a concise book focused on helping you develop your Photoshop skills. Don’t waste valuable time, needlessly wading through pager of filler content.

If you want to learn Photoshop Layers fast, read this book.

The techniques in this book can be used with any version of Adobe Photoshop supporting layers, including the latest Creative Cloud release. Please note, the book doesn’t apply to Elements or Lightroom.

Quickly learn Affinity Photo image editing

Affinity Photo is the hot photo editing package from Serif. It can compete head on with the latest version of Photoshop. It’s also affordable, incredibly powerful and exceptionally flexible. But all this power and flexibility brings its own challenges.

Just like Photoshop, Affinity Photo can be confusing and tricky to learn. Even with a background in Photoshop image editing it’s likely you will miss a lot of its features. And unlike Photoshop you won’t have an endless choice of books to learn from. Which is where “Essential Affinity Photo” comes to the rescue.

In this comprehensive yet easy to follow book, Landscape Photographer Robin Whalley explains the core features of Affinity Photo Desktop. Written in his unique, easy to understand style, Robin explains logically the essential techniques you need to know to learn Affinity Photo. Follow this book and its examples and you will soon be editing images as though you have been using the software for years.

The book is arranged into a series of lessons that focus in on the essential image editing skills. Each lesson builds on the previous one, minimising repetition and saving you valuable time.

You will learn about:

• Different Affinity Photo Personas, what these do and how to navigate them.
  
• The Develop Persona, using it to convert a Raw photo file into a high-quality image.
  
• How layers form the backbone of the Photo Persona and how to use them to improve your editing.
  
• Different Adjustment layers, filters and live filters you can apply, to fine tune and improve your photography.
  
• How to convert your images to black and white as well as important techniques such as Dodging and Burning.
  
• Creating and using layer masks to precisely target your adjustments to specific areas of an image.
  
• Harnessing the power of the Export Persona.
  
• And lots more.
  

Throughout the book there are examples and exercises for you to follow. The author provides the images for these on his website, allowing you to follow along on your own computer.

You won’t need to wade through hundreds of pages to find answers. This is a comprehensive and concise guide to help you learn Affinity Photo. It doesn’t matter if you are a complete novice or have some experience of Affinity Photo, this book could help improve your Affinity Photo editing.

Lightroom is powerful and easy to use. But it isn’t always obvious how to achieve the best results. In fact, many of the most powerful features are buried away and easily overlooked. It’s also not obvious in which order to apply your adjustments, which can make a substantial difference to your results.

This comprehensive, yet concise guide to Lightroom’s Develop module, is organised into four sections:

Section 1 – Lays the foundations to help you work quickly and effectively in Lightroom. The features covered here are often ignored, yet they can make it much easier to edit your photographs.

Section 2 – Provides detailed guidance for all the adjustment tools. Use this section to develop your skills, and then later as a reference. It’s also packed with hard earned tips from many thousands of hours using Lightroom.

Section 3 – Explains how to make selective adjustments to your images. Creating selections is one of the most valuable editing techniques you can develop. Despite this, surprising few people can do it well. This section will guide you through creating detailed and complex selection with ease.

Section 4 – Helps you develop your Lightroom workflow. You can then apply this to the three comprehensive examples. RAW files to accompany the examples can be downloaded from the authors website, allowing you to follow along on your own computer.

This book will help you:

• Fix common problems with your images.
• Learn how to reveal the full potential in your photos, making them stand out from the crowd.
• Create complex and precise selections that leave most people wondering how.
• Develop a standard workflow you can apply to any image, for great results.
• Use important tools and adjustments, but also understand why.
• Understand the best way to tackle any image and what order to apply your adjustments.
• Find new and powerful uses for tools you may previously have ignored.

The Photographers Guide to Lightroom’s Develop module has been written and illustrated with the latest Lightroom Classic CC edition (release January 2018). But if you’re using an earlier version of Lightroom, it’s still relevant but you won’t have access to all the features covered.

This book has been written for photographers by a photographer. It assumes only a limited knowledge of Lightroom’s Develop module but will quickly build your skills to an impressive level. It doesn’t matter if you find Lightroom a challenge, everything is explained with the author’s characteristic, no-nonsense approach.

If you want to achieve excellent results fast, follow the guidance in this book.

Adobe Photoshop CC Made Easy

Most people would love to use Adobe Photoshop but find it somewhere between difficult and impossible to learn. If you’re one of them, this book can help you. Photoshop can be easy to learn by understanding a few essential tools and techniques.

You need to stop trying to remember how to use lots of complicated tools. Instead, focus your attention on learning the essentials that make Photoshop easy to use. Follow this book’s chapters, completing the exercises and you’ll soon be editing photos as though you’ve been using the software for years.

This book is carefully organised into a series of lessons, each exploring an essential editing tool or technique. As you progress, each new lesson builds on the previous one, helping minimise repetition, saving you time and making Photoshop easy. It also allows you to go in-depth into the areas that are important.

You will learn about:

• The most important elements of the Photoshop interface as well as how to customise these to your needs.
• Using Adobe Camera RAW to convert RAW photo files into high-quality images.
• How layers form the backbone of Photoshop and how to use them to improve your editing.
• Retouching techniques to clean up dust spots, as well as more complex tasks like duplicating and moving objects in a photo.
• Correcting tone and colour in an image using the Levels and Curves tools. The power hidden in these simple tools will surprise you.
• How to convert your images to black and white as well as important techniques like Dodging and Burning.
• Creating and using layer masks to precisely target your adjustments on specific areas of an image.
• Sharpening your photos for professional results.
• A workflow you can use to consolidate all these tools and techniques into an easy to apply approach.
  
• And lots more.

Throughout the book there are many examples and exercises for you to follow. You can download the practice photos for these from my website, allowing you to follow along on your own computer. By the end of this book you will be confidently using Adobe Photoshop CC to edit your photos.

This is a comprehensive and concise guide to learning Adobe Photoshop CC. You don’t need to wade through hundreds of pages trying to understand how to edit a photo. It doesn’t matter if you are a complete novice or have some experience of Adobe Photoshop CC, this book could help improve your photo editing.

This book could be your best investment in learning Photoshop.

Learn to manage your images like a professional.

Are you struggling with too many photos cluttering up your computer?

Do you find you can’t keep pace with the growth in your image library?

Can you find the photo you need quickly, or are you wasting time browsing thousands of images?

Are you faced with a backlog of photos, unsure of the best way to organise them?

In this comprehensive yet easy to follow guide, Landscape Photographer Robin Whalley explains how Lightroom can help you manage your photo library. Written in his unique, easy to understand style, Robin explains logically everything you need to know. Even if you find yourself with a huge backlog of images, this book will help you to wrestle back control.

Section 1 provides an overview of the Lightroom Catalog and the important feature of the Library Module. This ensures you understand the most important tools and can be used as quick reference guide later.

Section 2 then explains how to apply the tools of the Library Module to real-world problems and situations.

You will learn:

• Why the Catalog is critical to Lightroom and how to avoid some costly but very common mistakes.
  
• How to organise your digital photographs and how this relates to Lightroom’s folders.
• How to import photos to Lightroom, while using automation to save yourself time later.
• To apply Flags, Ratings and Labels to your photos, helping you sort and organise your photo library.
• To quickly find photos, even from a library with many thousands of images.
• To create and manage a vocabulary of keywords, adding these to your photos.

This book doesn’t have you wading through hundreds of pages to find answers. It’s a comprehensive and concise guide to quickly help you to manage your photos like a professional. Seemingly complex processes are summarised into a simple to apply but effective workflow.

Follow this guide to regain control of your photo library.

Learn 9 Techniques and Become Confident with Photoshop

In this clearly explained and well-illustrated book, Landscape Photographer Robin Whalley guides you through the maze that’s Photoshop. With step by step instruction you quickly learn the essential tools and techniques. More importantly, you discover most of Photoshop can be ignored. To edit and enhance photography, you only need a handful of techniques.

This impressive little book was developed specifically for photographers. It’s structure and language make it accessible and easily understood, even by the novice user. Despite this, seasoned Photoshop users can also learn a thing or two.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve previously tried and failed to learn Photoshop. This book will cut through the confusion of Photoshop options. By focussing on the key tools and techniques, it’s possible to make sense of and quickly master Photoshop. A few powerful tools have been a constant in Photoshop for many years and for good reason. These are the same tools and techniques professional image editors turn to daily.

Following this book and you quickly learn:

• To evaluate images, quickly identify the necessary adjustments.
  
• How to navigate the confusing Photoshop interface, allowing you to work quickly and confidently.
  
• How to remove dust spots and unwanted objects to clean up your photos.
  
• Master the confusing Photoshop curves tool. One of the most powerful adjustment you can use.
  
• How to perform colour correction to make images more appealing.
  
• How to work with layers for special effects and control over your editing.
  
• To create and work with masks for seamless, targeted image enhancements.
  
• About different Color Space adjustments so your photography always looks good.
  

By the end of this book you will feel confident in using Photoshop to enhance and transform your photography.

The book is illustrated throughout with well-structured examples. Supporting image files can be downloaded from the author’s website, allowing you to follow along on your own computer. This book is packed with techniques, advice and guidance to ensure you’re quickly work effectively with Photoshop.

Don’t delay learning Photoshop. Get this book.

Save Time, Money and Frustration

It was a sad email that brought this book about. I wish it was unique, but it wasn’t; I receive emails just like this, all too frequently.

The gentleman in question was delighted when he was asked to show his photography. He tried hard to print his photos for the exhibition, but eventually gave up in frustration. As well as the expense of a new printer, the paper and the ink, he was running short of time. He decided his best option was to send the photos to a printing service. What came back shocked him; the photos were worse than his own attempts and that’s when he contacted me for help. We did solve his problem, quite easily as it happens, and I decided I had to write this book.

This book is here to help everyone who’s ever struggled to print their photography.

Creating prints to match your computer screen is something you can achieve. What prevents most people is misinformation, fragmented systems, and seemly technical problems. This book presents a clear and easily understood approach to printing photography. One you can follow repeatedly, to achieve perfect prints every time.

In this step by step guide you learn:

• The essentials of Colour Management, to ensure the colours you see on the computer look the same in your prints.
• Understand how to select the best resolution for your printer and paper choice.
• How to soft proofing your images so you know exactly how the prints will turn out. And if they don’t look right, how you can fix them.
• Configure the print driver in your computer to reproduce colours and tones accurately.
• To prepare images for printing by a third-party. Be certain the printed photos will match your screen rather than relying on luck.
• How to select a paper to enhance and do justice to your photography.
• To avoid common problems encountered when printing.

You can easily follow and apply the approach in this book. It doesn’t matter if intend to print yourself or send your photos to a third party. This book will help you produce consistent, high quality prints for less than the cost of a branded ink cartridge.

Avoid frustration, wasted time and expensive. Follow this systematic approach to photo printing.

Powerful techniques to sharpen your photos like a professional.

In this comprehensive book, Landscape Photographer Robin Whalley explains the tools and techniques you can use to sharpen your photography in Lightroom. Every element of the sharpening and noise reduction process is covered, from the basics through to advanced techniques. Packed with advice and following a no-nonsense approach, you will quickly learn an effect method to sharpening and noise reduction. A methodology that can dramatically improve the quality of your images. Nothing is withheld.

• Balance noise reduction and sharpening.
  
• Produce a dramatic three-dimensional appearance in images, using a little-known brush technique.
  
• Assess images to identify the type and levels of sharpening required.
  
• Apply a simple sharpening workflow around which Lightroom has been developed.
  
• Optimise images for screen or print output.
  
• Recognise and avoid common sharpening problems.
  

This book takes you far beyond simple sharpening by numbers. You will learn how to optimise each image, achieving results comparable with the professionals.

As well as easy to follow instructions, the book contains three full length examples. The reader can follow these on their own computer, using the photo RAW files provided. Every aspect of sharpening and noise reduction is explained, step by step.

At the end of the book is a code giving free access to a 1.5-hour video course. The course was developed by the author, specifically to support photographers with sharpening and noise reduction in Lightroom.

Fully revised & updated August 2018

Covers DxO and Google versions of Nik Silver Efex Pro 2

Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 quickly gained an enthusiastic following amongst photographers’ keen to produce dramatic black and white photography. Today, it still enjoys a strong following and for good reason. It helps you to quickly produce photographs that could take many hours using other photo editors. Despite this, a lot of photographers still don’t realise the full potential of their work.

The secret to success with Nik Silver Efex Pro is like most things in life. It’s knowing what to do to achieve the desired outcome.

This is where this book can help you.

• It thoroughly explains every control in the Silver Efex software. Not by using vague descriptions, but by examining the effect of the controls on actual images.
  
• You will find recommendations about which sliders to use to achieve specific results.
• There are tips spread throughout the book explaining how to accomplish dramatic results as well as improve your photo editing.
• It explains the order in which you should apply adjustments to your image to improve their appearance (it’s not the order the interface suggests).
• There are ideas about how to pre-process your photos before converting them black and white.

Contained in this book are four full length examples, detailing image conversions using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. To support the worked examples, you can download the starting images from the author's website and follow his editing on your own computer.

This book will help you achieve dramatic black & white conversions with your images.

Have you ever questioned why professional photographers achieve consistently better results?

Being a professional landscape photographer doesn’t make you a better photographer than an amateur. All it means is you earn your living using your photography, but with that comes an added pressure. Unlike when an amateur goes out with their camera, as a professional you must capture good photos every trip. If you don’t you won’t be able to cover your costs, pay the bills and would have a very short career.

In this book, landscape photographer Robin Whalley lifts the lid on how to capture consistently good landscape photography. Imagine being able to venture out, knowing that you’ll return with at least a few good shots and possibly many more.

If you think this is down to luck, think again. Luck does play a part, but it’s mainly down to following a different approach. An approach you can adopt as well to improve your photography.

In this book you will learn many important points to improve your landscape photography including:

• Why changing your camera for the latest megapixel monster could be a big mistake.
  
• Which accessories are the most important to ensuring good results when photographing the landscape.
• How to find the right light for the right subjects and when not to bother.
• How to ensure you’re consistently in the right place at the right time to capture the best light.
• And much, much more to help you shoot great landscape photography.

Written with the beginner and intermediate landscape photographer in mind, this book is packed with years of hard-won experience from out in the field. Some of this even appears so obvious when you first hear it that you wonder why you never realised. Unfortunately, good photographers don’t often share this vital information even though it’s the key to improved results.

Don’t struggle in ignorance.