 Welcome to episode six From the balcony Hope you're all doing well staying healthy staying safe. Let's get into today's Lockdown video Today we're back on the iPad And we're talking affinity photo for the iPad now. I think it was episode two not that long ago I did a an affinity photo for the iPad video Did a little demonstration on how I was using it and at the time I was pretty disappointed with how the App was working on my on my iPad. It was crashing and Had some stability issues. I Went ahead and did the video Thinking that other people might not be having same issues as I am maybe they have a different version of the iPad and I want to be fair and balanced so Since I made that video shortly after I've had no issues whatsoever With the app running smoothly on my iPad Air 3. I Think they updated it took care of the the stability issues So I'm really enjoying my time with affinity photo for the iPad so I just wanted to be fair and Do another video that stated Where I was with the app and I'm much happier now I've been using the computer version of affinity photo For a couple years now for all my photo editing And I've been very happy with it. It's been a really good replacement for a Photoshop for me And so I was looking for this app to be something I could use Away from home For times when I needed something more mobile this I think this apps going to easily fill that Nets for me It might even encroach on Pushing out the computer version. It's it's that good. I'm really enjoying my time with this app And since I have all this extra time right now It's been a lot of fun to kind of explore what this app can do and I'm just scratching the surface right now So I figured well besides just talk about affinity photo and say it's working. Okay, I might as well just do a little demo on Another way I use this app So we're gonna do a black and white conversion Using the tone mapping persona in affinity photo It's probably not the most typical way to convert black and white images But I have really coming to like this up this approach So let's take a look at this demonstration on how I'm converting my digital files to black and white Well, I thought we'd start with this image that I used in the last affinity photo demonstration And we're going to convert that To black and white and the tone mapping persona We're gonna press the tone mapping icon above and you see it's pretty light So we're going to open the basic studio and we're going to Pull back the tone compression To where it looks about right And then we're gonna take the saturation and dial it down to on minus one hundred percent And we're gonna lighten it up just a little bit. It's a little dark Using the exposure and I like to add a little Tonal contrast just gives a little more definition You want to be careful with that though because you can overdo that Quite easy Now we're going to go to the overlays hit the brush and We're going to create a an overlay and make the brush a little bit bigger And I'm going to paint in the sky. I have the hardness set at 50% What I'm going to do is try to Bring back a little bit of the sky that we lightened up. I Don't want to be quite as light as As it is here So I'm going to go ahead and fast-forward to this As I do the overlay and we're going to go up to the basic studio We're going to darken that sky just a little bit. It looks pretty good Then we'll go back to the overlay a little bit I think I'm gonna I'm just going to lighten that with the opacity just a little bit I think it I think I dialed in just a little bit too much of the darkness. I think that looks pretty good I'm going to hit apply And we're going to go into the photo persona. I think I want to lighten this just a little bit just a little bit more So we're going to go into the brightness contrast adjustment layer We're just going to just lighten it up just a little bit add just a little bit of contrast and then we're going to go to levels And do another adjustment layer and going to be working on this we'll be working on for the sky we're going to want to Adjust the whites Just clean them up a little bit. The sky seems a little flat Add a little black back into the sky just to give it a little more definition And then we're going to go up to layers And we're going to hit plus and add a mask layer Basically what we're going to do is we're going to be removing everything from from that adjustment layer Except for the sky. So we're going to paint over the foreground We're going to make sure the brush we're going to click brush and we're going to make sure it's on black And that's going to remove everything we've done in The foreground and we're not touch the sky. So basically we're just taking this for back to Before the levels adjustment layer Except for the sky. I just want to click the box on the levels adjustment layer so I can see the difference. I Think that looks pretty good. Now we're going to go up to layers and Click on the pixel layer and we're going to Take this back to the develop persona This is where I'm going to I just like to double check and see where I'm clipping the blacks and the whites I Forgot to tell you how you toggle the highlights in the shadows You just go up to the dotted The three dots above and then you just scroll down that way. There's that's where you You can toggle the highlights in the shadows. It's kind of important information I want to take it pretty close to the edge So I'm getting close to pure black and close to close to white and some of the highlights in this scene The highlights are showing red when there's no detail when it's completely clipped and the blacks are showing in blue When there's no information there this just gives me a little more control and to Keep my image from from looking too flat when I'm happy with where the the whites and blacks are I'll go ahead and hit develop Details look pretty good So I'm gonna go up to layers click on The pixel there and you don't have to duplicate it, but I I like to do this. This is part of my workflow I just like to have that that extra extra pixel layer just in case I changed my mind later And I'm I don't often do a vignette, but I think we'll do a vignette on this one And what you're gonna want to do is is turn exposure down just a little bit and set the hardness to 100% first so you can Find the set the shape of the vignette gives you a nice Defined lines so you can kind of see the shape before you actually start softening it up And once you kind of get the shape that you want for your image You can then reduce this the hardness quite a bit and you'll just this is something you have to kind of play with and just to kind of see how you just to see How you like it do it to taste I Like it kind of subtle and this isn't something I do that often But I thought I'd just go ahead and show you how it's done on this on this video some sometimes it's it's a Can be a useful way of bringing your eye to where you want in the image Just have to play with the size The exposure and the hardness just to kind of get what you want then you can toggle it on and off to see the effects It looks pretty good It's kind of subtle and that's that's the finished photo I'll go ahead and I'm gonna add a border to this image. I've showed how to do that in My last video, so I'm not gonna go through that again. This is how I convert digital color images Into black and white using the tone mapping persona. Well, I hope you got something out of that demonstration When I do these Little demonstration videos I'm not saying this is how you should edit your photos. I'm just saying this is how I like to do it It could be wrong. I may be changing the way I do it six months from now But right now this is how I like to edit my photos I'm not claiming to be an expert I just I like to use my software in a practical way and If I'm getting the results I want that really that's all that matters and If you do it different And get the results you want that's all that matters So I'm gonna go ahead and in today's video right here Thanks for joining me out here on the balcony And up next time. Thanks for coming along for the ride