 Welcome to another Riding Edge vlog. Today we're going to do a edit with Affinity Photo. It's been a while since I've done one of these and I just downloaded the 1.7 update and I thought well we should talk about that a little bit. If you don't use Affinity Photo, you use a different editing software, this video might not be for you or you might be interested in seeing what Affinity Photo has to offer in editing black-and-white photography. The image I'm going to work on is one I just recently took, came across this scene, hopped out of the car, took a quick shot and I really kind of like it so I think we'll use it as the image to edit. And the way we're going to edit this image is something I've only started doing last night. We're going to convert this photo from a digital file in the tone mapping persona and Affinity Photo. It's an approach that I've never done before. It's an approach I've never done before except for last night of course but I'm finding that there's potential here so I want to we're going to go ahead and do this photo using the tone mapping persona just to show another way, an alternative way to convert to black-and-white. Now this 1.7 update really is seems to be just more of a performance boost, kind of a performance update. You know on my old computer I'm happy to say that I can even see the effects of that update. The raw developing does seem to go quicker. The brushes seem a little snappier. So we're going to head into the office. I'm going to have a raw image loaded up on the computer and take first-band. Okay now we're starting with this raw image in the develop persona. We're going to try and get this looking good. Something that I've noticed on this new version of Affinity Photo is that the histograms seem to do a better job of representing what I'm seeing here. Now my older version of Affinity Photo, the histogram never corresponded very well with what I was seeing on the screen. I'll make sure I try to preserve these highlights though. I don't need to real contrast the image here. I'm trying to work with a fairly flat image to start with. We're going to be taking this into the tome mapping persona. I think we're looking pretty good right here. So one thing you need to be aware of, this little icon here, the assistant options, I'm going to click on that and make sure you're exporting, outputting your raw in a 32-bit HDR for this black and white conversion. Typically I would use a 16-bit and I'd be using a plug-in like SilverFX Pro. But for this approach I'm going to be using the biggest file with the most information I can get. I've got my tone curve set to take no action. It's basically just as raw data as you can get. So I'm going ahead and hit develop. I think what I've got going here looks fine. So now I'm going to go up here to the tone mapping persona. Click on that and when it gets finished here it's going to look terrible. Now last night's the first time I've actually ever done this. So I might be a little clumsy at it right now. Now what I want to do here is come over here to the tone compensation lever and I'm going to dial it all the way back. So basically taking away anything that the tone compensation was doing and I'm going to turn this in the black and white right here by taking away all the saturation. Now I'm going to come up here to local contrast. I'm going to turn that up to where it looks, where it starts looking good. I'm going to adjust the black point. Now I don't want to turn the local contrast up too high. It starts to look awfully over-processed. So that's that's nothing. I'm going to turn it up here to where it looks good. Around 50% looks pretty good. Just a black point just a little bit. Now I'm pretty happy with how quickly the black and white image is already coming together just by using these few levers, these few sliders. Now I think I'm going to go ahead and finish this in the photo persona, but I think I really like this because it looks pretty good. That's all that is for the tone mapping. It's pretty basic and apply. Now I might as well go ahead and crop this image a little bit so we can tighten it up a little. I shot a little looser than I probably should have. I was a little limited on time and I didn't want to trespass to take the picture. So this is kind of where we ended up. I'm going to straighten the horizon just a little bit. I think it just fills a little off to me and I think that looks pretty good. Okay now I'm going to go over here to the levels and I'm going to check my highlights and I really want to brighten up the flowers in the field. I'm going to just ignore what's happening in the sky right now. I'm just going to try to brighten up this area here. These are white flowers and I want that to be evident. I'm going to bring in some of the dark areas, some of the blacks back in a little bit at a little contrast. Okay I think I'm going to go with that. What I'm working on here is this area in here. This is my all these adjustments I'm making is just for this here. The one I'm going to do is hit the B key for my brush. Make sure it's on black and I'm going to leave the opacity at 50% because I'm going to bring the sky back to what it was in a couple steps. At this first pass we're going to go over this top part background at 50%. I think that looks right. I'm removing about 50% of what I did to it with the brush on black. I'm going to do the rest of the sky but I'm going to try to keep the tone of the tree where it is there because I kind of like that. I'm going to add the rest of the 50% back to just the clouds. I'm not trying to make it look stormy. I want to overdo the clouds but I do want them to have texture because it was a pretty interesting sky. I had a lot of nice detail. I think that looks pretty good. Let's make sure I didn't miss anything here. It should be about 100% now. Okay, it looks good. I'm going to go ahead and flatten the image. I think this looks pretty good. I really do like this. Let's check the levels again here to see where we're at. Hold down the Option key and grab the highlight slider. You can see the sky's back in with the level of the field. You can see where just a little bit of the white, the dark specks are. It shows where there white is that has no detail. That's what looks about right. Let's just check the shadow highlights. See if just adding a little more in the shadows makes it pop just a little bit more. There we go. I think that looks pretty good. Something here is bugging me is this cell tower back here in the background. Let's go ahead and see what we can do about that. Looks like I have a couple spots on the sensor as well. The in-painting brush tool. What happens here? A little spot here. Well, that's it. I'm pretty impressed with this update. I really like what I'm getting using the tone mapping as a way to convert my images to black and white. What I'll do now is I'll flatten this image as I'll put a border around it as I always do. Do the math. Add a new field layer. Drag it behind and there you go. Just export it and we're done. Now typically I would use SilverFX Pro to do my black and white conversions but I really am seeing there's a lot of potential here editing in a 32-bit file. It gives me a lot of room to to do some stuff but the final image really is being done in the photo persona. The fine-tuning of the image but I get there pretty quick using the tone mapping persona. Well, that's it guys. Thanks for coming along for another the edit with Affinity Photo and this would be 1.7 update. It's looking really good. I think I'll be using this for another two years. Until next time, thanks for coming along for the ride.