Make creative image adjustments

Expand the toolset in Photos by adding extensions from Affinity Photo

REQUIRES

Photos, Affinity Photo

you will learn

How to add extensions to Photos, then reduce haze and make buildings look like miniature toys

IT WILL TAKE

10 minutes

Apple’s Photos app is designed to help you import, organize, fix and share your shots. As a result, it’s an effective ‘one-stop shop’. However, while Photos enables you to fix common problems with color, composition and exposure, it lacks some of the more sophisticated tools found in other apps.

Powerful and versatile, Affinity Photo enables you to perform a wider range of edits than you can with Photos’ built-in tools. For a one-off purchase ($49.99), Affinity Photo provides many of the functions of Photoshop without an ongoing subscription fee — and it also brings extra editing tools to Photos through the use of extensions.

In our walkthrough, we’ll show you how to import Affinity Photo’s extensions into Photos and produce a creative and distinctive-looking image. Our scenic example photo suffers from cold, drab colors. The tones in the distant trees are washed out due to atmospheric haze.

We’ll demonstrate how to use Affinity Photo’s extensions to selectively adjust the contrast of the trees to reveal more color and detail. We’ll also increase the midtone contrast to reveal more delicate texture in the brickwork and create a picture with more punch.

After enhancing the shot’s colors and tones, we’ll show you how to use the Miniature extension to selectively blur parts of the image and mimic the effect of a tilt-shift lens. This selective blurring creates a narrow depth of field, helping to make subjects look like miniatures. George Cairns

Affinity Photo enables you to perform a wider range of edits