STEP BY STEP TIPS TO MAKE YOUR LANDSCAPES POP

Take your landscapes to the next level with this selection of techniques

01 BOOST THE TONES

Whether editing a Raw or a JPEG, the best place to begin enhancing tone and colour is the Develop Persona. Use the panel on the right to boost Contrast, Clarity and Saturation. Next click the Tones tab and go to Curves. Plot an S-shaped curve to add some punch.

02 ADD DRAMA TO SKIES

Skies often benefit from a darkening and an increase in contrast. While still in the Develop Persona, click the Overlays tab, then the gradient icon. Drag down from sky to land to add a pink overlay. Next, click Basic then lower Exposure and Highlights, and increase Contrast.

03 DODGE AND BURN

Hit the Develop button to fix the changes and enter the Photo Persona. Hit Cmd/ctrl+j to copy the layer and get the Dodge tool. Set Range: Highlights, then paint to lighten the highlights on rocks. Switch to the Burn tool and set Range: Shadows then darken the rock furrows.

03 RETOUCH DISTRACTIONS

Details that distract from your scene can be removed using the Inpainting tool in Affinity’s Photo Persona. Grab the tool from the toolbar, then click the Add Pixel layer icon in the Layers panel. Set ‘Current and Below’. Paint over distractions like the trees at the edge here.

05 CROP IN TIGHTER

A tighter crop will help our composition. Grab the Crop tool from the toolbar then go to the Overlay dropdown at top right. We can choose from helpful overlays like the ‘Rule of Thirds’ to aid our cropping by moving points of interest at the intersections of the lines.

06 ENHANCE DETAIL

Press Cmd/ctrl+shift+alt+e to merge all the layers into a new layer, then click the Tone Mapping Persona. In the panel on the right set Tone Compression to 0 then check Detail Enhancement. Set Amount to 50% then up the Radius until details look sharper.