Tutorial 3
James Paterson removes blemishes, softens skin and enhance tones with Serif Affinity Photo’s straightforward image-editing tools
Discover how to sharpen portraits the right way in Serif’s Affinity Photo
Among the masses the term ‘Photoshopped’ has become a byword for digitally enhanced portraits (among other types of image), but these days it’s not just Photoshop that lets you carry out these kinds of edits.
Affinity Photo offers a range of powerful portrait-enhancing tools, from those that let you remove marks and imperfections, to dedicated features for skin softening. What’s more, the layer-based workflow of Affinity means that these edits can be done on separate layers, so you always have the option to control the strength of an effect, or go back to an earlier stage.
Here we’ll explore several key retouching techniques that you can apply to almost any portrait. Along the way we’ll encounter many key features in Affinity Photo. Portrait retouching is often about enhancing different areas of a face – we boost the eyes, soften the skin, sharpen the lashes and so on. We can use layer masks to confine effects to specific areas of the shot. This is a key skill not just for retouching, but for all kinds of photograph editing.
We’ll employ the powerful High Pass filter in two contrasting ways. First we’ll use it to create a subtle softening effect, which we can confine to the skin with a layer mask. We can also use High Pass for a sharpening effect over details like the eyes, lashes and lips. As such, it’s a useful filter for boosting portraits.