Fun Affinity Photo effects
Transform a portrait with brushes
Brushes in Affinity Photo go far beyond the standard circular brush most of us are probably familiar with. In some ways they even surpass what can be done in Photoshop. Firstly, there’s a wide array of different brush tips to choose from, including the excellent set of grunge brushes we’ve used for our scatter effect here. What’s more, brushes can be customized with a range of useful parameters like spacing, scattering and wet edge controls. You can have hours of fun simply by playing with all the settings.
But the options don’t stop there… You can also create your own brushes from any image or shape, like the colourful splashes in our portrait above (created using real-life ink splashes).
One of the best things about using brushes in Affinity is how the brush tip shows a preview of the stroke before you start painting – including any colour, opacity or blend settings applied – so you can see how each stroke will affect your image.
For this effect we start by isolating our subject with a layer mask, then paint both in front of and behind her on different layers of the canvas. We’ll paint on the layer mask too, which has the effect of eating away at certain parts of our subject’s figure.
Once done, we can use our ink splash brushes (included amongst the project files) to add a splash of colour behind our subject. Finally, we’ll make use of a star photo downloaded from the NASA images website (images.nasa.gov), which is a fantastic source of amazing free photographs…
Select the subject
Open the portrait, then grab the Selection Brush from the Affinity toolbar and paint over the subject to select her. Next go to Select>refine Edges and increase the Border Width to refine the selection. Set Output: Mask and hit OK. Go to the Layers panel and click the Add Pixel Layer icon.
Paint a texture
Drag the new layer to the bottom of the stack, then go to Edit>fill and fill with white. Next make a new layer, go to the Brushes panel (View>studio>brushes), click the drop-down and choose Texture. Pick a brush, then choose a grey colour in the Color panel and paint over the layer.
Rough up the mask
Highlight the mask thumbnail on the portrait layer, then set the colour to black and use the Grunge brushes to paint over the image. This will take chunks out of the edges of the subject. Build up the effect with different brushes and experiment with brush opacity to add depth.
Sample and paint
Make another new pixel layer at the top of the stack and go to the Brushes panel and double-click the ‘Grunge 3’ brush to open the settings. Increase Scattering and Size Jitter. Hold Alt and click to sample colours from the portrait, then paint to scatter them around the edges of the figure.
Use splash brushes
Make two new layers below the portrait layer, then use the ink splash brushes (see Quick Tip) to dab in splashes of colour behind the subject. Use the rotation control in the brush settings to alter the shape of the splashes as you paint. Paint a few drops of colour on the top layer too, if you like.
Blend a photo
Open a star photo from the NASA website, then copy (Cmd/ctrl+c) and paste (Cmd/ctrl+v) it into the main image. Go to the Blend Mode drop-down in the Layers panel and choose Screen, using the Move tool to alter the position. Make any tonal changes you like to finish off.