STEP BY STEP STELLAR PORTRAIT IMAGES

Blend star photos with your portraits and learn key layer skills in Affinity Photo

01 SELECT THE BACKGROUND

Open our or your portrait. Grab the Selection brush, check Snap To Edges in the options and then paint over the background to select it. If this goes wrong, you can hold Alt and paint to subtract. Once done, hit the Refine button at the top. Use the controls to improve the selection edge.

02 BLOW OUT THE BACKDROP

Increase Border Width, then paint with the Matte brush along the hair where it meets the background to expand the refinement. Once done, set output to Selection and hit OK. Click the Adjustment icon in the Layers Panel and choose Exposure, then increase exposure to blow out the backdrop.

03 INVERT THE TONES

Hit Cmd/ctrl+shift+alt+e to merge a copy of the layers (or if you’re starting with a white background portrait and have skipped steps 1 and 2, hit Cmd/ Ctrl+j to copy the background layer), then go to Layer>invert to invert the tones, resulting in a negative version of the image.

04 COPY IN THE STARS

Click the Adjustment icon in the Layers panel and choose Black And White. Next open the star image into Affinity Photo (go to http://images.nasa.gov and search the image library for “stormy stellar nursery”). Hit Cmd/ctrl+c to copy, then go to the portrait image and press Cmd/ctrl+v to paste the stars in.

05 BLEND THE LAYER

Click the Blend Mode drop-down at the top of the Layers Panel and choose Multiply. This multiplies the darkness values on each layer, so that areas can only stay the same or become even darker. It results in the brighter parts of the inverted portrait becoming filled with stars.

06 POSITION THE STARS

Grab the Move tool and position the stars layer until it fits nicely with the portrait (drag the corners to resize). The image is likely to need brightening, so click the Adjustment icon again and choose Curves. Drag up on the curve line to brighten the image, and make any other colour changes you like.