1.2 Live Filter Layers

[SOUND] Hi, welcome to the first lesson in Affinity Photo Live Filters and In Painting. In this lesson, we're gonna go through how you can use live filter layers. Now, if you've worked with filter layers in another application before, then you will very likely have had the experience of applying a filter to an image, and then not being, not happy with what you've done but unable to really undo it just completely back tracking in your history. Or of wanting to keep a filter in place but just wanting to tweak it a little bit, after seeing that it's not exactly how you wanted it after committing it. But Affinity Photo has a really great way to deal with these issues by providing something called live filter layers, as the name suggests, a live filter layer applies a filter, by way of a layer. So when you create a live filter layer, in Affinity Photo, you actually end up with the filter self contained on its own layer. Now that layer can be hidden, it can have its blend mode changed, it can be moved around in your layers panel. It can be removed completely, and it can have its filter settings changed at any time. So it's completely non-destructive and if you need to tweak how it looks, you can do that. So we're gonna put together a quick example of something that you might do with a light filter layer. We're just gonna create a very basic tilt shift effect on this photo here. And the thing to be aware of when you are setting about using a live filter layer is that, even though you are working with filters, you don't want this Filters Menu here. Because as well as having light filters, Affinity Photo has just regular filters that make actual rasterized changes to your document. So these are the non-live filters. If you're wanting to apply live filters, then you actually need to head up here to the Layer Menu. And then from here you can choose New Live Filter Layer. Now, in this case we're going to make a basic tilt-shift effect, so we want the Depth Of Field Filter. So we'll select that here. Now you can see that the Depth of Field filter has come up as a layer. Independently, and self contained. So now, we can just change these settings to start giving us a basic tilt shift effect. So we're gonna change up the point of focus on our tilt shift, change the radius of the blur, give it some more clarity, increase the vibrance, and then just like that we have a very basic tilt shift effect. Now obviously with more time put into that you can get a more striking effect, but you can see in a just a very short space of time you're able to get the basics in place there. And now because we're working with a layer, we can turn that effect off, and our original image is perfectly preserved. Or if we need to come back later and tweak the settings, then we can just double-click on the thumbnail of the layer, and all of those settings are brought up again. So let's say we wanna change the range of our Depth of Field effect, and change the radius of the blur, we can do that at anytime we want. Now if you don't want to preserve your effect on a separate layer anymore, if you do wanna commit it and rasterize it into your image, then you can hit the Merge Button. So that gives you the best of both worlds. You have the ability to use your filters in a non-destructive and editable way, but then you can merge everything in together when you're finished with your tweaking. Now there are several different live filter layer effects that you can choose here. So definitely go through those and have a little play with all of the different effects that you can create with these. So that is how you use live filter layers in Affinity Photo. In the next lesson, we're gonna have a look at how you can use one of Affinity Photo's coolest tools, and that is the Inpainting Tool. Now this tool is so effective that when I first saw the demonstration video, I didn't quite believe that it could work as well as it does. And then I tried it for myself and sure enough this tool works wonders. I'll show you how to use it in the next lesson.