Post pobrano z: An Introduction to Adobe Fresco and How It Compares to Procreate

Has Procreate met its match? Fresco, Adobe’s new drawing program for iPad, is here—how does it compare to Procreate or Photoshop? Is it a worthwhile competitor, or something you should pass up? Here’s an overview, first impressions, and some comparisons for your consideration.

I’m an artist—art, design, game development and content creation are what I do professionally. I spend a lot of time in Adobe Photoshop, but I also really enjoy Procreate. 

That said, I was pretty excited to get my hands on Fresco. When it comes to my iPad, Procreate is a really wonderful, enjoyable application. The price is right, and it’s very user friendly. So how does Adobe Fresco hold up, at launch? 

Follow along with us over on our Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

1. A Tour of Adobe Fresco

First Impressions

My first impression of Adobe Fresco was generally optimistic. I really enjoy many of the „out the box” brushes. I spent some time just casually sketching, and it did feel really natural and comfortable. 

I wanted Fresco to be an awesome application that I fell in love with. 

So… how did my first date with Fresco go? Let’s take a look at the tools themselves. You can find the tools, by default, on the left-hand side of the visible work area.

Pixel Brushes

Pixel Brushes are your standard raster brushes, very much like those in Photoshop. I do a lot of drawing in Photoshop, so I was really excited at the prospect of having all of my usual Photoshop brushes on my iPad. 

Below, I’ve tested out one of the ink brushes, and I’ve doodled an apple with some of the sketch brushes. 

Importing Brushes

Your imported brushes are listed as „Library Brushes” at the bottom of your available Pixel Brushes. Doesn’t seem like there’s any sorting or reordering things, at this time.

I can’t remove any brushes I’ve imported within the app either—and it seems like I’m not the only one out there having that issue. That’s a bummer, but not a deal breaker.

Lovely, Right Out the Box

The Pixel Brushes that come with Fresco, however, are lovely. They have beautiful textures, and the sensitivity felt on point, without any adjustments—I didn’t have to tweak anything there to create really beautiful lines and textures. The Cezanne and Impressionist brushes were particularly fun and full of personality.

Live Brushes

Fresco also has Live Brushes—and they’re really cool. I had a lot of fun trying out the watercolor brushes, in particular. The way the colors bleed and run into each other really feels as if you’re working with paint. 

This isn’t the way I usually draw, digitally, but it was a lot of fun to play with. I’d say that this, right here, is probably one of Fresco’s coolest features. You’ve got Watercolor and Oil brushes, 11 brushes total. 

Vector Brushes

The Vector Brushes are rather nice too! It’s really simple to just dig in and create some really lovely, clean, vector lines. There are five different brushes to choose from, which did feel a little odd to me. Still, the five here are pretty versatile. 

However, there’s no editing these vector lines with something like anchor points. Not a deal breaker, but it’s something that would have been nice.

The Eraser

The Eraser surprised me, because I expected to have the same Brush Options as the other brush tools. You can „Erase with Brush”, but I found this to be confusing—you don’t use the Eraser to erase like this.

For example, if I want to erase with a soft round brush, I have to, instead, go to the Pixel Brush Tool, select my soft round brush, and then tap and hold the Touch Shortcut while drawing—a circle on the screen that can be used to alter how some tools behave. 

The line on the left is drawn with the Eraser tool, while the line on the right is drawn with the Pixel Brush Tool, using the Touch Shortcut. 

The Other Tools

You can use the Move Tool to move your work, as well as flip content horizontally or vertically.

The Selection Tools are used to select a specific area. Simply tap and drag—this was quite straightforward and easy to use. 

Then, you have a Paint Bucket Tool. Tap to add a fill color—the color currently active.

The Eyedropper is used to select color, but I found myself rarely using it. Instead, tap and hold on a color in your document to „pick up the color”. This is a standard action that will be familiar to those who have used Procreate. 

There is also the ability to Import content, right from the tools. 

One note there, however. I did really like that you can directly open your camera from Fresco, and then import. As a teacher, you could potentially photograph content, import, and directly draw on top of it, for example. That’s pretty cool. 

Sharing Your Creations

Adobe Fresco has pretty straightforward export options. We can publish and export to a variety of formats, including PSD, PNG, JPG, and PDF. We can also export a time-lapse process video, which is genuinely fun to watch. 

Fresco also allows the user to export as a Behance project, and there’s a Quick Export, which allows you to export a snapshot of your work. I found myself thinking it was kind of like a screenshot tool. 

The Price Tag

I have a paid Creative Cloud plan already—I use Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and many other members of the Creative Cloud family on the regular. If you’re in the same boat as I am, it means you can download the fully featured version of Adobe Fresco without any additional fee. That’s appreciated. 

However, if you don’t, Adobe Fresco’s price tag is $9.99 a month—after the first six months, which act as an initial, free trial. 

If you don’t want to pay the subscription fee, Adobe Fresco is still available to use, but it’s generally a freemium app with limited features. For example, you’ll only be able to export flattened, low-res imagery, and not all brushes will be available. 

2. Adobe Fresco vs. Photoshop

A Replacement? A Companion? Something Else?

In a dream world, I would love to see a completely mobile version of Photoshop—the same functionality as Photoshop, but I can take it with me on my iPad. Fresco has potential, and the Live Brushes are quite fun to experiment with, but that’s not what Fresco is.

I think it’s important to note how Adobe describes Fresco:

Adobe Fresco brings together the world’s largest brush collection with revolutionary new technology to deliver a natural painting and drawing experience

That said, I found myself enjoying Fresco the most when I viewed it as an attempt to simulate real media—not as a Procreate competitor or as a companion/partner to Photoshop.

The Limitations

There are obvious limitations here, with Fresco—Photoshop is more than exclusively an illustration tool. We have a full range of tools for photo manipulation, adjustments, and more. 

But as an illustration tool, Fresco isn’t as powerful as Photoshop. I expected that, honestly. However, the Brush Settings in Fresco have less than half of the Brush Settings available in Photoshop.

Importing Photoshop Brushes

This was one of the features I was most excited about: importing and using my Photoshop brushes in a mobile application. It sounds too good to be true!

It works, although it wasn’t without hiccups. Fresco has an Import from File feature, but I couldn’t get my brushes loaded up this way.

Instead, go to the brush file itself and choose Open In, then Fresco—so, if you have similar trouble, give this alternate method a try!

Photoshop Brush Settings

The Photoshop brush itself worked, once I had it imported. I had to go back in and tweak what settings are available in Fresco accordingly—like the Transfer and the Shape Dynamics. The Brush Settings are located at the bottom of the Tools panel. 

You can test the brush out, in the preview above these settings—a setting that will be familiar for Procreate users, too. 

The Compatibility

One of the appealing things about Fresco, for me, was the ability to easily jump back and forth from Photoshop to Fresco and back to Photoshop. 

This is possible because you can save and export as a PSD in both programs. Fresco essentially saves your work as a cloud document, which you can then open up in Photoshop. 

However, I need to note that this is also achievable with most cloud services—I regularly jump from Procreate to Photoshop and back this way. 

3. Adobe Fresco vs. Procreate

The Functionality

Ultimately, Procreate and Adobe Fresco both do a lot of the same things. However, that’s the big deal here—this feels particularly jarring when you look at the price difference. 

Let’s look at Procreate Bushes and Adobe Fresco Brushes, as an example (specifically, Pixel Brushes). 

In Procreate, I can easily duplicate brushes and customize them to my liking. I can tap and drag to rearrange them—both the brushes themselves and the sets in my brush library.

In Fresco, however, I can’t seem to duplicate any of the default brushes. I’m left customizing the original, and then reverting to the original, if I want to go to back to the vanilla version. This is a huge bummer. You can favorite brushes, but there’s no rearranging them—the categories or the brushes themselves. 

Customizing Brushes

That said, check out the difference between brush customization in Fresco and in Procreate. 

In Fresco, the customization options seem to vary, based on the brush. When I looked at the 14px pencil, under Sketching, I was left with Pressure and Velocity Dynamics.

In Procreate, the brush options are relatively universal from brush to brush, and they are pretty robust. 

The Interface

Procreate’s UI is quite minimal, and it’s nice—it keeps the emphasis on the artwork itself.

Fresco isn’t necessarily cluttered, but I did find myself feeling rather „boxed in”, especially on the right-hand side. Procreate puts its layers here too, but I appreciate that these menus are collapsible. 

I did, however, appreciate that Fresco allows you to expand the canvas and hide almost all of your tools. It feels refreshing, clean, and very welcoming to draw this way—really reminiscent of a traditional sketchbook. This feels great; just doodling with the sketch brushes on an open surface like this is a very nice experience. 

Working With Color

I love that Procreate has customizable color palettes. Saving colors and color schemes is a normal part of my workflow.

In Fresco, when looking at the color picker, we have the option to save recent colors, by tapping on the plus sign in the Recent expandable menu. This works, but it doesn’t necessarily work well. I can’t rearrange any of these colors, and I can’t seem to delete them either. These recently saved colors also seem to be document specific. 

Exporting Artwork

Both Adobe Fresco and Procreate can export artwork to PSD files, which is important for me, as someone who works in Photoshop a lot. I often find myself drawing in Procreate, jumping over to Photoshop, and then going back to Procreate. I could easily do the same in Fresco, but it wasn’t necessarily a process that was vastly improved.

They can both export time-lapse video, as well.

Procreate, however, can export as additional file types, such as animated GIFs, TIFF files, and animated PNGs. 

The Price

Let’s be real here—price matters, and it’s probably one of the first factors on everybody’s mind, when it comes to whether or not Fresco is for them. 

Fresco comes with a $9.99 monthly fee, if you don’t already have a Creative Cloud subscription. Procreate, on the other hand, costs $9.99—and it’s a one-time fee. 

And that’s a pretty big difference, especially if viewing Fresco as a possible Procreate competitor. 

Honestly, I can’t say it has a world of content that Procreate doesn’t have. In fact, Fresco doesn’t have all of Procreate’s features, although some of them are listed as „coming soon” (such as perspective drawing and symmetry tools). 

Ultimately, this means Procreate is $9.99 USD (and a one-time fee), while Adobe Fresco is potentially $119.98 USD per year. Wow! Of course, if you’re already a Creative Cloud subscriber, it’s included. Honestly, that’s the deal maker there, for me. Adobe has promised some updates here, so only time will tell on that.  

But Those Live Brushes

I have to admit, however—Adobe Fresco’s Live Brushes are a genuinely fun experience. Sitting back and painting fluffy clouds and just watching the paint blend and smear was pretty neat. I know I presented plenty of things about Fresco that weren’t so hot, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t genuinely have a good time sitting back in my favorite chair and painting some clouds. It was a really organic and relaxing experience.

I drew the following, below, using the Watercolor Live Brushes. Holding down the Touch Shortcut, when using this brush, gives you „Pure Water”, instead of an eraser—it’s just really fun to push paint around and experiment with layering. 

I’m really curious to see where Adobe takes this feature in the future.

Who Wins the Battle Royale?

And the Winner Is…

Adobe Fresco isn’t a fundamentally bad application. It has a lot of potential, and some of the brushes are really very enjoyable to use. At launch, it’s just not everything it could be, just yet. I really hope this changes in the future, because the potential is there. Adobe has mentioned a bunch of additional features coming soon—I just wish „soon” was sooner!

In my opinion, there just isn’t enough here to dethrone Procreate, especially when Procreate has such a universally accessible price tag. As an „extra”, included with Creative Cloud, it’s fun to experiment with—but I wouldn’t call Fresco a significant addition to my normal workflow. 

The Final Verdict

At the end of the day, Procreate has become a larger and larger part of my professional life. There have been times I’ve considered completely switching to Procreate as my preferred illustration tool—it’s genuinely awesome. 

Fresco feels like an application that wants to compete, but just isn’t there yet. Adobe’s promised a bunch of updates, however—so we’ll see what happens! If nothing else, I’ve got myself a new set of watercolors without the mess… and that’s pretty neat.

Thanks for exploring Adobe Fresco and Procreate with me! If you enjoyed this article, here are some others that you might enjoy, too!

• 
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  How to Create and Customize Procreate Brushes
  Daisy Ein

• 
  Procreate
  How to Use Procreate Layers
  Daisy Ein

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  How to Create a Punk-Rock Portrait in Procreate
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• 
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  How to Create a Summer Portrait With Ice Cream in Procreate
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Post pobrano z: An Introduction to Adobe Fresco and How It Compares to Procreate

Has Procreate met its match? Fresco, Adobe’s new drawing program for iPad, is here—how does it compare to Procreate or Photoshop? Is it a worthwhile competitor, or something you should pass up? Here’s an overview, first impressions, and some comparisons for your consideration.

I’m an artist—art, design, game development and content creation are what I do professionally. I spend a lot of time in Adobe Photoshop, but I also really enjoy Procreate. 

That said, I was pretty excited to get my hands on Fresco. When it comes to my iPad, Procreate is a really wonderful, enjoyable application. The price is right, and it’s very user friendly. So how does Adobe Fresco hold up, at launch? 

Follow along with us over on our Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

1. A Tour of Adobe Fresco

First Impressions

My first impression of Adobe Fresco was generally optimistic. I really enjoy many of the „out the box” brushes. I spent some time just casually sketching, and it did feel really natural and comfortable. 

I wanted Fresco to be an awesome application that I fell in love with. 

So… how did my first date with Fresco go? Let’s take a look at the tools themselves. You can find the tools, by default, on the left-hand side of the visible work area.

Pixel Brushes

Pixel Brushes are your standard raster brushes, very much like those in Photoshop. I do a lot of drawing in Photoshop, so I was really excited at the prospect of having all of my usual Photoshop brushes on my iPad. 

Below, I’ve tested out one of the ink brushes, and I’ve doodled an apple with some of the sketch brushes. 

Importing Brushes

Your imported brushes are listed as „Library Brushes” at the bottom of your available Pixel Brushes. Doesn’t seem like there’s any sorting or reordering things, at this time.

I can’t remove any brushes I’ve imported within the app either—and it seems like I’m not the only one out there having that issue. That’s a bummer, but not a deal breaker.

Lovely, Right Out the Box

The Pixel Brushes that come with Fresco, however, are lovely. They have beautiful textures, and the sensitivity felt on point, without any adjustments—I didn’t have to tweak anything there to create really beautiful lines and textures. The Cezanne and Impressionist brushes were particularly fun and full of personality.

Live Brushes

Fresco also has Live Brushes—and they’re really cool. I had a lot of fun trying out the watercolor brushes, in particular. The way the colors bleed and run into each other really feels as if you’re working with paint. 

This isn’t the way I usually draw, digitally, but it was a lot of fun to play with. I’d say that this, right here, is probably one of Fresco’s coolest features. You’ve got Watercolor and Oil brushes, 11 brushes total. 

Vector Brushes

The Vector Brushes are rather nice too! It’s really simple to just dig in and create some really lovely, clean, vector lines. There are five different brushes to choose from, which did feel a little odd to me. Still, the five here are pretty versatile. 

However, there’s no editing these vector lines with something like anchor points. Not a deal breaker, but it’s something that would have been nice.

The Eraser

The Eraser surprised me, because I expected to have the same Brush Options as the other brush tools. You can „Erase with Brush”, but I found this to be confusing—you don’t use the Eraser to erase like this.

For example, if I want to erase with a soft round brush, I have to, instead, go to the Pixel Brush Tool, select my soft round brush, and then tap and hold the Touch Shortcut while drawing—a circle on the screen that can be used to alter how some tools behave. 

The line on the left is drawn with the Eraser tool, while the line on the right is drawn with the Pixel Brush Tool, using the Touch Shortcut. 

The Other Tools

You can use the Move Tool to move your work, as well as flip content horizontally or vertically.

The Selection Tools are used to select a specific area. Simply tap and drag—this was quite straightforward and easy to use. 

Then, you have a Paint Bucket Tool. Tap to add a fill color—the color currently active.

The Eyedropper is used to select color, but I found myself rarely using it. Instead, tap and hold on a color in your document to „pick up the color”. This is a standard action that will be familiar to those who have used Procreate. 

There is also the ability to Import content, right from the tools. 

One note there, however. I did really like that you can directly open your camera from Fresco, and then import. As a teacher, you could potentially photograph content, import, and directly draw on top of it, for example. That’s pretty cool. 

Sharing Your Creations

Adobe Fresco has pretty straightforward export options. We can publish and export to a variety of formats, including PSD, PNG, JPG, and PDF. We can also export a time-lapse process video, which is genuinely fun to watch. 

Fresco also allows the user to export as a Behance project, and there’s a Quick Export, which allows you to export a snapshot of your work. I found myself thinking it was kind of like a screenshot tool. 

The Price Tag

I have a paid Creative Cloud plan already—I use Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and many other members of the Creative Cloud family on the regular. If you’re in the same boat as I am, it means you can download the fully featured version of Adobe Fresco without any additional fee. That’s appreciated. 

However, if you don’t, Adobe Fresco’s price tag is $9.99 a month—after the first six months, which act as an initial, free trial. 

If you don’t want to pay the subscription fee, Adobe Fresco is still available to use, but it’s generally a freemium app with limited features. For example, you’ll only be able to export flattened, low-res imagery, and not all brushes will be available. 

2. Adobe Fresco vs. Photoshop

A Replacement? A Companion? Something Else?

In a dream world, I would love to see a completely mobile version of Photoshop—the same functionality as Photoshop, but I can take it with me on my iPad. Fresco has potential, and the Live Brushes are quite fun to experiment with, but that’s not what Fresco is.

I think it’s important to note how Adobe describes Fresco:

Adobe Fresco brings together the world’s largest brush collection with revolutionary new technology to deliver a natural painting and drawing experience

That said, I found myself enjoying Fresco the most when I viewed it as an attempt to simulate real media—not as a Procreate competitor or as a companion/partner to Photoshop.

The Limitations

There are obvious limitations here, with Fresco—Photoshop is more than exclusively an illustration tool. We have a full range of tools for photo manipulation, adjustments, and more. 

But as an illustration tool, Fresco isn’t as powerful as Photoshop. I expected that, honestly. However, the Brush Settings in Fresco have less than half of the Brush Settings available in Photoshop.

Importing Photoshop Brushes

This was one of the features I was most excited about: importing and using my Photoshop brushes in a mobile application. It sounds too good to be true!

It works, although it wasn’t without hiccups. Fresco has an Import from File feature, but I couldn’t get my brushes loaded up this way.

Instead, go to the brush file itself and choose Open In, then Fresco—so, if you have similar trouble, give this alternate method a try!

Photoshop Brush Settings

The Photoshop brush itself worked, once I had it imported. I had to go back in and tweak what settings are available in Fresco accordingly—like the Transfer and the Shape Dynamics. The Brush Settings are located at the bottom of the Tools panel. 

You can test the brush out, in the preview above these settings—a setting that will be familiar for Procreate users, too. 

The Compatibility

One of the appealing things about Fresco, for me, was the ability to easily jump back and forth from Photoshop to Fresco and back to Photoshop. 

This is possible because you can save and export as a PSD in both programs. Fresco essentially saves your work as a cloud document, which you can then open up in Photoshop. 

However, I need to note that this is also achievable with most cloud services—I regularly jump from Procreate to Photoshop and back this way. 

3. Adobe Fresco vs. Procreate

The Functionality

Ultimately, Procreate and Adobe Fresco both do a lot of the same things. However, that’s the big deal here—this feels particularly jarring when you look at the price difference. 

Let’s look at Procreate Bushes and Adobe Fresco Brushes, as an example (specifically, Pixel Brushes). 

In Procreate, I can easily duplicate brushes and customize them to my liking. I can tap and drag to rearrange them—both the brushes themselves and the sets in my brush library.

In Fresco, however, I can’t seem to duplicate any of the default brushes. I’m left customizing the original, and then reverting to the original, if I want to go to back to the vanilla version. This is a huge bummer. You can favorite brushes, but there’s no rearranging them—the categories or the brushes themselves. 

Customizing Brushes

That said, check out the difference between brush customization in Fresco and in Procreate. 

In Fresco, the customization options seem to vary, based on the brush. When I looked at the 14px pencil, under Sketching, I was left with Pressure and Velocity Dynamics.

In Procreate, the brush options are relatively universal from brush to brush, and they are pretty robust. 

The Interface

Procreate’s UI is quite minimal, and it’s nice—it keeps the emphasis on the artwork itself.

Fresco isn’t necessarily cluttered, but I did find myself feeling rather „boxed in”, especially on the right-hand side. Procreate puts its layers here too, but I appreciate that these menus are collapsible. 

I did, however, appreciate that Fresco allows you to expand the canvas and hide almost all of your tools. It feels refreshing, clean, and very welcoming to draw this way—really reminiscent of a traditional sketchbook. This feels great; just doodling with the sketch brushes on an open surface like this is a very nice experience. 

Working With Color

I love that Procreate has customizable color palettes. Saving colors and color schemes is a normal part of my workflow.

In Fresco, when looking at the color picker, we have the option to save recent colors, by tapping on the plus sign in the Recent expandable menu. This works, but it doesn’t necessarily work well. I can’t rearrange any of these colors, and I can’t seem to delete them either. These recently saved colors also seem to be document specific. 

Exporting Artwork

Both Adobe Fresco and Procreate can export artwork to PSD files, which is important for me, as someone who works in Photoshop a lot. I often find myself drawing in Procreate, jumping over to Photoshop, and then going back to Procreate. I could easily do the same in Fresco, but it wasn’t necessarily a process that was vastly improved.

They can both export time-lapse video, as well.

Procreate, however, can export as additional file types, such as animated GIFs, TIFF files, and animated PNGs. 

The Price

Let’s be real here—price matters, and it’s probably one of the first factors on everybody’s mind, when it comes to whether or not Fresco is for them. 

Fresco comes with a $9.99 monthly fee, if you don’t already have a Creative Cloud subscription. Procreate, on the other hand, costs $9.99—and it’s a one-time fee. 

And that’s a pretty big difference, especially if viewing Fresco as a possible Procreate competitor. 

Honestly, I can’t say it has a world of content that Procreate doesn’t have. In fact, Fresco doesn’t have all of Procreate’s features, although some of them are listed as „coming soon” (such as perspective drawing and symmetry tools). 

Ultimately, this means Procreate is $9.99 USD (and a one-time fee), while Adobe Fresco is potentially $119.98 USD per year. Wow! Of course, if you’re already a Creative Cloud subscriber, it’s included. Honestly, that’s the deal maker there, for me. Adobe has promised some updates here, so only time will tell on that.  

But Those Live Brushes

I have to admit, however—Adobe Fresco’s Live Brushes are a genuinely fun experience. Sitting back and painting fluffy clouds and just watching the paint blend and smear was pretty neat. I know I presented plenty of things about Fresco that weren’t so hot, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t genuinely have a good time sitting back in my favorite chair and painting some clouds. It was a really organic and relaxing experience.

I drew the following, below, using the Watercolor Live Brushes. Holding down the Touch Shortcut, when using this brush, gives you „Pure Water”, instead of an eraser—it’s just really fun to push paint around and experiment with layering. 

I’m really curious to see where Adobe takes this feature in the future.

Who Wins the Battle Royale?

And the Winner Is…

Adobe Fresco isn’t a fundamentally bad application. It has a lot of potential, and some of the brushes are really very enjoyable to use. At launch, it’s just not everything it could be, just yet. I really hope this changes in the future, because the potential is there. Adobe has mentioned a bunch of additional features coming soon—I just wish „soon” was sooner!

In my opinion, there just isn’t enough here to dethrone Procreate, especially when Procreate has such a universally accessible price tag. As an „extra”, included with Creative Cloud, it’s fun to experiment with—but I wouldn’t call Fresco a significant addition to my normal workflow. 

The Final Verdict

At the end of the day, Procreate has become a larger and larger part of my professional life. There have been times I’ve considered completely switching to Procreate as my preferred illustration tool—it’s genuinely awesome. 

Fresco feels like an application that wants to compete, but just isn’t there yet. Adobe’s promised a bunch of updates, however—so we’ll see what happens! If nothing else, I’ve got myself a new set of watercolors without the mess… and that’s pretty neat.

Thanks for exploring Adobe Fresco and Procreate with me! If you enjoyed this article, here are some others that you might enjoy, too!

• 
  Brushes
  How to Create and Customize Procreate Brushes
  Daisy Ein

• 
  Procreate
  How to Use Procreate Layers
  Daisy Ein

• 
  Procreate
  How to Create a Punk-Rock Portrait in Procreate
  Maria Dimova

• 
  Procreate
  How to Draw a Mystic Moon Illustration in Procreate on iPad
  Yulia Sokolova

• 
  Procreate
  How to Create a Summer Portrait With Ice Cream in Procreate
  Maria Dimova

Post pobrano z: An Introduction to Adobe Fresco and How It Compares to Procreate

Has Procreate met its match? Fresco, Adobe’s new drawing program for iPad, is here—how does it compare to Procreate or Photoshop? Is it a worthwhile competitor, or something you should pass up? Here’s an overview, first impressions, and some comparisons for your consideration.

I’m an artist—art, design, game development and content creation are what I do professionally. I spend a lot of time in Adobe Photoshop, but I also really enjoy Procreate. 

That said, I was pretty excited to get my hands on Fresco. When it comes to my iPad, Procreate is a really wonderful, enjoyable application. The price is right, and it’s very user friendly. So how does Adobe Fresco hold up, at launch? 

Follow along with us over on our Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

1. A Tour of Adobe Fresco

First Impressions

My first impression of Adobe Fresco was generally optimistic. I really enjoy many of the „out the box” brushes. I spent some time just casually sketching, and it did feel really natural and comfortable. 

I wanted Fresco to be an awesome application that I fell in love with. 

So… how did my first date with Fresco go? Let’s take a look at the tools themselves. You can find the tools, by default, on the left-hand side of the visible work area.

Pixel Brushes

Pixel Brushes are your standard raster brushes, very much like those in Photoshop. I do a lot of drawing in Photoshop, so I was really excited at the prospect of having all of my usual Photoshop brushes on my iPad. 

Below, I’ve tested out one of the ink brushes, and I’ve doodled an apple with some of the sketch brushes. 

Importing Brushes

Your imported brushes are listed as „Library Brushes” at the bottom of your available Pixel Brushes. Doesn’t seem like there’s any sorting or reordering things, at this time.

I can’t remove any brushes I’ve imported within the app either—and it seems like I’m not the only one out there having that issue. That’s a bummer, but not a deal breaker.

Lovely, Right Out the Box

The Pixel Brushes that come with Fresco, however, are lovely. They have beautiful textures, and the sensitivity felt on point, without any adjustments—I didn’t have to tweak anything there to create really beautiful lines and textures. The Cezanne and Impressionist brushes were particularly fun and full of personality.

Live Brushes

Fresco also has Live Brushes—and they’re really cool. I had a lot of fun trying out the watercolor brushes, in particular. The way the colors bleed and run into each other really feels as if you’re working with paint. 

This isn’t the way I usually draw, digitally, but it was a lot of fun to play with. I’d say that this, right here, is probably one of Fresco’s coolest features. You’ve got Watercolor and Oil brushes, 11 brushes total. 

Vector Brushes

The Vector Brushes are rather nice too! It’s really simple to just dig in and create some really lovely, clean, vector lines. There are five different brushes to choose from, which did feel a little odd to me. Still, the five here are pretty versatile. 

However, there’s no editing these vector lines with something like anchor points. Not a deal breaker, but it’s something that would have been nice.

The Eraser

The Eraser surprised me, because I expected to have the same Brush Options as the other brush tools. You can „Erase with Brush”, but I found this to be confusing—you don’t use the Eraser to erase like this.

For example, if I want to erase with a soft round brush, I have to, instead, go to the Pixel Brush Tool, select my soft round brush, and then tap and hold the Touch Shortcut while drawing—a circle on the screen that can be used to alter how some tools behave. 

The line on the left is drawn with the Eraser tool, while the line on the right is drawn with the Pixel Brush Tool, using the Touch Shortcut. 

The Other Tools

You can use the Move Tool to move your work, as well as flip content horizontally or vertically.

The Selection Tools are used to select a specific area. Simply tap and drag—this was quite straightforward and easy to use. 

Then, you have a Paint Bucket Tool. Tap to add a fill color—the color currently active.

The Eyedropper is used to select color, but I found myself rarely using it. Instead, tap and hold on a color in your document to „pick up the color”. This is a standard action that will be familiar to those who have used Procreate. 

There is also the ability to Import content, right from the tools. 

One note there, however. I did really like that you can directly open your camera from Fresco, and then import. As a teacher, you could potentially photograph content, import, and directly draw on top of it, for example. That’s pretty cool. 

Sharing Your Creations

Adobe Fresco has pretty straightforward export options. We can publish and export to a variety of formats, including PSD, PNG, JPG, and PDF. We can also export a time-lapse process video, which is genuinely fun to watch. 

Fresco also allows the user to export as a Behance project, and there’s a Quick Export, which allows you to export a snapshot of your work. I found myself thinking it was kind of like a screenshot tool. 

The Price Tag

I have a paid Creative Cloud plan already—I use Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and many other members of the Creative Cloud family on the regular. If you’re in the same boat as I am, it means you can download the fully featured version of Adobe Fresco without any additional fee. That’s appreciated. 

However, if you don’t, Adobe Fresco’s price tag is $9.99 a month—after the first six months, which act as an initial, free trial. 

If you don’t want to pay the subscription fee, Adobe Fresco is still available to use, but it’s generally a freemium app with limited features. For example, you’ll only be able to export flattened, low-res imagery, and not all brushes will be available. 

2. Adobe Fresco vs. Photoshop

A Replacement? A Companion? Something Else?

In a dream world, I would love to see a completely mobile version of Photoshop—the same functionality as Photoshop, but I can take it with me on my iPad. Fresco has potential, and the Live Brushes are quite fun to experiment with, but that’s not what Fresco is.

I think it’s important to note how Adobe describes Fresco:

Adobe Fresco brings together the world’s largest brush collection with revolutionary new technology to deliver a natural painting and drawing experience

That said, I found myself enjoying Fresco the most when I viewed it as an attempt to simulate real media—not as a Procreate competitor or as a companion/partner to Photoshop.

The Limitations

There are obvious limitations here, with Fresco—Photoshop is more than exclusively an illustration tool. We have a full range of tools for photo manipulation, adjustments, and more. 

But as an illustration tool, Fresco isn’t as powerful as Photoshop. I expected that, honestly. However, the Brush Settings in Fresco have less than half of the Brush Settings available in Photoshop.

Importing Photoshop Brushes

This was one of the features I was most excited about: importing and using my Photoshop brushes in a mobile application. It sounds too good to be true!

It works, although it wasn’t without hiccups. Fresco has an Import from File feature, but I couldn’t get my brushes loaded up this way.

Instead, go to the brush file itself and choose Open In, then Fresco—so, if you have similar trouble, give this alternate method a try!

Photoshop Brush Settings

The Photoshop brush itself worked, once I had it imported. I had to go back in and tweak what settings are available in Fresco accordingly—like the Transfer and the Shape Dynamics. The Brush Settings are located at the bottom of the Tools panel. 

You can test the brush out, in the preview above these settings—a setting that will be familiar for Procreate users, too. 

The Compatibility

One of the appealing things about Fresco, for me, was the ability to easily jump back and forth from Photoshop to Fresco and back to Photoshop. 

This is possible because you can save and export as a PSD in both programs. Fresco essentially saves your work as a cloud document, which you can then open up in Photoshop. 

However, I need to note that this is also achievable with most cloud services—I regularly jump from Procreate to Photoshop and back this way. 

3. Adobe Fresco vs. Procreate

The Functionality

Ultimately, Procreate and Adobe Fresco both do a lot of the same things. However, that’s the big deal here—this feels particularly jarring when you look at the price difference. 

Let’s look at Procreate Bushes and Adobe Fresco Brushes, as an example (specifically, Pixel Brushes). 

In Procreate, I can easily duplicate brushes and customize them to my liking. I can tap and drag to rearrange them—both the brushes themselves and the sets in my brush library.

In Fresco, however, I can’t seem to duplicate any of the default brushes. I’m left customizing the original, and then reverting to the original, if I want to go to back to the vanilla version. This is a huge bummer. You can favorite brushes, but there’s no rearranging them—the categories or the brushes themselves. 

Customizing Brushes

That said, check out the difference between brush customization in Fresco and in Procreate. 

In Fresco, the customization options seem to vary, based on the brush. When I looked at the 14px pencil, under Sketching, I was left with Pressure and Velocity Dynamics.

In Procreate, the brush options are relatively universal from brush to brush, and they are pretty robust. 

The Interface

Procreate’s UI is quite minimal, and it’s nice—it keeps the emphasis on the artwork itself.

Fresco isn’t necessarily cluttered, but I did find myself feeling rather „boxed in”, especially on the right-hand side. Procreate puts its layers here too, but I appreciate that these menus are collapsible. 

I did, however, appreciate that Fresco allows you to expand the canvas and hide almost all of your tools. It feels refreshing, clean, and very welcoming to draw this way—really reminiscent of a traditional sketchbook. This feels great; just doodling with the sketch brushes on an open surface like this is a very nice experience. 

Working With Color

I love that Procreate has customizable color palettes. Saving colors and color schemes is a normal part of my workflow.

In Fresco, when looking at the color picker, we have the option to save recent colors, by tapping on the plus sign in the Recent expandable menu. This works, but it doesn’t necessarily work well. I can’t rearrange any of these colors, and I can’t seem to delete them either. These recently saved colors also seem to be document specific. 

Exporting Artwork

Both Adobe Fresco and Procreate can export artwork to PSD files, which is important for me, as someone who works in Photoshop a lot. I often find myself drawing in Procreate, jumping over to Photoshop, and then going back to Procreate. I could easily do the same in Fresco, but it wasn’t necessarily a process that was vastly improved.

They can both export time-lapse video, as well.

Procreate, however, can export as additional file types, such as animated GIFs, TIFF files, and animated PNGs. 

The Price

Let’s be real here—price matters, and it’s probably one of the first factors on everybody’s mind, when it comes to whether or not Fresco is for them. 

Fresco comes with a $9.99 monthly fee, if you don’t already have a Creative Cloud subscription. Procreate, on the other hand, costs $9.99—and it’s a one-time fee. 

And that’s a pretty big difference, especially if viewing Fresco as a possible Procreate competitor. 

Honestly, I can’t say it has a world of content that Procreate doesn’t have. In fact, Fresco doesn’t have all of Procreate’s features, although some of them are listed as „coming soon” (such as perspective drawing and symmetry tools). 

Ultimately, this means Procreate is $9.99 USD (and a one-time fee), while Adobe Fresco is potentially $119.98 USD per year. Wow! Of course, if you’re already a Creative Cloud subscriber, it’s included. Honestly, that’s the deal maker there, for me. Adobe has promised some updates here, so only time will tell on that.  

But Those Live Brushes

I have to admit, however—Adobe Fresco’s Live Brushes are a genuinely fun experience. Sitting back and painting fluffy clouds and just watching the paint blend and smear was pretty neat. I know I presented plenty of things about Fresco that weren’t so hot, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t genuinely have a good time sitting back in my favorite chair and painting some clouds. It was a really organic and relaxing experience.

I drew the following, below, using the Watercolor Live Brushes. Holding down the Touch Shortcut, when using this brush, gives you „Pure Water”, instead of an eraser—it’s just really fun to push paint around and experiment with layering. 

I’m really curious to see where Adobe takes this feature in the future.

Who Wins the Battle Royale?

And the Winner Is…

Adobe Fresco isn’t a fundamentally bad application. It has a lot of potential, and some of the brushes are really very enjoyable to use. At launch, it’s just not everything it could be, just yet. I really hope this changes in the future, because the potential is there. Adobe has mentioned a bunch of additional features coming soon—I just wish „soon” was sooner!

In my opinion, there just isn’t enough here to dethrone Procreate, especially when Procreate has such a universally accessible price tag. As an „extra”, included with Creative Cloud, it’s fun to experiment with—but I wouldn’t call Fresco a significant addition to my normal workflow. 

The Final Verdict

At the end of the day, Procreate has become a larger and larger part of my professional life. There have been times I’ve considered completely switching to Procreate as my preferred illustration tool—it’s genuinely awesome. 

Fresco feels like an application that wants to compete, but just isn’t there yet. Adobe’s promised a bunch of updates, however—so we’ll see what happens! If nothing else, I’ve got myself a new set of watercolors without the mess… and that’s pretty neat.

Thanks for exploring Adobe Fresco and Procreate with me! If you enjoyed this article, here are some others that you might enjoy, too!

• 
  Brushes
  How to Create and Customize Procreate Brushes
  Daisy Ein

• 
  Procreate
  How to Use Procreate Layers
  Daisy Ein

• 
  Procreate
  How to Create a Punk-Rock Portrait in Procreate
  Maria Dimova

• 
  Procreate
  How to Draw a Mystic Moon Illustration in Procreate on iPad
  Yulia Sokolova

• 
  Procreate
  How to Create a Summer Portrait With Ice Cream in Procreate
  Maria Dimova

Post pobrano z: A Beginner’s Guide to Affinity Photo for iPad

Today is all about Affinity Photo for the iPad. For a long time, photo editor apps for mobile devices were… less than stellar. And it made sense. Mobile meant phones, and no one was really looking to create full-blown composites on their phone.

But even now, with the iPad being so advanced that some people argue that it could be used as a stand-alone laptop, photo editing apps are still not much more than lightweight versions of their original counterparts, offering some filters and color. But Affinity Photo for the iPad is unique in that it offers the full power of Affinity Photo—not a wimpy, watered-down version. This even includes PSD importing and exporting! 

So let’s take a look at how you can get the full Affinity Photo experience, in a much smaller package and all on the go! 

Follow along with us over on the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

What You’ll Need

You will need the following resources in order to complete this project:

• Man with blue hair
• Broken glass

Find more resources on Envato Elements!

1. Interface Settings and Left-Handed Mode

The first thing I always recommend when jumping into a new program is to set up your interface and settings. And while the interface is nowhere near as fluid as the desktop version, there are still a lot of personal preferences you can set by clicking on the Gear icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app.

Step 1

First, in General, you have your Undo Limit, going up to an insane 2,000 undos. I recommend keeping it around 25-50 for the sake of performance. 

Step 2

Next, how often you’d like things to Autosave, great for those like me who live that „10% or less battery life” life.

Step 3

Your Language and your Default Save Location. I highly recommend iCloud Drive for reasons I will cover a little later on!

Step 4

In Interface, you will find your Background Gray Level. I like to keep things nice and dark myself.

Step 5

And finally, you will also find Left Handed Mode for all you lefties out there! 

So just take a quick look through, and get everything nice and set up to your liking. 

2. Creating a Document & Importing Resources

Next, we will want to set up our canvas by pressing the + icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app’s splash screen.

Step 1

From here, you can choose from several options, including:

• Create a whole New Document, which will bring up your typical options of Size, Color, and some document presets.
• You can also import New From Clipboard or From Photos saved to your iPad.
• You can Import From Cloud, which is what I personally find to be the easiest. To do this, you will have to have iCloud set up, which you likely already have or at the very least have it installed on one of your Apple products by default. But if not, it’s a straightforward process!

Step 2

Download and install iCloud on both the iPad and the computer you will be sharing the files with—in this case, my PC. Then you can drag and drop any resources you might need into the shared drive. 

How you go about importing depends not only on your personal workflow but on the image you will be creating. In this case, we will be creating a portrait photo effect, so I want to start by opening my portrait photo.

3. Controlling the Canvas and Gestures

Affinity Photo for the iPad keeps it very simple with its gestures, keeping things fairly standard and intuitive. 

How to Zoom in Affinity Photo

You zoom in and out by placing two fingers on the screen and then pinching.

If you pinch outwards, you will zoom in, and if you pinch inward, you will zoom out.

You can also adjust the Zoom by going into the Navigator found on the right-hand side of the screen. You will see a few preset percentages as well as the Fit to screen option. 

How to Pan in Affinity Photo

To pan, simply take one finger, touch, and drag.

Make sure the View tool is selected. If you have another tool selected, like the Paintbrush tool, you will want to use two fingers instead of one, so that you won’t apply the tool.

How to Rotate in Affinity Photo

To rotate, you will first have to go into the Navigator, as Rotate is turned off by default. Once it’s turned on, you can rotate by using the rotation dial within the Navigator or by making a pinch and swivel motion.

To reset your canvas’s angle, click the rotation dial, input 0, and hit OK!

How to Redo and Undo in Affinity Photo

Redo and Undo are also controlled using gestures. You can Undo by doing a two-finger tap on the canvas.

Redo by doing a three-finger tap on the canvas. 

How to Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy in Affinity Photo

If you hold down on the canvas with one finger, a quick context menu will open up containing the Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy options.

There are also tool-specific gestures as well, which we will cover when we cover the tool itself! But most come down to a simple drag, swipe, or tap. No magic fingers needed.

4. Moving, Rotating, and Resizing Layers

Let’s go into Options located in the File menu—that would be the three dots in the upper left-hand corner. We are going to go to Place From Cloud and bring in a glass texture.

With that placed, let’s look at how we rotate, resize, and move around different layers. First, you will want to make sure the Move tool is selected.  

How to Move Layers in Affinity Photo

To Move a layer around, hold your finger inside the image, and pan around.

Remember, if you want to Pan the canvas, and not move the layer around, you will use two fingers instead of one.  

How to Resize Layers in Affinity Photo

To resize layers, you will want to tap and drag the control nodes—the blue dots found around the image.

Some images and layers will by default constrain, keeping the original aspect ratio, whereas some layers won’t.

Whatever the case, you can use a one-finger modifier to toggle it on or off. While resizing the image with one finger, use your other finger to press down on the screen. 

How to Rotate Layers in Affinity Photo

Rotate by holding the top control handle and swiveling to either the left or right.

If you want more precise control, you can open up the Transform panel found on the right-hand side.

Here you can adjust the order, Flip, and Rotate, and adjust the Dimensions by either tapping to change the numbers manually or by swiping up or down on the dimension dials. 

5. Layers, Blend Modes, and Filters 

Now, let’s take a closer look at layers. I’ll quickly run through the basics, and then we can jump into the good stuff.

How to Create a New Layer in Affinity Photo

Create a layer by opening up the Layers panel, found on the right-hand side.

Tap the + sign. From here, you can create a Pixel or Fill Layer. As well as layer masks and groups… let’s hold off on those.

I am going to create a Fill Layer set to a very dark purple #181320, along with an empty Pixel Layer.

How to Re-Order and Group Layers in Affinity Photo

Re-order a layer by tapping and dragging.

To re-order multiple layers at once, use a swipe gesture on any layers you’d like to move to select them. Do the same to deselect layers

To select multiple layers at once, select a layer, and then use two fingers to select another layer either above or below the initially selected layer. All layers between the two selected layers will become selected themselves.

You can group things together by selecting the layers you want to group, and then making a pinch-in gesture. You can then ungroup layers by selecting the group and pinching outwards.

Alternatively, you can hit the Group Layers icon found inside the Layers panel, to the left of the + icon. I much prefer the second method!

How to Duplicate in Affinity Photo

Duplicate a layer by selecting the Move Tool, double-tapping the layer on the canvas that you want to duplicate, holding down on the layer with two fingers, and then dragging with a finger on your other hand.

How to Adjust Layer Settings in Affinity Photo

To get all of the fine-tuning layer options such as Opacity and Layer Modes, select the layer you want to adjust, and then click on the Layer Options icon in the Layers panel (shown as three dots in a circle).

You can also choose to Lock and rename a layer in the layer options. 

How to Change Layer Modes in Affinity Photo

One of my favorite tools in both Affinity Photo and Photoshop is the Layer Modes. They are endlessly useful, so they are an absolute must-have. You can adjust the layer mode by clicking Normal and selecting from the list that appears. 

Alternatively, you can swipe through each layer mode individually by using a swiping gesture over the layer mode options.

How to Add Adjustment Layers in Affinity Photo

To access the adjustment layers, click on the icon of the three-circle pyramid found in the right-hand toolbar. A list of all of your adjustments will come up. 

Let’s start with a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. When tapped, the options available to the adjustment layer you choose will come up towards the bottom of the screen.

To adjust the settings, either swipe on the various setting dials or you can tap them to input the amounts manually. Each adjustment layer will have its own options!   

How to Add Filters in Affinity Photo

All of your Filters can be found directly below your adjustment layers.

Like with adjustment layers, all Filters will have their own filter specific options that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Along with the live preview you can also choose to have a split preview by hitting the Split icon giving you a before and after view of your photo.   

6. Selections and Layer Masks

Next, onto selections, extractions, and layer masks!

Step 1

First, we need to switch into the Selection Persona. This is where we will find all of our selection and extraction based tools.

You have all the classic tools to choose from. 

1. Smart selection Tool
2. Freehand Selection Tool
3. Marquee Tools
4. Flood Selection Tool 
5. Color Select Tool

You can see all of the selection options towards the bottom of the screen. Including whether you want to add to Add or Subtract from a selection and the Brush Width. 

Step 2

Of course, you will likely want to refine your selection. Hit the Refine Selection tool found at the very bottom of the toolbar.

Your adjustment should be set to Matte by default.   

Step 3

Next, adjust your brush, and drag across the edges of any hair, cloth or…anything really that needs to be selected.

This tool works exactly the same in the iPad version as it doe the desktop version! So, for instance, if too much gets selected, you can change from Matte to Foreground and fill in any part that should be in the foreground.

Once you are happy, you will want to choose your Output, in this case, New Layer with Mask and then hit Apply. 

Step 4

Now, if you want to add a Layer Mask without creating a selection all you have to do is choose the layer you want to add a mask too, hit the + icon found in the layers panel, and then select Mask Layer.

Use a black brush to mask out any areas as normal!

7. The Liquify Persona 

Just like all the selection tools, all of the liquify tools and options have their very own persona. The Liquify Persona works the same as most, if not all, Liquify tools—which I like!  

Step 1

You push and pull on the grid, adjusting the Liquify Brush using the setting towards the bottom of the screen. 

Step 2

Adjust the mesh display by clicking the Mesh icon found on the right-hand side of the canvas. You can change the Color of the grid or hide it completely by bringing the Opacity down to 0%.

Step 3

All of your different liquify tools can be found to the left, allowing you to push, pull, and twist in every direction imaginable.

Step 4

Finally, there is also the Freeze and Thaw tools, which are your liquify masks.

Freeze makes it so the area marked in red, won’t be affected by any liquify tools.

Thaw erases the frozen mask, allowing that area to be liquefied again.  

8. The Brush Tool

Let’s take a quick look at the basics of the Paint Brush tool. 

Where to Find Brush Categories in Affinity Photo

First, we have the Brush Categories, which will hold all of Affinity Photo’s default brushes. 

You can switch through the brushes by going towards the top and hitting Basic, which is what your brushes are set to by default. 

Where to Find Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

Again, once you have the Brush tool selected, all of its settings will pop up towards the bottom of the screen. Here you have your Width, Opacity, Flow, Hardness, and Color. 

From here you can paint using your finger, or the Apple Pencil if you need more precise details. 

How to Import Brushes in Affinity Photo

And of course, you can import your own brushes by tapping the Three-Lined icon on the upper right of the Brushes panel and choosing Import Brushes.

From here you will choose wherever you have your brushes saved. You can drop them right into iCloud Drive, and then tap to import!

More Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

To further adjust a brush, beyond just the typical size or flow, tap and hold on a brush, choose Edit and all of its possible settings will come up.

If you want to reset the brush back to default you can tap, hold and then choose Reset.

And as a little trick, hit the Pin icon found towards the top of the Brushes panel to keep the Brushes panel open. This is handy if you switch your brushes around a lot, as the constant opening and closing can get incredibly annoying.

9. Saving and Exporting 

Finally, at the end of every work session, you are probably going to do one of two things: save or export.

How to Auto-Save in Affinity Photo 

Affinity Photo for the iPad can save a document in one of two ways. It will first Auto-Save all on its own, saving the file internally within the app’s memory. This is great for maybe one or two projects, but things are going to start piling up real fast. 

How to Save in Affinity Photo

The second option is to save a copy of the file by tapping the Document menu and choosing to Save a Copy.

From here, you can rename your file and decide where to save it to—in my case, iCloud Drive. You can also link things up with Dropbox and other file-sharing networks.

This will save as an Affinity Photo file, and it can be opened in the desktop version of Affinity Photo without having to convert or merge any layers!

How to Export in Affinity Photo

But if your image is all finished, you might as well export it using your iPad! Go to the Document menu and choose Export to bring up all of the exporting options.

You have all of the exporting options the desktop version has, including Exporting to PSD. The settings will change depending on the format you choose. 

Once you have all of your settings set, you need hit OK to choose, once again, where you want the image to be saved. Once it’s exported, you are good to go!  

We’ve Done It!

And there you have it: a basic rundown of the Affinity Photo iPad App. If you are already experienced, or even just someone who knows their way around the desktop version of Affinity Photo „pretty OK”, you will have absolutely no problem diving headfirst into the iPad version of Affinity Photo. It’s the same program—but with touch! And carrying around an iPad is maybe a tad bit less cumbersome than a full-blown workstation desktop with a dual-screen setup. You won’t get as many weird looks at your local coffee shop, at the very least. 

So, as always, keep experimenting with different techniques and practicing, and don’t forget to post your version below, along with any questions, comments, or critiques!

Looking to learn more? Why not check out the following photo manipulation tutorials:

• 
  Affinity Photo
  Affinity Photo for Beginners: A Quick Start Guide
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Effects
  How to Remove an Object in a Photo in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Giant Panda Photo Manipulation in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Affinity Photo
  How to Create a Galaxy-Themed Wanderlust Composite in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Dark Double Exposure Effect in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Grunge Ultra-Violet Photo Manipulation Poster in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

Post pobrano z: A Beginner’s Guide to Affinity Photo for iPad

Today is all about Affinity Photo for the iPad. For a long time, photo editor apps for mobile devices were… less than stellar. And it made sense. Mobile meant phones, and no one was really looking to create full-blown composites on their phone.

But even now, with the iPad being so advanced that some people argue that it could be used as a stand-alone laptop, photo editing apps are still not much more than lightweight versions of their original counterparts, offering some filters and color. But Affinity Photo for the iPad is unique in that it offers the full power of Affinity Photo—not a wimpy, watered-down version. This even includes PSD importing and exporting! 

So let’s take a look at how you can get the full Affinity Photo experience, in a much smaller package and all on the go! 

Follow along with us over on the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

What You’ll Need

You will need the following resources in order to complete this project:

• Man with blue hair
• Broken glass

Find more resources on Envato Elements!

1. Interface Settings and Left-Handed Mode

The first thing I always recommend when jumping into a new program is to set up your interface and settings. And while the interface is nowhere near as fluid as the desktop version, there are still a lot of personal preferences you can set by clicking on the Gear icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app.

Step 1

First, in General, you have your Undo Limit, going up to an insane 2,000 undos. I recommend keeping it around 25-50 for the sake of performance. 

Step 2

Next, how often you’d like things to Autosave, great for those like me who live that „10% or less battery life” life.

Step 3

Your Language and your Default Save Location. I highly recommend iCloud Drive for reasons I will cover a little later on!

Step 4

In Interface, you will find your Background Gray Level. I like to keep things nice and dark myself.

Step 5

And finally, you will also find Left Handed Mode for all you lefties out there! 

So just take a quick look through, and get everything nice and set up to your liking. 

2. Creating a Document & Importing Resources

Next, we will want to set up our canvas by pressing the + icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app’s splash screen.

Step 1

From here, you can choose from several options, including:

• Create a whole New Document, which will bring up your typical options of Size, Color, and some document presets.
• You can also import New From Clipboard or From Photos saved to your iPad.
• You can Import From Cloud, which is what I personally find to be the easiest. To do this, you will have to have iCloud set up, which you likely already have or at the very least have it installed on one of your Apple products by default. But if not, it’s a straightforward process!

Step 2

Download and install iCloud on both the iPad and the computer you will be sharing the files with—in this case, my PC. Then you can drag and drop any resources you might need into the shared drive. 

How you go about importing depends not only on your personal workflow but on the image you will be creating. In this case, we will be creating a portrait photo effect, so I want to start by opening my portrait photo.

3. Controlling the Canvas and Gestures

Affinity Photo for the iPad keeps it very simple with its gestures, keeping things fairly standard and intuitive. 

How to Zoom in Affinity Photo

You zoom in and out by placing two fingers on the screen and then pinching.

If you pinch outwards, you will zoom in, and if you pinch inward, you will zoom out.

You can also adjust the Zoom by going into the Navigator found on the right-hand side of the screen. You will see a few preset percentages as well as the Fit to screen option. 

How to Pan in Affinity Photo

To pan, simply take one finger, touch, and drag.

Make sure the View tool is selected. If you have another tool selected, like the Paintbrush tool, you will want to use two fingers instead of one, so that you won’t apply the tool.

How to Rotate in Affinity Photo

To rotate, you will first have to go into the Navigator, as Rotate is turned off by default. Once it’s turned on, you can rotate by using the rotation dial within the Navigator or by making a pinch and swivel motion.

To reset your canvas’s angle, click the rotation dial, input 0, and hit OK!

How to Redo and Undo in Affinity Photo

Redo and Undo are also controlled using gestures. You can Undo by doing a two-finger tap on the canvas.

Redo by doing a three-finger tap on the canvas. 

How to Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy in Affinity Photo

If you hold down on the canvas with one finger, a quick context menu will open up containing the Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy options.

There are also tool-specific gestures as well, which we will cover when we cover the tool itself! But most come down to a simple drag, swipe, or tap. No magic fingers needed.

4. Moving, Rotating, and Resizing Layers

Let’s go into Options located in the File menu—that would be the three dots in the upper left-hand corner. We are going to go to Place From Cloud and bring in a glass texture.

With that placed, let’s look at how we rotate, resize, and move around different layers. First, you will want to make sure the Move tool is selected.  

How to Move Layers in Affinity Photo

To Move a layer around, hold your finger inside the image, and pan around.

Remember, if you want to Pan the canvas, and not move the layer around, you will use two fingers instead of one.  

How to Resize Layers in Affinity Photo

To resize layers, you will want to tap and drag the control nodes—the blue dots found around the image.

Some images and layers will by default constrain, keeping the original aspect ratio, whereas some layers won’t.

Whatever the case, you can use a one-finger modifier to toggle it on or off. While resizing the image with one finger, use your other finger to press down on the screen. 

How to Rotate Layers in Affinity Photo

Rotate by holding the top control handle and swiveling to either the left or right.

If you want more precise control, you can open up the Transform panel found on the right-hand side.

Here you can adjust the order, Flip, and Rotate, and adjust the Dimensions by either tapping to change the numbers manually or by swiping up or down on the dimension dials. 

5. Layers, Blend Modes, and Filters 

Now, let’s take a closer look at layers. I’ll quickly run through the basics, and then we can jump into the good stuff.

How to Create a New Layer in Affinity Photo

Create a layer by opening up the Layers panel, found on the right-hand side.

Tap the + sign. From here, you can create a Pixel or Fill Layer. As well as layer masks and groups… let’s hold off on those.

I am going to create a Fill Layer set to a very dark purple #181320, along with an empty Pixel Layer.

How to Re-Order and Group Layers in Affinity Photo

Re-order a layer by tapping and dragging.

To re-order multiple layers at once, use a swipe gesture on any layers you’d like to move to select them. Do the same to deselect layers

To select multiple layers at once, select a layer, and then use two fingers to select another layer either above or below the initially selected layer. All layers between the two selected layers will become selected themselves.

You can group things together by selecting the layers you want to group, and then making a pinch-in gesture. You can then ungroup layers by selecting the group and pinching outwards.

Alternatively, you can hit the Group Layers icon found inside the Layers panel, to the left of the + icon. I much prefer the second method!

How to Duplicate in Affinity Photo

Duplicate a layer by selecting the Move Tool, double-tapping the layer on the canvas that you want to duplicate, holding down on the layer with two fingers, and then dragging with a finger on your other hand.

How to Adjust Layer Settings in Affinity Photo

To get all of the fine-tuning layer options such as Opacity and Layer Modes, select the layer you want to adjust, and then click on the Layer Options icon in the Layers panel (shown as three dots in a circle).

You can also choose to Lock and rename a layer in the layer options. 

How to Change Layer Modes in Affinity Photo

One of my favorite tools in both Affinity Photo and Photoshop is the Layer Modes. They are endlessly useful, so they are an absolute must-have. You can adjust the layer mode by clicking Normal and selecting from the list that appears. 

Alternatively, you can swipe through each layer mode individually by using a swiping gesture over the layer mode options.

How to Add Adjustment Layers in Affinity Photo

To access the adjustment layers, click on the icon of the three-circle pyramid found in the right-hand toolbar. A list of all of your adjustments will come up. 

Let’s start with a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. When tapped, the options available to the adjustment layer you choose will come up towards the bottom of the screen.

To adjust the settings, either swipe on the various setting dials or you can tap them to input the amounts manually. Each adjustment layer will have its own options!   

How to Add Filters in Affinity Photo

All of your Filters can be found directly below your adjustment layers.

Like with adjustment layers, all Filters will have their own filter specific options that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Along with the live preview you can also choose to have a split preview by hitting the Split icon giving you a before and after view of your photo.   

6. Selections and Layer Masks

Next, onto selections, extractions, and layer masks!

Step 1

First, we need to switch into the Selection Persona. This is where we will find all of our selection and extraction based tools.

You have all the classic tools to choose from. 

1. Smart selection Tool
2. Freehand Selection Tool
3. Marquee Tools
4. Flood Selection Tool 
5. Color Select Tool

You can see all of the selection options towards the bottom of the screen. Including whether you want to add to Add or Subtract from a selection and the Brush Width. 

Step 2

Of course, you will likely want to refine your selection. Hit the Refine Selection tool found at the very bottom of the toolbar.

Your adjustment should be set to Matte by default.   

Step 3

Next, adjust your brush, and drag across the edges of any hair, cloth or…anything really that needs to be selected.

This tool works exactly the same in the iPad version as it doe the desktop version! So, for instance, if too much gets selected, you can change from Matte to Foreground and fill in any part that should be in the foreground.

Once you are happy, you will want to choose your Output, in this case, New Layer with Mask and then hit Apply. 

Step 4

Now, if you want to add a Layer Mask without creating a selection all you have to do is choose the layer you want to add a mask too, hit the + icon found in the layers panel, and then select Mask Layer.

Use a black brush to mask out any areas as normal!

7. The Liquify Persona 

Just like all the selection tools, all of the liquify tools and options have their very own persona. The Liquify Persona works the same as most, if not all, Liquify tools—which I like!  

Step 1

You push and pull on the grid, adjusting the Liquify Brush using the setting towards the bottom of the screen. 

Step 2

Adjust the mesh display by clicking the Mesh icon found on the right-hand side of the canvas. You can change the Color of the grid or hide it completely by bringing the Opacity down to 0%.

Step 3

All of your different liquify tools can be found to the left, allowing you to push, pull, and twist in every direction imaginable.

Step 4

Finally, there is also the Freeze and Thaw tools, which are your liquify masks.

Freeze makes it so the area marked in red, won’t be affected by any liquify tools.

Thaw erases the frozen mask, allowing that area to be liquefied again.  

8. The Brush Tool

Let’s take a quick look at the basics of the Paint Brush tool. 

Where to Find Brush Categories in Affinity Photo

First, we have the Brush Categories, which will hold all of Affinity Photo’s default brushes. 

You can switch through the brushes by going towards the top and hitting Basic, which is what your brushes are set to by default. 

Where to Find Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

Again, once you have the Brush tool selected, all of its settings will pop up towards the bottom of the screen. Here you have your Width, Opacity, Flow, Hardness, and Color. 

From here you can paint using your finger, or the Apple Pencil if you need more precise details. 

How to Import Brushes in Affinity Photo

And of course, you can import your own brushes by tapping the Three-Lined icon on the upper right of the Brushes panel and choosing Import Brushes.

From here you will choose wherever you have your brushes saved. You can drop them right into iCloud Drive, and then tap to import!

More Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

To further adjust a brush, beyond just the typical size or flow, tap and hold on a brush, choose Edit and all of its possible settings will come up.

If you want to reset the brush back to default you can tap, hold and then choose Reset.

And as a little trick, hit the Pin icon found towards the top of the Brushes panel to keep the Brushes panel open. This is handy if you switch your brushes around a lot, as the constant opening and closing can get incredibly annoying.

9. Saving and Exporting 

Finally, at the end of every work session, you are probably going to do one of two things: save or export.

How to Auto-Save in Affinity Photo 

Affinity Photo for the iPad can save a document in one of two ways. It will first Auto-Save all on its own, saving the file internally within the app’s memory. This is great for maybe one or two projects, but things are going to start piling up real fast. 

How to Save in Affinity Photo

The second option is to save a copy of the file by tapping the Document menu and choosing to Save a Copy.

From here, you can rename your file and decide where to save it to—in my case, iCloud Drive. You can also link things up with Dropbox and other file-sharing networks.

This will save as an Affinity Photo file, and it can be opened in the desktop version of Affinity Photo without having to convert or merge any layers!

How to Export in Affinity Photo

But if your image is all finished, you might as well export it using your iPad! Go to the Document menu and choose Export to bring up all of the exporting options.

You have all of the exporting options the desktop version has, including Exporting to PSD. The settings will change depending on the format you choose. 

Once you have all of your settings set, you need hit OK to choose, once again, where you want the image to be saved. Once it’s exported, you are good to go!  

We’ve Done It!

And there you have it: a basic rundown of the Affinity Photo iPad App. If you are already experienced, or even just someone who knows their way around the desktop version of Affinity Photo „pretty OK”, you will have absolutely no problem diving headfirst into the iPad version of Affinity Photo. It’s the same program—but with touch! And carrying around an iPad is maybe a tad bit less cumbersome than a full-blown workstation desktop with a dual-screen setup. You won’t get as many weird looks at your local coffee shop, at the very least. 

So, as always, keep experimenting with different techniques and practicing, and don’t forget to post your version below, along with any questions, comments, or critiques!

Looking to learn more? Why not check out the following photo manipulation tutorials:

• 
  Affinity Photo
  Affinity Photo for Beginners: A Quick Start Guide
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Effects
  How to Remove an Object in a Photo in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Giant Panda Photo Manipulation in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Affinity Photo
  How to Create a Galaxy-Themed Wanderlust Composite in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Dark Double Exposure Effect in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Grunge Ultra-Violet Photo Manipulation Poster in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

Post pobrano z: A Beginner’s Guide to Affinity Photo for iPad

Today is all about Affinity Photo for the iPad. For a long time, photo editor apps for mobile devices were… less than stellar. And it made sense. Mobile meant phones, and no one was really looking to create full-blown composites on their phone.

But even now, with the iPad being so advanced that some people argue that it could be used as a stand-alone laptop, photo editing apps are still not much more than lightweight versions of their original counterparts, offering some filters and color. But Affinity Photo for the iPad is unique in that it offers the full power of Affinity Photo—not a wimpy, watered-down version. This even includes PSD importing and exporting! 

So let’s take a look at how you can get the full Affinity Photo experience, in a much smaller package and all on the go! 

Follow along with us over on the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

What You’ll Need

You will need the following resources in order to complete this project:

• Man with blue hair
• Broken glass

Find more resources on Envato Elements!

1. Interface Settings and Left-Handed Mode

The first thing I always recommend when jumping into a new program is to set up your interface and settings. And while the interface is nowhere near as fluid as the desktop version, there are still a lot of personal preferences you can set by clicking on the Gear icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app.

Step 1

First, in General, you have your Undo Limit, going up to an insane 2,000 undos. I recommend keeping it around 25-50 for the sake of performance. 

Step 2

Next, how often you’d like things to Autosave, great for those like me who live that „10% or less battery life” life.

Step 3

Your Language and your Default Save Location. I highly recommend iCloud Drive for reasons I will cover a little later on!

Step 4

In Interface, you will find your Background Gray Level. I like to keep things nice and dark myself.

Step 5

And finally, you will also find Left Handed Mode for all you lefties out there! 

So just take a quick look through, and get everything nice and set up to your liking. 

2. Creating a Document & Importing Resources

Next, we will want to set up our canvas by pressing the + icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app’s splash screen.

Step 1

From here, you can choose from several options, including:

• Create a whole New Document, which will bring up your typical options of Size, Color, and some document presets.
• You can also import New From Clipboard or From Photos saved to your iPad.
• You can Import From Cloud, which is what I personally find to be the easiest. To do this, you will have to have iCloud set up, which you likely already have or at the very least have it installed on one of your Apple products by default. But if not, it’s a straightforward process!

Step 2

Download and install iCloud on both the iPad and the computer you will be sharing the files with—in this case, my PC. Then you can drag and drop any resources you might need into the shared drive. 

How you go about importing depends not only on your personal workflow but on the image you will be creating. In this case, we will be creating a portrait photo effect, so I want to start by opening my portrait photo.

3. Controlling the Canvas and Gestures

Affinity Photo for the iPad keeps it very simple with its gestures, keeping things fairly standard and intuitive. 

How to Zoom in Affinity Photo

You zoom in and out by placing two fingers on the screen and then pinching.

If you pinch outwards, you will zoom in, and if you pinch inward, you will zoom out.

You can also adjust the Zoom by going into the Navigator found on the right-hand side of the screen. You will see a few preset percentages as well as the Fit to screen option. 

How to Pan in Affinity Photo

To pan, simply take one finger, touch, and drag.

Make sure the View tool is selected. If you have another tool selected, like the Paintbrush tool, you will want to use two fingers instead of one, so that you won’t apply the tool.

How to Rotate in Affinity Photo

To rotate, you will first have to go into the Navigator, as Rotate is turned off by default. Once it’s turned on, you can rotate by using the rotation dial within the Navigator or by making a pinch and swivel motion.

To reset your canvas’s angle, click the rotation dial, input 0, and hit OK!

How to Redo and Undo in Affinity Photo

Redo and Undo are also controlled using gestures. You can Undo by doing a two-finger tap on the canvas.

Redo by doing a three-finger tap on the canvas. 

How to Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy in Affinity Photo

If you hold down on the canvas with one finger, a quick context menu will open up containing the Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy options.

There are also tool-specific gestures as well, which we will cover when we cover the tool itself! But most come down to a simple drag, swipe, or tap. No magic fingers needed.

4. Moving, Rotating, and Resizing Layers

Let’s go into Options located in the File menu—that would be the three dots in the upper left-hand corner. We are going to go to Place From Cloud and bring in a glass texture.

With that placed, let’s look at how we rotate, resize, and move around different layers. First, you will want to make sure the Move tool is selected.  

How to Move Layers in Affinity Photo

To Move a layer around, hold your finger inside the image, and pan around.

Remember, if you want to Pan the canvas, and not move the layer around, you will use two fingers instead of one.  

How to Resize Layers in Affinity Photo

To resize layers, you will want to tap and drag the control nodes—the blue dots found around the image.

Some images and layers will by default constrain, keeping the original aspect ratio, whereas some layers won’t.

Whatever the case, you can use a one-finger modifier to toggle it on or off. While resizing the image with one finger, use your other finger to press down on the screen. 

How to Rotate Layers in Affinity Photo

Rotate by holding the top control handle and swiveling to either the left or right.

If you want more precise control, you can open up the Transform panel found on the right-hand side.

Here you can adjust the order, Flip, and Rotate, and adjust the Dimensions by either tapping to change the numbers manually or by swiping up or down on the dimension dials. 

5. Layers, Blend Modes, and Filters 

Now, let’s take a closer look at layers. I’ll quickly run through the basics, and then we can jump into the good stuff.

How to Create a New Layer in Affinity Photo

Create a layer by opening up the Layers panel, found on the right-hand side.

Tap the + sign. From here, you can create a Pixel or Fill Layer. As well as layer masks and groups… let’s hold off on those.

I am going to create a Fill Layer set to a very dark purple #181320, along with an empty Pixel Layer.

How to Re-Order and Group Layers in Affinity Photo

Re-order a layer by tapping and dragging.

To re-order multiple layers at once, use a swipe gesture on any layers you’d like to move to select them. Do the same to deselect layers

To select multiple layers at once, select a layer, and then use two fingers to select another layer either above or below the initially selected layer. All layers between the two selected layers will become selected themselves.

You can group things together by selecting the layers you want to group, and then making a pinch-in gesture. You can then ungroup layers by selecting the group and pinching outwards.

Alternatively, you can hit the Group Layers icon found inside the Layers panel, to the left of the + icon. I much prefer the second method!

How to Duplicate in Affinity Photo

Duplicate a layer by selecting the Move Tool, double-tapping the layer on the canvas that you want to duplicate, holding down on the layer with two fingers, and then dragging with a finger on your other hand.

How to Adjust Layer Settings in Affinity Photo

To get all of the fine-tuning layer options such as Opacity and Layer Modes, select the layer you want to adjust, and then click on the Layer Options icon in the Layers panel (shown as three dots in a circle).

You can also choose to Lock and rename a layer in the layer options. 

How to Change Layer Modes in Affinity Photo

One of my favorite tools in both Affinity Photo and Photoshop is the Layer Modes. They are endlessly useful, so they are an absolute must-have. You can adjust the layer mode by clicking Normal and selecting from the list that appears. 

Alternatively, you can swipe through each layer mode individually by using a swiping gesture over the layer mode options.

How to Add Adjustment Layers in Affinity Photo

To access the adjustment layers, click on the icon of the three-circle pyramid found in the right-hand toolbar. A list of all of your adjustments will come up. 

Let’s start with a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. When tapped, the options available to the adjustment layer you choose will come up towards the bottom of the screen.

To adjust the settings, either swipe on the various setting dials or you can tap them to input the amounts manually. Each adjustment layer will have its own options!   

How to Add Filters in Affinity Photo

All of your Filters can be found directly below your adjustment layers.

Like with adjustment layers, all Filters will have their own filter specific options that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Along with the live preview you can also choose to have a split preview by hitting the Split icon giving you a before and after view of your photo.   

6. Selections and Layer Masks

Next, onto selections, extractions, and layer masks!

Step 1

First, we need to switch into the Selection Persona. This is where we will find all of our selection and extraction based tools.

You have all the classic tools to choose from. 

1. Smart selection Tool
2. Freehand Selection Tool
3. Marquee Tools
4. Flood Selection Tool 
5. Color Select Tool

You can see all of the selection options towards the bottom of the screen. Including whether you want to add to Add or Subtract from a selection and the Brush Width. 

Step 2

Of course, you will likely want to refine your selection. Hit the Refine Selection tool found at the very bottom of the toolbar.

Your adjustment should be set to Matte by default.   

Step 3

Next, adjust your brush, and drag across the edges of any hair, cloth or…anything really that needs to be selected.

This tool works exactly the same in the iPad version as it doe the desktop version! So, for instance, if too much gets selected, you can change from Matte to Foreground and fill in any part that should be in the foreground.

Once you are happy, you will want to choose your Output, in this case, New Layer with Mask and then hit Apply. 

Step 4

Now, if you want to add a Layer Mask without creating a selection all you have to do is choose the layer you want to add a mask too, hit the + icon found in the layers panel, and then select Mask Layer.

Use a black brush to mask out any areas as normal!

7. The Liquify Persona 

Just like all the selection tools, all of the liquify tools and options have their very own persona. The Liquify Persona works the same as most, if not all, Liquify tools—which I like!  

Step 1

You push and pull on the grid, adjusting the Liquify Brush using the setting towards the bottom of the screen. 

Step 2

Adjust the mesh display by clicking the Mesh icon found on the right-hand side of the canvas. You can change the Color of the grid or hide it completely by bringing the Opacity down to 0%.

Step 3

All of your different liquify tools can be found to the left, allowing you to push, pull, and twist in every direction imaginable.

Step 4

Finally, there is also the Freeze and Thaw tools, which are your liquify masks.

Freeze makes it so the area marked in red, won’t be affected by any liquify tools.

Thaw erases the frozen mask, allowing that area to be liquefied again.  

8. The Brush Tool

Let’s take a quick look at the basics of the Paint Brush tool. 

Where to Find Brush Categories in Affinity Photo

First, we have the Brush Categories, which will hold all of Affinity Photo’s default brushes. 

You can switch through the brushes by going towards the top and hitting Basic, which is what your brushes are set to by default. 

Where to Find Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

Again, once you have the Brush tool selected, all of its settings will pop up towards the bottom of the screen. Here you have your Width, Opacity, Flow, Hardness, and Color. 

From here you can paint using your finger, or the Apple Pencil if you need more precise details. 

How to Import Brushes in Affinity Photo

And of course, you can import your own brushes by tapping the Three-Lined icon on the upper right of the Brushes panel and choosing Import Brushes.

From here you will choose wherever you have your brushes saved. You can drop them right into iCloud Drive, and then tap to import!

More Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

To further adjust a brush, beyond just the typical size or flow, tap and hold on a brush, choose Edit and all of its possible settings will come up.

If you want to reset the brush back to default you can tap, hold and then choose Reset.

And as a little trick, hit the Pin icon found towards the top of the Brushes panel to keep the Brushes panel open. This is handy if you switch your brushes around a lot, as the constant opening and closing can get incredibly annoying.

9. Saving and Exporting 

Finally, at the end of every work session, you are probably going to do one of two things: save or export.

How to Auto-Save in Affinity Photo 

Affinity Photo for the iPad can save a document in one of two ways. It will first Auto-Save all on its own, saving the file internally within the app’s memory. This is great for maybe one or two projects, but things are going to start piling up real fast. 

How to Save in Affinity Photo

The second option is to save a copy of the file by tapping the Document menu and choosing to Save a Copy.

From here, you can rename your file and decide where to save it to—in my case, iCloud Drive. You can also link things up with Dropbox and other file-sharing networks.

This will save as an Affinity Photo file, and it can be opened in the desktop version of Affinity Photo without having to convert or merge any layers!

How to Export in Affinity Photo

But if your image is all finished, you might as well export it using your iPad! Go to the Document menu and choose Export to bring up all of the exporting options.

You have all of the exporting options the desktop version has, including Exporting to PSD. The settings will change depending on the format you choose. 

Once you have all of your settings set, you need hit OK to choose, once again, where you want the image to be saved. Once it’s exported, you are good to go!  

We’ve Done It!

And there you have it: a basic rundown of the Affinity Photo iPad App. If you are already experienced, or even just someone who knows their way around the desktop version of Affinity Photo „pretty OK”, you will have absolutely no problem diving headfirst into the iPad version of Affinity Photo. It’s the same program—but with touch! And carrying around an iPad is maybe a tad bit less cumbersome than a full-blown workstation desktop with a dual-screen setup. You won’t get as many weird looks at your local coffee shop, at the very least. 

So, as always, keep experimenting with different techniques and practicing, and don’t forget to post your version below, along with any questions, comments, or critiques!

Looking to learn more? Why not check out the following photo manipulation tutorials:

• 
  Affinity Photo
  Affinity Photo for Beginners: A Quick Start Guide
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Effects
  How to Remove an Object in a Photo in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Giant Panda Photo Manipulation in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Affinity Photo
  How to Create a Galaxy-Themed Wanderlust Composite in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Dark Double Exposure Effect in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Grunge Ultra-Violet Photo Manipulation Poster in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

Post pobrano z: A Beginner’s Guide to Affinity Photo for iPad

Today is all about Affinity Photo for the iPad. For a long time, photo editor apps for mobile devices were… less than stellar. And it made sense. Mobile meant phones, and no one was really looking to create full-blown composites on their phone.

But even now, with the iPad being so advanced that some people argue that it could be used as a stand-alone laptop, photo editing apps are still not much more than lightweight versions of their original counterparts, offering some filters and color. But Affinity Photo for the iPad is unique in that it offers the full power of Affinity Photo—not a wimpy, watered-down version. This even includes PSD importing and exporting! 

So let’s take a look at how you can get the full Affinity Photo experience, in a much smaller package and all on the go! 

Follow along with us over on the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

What You’ll Need

You will need the following resources in order to complete this project:

• Man with blue hair
• Broken glass

Find more resources on Envato Elements!

1. Interface Settings and Left-Handed Mode

The first thing I always recommend when jumping into a new program is to set up your interface and settings. And while the interface is nowhere near as fluid as the desktop version, there are still a lot of personal preferences you can set by clicking on the Gear icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app.

Step 1

First, in General, you have your Undo Limit, going up to an insane 2,000 undos. I recommend keeping it around 25-50 for the sake of performance. 

Step 2

Next, how often you’d like things to Autosave, great for those like me who live that „10% or less battery life” life.

Step 3

Your Language and your Default Save Location. I highly recommend iCloud Drive for reasons I will cover a little later on!

Step 4

In Interface, you will find your Background Gray Level. I like to keep things nice and dark myself.

Step 5

And finally, you will also find Left Handed Mode for all you lefties out there! 

So just take a quick look through, and get everything nice and set up to your liking. 

2. Creating a Document & Importing Resources

Next, we will want to set up our canvas by pressing the + icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app’s splash screen.

Step 1

From here, you can choose from several options, including:

• Create a whole New Document, which will bring up your typical options of Size, Color, and some document presets.
• You can also import New From Clipboard or From Photos saved to your iPad.
• You can Import From Cloud, which is what I personally find to be the easiest. To do this, you will have to have iCloud set up, which you likely already have or at the very least have it installed on one of your Apple products by default. But if not, it’s a straightforward process!

Step 2

Download and install iCloud on both the iPad and the computer you will be sharing the files with—in this case, my PC. Then you can drag and drop any resources you might need into the shared drive. 

How you go about importing depends not only on your personal workflow but on the image you will be creating. In this case, we will be creating a portrait photo effect, so I want to start by opening my portrait photo.

3. Controlling the Canvas and Gestures

Affinity Photo for the iPad keeps it very simple with its gestures, keeping things fairly standard and intuitive. 

How to Zoom in Affinity Photo

You zoom in and out by placing two fingers on the screen and then pinching.

If you pinch outwards, you will zoom in, and if you pinch inward, you will zoom out.

You can also adjust the Zoom by going into the Navigator found on the right-hand side of the screen. You will see a few preset percentages as well as the Fit to screen option. 

How to Pan in Affinity Photo

To pan, simply take one finger, touch, and drag.

Make sure the View tool is selected. If you have another tool selected, like the Paintbrush tool, you will want to use two fingers instead of one, so that you won’t apply the tool.

How to Rotate in Affinity Photo

To rotate, you will first have to go into the Navigator, as Rotate is turned off by default. Once it’s turned on, you can rotate by using the rotation dial within the Navigator or by making a pinch and swivel motion.

To reset your canvas’s angle, click the rotation dial, input 0, and hit OK!

How to Redo and Undo in Affinity Photo

Redo and Undo are also controlled using gestures. You can Undo by doing a two-finger tap on the canvas.

Redo by doing a three-finger tap on the canvas. 

How to Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy in Affinity Photo

If you hold down on the canvas with one finger, a quick context menu will open up containing the Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy options.

There are also tool-specific gestures as well, which we will cover when we cover the tool itself! But most come down to a simple drag, swipe, or tap. No magic fingers needed.

4. Moving, Rotating, and Resizing Layers

Let’s go into Options located in the File menu—that would be the three dots in the upper left-hand corner. We are going to go to Place From Cloud and bring in a glass texture.

With that placed, let’s look at how we rotate, resize, and move around different layers. First, you will want to make sure the Move tool is selected.  

How to Move Layers in Affinity Photo

To Move a layer around, hold your finger inside the image, and pan around.

Remember, if you want to Pan the canvas, and not move the layer around, you will use two fingers instead of one.  

How to Resize Layers in Affinity Photo

To resize layers, you will want to tap and drag the control nodes—the blue dots found around the image.

Some images and layers will by default constrain, keeping the original aspect ratio, whereas some layers won’t.

Whatever the case, you can use a one-finger modifier to toggle it on or off. While resizing the image with one finger, use your other finger to press down on the screen. 

How to Rotate Layers in Affinity Photo

Rotate by holding the top control handle and swiveling to either the left or right.

If you want more precise control, you can open up the Transform panel found on the right-hand side.

Here you can adjust the order, Flip, and Rotate, and adjust the Dimensions by either tapping to change the numbers manually or by swiping up or down on the dimension dials. 

5. Layers, Blend Modes, and Filters 

Now, let’s take a closer look at layers. I’ll quickly run through the basics, and then we can jump into the good stuff.

How to Create a New Layer in Affinity Photo

Create a layer by opening up the Layers panel, found on the right-hand side.

Tap the + sign. From here, you can create a Pixel or Fill Layer. As well as layer masks and groups… let’s hold off on those.

I am going to create a Fill Layer set to a very dark purple #181320, along with an empty Pixel Layer.

How to Re-Order and Group Layers in Affinity Photo

Re-order a layer by tapping and dragging.

To re-order multiple layers at once, use a swipe gesture on any layers you’d like to move to select them. Do the same to deselect layers

To select multiple layers at once, select a layer, and then use two fingers to select another layer either above or below the initially selected layer. All layers between the two selected layers will become selected themselves.

You can group things together by selecting the layers you want to group, and then making a pinch-in gesture. You can then ungroup layers by selecting the group and pinching outwards.

Alternatively, you can hit the Group Layers icon found inside the Layers panel, to the left of the + icon. I much prefer the second method!

How to Duplicate in Affinity Photo

Duplicate a layer by selecting the Move Tool, double-tapping the layer on the canvas that you want to duplicate, holding down on the layer with two fingers, and then dragging with a finger on your other hand.

How to Adjust Layer Settings in Affinity Photo

To get all of the fine-tuning layer options such as Opacity and Layer Modes, select the layer you want to adjust, and then click on the Layer Options icon in the Layers panel (shown as three dots in a circle).

You can also choose to Lock and rename a layer in the layer options. 

How to Change Layer Modes in Affinity Photo

One of my favorite tools in both Affinity Photo and Photoshop is the Layer Modes. They are endlessly useful, so they are an absolute must-have. You can adjust the layer mode by clicking Normal and selecting from the list that appears. 

Alternatively, you can swipe through each layer mode individually by using a swiping gesture over the layer mode options.

How to Add Adjustment Layers in Affinity Photo

To access the adjustment layers, click on the icon of the three-circle pyramid found in the right-hand toolbar. A list of all of your adjustments will come up. 

Let’s start with a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. When tapped, the options available to the adjustment layer you choose will come up towards the bottom of the screen.

To adjust the settings, either swipe on the various setting dials or you can tap them to input the amounts manually. Each adjustment layer will have its own options!   

How to Add Filters in Affinity Photo

All of your Filters can be found directly below your adjustment layers.

Like with adjustment layers, all Filters will have their own filter specific options that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Along with the live preview you can also choose to have a split preview by hitting the Split icon giving you a before and after view of your photo.   

6. Selections and Layer Masks

Next, onto selections, extractions, and layer masks!

Step 1

First, we need to switch into the Selection Persona. This is where we will find all of our selection and extraction based tools.

You have all the classic tools to choose from. 

1. Smart selection Tool
2. Freehand Selection Tool
3. Marquee Tools
4. Flood Selection Tool 
5. Color Select Tool

You can see all of the selection options towards the bottom of the screen. Including whether you want to add to Add or Subtract from a selection and the Brush Width. 

Step 2

Of course, you will likely want to refine your selection. Hit the Refine Selection tool found at the very bottom of the toolbar.

Your adjustment should be set to Matte by default.   

Step 3

Next, adjust your brush, and drag across the edges of any hair, cloth or…anything really that needs to be selected.

This tool works exactly the same in the iPad version as it doe the desktop version! So, for instance, if too much gets selected, you can change from Matte to Foreground and fill in any part that should be in the foreground.

Once you are happy, you will want to choose your Output, in this case, New Layer with Mask and then hit Apply. 

Step 4

Now, if you want to add a Layer Mask without creating a selection all you have to do is choose the layer you want to add a mask too, hit the + icon found in the layers panel, and then select Mask Layer.

Use a black brush to mask out any areas as normal!

7. The Liquify Persona 

Just like all the selection tools, all of the liquify tools and options have their very own persona. The Liquify Persona works the same as most, if not all, Liquify tools—which I like!  

Step 1

You push and pull on the grid, adjusting the Liquify Brush using the setting towards the bottom of the screen. 

Step 2

Adjust the mesh display by clicking the Mesh icon found on the right-hand side of the canvas. You can change the Color of the grid or hide it completely by bringing the Opacity down to 0%.

Step 3

All of your different liquify tools can be found to the left, allowing you to push, pull, and twist in every direction imaginable.

Step 4

Finally, there is also the Freeze and Thaw tools, which are your liquify masks.

Freeze makes it so the area marked in red, won’t be affected by any liquify tools.

Thaw erases the frozen mask, allowing that area to be liquefied again.  

8. The Brush Tool

Let’s take a quick look at the basics of the Paint Brush tool. 

Where to Find Brush Categories in Affinity Photo

First, we have the Brush Categories, which will hold all of Affinity Photo’s default brushes. 

You can switch through the brushes by going towards the top and hitting Basic, which is what your brushes are set to by default. 

Where to Find Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

Again, once you have the Brush tool selected, all of its settings will pop up towards the bottom of the screen. Here you have your Width, Opacity, Flow, Hardness, and Color. 

From here you can paint using your finger, or the Apple Pencil if you need more precise details. 

How to Import Brushes in Affinity Photo

And of course, you can import your own brushes by tapping the Three-Lined icon on the upper right of the Brushes panel and choosing Import Brushes.

From here you will choose wherever you have your brushes saved. You can drop them right into iCloud Drive, and then tap to import!

More Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

To further adjust a brush, beyond just the typical size or flow, tap and hold on a brush, choose Edit and all of its possible settings will come up.

If you want to reset the brush back to default you can tap, hold and then choose Reset.

And as a little trick, hit the Pin icon found towards the top of the Brushes panel to keep the Brushes panel open. This is handy if you switch your brushes around a lot, as the constant opening and closing can get incredibly annoying.

9. Saving and Exporting 

Finally, at the end of every work session, you are probably going to do one of two things: save or export.

How to Auto-Save in Affinity Photo 

Affinity Photo for the iPad can save a document in one of two ways. It will first Auto-Save all on its own, saving the file internally within the app’s memory. This is great for maybe one or two projects, but things are going to start piling up real fast. 

How to Save in Affinity Photo

The second option is to save a copy of the file by tapping the Document menu and choosing to Save a Copy.

From here, you can rename your file and decide where to save it to—in my case, iCloud Drive. You can also link things up with Dropbox and other file-sharing networks.

This will save as an Affinity Photo file, and it can be opened in the desktop version of Affinity Photo without having to convert or merge any layers!

How to Export in Affinity Photo

But if your image is all finished, you might as well export it using your iPad! Go to the Document menu and choose Export to bring up all of the exporting options.

You have all of the exporting options the desktop version has, including Exporting to PSD. The settings will change depending on the format you choose. 

Once you have all of your settings set, you need hit OK to choose, once again, where you want the image to be saved. Once it’s exported, you are good to go!  

We’ve Done It!

And there you have it: a basic rundown of the Affinity Photo iPad App. If you are already experienced, or even just someone who knows their way around the desktop version of Affinity Photo „pretty OK”, you will have absolutely no problem diving headfirst into the iPad version of Affinity Photo. It’s the same program—but with touch! And carrying around an iPad is maybe a tad bit less cumbersome than a full-blown workstation desktop with a dual-screen setup. You won’t get as many weird looks at your local coffee shop, at the very least. 

So, as always, keep experimenting with different techniques and practicing, and don’t forget to post your version below, along with any questions, comments, or critiques!

Looking to learn more? Why not check out the following photo manipulation tutorials:

• 
  Affinity Photo
  Affinity Photo for Beginners: A Quick Start Guide
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Effects
  How to Remove an Object in a Photo in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Giant Panda Photo Manipulation in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Affinity Photo
  How to Create a Galaxy-Themed Wanderlust Composite in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Dark Double Exposure Effect in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Grunge Ultra-Violet Photo Manipulation Poster in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

Post pobrano z: A Beginner’s Guide to Affinity Photo for iPad

Today is all about Affinity Photo for the iPad. For a long time, photo editor apps for mobile devices were… less than stellar. And it made sense. Mobile meant phones, and no one was really looking to create full-blown composites on their phone.

But even now, with the iPad being so advanced that some people argue that it could be used as a stand-alone laptop, photo editing apps are still not much more than lightweight versions of their original counterparts, offering some filters and color. But Affinity Photo for the iPad is unique in that it offers the full power of Affinity Photo—not a wimpy, watered-down version. This even includes PSD importing and exporting! 

So let’s take a look at how you can get the full Affinity Photo experience, in a much smaller package and all on the go! 

Follow along with us over on the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

What You’ll Need

You will need the following resources in order to complete this project:

• Man with blue hair
• Broken glass

Find more resources on Envato Elements!

1. Interface Settings and Left-Handed Mode

The first thing I always recommend when jumping into a new program is to set up your interface and settings. And while the interface is nowhere near as fluid as the desktop version, there are still a lot of personal preferences you can set by clicking on the Gear icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app.

Step 1

First, in General, you have your Undo Limit, going up to an insane 2,000 undos. I recommend keeping it around 25-50 for the sake of performance. 

Step 2

Next, how often you’d like things to Autosave, great for those like me who live that „10% or less battery life” life.

Step 3

Your Language and your Default Save Location. I highly recommend iCloud Drive for reasons I will cover a little later on!

Step 4

In Interface, you will find your Background Gray Level. I like to keep things nice and dark myself.

Step 5

And finally, you will also find Left Handed Mode for all you lefties out there! 

So just take a quick look through, and get everything nice and set up to your liking. 

2. Creating a Document & Importing Resources

Next, we will want to set up our canvas by pressing the + icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app’s splash screen.

Step 1

From here, you can choose from several options, including:

• Create a whole New Document, which will bring up your typical options of Size, Color, and some document presets.
• You can also import New From Clipboard or From Photos saved to your iPad.
• You can Import From Cloud, which is what I personally find to be the easiest. To do this, you will have to have iCloud set up, which you likely already have or at the very least have it installed on one of your Apple products by default. But if not, it’s a straightforward process!

Step 2

Download and install iCloud on both the iPad and the computer you will be sharing the files with—in this case, my PC. Then you can drag and drop any resources you might need into the shared drive. 

How you go about importing depends not only on your personal workflow but on the image you will be creating. In this case, we will be creating a portrait photo effect, so I want to start by opening my portrait photo.

3. Controlling the Canvas and Gestures

Affinity Photo for the iPad keeps it very simple with its gestures, keeping things fairly standard and intuitive. 

How to Zoom in Affinity Photo

You zoom in and out by placing two fingers on the screen and then pinching.

If you pinch outwards, you will zoom in, and if you pinch inward, you will zoom out.

You can also adjust the Zoom by going into the Navigator found on the right-hand side of the screen. You will see a few preset percentages as well as the Fit to screen option. 

How to Pan in Affinity Photo

To pan, simply take one finger, touch, and drag.

Make sure the View tool is selected. If you have another tool selected, like the Paintbrush tool, you will want to use two fingers instead of one, so that you won’t apply the tool.

How to Rotate in Affinity Photo

To rotate, you will first have to go into the Navigator, as Rotate is turned off by default. Once it’s turned on, you can rotate by using the rotation dial within the Navigator or by making a pinch and swivel motion.

To reset your canvas’s angle, click the rotation dial, input 0, and hit OK!

How to Redo and Undo in Affinity Photo

Redo and Undo are also controlled using gestures. You can Undo by doing a two-finger tap on the canvas.

Redo by doing a three-finger tap on the canvas. 

How to Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy in Affinity Photo

If you hold down on the canvas with one finger, a quick context menu will open up containing the Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy options.

There are also tool-specific gestures as well, which we will cover when we cover the tool itself! But most come down to a simple drag, swipe, or tap. No magic fingers needed.

4. Moving, Rotating, and Resizing Layers

Let’s go into Options located in the File menu—that would be the three dots in the upper left-hand corner. We are going to go to Place From Cloud and bring in a glass texture.

With that placed, let’s look at how we rotate, resize, and move around different layers. First, you will want to make sure the Move tool is selected.  

How to Move Layers in Affinity Photo

To Move a layer around, hold your finger inside the image, and pan around.

Remember, if you want to Pan the canvas, and not move the layer around, you will use two fingers instead of one.  

How to Resize Layers in Affinity Photo

To resize layers, you will want to tap and drag the control nodes—the blue dots found around the image.

Some images and layers will by default constrain, keeping the original aspect ratio, whereas some layers won’t.

Whatever the case, you can use a one-finger modifier to toggle it on or off. While resizing the image with one finger, use your other finger to press down on the screen. 

How to Rotate Layers in Affinity Photo

Rotate by holding the top control handle and swiveling to either the left or right.

If you want more precise control, you can open up the Transform panel found on the right-hand side.

Here you can adjust the order, Flip, and Rotate, and adjust the Dimensions by either tapping to change the numbers manually or by swiping up or down on the dimension dials. 

5. Layers, Blend Modes, and Filters 

Now, let’s take a closer look at layers. I’ll quickly run through the basics, and then we can jump into the good stuff.

How to Create a New Layer in Affinity Photo

Create a layer by opening up the Layers panel, found on the right-hand side.

Tap the + sign. From here, you can create a Pixel or Fill Layer. As well as layer masks and groups… let’s hold off on those.

I am going to create a Fill Layer set to a very dark purple #181320, along with an empty Pixel Layer.

How to Re-Order and Group Layers in Affinity Photo

Re-order a layer by tapping and dragging.

To re-order multiple layers at once, use a swipe gesture on any layers you’d like to move to select them. Do the same to deselect layers

To select multiple layers at once, select a layer, and then use two fingers to select another layer either above or below the initially selected layer. All layers between the two selected layers will become selected themselves.

You can group things together by selecting the layers you want to group, and then making a pinch-in gesture. You can then ungroup layers by selecting the group and pinching outwards.

Alternatively, you can hit the Group Layers icon found inside the Layers panel, to the left of the + icon. I much prefer the second method!

How to Duplicate in Affinity Photo

Duplicate a layer by selecting the Move Tool, double-tapping the layer on the canvas that you want to duplicate, holding down on the layer with two fingers, and then dragging with a finger on your other hand.

How to Adjust Layer Settings in Affinity Photo

To get all of the fine-tuning layer options such as Opacity and Layer Modes, select the layer you want to adjust, and then click on the Layer Options icon in the Layers panel (shown as three dots in a circle).

You can also choose to Lock and rename a layer in the layer options. 

How to Change Layer Modes in Affinity Photo

One of my favorite tools in both Affinity Photo and Photoshop is the Layer Modes. They are endlessly useful, so they are an absolute must-have. You can adjust the layer mode by clicking Normal and selecting from the list that appears. 

Alternatively, you can swipe through each layer mode individually by using a swiping gesture over the layer mode options.

How to Add Adjustment Layers in Affinity Photo

To access the adjustment layers, click on the icon of the three-circle pyramid found in the right-hand toolbar. A list of all of your adjustments will come up. 

Let’s start with a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. When tapped, the options available to the adjustment layer you choose will come up towards the bottom of the screen.

To adjust the settings, either swipe on the various setting dials or you can tap them to input the amounts manually. Each adjustment layer will have its own options!   

How to Add Filters in Affinity Photo

All of your Filters can be found directly below your adjustment layers.

Like with adjustment layers, all Filters will have their own filter specific options that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Along with the live preview you can also choose to have a split preview by hitting the Split icon giving you a before and after view of your photo.   

6. Selections and Layer Masks

Next, onto selections, extractions, and layer masks!

Step 1

First, we need to switch into the Selection Persona. This is where we will find all of our selection and extraction based tools.

You have all the classic tools to choose from. 

1. Smart selection Tool
2. Freehand Selection Tool
3. Marquee Tools
4. Flood Selection Tool 
5. Color Select Tool

You can see all of the selection options towards the bottom of the screen. Including whether you want to add to Add or Subtract from a selection and the Brush Width. 

Step 2

Of course, you will likely want to refine your selection. Hit the Refine Selection tool found at the very bottom of the toolbar.

Your adjustment should be set to Matte by default.   

Step 3

Next, adjust your brush, and drag across the edges of any hair, cloth or…anything really that needs to be selected.

This tool works exactly the same in the iPad version as it doe the desktop version! So, for instance, if too much gets selected, you can change from Matte to Foreground and fill in any part that should be in the foreground.

Once you are happy, you will want to choose your Output, in this case, New Layer with Mask and then hit Apply. 

Step 4

Now, if you want to add a Layer Mask without creating a selection all you have to do is choose the layer you want to add a mask too, hit the + icon found in the layers panel, and then select Mask Layer.

Use a black brush to mask out any areas as normal!

7. The Liquify Persona 

Just like all the selection tools, all of the liquify tools and options have their very own persona. The Liquify Persona works the same as most, if not all, Liquify tools—which I like!  

Step 1

You push and pull on the grid, adjusting the Liquify Brush using the setting towards the bottom of the screen. 

Step 2

Adjust the mesh display by clicking the Mesh icon found on the right-hand side of the canvas. You can change the Color of the grid or hide it completely by bringing the Opacity down to 0%.

Step 3

All of your different liquify tools can be found to the left, allowing you to push, pull, and twist in every direction imaginable.

Step 4

Finally, there is also the Freeze and Thaw tools, which are your liquify masks.

Freeze makes it so the area marked in red, won’t be affected by any liquify tools.

Thaw erases the frozen mask, allowing that area to be liquefied again.  

8. The Brush Tool

Let’s take a quick look at the basics of the Paint Brush tool. 

Where to Find Brush Categories in Affinity Photo

First, we have the Brush Categories, which will hold all of Affinity Photo’s default brushes. 

You can switch through the brushes by going towards the top and hitting Basic, which is what your brushes are set to by default. 

Where to Find Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

Again, once you have the Brush tool selected, all of its settings will pop up towards the bottom of the screen. Here you have your Width, Opacity, Flow, Hardness, and Color. 

From here you can paint using your finger, or the Apple Pencil if you need more precise details. 

How to Import Brushes in Affinity Photo

And of course, you can import your own brushes by tapping the Three-Lined icon on the upper right of the Brushes panel and choosing Import Brushes.

From here you will choose wherever you have your brushes saved. You can drop them right into iCloud Drive, and then tap to import!

More Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

To further adjust a brush, beyond just the typical size or flow, tap and hold on a brush, choose Edit and all of its possible settings will come up.

If you want to reset the brush back to default you can tap, hold and then choose Reset.

And as a little trick, hit the Pin icon found towards the top of the Brushes panel to keep the Brushes panel open. This is handy if you switch your brushes around a lot, as the constant opening and closing can get incredibly annoying.

9. Saving and Exporting 

Finally, at the end of every work session, you are probably going to do one of two things: save or export.

How to Auto-Save in Affinity Photo 

Affinity Photo for the iPad can save a document in one of two ways. It will first Auto-Save all on its own, saving the file internally within the app’s memory. This is great for maybe one or two projects, but things are going to start piling up real fast. 

How to Save in Affinity Photo

The second option is to save a copy of the file by tapping the Document menu and choosing to Save a Copy.

From here, you can rename your file and decide where to save it to—in my case, iCloud Drive. You can also link things up with Dropbox and other file-sharing networks.

This will save as an Affinity Photo file, and it can be opened in the desktop version of Affinity Photo without having to convert or merge any layers!

How to Export in Affinity Photo

But if your image is all finished, you might as well export it using your iPad! Go to the Document menu and choose Export to bring up all of the exporting options.

You have all of the exporting options the desktop version has, including Exporting to PSD. The settings will change depending on the format you choose. 

Once you have all of your settings set, you need hit OK to choose, once again, where you want the image to be saved. Once it’s exported, you are good to go!  

We’ve Done It!

And there you have it: a basic rundown of the Affinity Photo iPad App. If you are already experienced, or even just someone who knows their way around the desktop version of Affinity Photo „pretty OK”, you will have absolutely no problem diving headfirst into the iPad version of Affinity Photo. It’s the same program—but with touch! And carrying around an iPad is maybe a tad bit less cumbersome than a full-blown workstation desktop with a dual-screen setup. You won’t get as many weird looks at your local coffee shop, at the very least. 

So, as always, keep experimenting with different techniques and practicing, and don’t forget to post your version below, along with any questions, comments, or critiques!

Looking to learn more? Why not check out the following photo manipulation tutorials:

• 
  Affinity Photo
  Affinity Photo for Beginners: A Quick Start Guide
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Effects
  How to Remove an Object in a Photo in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Giant Panda Photo Manipulation in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Affinity Photo
  How to Create a Galaxy-Themed Wanderlust Composite in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Dark Double Exposure Effect in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Grunge Ultra-Violet Photo Manipulation Poster in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

Post pobrano z: A Beginner’s Guide to Affinity Photo for iPad

Today is all about Affinity Photo for the iPad. For a long time, photo editor apps for mobile devices were… less than stellar. And it made sense. Mobile meant phones, and no one was really looking to create full-blown composites on their phone.

But even now, with the iPad being so advanced that some people argue that it could be used as a stand-alone laptop, photo editing apps are still not much more than lightweight versions of their original counterparts, offering some filters and color. But Affinity Photo for the iPad is unique in that it offers the full power of Affinity Photo—not a wimpy, watered-down version. This even includes PSD importing and exporting! 

So let’s take a look at how you can get the full Affinity Photo experience, in a much smaller package and all on the go! 

Follow along with us over on the Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

What You’ll Need

You will need the following resources in order to complete this project:

• Man with blue hair
• Broken glass

Find more resources on Envato Elements!

1. Interface Settings and Left-Handed Mode

The first thing I always recommend when jumping into a new program is to set up your interface and settings. And while the interface is nowhere near as fluid as the desktop version, there are still a lot of personal preferences you can set by clicking on the Gear icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app.

Step 1

First, in General, you have your Undo Limit, going up to an insane 2,000 undos. I recommend keeping it around 25-50 for the sake of performance. 

Step 2

Next, how often you’d like things to Autosave, great for those like me who live that „10% or less battery life” life.

Step 3

Your Language and your Default Save Location. I highly recommend iCloud Drive for reasons I will cover a little later on!

Step 4

In Interface, you will find your Background Gray Level. I like to keep things nice and dark myself.

Step 5

And finally, you will also find Left Handed Mode for all you lefties out there! 

So just take a quick look through, and get everything nice and set up to your liking. 

2. Creating a Document & Importing Resources

Next, we will want to set up our canvas by pressing the + icon found in the upper right-hand corner of the Affinity Photo app’s splash screen.

Step 1

From here, you can choose from several options, including:

• Create a whole New Document, which will bring up your typical options of Size, Color, and some document presets.
• You can also import New From Clipboard or From Photos saved to your iPad.
• You can Import From Cloud, which is what I personally find to be the easiest. To do this, you will have to have iCloud set up, which you likely already have or at the very least have it installed on one of your Apple products by default. But if not, it’s a straightforward process!

Step 2

Download and install iCloud on both the iPad and the computer you will be sharing the files with—in this case, my PC. Then you can drag and drop any resources you might need into the shared drive. 

How you go about importing depends not only on your personal workflow but on the image you will be creating. In this case, we will be creating a portrait photo effect, so I want to start by opening my portrait photo.

3. Controlling the Canvas and Gestures

Affinity Photo for the iPad keeps it very simple with its gestures, keeping things fairly standard and intuitive. 

How to Zoom in Affinity Photo

You zoom in and out by placing two fingers on the screen and then pinching.

If you pinch outwards, you will zoom in, and if you pinch inward, you will zoom out.

You can also adjust the Zoom by going into the Navigator found on the right-hand side of the screen. You will see a few preset percentages as well as the Fit to screen option. 

How to Pan in Affinity Photo

To pan, simply take one finger, touch, and drag.

Make sure the View tool is selected. If you have another tool selected, like the Paintbrush tool, you will want to use two fingers instead of one, so that you won’t apply the tool.

How to Rotate in Affinity Photo

To rotate, you will first have to go into the Navigator, as Rotate is turned off by default. Once it’s turned on, you can rotate by using the rotation dial within the Navigator or by making a pinch and swivel motion.

To reset your canvas’s angle, click the rotation dial, input 0, and hit OK!

How to Redo and Undo in Affinity Photo

Redo and Undo are also controlled using gestures. You can Undo by doing a two-finger tap on the canvas.

Redo by doing a three-finger tap on the canvas. 

How to Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy in Affinity Photo

If you hold down on the canvas with one finger, a quick context menu will open up containing the Duplicate, Delete, Cut, and Copy options.

There are also tool-specific gestures as well, which we will cover when we cover the tool itself! But most come down to a simple drag, swipe, or tap. No magic fingers needed.

4. Moving, Rotating, and Resizing Layers

Let’s go into Options located in the File menu—that would be the three dots in the upper left-hand corner. We are going to go to Place From Cloud and bring in a glass texture.

With that placed, let’s look at how we rotate, resize, and move around different layers. First, you will want to make sure the Move tool is selected.  

How to Move Layers in Affinity Photo

To Move a layer around, hold your finger inside the image, and pan around.

Remember, if you want to Pan the canvas, and not move the layer around, you will use two fingers instead of one.  

How to Resize Layers in Affinity Photo

To resize layers, you will want to tap and drag the control nodes—the blue dots found around the image.

Some images and layers will by default constrain, keeping the original aspect ratio, whereas some layers won’t.

Whatever the case, you can use a one-finger modifier to toggle it on or off. While resizing the image with one finger, use your other finger to press down on the screen. 

How to Rotate Layers in Affinity Photo

Rotate by holding the top control handle and swiveling to either the left or right.

If you want more precise control, you can open up the Transform panel found on the right-hand side.

Here you can adjust the order, Flip, and Rotate, and adjust the Dimensions by either tapping to change the numbers manually or by swiping up or down on the dimension dials. 

5. Layers, Blend Modes, and Filters 

Now, let’s take a closer look at layers. I’ll quickly run through the basics, and then we can jump into the good stuff.

How to Create a New Layer in Affinity Photo

Create a layer by opening up the Layers panel, found on the right-hand side.

Tap the + sign. From here, you can create a Pixel or Fill Layer. As well as layer masks and groups… let’s hold off on those.

I am going to create a Fill Layer set to a very dark purple #181320, along with an empty Pixel Layer.

How to Re-Order and Group Layers in Affinity Photo

Re-order a layer by tapping and dragging.

To re-order multiple layers at once, use a swipe gesture on any layers you’d like to move to select them. Do the same to deselect layers

To select multiple layers at once, select a layer, and then use two fingers to select another layer either above or below the initially selected layer. All layers between the two selected layers will become selected themselves.

You can group things together by selecting the layers you want to group, and then making a pinch-in gesture. You can then ungroup layers by selecting the group and pinching outwards.

Alternatively, you can hit the Group Layers icon found inside the Layers panel, to the left of the + icon. I much prefer the second method!

How to Duplicate in Affinity Photo

Duplicate a layer by selecting the Move Tool, double-tapping the layer on the canvas that you want to duplicate, holding down on the layer with two fingers, and then dragging with a finger on your other hand.

How to Adjust Layer Settings in Affinity Photo

To get all of the fine-tuning layer options such as Opacity and Layer Modes, select the layer you want to adjust, and then click on the Layer Options icon in the Layers panel (shown as three dots in a circle).

You can also choose to Lock and rename a layer in the layer options. 

How to Change Layer Modes in Affinity Photo

One of my favorite tools in both Affinity Photo and Photoshop is the Layer Modes. They are endlessly useful, so they are an absolute must-have. You can adjust the layer mode by clicking Normal and selecting from the list that appears. 

Alternatively, you can swipe through each layer mode individually by using a swiping gesture over the layer mode options.

How to Add Adjustment Layers in Affinity Photo

To access the adjustment layers, click on the icon of the three-circle pyramid found in the right-hand toolbar. A list of all of your adjustments will come up. 

Let’s start with a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer. When tapped, the options available to the adjustment layer you choose will come up towards the bottom of the screen.

To adjust the settings, either swipe on the various setting dials or you can tap them to input the amounts manually. Each adjustment layer will have its own options!   

How to Add Filters in Affinity Photo

All of your Filters can be found directly below your adjustment layers.

Like with adjustment layers, all Filters will have their own filter specific options that will appear at the bottom of the screen.

Along with the live preview you can also choose to have a split preview by hitting the Split icon giving you a before and after view of your photo.   

6. Selections and Layer Masks

Next, onto selections, extractions, and layer masks!

Step 1

First, we need to switch into the Selection Persona. This is where we will find all of our selection and extraction based tools.

You have all the classic tools to choose from. 

1. Smart selection Tool
2. Freehand Selection Tool
3. Marquee Tools
4. Flood Selection Tool 
5. Color Select Tool

You can see all of the selection options towards the bottom of the screen. Including whether you want to add to Add or Subtract from a selection and the Brush Width. 

Step 2

Of course, you will likely want to refine your selection. Hit the Refine Selection tool found at the very bottom of the toolbar.

Your adjustment should be set to Matte by default.   

Step 3

Next, adjust your brush, and drag across the edges of any hair, cloth or…anything really that needs to be selected.

This tool works exactly the same in the iPad version as it doe the desktop version! So, for instance, if too much gets selected, you can change from Matte to Foreground and fill in any part that should be in the foreground.

Once you are happy, you will want to choose your Output, in this case, New Layer with Mask and then hit Apply. 

Step 4

Now, if you want to add a Layer Mask without creating a selection all you have to do is choose the layer you want to add a mask too, hit the + icon found in the layers panel, and then select Mask Layer.

Use a black brush to mask out any areas as normal!

7. The Liquify Persona 

Just like all the selection tools, all of the liquify tools and options have their very own persona. The Liquify Persona works the same as most, if not all, Liquify tools—which I like!  

Step 1

You push and pull on the grid, adjusting the Liquify Brush using the setting towards the bottom of the screen. 

Step 2

Adjust the mesh display by clicking the Mesh icon found on the right-hand side of the canvas. You can change the Color of the grid or hide it completely by bringing the Opacity down to 0%.

Step 3

All of your different liquify tools can be found to the left, allowing you to push, pull, and twist in every direction imaginable.

Step 4

Finally, there is also the Freeze and Thaw tools, which are your liquify masks.

Freeze makes it so the area marked in red, won’t be affected by any liquify tools.

Thaw erases the frozen mask, allowing that area to be liquefied again.  

8. The Brush Tool

Let’s take a quick look at the basics of the Paint Brush tool. 

Where to Find Brush Categories in Affinity Photo

First, we have the Brush Categories, which will hold all of Affinity Photo’s default brushes. 

You can switch through the brushes by going towards the top and hitting Basic, which is what your brushes are set to by default. 

Where to Find Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

Again, once you have the Brush tool selected, all of its settings will pop up towards the bottom of the screen. Here you have your Width, Opacity, Flow, Hardness, and Color. 

From here you can paint using your finger, or the Apple Pencil if you need more precise details. 

How to Import Brushes in Affinity Photo

And of course, you can import your own brushes by tapping the Three-Lined icon on the upper right of the Brushes panel and choosing Import Brushes.

From here you will choose wherever you have your brushes saved. You can drop them right into iCloud Drive, and then tap to import!

More Brush Settings in Affinity Photo

To further adjust a brush, beyond just the typical size or flow, tap and hold on a brush, choose Edit and all of its possible settings will come up.

If you want to reset the brush back to default you can tap, hold and then choose Reset.

And as a little trick, hit the Pin icon found towards the top of the Brushes panel to keep the Brushes panel open. This is handy if you switch your brushes around a lot, as the constant opening and closing can get incredibly annoying.

9. Saving and Exporting 

Finally, at the end of every work session, you are probably going to do one of two things: save or export.

How to Auto-Save in Affinity Photo 

Affinity Photo for the iPad can save a document in one of two ways. It will first Auto-Save all on its own, saving the file internally within the app’s memory. This is great for maybe one or two projects, but things are going to start piling up real fast. 

How to Save in Affinity Photo

The second option is to save a copy of the file by tapping the Document menu and choosing to Save a Copy.

From here, you can rename your file and decide where to save it to—in my case, iCloud Drive. You can also link things up with Dropbox and other file-sharing networks.

This will save as an Affinity Photo file, and it can be opened in the desktop version of Affinity Photo without having to convert or merge any layers!

How to Export in Affinity Photo

But if your image is all finished, you might as well export it using your iPad! Go to the Document menu and choose Export to bring up all of the exporting options.

You have all of the exporting options the desktop version has, including Exporting to PSD. The settings will change depending on the format you choose. 

Once you have all of your settings set, you need hit OK to choose, once again, where you want the image to be saved. Once it’s exported, you are good to go!  

We’ve Done It!

And there you have it: a basic rundown of the Affinity Photo iPad App. If you are already experienced, or even just someone who knows their way around the desktop version of Affinity Photo „pretty OK”, you will have absolutely no problem diving headfirst into the iPad version of Affinity Photo. It’s the same program—but with touch! And carrying around an iPad is maybe a tad bit less cumbersome than a full-blown workstation desktop with a dual-screen setup. You won’t get as many weird looks at your local coffee shop, at the very least. 

So, as always, keep experimenting with different techniques and practicing, and don’t forget to post your version below, along with any questions, comments, or critiques!

Looking to learn more? Why not check out the following photo manipulation tutorials:

• 
  Affinity Photo
  Affinity Photo for Beginners: A Quick Start Guide
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Effects
  How to Remove an Object in a Photo in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Giant Panda Photo Manipulation in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Affinity Photo
  How to Create a Galaxy-Themed Wanderlust Composite in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Dark Double Exposure Effect in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

• 
  Photo Manipulation
  How to Create a Grunge Ultra-Violet Photo Manipulation Poster in Affinity Photo
  Abbey Esparza

Post pobrano z: How to Create Particle Effects in Photoshop (With Photoshop Action Examples!)

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create particle effects in Photoshop. I will explain everything in so much detail that everyone can create it, even those who have just opened Photoshop for the first time.

What You’ll Need

To recreate the design above, you will need the following resources:

• Stock Image

1. How to Start Creating an Action

First, open the photo that you want to work with. To open your photo, go to File > Open, choose your photo, and click Open. Now, before we get started, just check a couple of things:

1. Your photo should be in RGB Color mode, 8 Bits/Channel. To check this, go to Image > Mode.
2. For best results, your photo size should be 2000–4000 px wide/high. To check this, go to Image > Image Size.
3. Your photo should be the Background layer. If it is not, go to Layer > New > Background from Layer.

2. How to Select the Subject

Step 1

In this section, we are going to make a selection of our subject and then copy the subject to a separate layer. Choose the Quick Selection Tool (W) and select the background of the photo. Use the Shift-Alt buttons on your keyboard to add or subtract areas from the selection. After you’ve made a perfect selection, press Control-Shift-I on your keyboard to invert the selection.

Step 2

Now go to Select > Modify > Smooth and set the Sample Radius to 5 px. Next, go to Select > Modify > Contract and set Contract By to 2 px. Finally, go to Select > Modify > Feather and set the Feather Radius to 1 px.

Step 3

Press Control-J on your keyboard to create a new layer using the selection. Then, name this new layer Subject.

3. How to Create the Particles

Step 1

In this section we are going to create the particles. Go to Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize and set the Cell Size to 60.

Step 2

Now press Control-Shift-U on your keyboard to desaturate this layer and hide the Background layer. Then, go to Select > Color Range, set the Fuzziness to 10 and, using the Eyedropper Tool, select the particles of any color by clicking on any of the particles inside the subject area.

Step 3

Go to Select > Select and Mask and set the Smooth to 2, Feather to 2 px, Contrast to 50%, and Shift Edge to -2%.

Step 4

Now select the Background layer and press Control-J to create a new layer using the selection. Name this new layer P_1.

Step 5

Repeat this process by following the previous two steps to create as many particle layers as you like. Name the layers according to the sequence number of the particle layer. Feel free to use different Color Range and Select and Mask settings each time.

Step 6

Now Right-click on the Subject layer and choose Delete Layer. Then, show the Background layer and select the P_1 layer. After that, using the Move Tool (V), click and drag anywhere inside the canvas to position the layer as you like.

Step 7

Repeat this method to position the remaining particles layer as you like. Here is my result:

4. How to Make the Final Adjustments

Step 1

In this section we are going to make some final adjustments to the design. Select the P_1 layer and press D to reset the swatches. Then, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map to create a new gradient map adjustment layer and name it Overall Contrast.

Step 2

Now change the Blending Mode of this layer to Soft Light and set the Opacity to 40%.

Step 3

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation to create a new hue/saturation adjustment layer and name it Overall Saturation.

Step 4

Now Double-click on this layer thumbnail and, in the Properties panel, set the Saturation to +18.

5. How to Crop the Image

In this section we are going to crop the image. Choose the Crop Tool (C) and transform the Crop Box as shown below:

You Made It!

Congratulations, you have
succeeded! You have learned how to create a particle effect Photoshop action. Here is our final result:

15 Particle Effects from Envato Elements

Want to see more exciting photo effects? Check out this list of dispersion effect Photoshop actions from Envato Elements. Enjoy incredible styles from vintage effects to so much more!

Pixelum – Digital Dispersion Effect Photoshop Action

Particle effect Photoshop actions can transform your sports photos into awesome, energetic visuals. This digital dispersion effect from profactions creates an explosion of digital pixels in any direction you need. Use it with Photoshop CS3 and above.

Tornadum – Powerful Dispersion Effect Photoshop Action

This next dust particle effect Photoshop action looks pretty wild! Create one-of-a-kind images for Instagram or Twitter in just a few short clicks. Explore lots of graphic elements within this download as well as ten color preset options. Check it out!

Forge – Particle Dispersion Effect Photoshop Action

Need a wicked intro for your vlog channel or videos? This particle effect Photoshop action looks amazing with 3D text and more. Enjoy a high-quality, professional result that will blow your audience away. Works best with Photoshop CS4 and above.

3D Dispersion Effect Photoshop Action

Need a 3D Dispersion effect? Photoshop can help you achieve exactly what you need with this next download. Create amazing flying particles and realistic 3D pieces that are incredibly entertaining and visually effective. Add it to your collection.

Commetum – Cosmic Tail Photoshop Action

Create an epic cosmic tail with this next particle effect action. Created by profactions, this Photoshop action creates a fully editable image with ten color presets and many more great options. Use it with high-quality images for the best results.

Numeric – Photoshop Particle Effect Plugin

This next add-on features a cool numeric touch as a particle photo effect. Instantly turn your portraits into a wicked typographic effect for social media and more. Just download and install the action to get started. Check it out.

Geometric Dispersion FX Photoshop Add/On Extension

Geometric effects have been trending for years! Now you can use this dispersion particle effect that splits your sports and action shots into edgy, geometric shapes. Use it with any image or resolution and the latest versions of Adobe Photoshop.

Liquify 2 Rain Effect Photoshop Action

Liquify your subjects in seconds! This next Photoshop action creates an unbelievable liquid effect that simulates rain or splashing water. Just mask out the area where you would like to apply the effect, and then play the action. It’s that simple!

Fragmentum – Breaking Distressed Effect Photoshop Action

Feeling a little edgy? Explore a distressed effect Photoshop action like this next one. Fragmentum explodes any object, face or area into millions of tiny dust particles. Easily create this effect yourself using Photoshop versions CS3 and above.

Seizure Photoshop Action

Seize new opportunities to express yourself. Photoshop actions like this seizure effect from codetoform turn any boring portrait into a digital masterpiece. Enjoy the well-organized layers and add-ons including a step-by-step tutorial. 

Ashes n Embers – Fire Effect Photoshop Action

Need a fire effect Photoshop action? You can create this next phenomenal look in much less time. Free up your workflow with this easy-to-use Photoshop action that includes ten color presets. Edit the directions to create the best look.

Feathers Photoshop Action

Dispersion effects aren’t just for dust and sparkles. This next Photoshop action bursts any subject into a cluster of floating, natural feathers for a bold, new style. Upload your result to Instagram to see how your numbers do! Check it out.

Dispersion 2 Photoshop Action

Trendy dispersion effects are used on dancer photos, but you can also apply them to ordinary objects or photos. This Dispersion 2 Photoshop action from sevenstyles creates a mind-blowing effect with realistic particle details. Edit and add to it to fit your needs.

Fractal – Sparkle Effect Photoshop Action

Create an electrifying look with lightning and sparkle effects. Simply fill in your model with color and play the action to enjoy this awesome result in seconds. Included in this download is also a helpful video with step-by-step directions. Add it now.

Elementum – Dispersion Photoshop Action

Highly detailed and easy to customize, this next photo effect action includes four options with different directions to choose from. Explore up, down, left, and right directions to switch up the style to fit your needs. Great for Instagram and social media!

More Particle Effects

From sparkles to unique snow effects, Photoshop actions make it possible to create magic in just a few seconds. Explore this list of incredible resources and let us know a few of your favorites.

Enjoy more particle effects from these links:

• 
  Photography
  How to Add Cool Particle Effects in Photoshop With a Stylish PSD Action
  Marie Gardiner

• 
  Photoshop Actions
  How to Create an Ashes & Embers Dispersion Action in Adobe Photoshop
  Indranil Saha

• 
  Photo Effects
  45 Best Photoshop Actions With Creative Photo Effects
  Sean Hodge

• 
  Adobe Photoshop
  26 Best Glow Effects in Photoshop (Actions and Text Effects)
  Melody Nieves

• 
  Photoshop Actions
  How to Create an Awesome Dispersion Action in Adobe Photoshop
  Marko Kožokar

• 
  Photoshop Actions
  How to Create a Typography Dispersion Action in Adobe Photoshop
  Marko Kožokar

• 
  Photoshop Actions
  How to Create a Shatter Photoshop Effect Action
  Marko Kožokar

• 
  Photoshop Actions
  How to Create a Rock Blast Effect Action in Adobe Photoshop
  Marko Kožokar