I tried to keep this photo looking natural by not blurring the background TOO much, but you can use these same steps to add as much blur as you want!🙂

At last this lady has demonstrated this video at a slow a and steady pace showing all the movements of the cursor giving us time to take it all in. Well done and thankyou.

This tutorial is sooo timely. I needed to edit a particular photograph for this evening at the local camera club. I decided I wanted to blur the background and I used one of your earlier tutorials and it was OK. However the techniques in this latest tutorial have allowed me to improve on my first efforts. I am so grateful. You (and Ezra) are just the best.

Thank you Ally! I had to create a photo with blurred background at short notice and my first attempts with Affinity were a disaster. They included all the potential errors you highlighted! Once I found your tutorial it all worked perfectly. Thanks to you and Ezra for all your great work.

The reason I purchased Affinity is because of the excellent and very easy to follow tutorials. I've had a dabble at the other 2 big name products that are very powerful editing tools, however Affinity is just as powerful but far easier to navigate around and layering is just easier overall.

Enjoyed seeing how you applied the gradient to the blur layer. Nice trick! Thank you for sharing this effect.

Another real gem - great stuff Ally and as usual so nicely described, making it super easy to understand. Over time I've used gaussian but never got the extremely useful result you made. Love the application of gradient to the blur. Can't wait to play with this one, thank you. :)

Excellent tutorial as always. Thank you 🙂

Another great and fun tutorial. I love each and every one you present and always look forward to the next one. Thanks so much for making it fun.

Thanks! As always, I enjoyed this quick tutorial.

I've fooled around with a few different ways to deal with haloing but didn't think of this one. Great stuff as always, thanks 👍🏼

thank so much, that was so incredibly helpful... I used your method on a seamless paper backdrop which wasn't that seamless anymore... wow what a difference.... 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Thank you! I have several of your excellent courses, and videos like this one really help to reinforce all that knowledge.

Wow, again some use of tools that I have never used before. I learn something new every time I watch your videos. Thanks for taking the time to make these!

Love this tutorial! Thank you as always!

Thanks so much, I have just tried this to blur the background and it works a treat. Many thanks.

Another awesome video. Thanks guys, these are really useful.

Wow; very helpful! Thank you .

A very nice and useful tutorial. Thank you so much!

Excellent video . Thank you again!

This tutorial is so useful, thank you.

Ezra and Ally: This is so cool This lesson is right where I've ended up in 'retouching' photo practice. I've been really working with simulated background lighting - adjusting bg curves to pull 'out' the model more, with the goal to not touch the model settings. Haloing with the blur efx has been a problem, and I didn't even know what it was called. The impainting method to fix that is just cool! Thanks for the tips, and as a hobbyist, this is just more fun with the lessons you both provide! Peace!

Great tutorial. Thanks Ally!

I really appreciate these tutorials as I'm trying to transition over to using Affinity all of the time instead of PS. Thank you!!

Thank you! So easy to follow.

Thank you for always sharing great tutorials :) keep it up

By far, the best method...the best. Thank you so much for all the effort in scripting and the care you guys took in producing this. Like I said before, your presentations should be the de facto standard by which all other post productions videos are made.

Your every tutorial has made me fell in love with Affinity Photo even more.

Absolutely Awesome!!! Love your informative and easy to follow Affinity photo tutorials! You are amazing and so creative....i was just wondering how to blur the background...i use to use ps and i am so happy i dont now....and the transition is at times frustrating...but..well worth the effort to learn Affinity!!! Thankyou!!!!😀

just fantastic tutorial

Great idea, thank you very much!

Wonderful video and explained beautifully. Thanks...

Very helpful tutorial! Super easy to follow along, thanks!

Beautifully explained!

So incredibly helpful - thank you.

thank you for educating me

Excellent. Love this

Excellent training video, her slow and deliberate voice makes it easy to follow.

Hi Ali. Another great instructional video! You explain the process so well that, as usual, it’s simplified for those of us who are learning the complexities of AF. Thank you so much. Now, it would be even better (an 11 out of 10…) if we could see you again too. Hope you’re very well indeed, hope Ezra is doing good too. Thanks again.

Nice work. Thank you.

Great video again! Thanks

Superb, as always. Thankyou. Best wished to you and Ezra.

This video made my day

Oh, your lovely voice and your teaching makes Affinity so simple 😁

You have the best Affinity Photo tutorials.

Thank you Ally! 👋🏻

Great tutorial!

A very great knowledge sharing. Thank you

brilliant thank you

Hey thanks, this was super helpful :D

very helpful thanks

Super cool

inpaint saves so much time!

THANK YOU!!!

You've just bumped my Affinity skill level from ugly to pretty good!! Awesome video Ally!!

Hi, Ally! As always a informative video. Thank you very much. :-)

You are the queen of the magicians. ;-) Thank you.

Thank you, Ally Affinity Revolution tutorial lady. This is excellent (and very advanced, no?)

Fantastic clear tutorial. Very informative and you have a superb teaching skill. I've purchased legal copies of P.S. from eBay saying they are genuine ex university software, but after time P.S. always blows me out, so now time to fully get into my purchased Affinity Photo software. Fantastic alternative to the overpriced Photoshop. Thank you for a great tutorial.

Thanks for another great video. I've learned so much from you. In this picture, the stuff on the right and left hand sides, particularly the leaves in the upper right hand corner, are also close to the camera. Would a radial or eliptical gradient work better to keep them from being blurred as much as the stuff in the very background?

Thank you

Your tutorials are super clear. Do you ever use Affinity Photo on the iPad? There are other tutorials out there for it, but I prefer your teaching style.

Thanks

Thnxxx

Super tutorial. Have you guys got any plans, or have you covered this already to show a technique how double chins can be removed from a portrait in Affinity?

This was amazingly thorough. It's a great series and I've been following you for a long time. Just out of interest, any thoughts on Pixelmator pro?

I've used this tutorial and its technique a dozen times. I am interested in why you don't use the Lens Blur filter on the background instead of Gaussian Blur filter. Especially when mimicking the DOF characteristics of a wide aperture. TIA

🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

how do i transfer a mask in to backround layer with windows keyboard? i dont have this command putton!

Rather than in paint, is it not just as useful to cut and paste the subject to a new layer?

Hi, everytime im using Blur it always merged with the selected layer. so i cant control it freely, which setting should i change?

Great video if you're doing one or two but if you're doing volume this won't work thanks for the vid.

I have switched to Affinity permanently and all thanks to you. I've been following your tutorials for a long time and now I can use affinity fluently. I have already known this technique. I use this technique when upper/mid portion of the subject is visible. I use tilt-shift blur when the legs of the subject are visible.

in the last step, I blurred the bordered area just around the subject - instead of the rest of the background. Don't know how to flip it? :(

Very nicely explained. Something I do on a regular basis. Especially on those ugly smartphone images that are sent to you by your friends and relatives. Blur the background and then darken the background down a bit is my standard recipe. If you manage to correct the horrible wide angle perspective and put all the walls up straight again, and then crop appropriately, you can sometimes even turn completely untalented rubbish into quite a good looking picture. 😊 Affinity Revolution delivers a good path for beginners to take to get to grips on this very powerful and rather complicated piece of software. Note the tip about enlarging the selection slightly prior to inpainting.

I have multiple RAW photos of the same object in the same srounding and lightning , I would like to know how to apply the same color corrections and color grading with out having to do it every time for each picture?

You can use the ALT option to switch from FOREGROUD to BACKGROUND, this saves having to keep clicking on the tabs. Also you can change the PREVIEW tab to BLACK AND WHITE to see which areas have not been selected that you may have missed.

what if i just want to ad the mask directly with new layer without using the refine tool (after i marked the mask with brush tool) ^seems like double work if the mask is good enought from the start and i just want to ad it. So is there any hotkeys to ad mask with new layer?

So nice! She maybe looks *slightly too cut-out still here but these techniques super help! TY!!

Thank you, Ally, this video was so 'enlightening'! Makes me wonder where you learned all these tricks 😊

Maybe a dumb question - why go through this detailed selection process only to expand the selection later. Am I missing something?

So this proces took almost 10 minutes. I can do this in 30 seconds in Photoshop :(