Affinity Photo :: Develop Persona :: Blemish Removal Tool

[Andrea B.]

I promised Susanne I would figure this tool out and I think I got it. And will explain it in a minute.

However, my suggestion to anyone using Affinity is NOT to use the Blemish Tool that is in the Develop Persona because the Inpainting Tool for removing blemishes and dust bunnies is ever so much better in the Photo Persona section of Affinity. So after tweaking your raw file as needed for basic exposure and curve settings, hit the Develop button and move to the Photo Persona for the dust bunny removals or blemish clean-ups.

ADDED LATER:  I am going to back off that preceding statement just a bit. If you unfortunately have a sky full of the same dust bunnies in multiple photos, then using the Blemish Tool in Develop permits you to save the first removal effort as a preset for application to subsequent photos. That is valuable and a good reason for using the Develop Blemish Tool.

But So, if you must use Blemish Tool in Develop, here is what I figured out. Hope it helps!
Once you have done this properly about 10 times, the Blemish Tool becomes very easy to use if you want to. I'm not sure that it necessarily always gives the best results because it is more of a clone-patch rather than blend-patch.

ADDED LATER:  Works very well for sky bunnies in mostly blue skies.


Affinity Photo :: Develop Persona :: Blemish Removal Tool (L)

Description
The Develop Persona Blemish Tool is a click and drag tool which outputs two connected circular areas.
You will see a double-circle, the blemish cover, connected by a solid white line to a single-circle, the blemish patch.
The patching effect over the blemish is immediately seen.

Initialize the Develop Blemish Tool:  L > Click & Drag
This action gets the blemish removal circles placed on screen, but refinement of the size and positon of the blemish cover and the blemish patch will be needed.

• Hit the keyboard letter L, place the cursor over the blemish, click the blemish and
  then immediately drag the cursor to the side before releasing it.

• You should see the small double circle on the blemish and a small single circle nearby.
  The two circular areas are connected by a solid white line.

• The double circle covers the blemish.
  The single circle selects the replacement patch.

• If you click the blemish and release the cursor before dragging it, then the tool does not work properly.
  This is indicated by a dotted white line connecting the circular areas.
  Should you make this mistake, click the double circle and hit delete.

Remove a Blemish Tool Placement:  Click > Delete

• Click the double circle and hit delete.

Resize the Blemish Cover:  Drag the Double-arrow

• Float the cursor over the double blemish circle until you see a double-headed arrow.
• Then click and drag the double-arrow back or forth to resize the blemish coverage.

• The attached single circle will enlarge/shrink simultaneously.
• This may temporarily disturb the patching effect until you re-adjust the single circle placement.

Move the Blemish Cover:  Drag the Plus

• Float the cursor over the double blemish circle until you see a plus symbol.
• Then click and drag the plus until the blemish circle is positioned as you wish over the blemish.

Move the Patch Selection:  Drag the Plus

• Float the cursor over the single patch circle until you see a plus symbol.
• Then click and drag the plus until the patch selection is positioned over a suitable patching area.
• You can drag the patch circle to any location in the photo,
  but obviously some areas make more sense than others as a proper patch. "-)

Summary

• L > Click & Drag over blemish
• Double-arrow Drag to resize blemish coverage
• Plus Drag to select best patching area

Corrections and comments are always welcomed.
Please do let me know how I can make this more clear or how I can improve it in any way.
Please also let me know if it works for you.

I know that this little tutorial needs some screen shots.
I will get to that as soon as I can. Kinda busy with some photos which are due soon. "-)


Photo Persona :: Blemish Removal Tool
This blemish tool (the bandaid symbol) also has a click & drag action. BUT you do not get any connected circles placed on the screen. So after the click & drag you cannot go back and readjust the placement or sizing. You have to set the width initially and get the patch selection right on the first (and only) drag. Not easy.
Only width is adjustable.
Weird, huh? that it does not work quite like the Develop Blemish Tool.

Photo Persona :: Healing Brush Tool
This is a cloning tool like we all know & love from PS. Works as expected. Set brush characterics (or select an existing brush), alt-click an area to load it into the brush, and then paint over the area you want to remove.

Photo Persona ::  Inpainting Brush Tool
This is the cool one - and my fav for quick dust bunny removal. Works as expected. Easy to use. Set brush characteristics (or select an existing brush) and just click the blemish away. The tool selects and blends from the area surrounding the blemish.

Photo Persona :: Patch Tool
I am completely flummoxed by this one. 

Photo Persona :: Red Eye Tool
Works as expected. Click and drag a square around any offending red eye.

[smusesuse]

Andrea, thank you so much for this! I'll check it out when I'm at home and come back to you.

[smusesuse]

Oooooh Andrea, thank you so so much for your manual!!! I was FINALLY able to remove dust bunnies from my pictures, me so happy! 

And it's so weird, now that I managed to use the blemish removal and the inpainting tool, I have no idea why it didn't work before?
Anyway, thanks again! Here's my dust-bunny-free proof. 

[Andrea B.]

Hurray, Suse !! Happy you got it working. "-)
Now we both have mastered ONE thing in Affinity !! 
What should we try next?

[Jakov Minić]

Beautiful photo!
It just goes to show what a good photographer can do with a 6 megapixel camera

[Jørgen Ramskov]

Wow, that's a really nice shot!

Andrea: Impressive guide.

May I ask why you're using this program, what's the advantage compared to the competition?

[smusesuse]

Thank you thank you, Jakov and Jørgen 

Andrea, I don't know?   I'm so happy to finally be able to use affinity that I am much more motivated now to actually do so. Which means that I am discovering more things that I had problems figuring out before (the snapping thingy with the cropping tool for example). Next time I bang my head against some wall (tool) I will let you know.

[Andrea B.]

Suse, write up a little tutorial on that snapping thingie! Your photo looks great!

That Develop Blemish Tool was tricky until I explained it to myself!! Then suddenly it was obvious. But there was no good explanation to be found in the Affinity manual. They definitely need to write a better manual. Their current manual mostly says what things are, but does not go into the details needed to make the tools work well. Like how best to use Views and Snapshots? And what the heck is that Scope thingy and how do you make good use of it?


Jørgen, I don't know Affinity Photo well enough yet for a fuller comparison, but I would say that it appears to be, initially, somewhere between Photoshop Elements and Big PS (or whatever they are calling it now in the Kloud). As a former user of PSE, I would say that AffPhoto has much more than PSE, but I'm not sure if it has as much as Big PS. An important up-front note is that currently Affinity Photo only runs on Macs.

The tools and activities are divided up into four "Personas": Developer, Photo, Liquefy and Export.

The Photo Persona is 16-bit edit capable and has layers & masks and all the typical desireable tools like Curves, Channels, Brushes, Gradients, Presets, Snapshots, Effects, Soft Proofing and lots more. Adjustment layers, mask layers, filter layers. There is a sub-app called Assistant which automates certain actions when set-up and enabled. So I think you could definitely say that Photo Persona is fully-featured. Most of the tools seem similar to the same named tools which I have used in other editors. There are little differences here and there, but so far they seem easily sorted.

I am not yet particularly impressed with the Developer Persona which handles the raw conversion because I haven't gotten the colours I want to see. But give me a little more time with Developer to make sure I understand everything there and don't take that as a diss just yet. There is one fascinating tool in Developer which I would very much like to understand better, the Scope thingy. I'm not sure I've ever needed to know the power spectral density of a photo file, but I can now see that if I use Scope!!

The Liquefy Persona has warping and liquefy and such-like special effects tools. I have not yet prowled this section.

The Export Persona is quite nice for finializing the saves. Currently the choices are Jpeg, Tiff, Png, Gif, Svg, Pdf and Eps. No DNGs it seems. There is a resampler menu and a matter too.

Because the Affinity company has put a lot of work into the associated Affinity Designer, I think that Affinity Photo will be well supported also. They have a list of features and upgrades they say they are working on.

Of course, only time will tell whether the Affinity Designer/Photo combo can make a dent in the Creative Cloud or at least in the parts of CC which correspond to Designer/Photo. It seems like that is what Affinity is aiming for. And competition is always good.



 

[Jørgen Ramskov]

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply. Competition is indeed good and Adobe needs as much competition as possible