I spent all day the other day working on some photos that I took of Uluru when I was there in 2022. As most of you know I’m trying hard not use any Adobe products and I’ve been experimenting with other software. Today I thought I would show you some photos that I have processed using Affinity Photo 2.
I still have problems with it, but that is more me and not knowing how to use it. I think I was the same with PS when I first started with it. Though, I think the advantage I have this time is that I have a better idea of what is possible so it is just a matter of working out how to achieve the same thing but with new software.
I think I said a week or 2 back that I have found Google fantastic to use while trying to work out how to do stuff in it. It isn’t always easy, but I am sure with time I will get there.
This first image is a sunrise shot taken at the rock. They have places that they tell you where to go and photograph, but they can be strange. The sun rises behind you here and what you are getting is the sun as it hits the rock as it rises. Wasn’t quite what I wanted, but it was still okay.
These images are seeming quite dark here, they weren’t this dark on my laptop and I don’t know why WP does this sometimes. Am I the only one who has this happen to them. Images can look over saturated or too dark, when I know they weren’t. I am at a loss.
This next one seemed very very dark so I put it back into Affinity and lightened it up more. It looked great on my laptop, but here in WP is looks too dark again. I guess I will wait and see what you all say.
This is a long exposure that was taken before sunset when we were there. It was also taken in the same area as the above image, but at the other end of the day. I remember thinking there were too many clouds.
There is no way we will get any kind of sunset, then look what happened.
It was a stunner, I was so happy to get this. The rock was very dark, but I did a lot of work with the clouds to make it stand out more.
I thought for this final image I might give a before and after.
Hopefully, you can see how much work I did.
As I said I’m still learning how to do things in Affinity Photo 2, and so far I think it could be an alternative to PS. The plan going forward is to continue using Affinity and ON1 for all my processing and try not to use PS, and see if I miss it.
There will be times that I know I will go to PS especially when I want to do something quickly, but I do hope that as we go towards May next year, those times become less frequent. I will, of course, keep you up to date with what I am doing.
Til next time.
You definitely did do a lot of work! My images also always look darker on WP and lose some of their depth, too. The originals are always better. Beautiful images here, though.
Thank you Lynette, I think the work was worth it. I don’t understand why it happens, I have been doing some research, but nothing seems to make sense.
I’ve been using Photomator for macOS, and I’ve been really impressed with it. I also have Affinity Photo 2 for macOS, but I’ve been having a tough time with it for everyday editing. One thing that Affinity Photo does really well is HDR merge – the results are amazing!
I’ve also been hesitant to use Adobe products for post-processing. I don’t understand why they don’t offer a one-time purchase option.
I don’t have a Mac, so that program won’t work for me. I have had good results with Affinity, really the only problem I have is working out how it does stuff, but I’m getting better at that.
I really want to get away from Adobe if I can, I have until May to work it out. Thanks Braden.
Hi Leanne
I have had that problem too. Is it because you have reduced the image size. Are the photos transferred from your camera. I tend to use Google photos and sometimes this happens. I’m not nearly as technical as you, so might be on the wrong track. Anyhow you did a great job with these photos.
I have done some research people say you need to convert your photos to sRGB colour, tick I do that. If you don’t resize then the WP compression system can do it, so I always resize my images and at fairly good quality, so from what I can tell I am doing it right, but it still happens. Thank you Alison, I will keep trying.
Affinity Photo 2 is not bad. But some of the image processing in PS are a great deal better. So it is hard to ditch it, even if one likes.
I haven’t got that far with it yet, but with the price hikes of PS, I think it will become too expensive for me to use.
Yes. Colour on my tablet and on laptop are slightly different. Frustrating! Have not found out if I can do anything about that. Any suggestions apart from buying a new laptop?
Yeah, it is weird. The photos look great on my laptop, but it is just with wordpress. No idea why, it doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes, I have to work out why. Sorry no suggestions, but I think the problem is WP and probably not your laptop. lol Though you could use it as an excuse to get one.
I love the last sunset image Leanne. The colors in the sunset are vibrant and the rock looks red.
That was the first one I did, thank you Anne.
Looks really good — I also have that frustration with WP and the end result of some of my images. The only way we can control all the factors in how someone views our photos is if we print it and show them physically.
Thank you Matt, maybe it is just me. I don’t understand it, I did some research and the things they suggested doing, well I already do them. I don’t want to print, so I guess have to deal with it as it is.
Your images are likely dark because the brightness on the monitor you are using is too bright while you are processing your photos. Thus, you end up reducing the exposure, lowering the whites/highlights, deepening the shadows/blacks, etc. The lighting in the room you are in while processing your photos can also impact this. Working in a brightly lit room can throw off your perception of exposure, lights, and darks. This can usually be solved by using a color calibration tool such as the Datacolor Spyder X. Google it! When I calibrated the monitor I am using now, I had to turn the brightness down to 22 percent! I also ended up replacing the two bright daylight bulbs in the room with ones that were lower wattage. I also calibrated my laptop, which had a cooler color tone before that point, causing me to make a lot of my images too warm. Since calibrating both my desktop monitor and my laptop, they both look the same. And prints look just like they do on my screen.
That would be the case if I wasn’t using the same monitor to process and look at my phtoos on WordPress. They look fine on my laptop, then when I load them to WP using my laptop they look so much darker than they are in the folder on my laptop. I use the same screen for everything. So that can’t be the problem. I don’t know, it is a setting in WP but I can’t work out where it is or how to stop it from happening.
Your WordPress page has a dark back ground. When viewing in your folders, is the background surrounding the photo black, or is it white? If you’re viewing and or editing in an app with a white background, they won’t appear as dark as they do when surrounded by a black background and vice versa. Size might be an issue. I use a 27 inch monitor for most of my editing. But when I look at my images on my phone or other smaller device, some of the wider angle images loose their feel. Because everything is so small and you don’t see details like you can on a larger screen. So try opening your WordPress photos full screen. Or shrink your photo viewing window to the size the images are displayed at on your WordPress page. To see how they compare when viewed at the same or similar size. Finally, If you are saving your files at a lower resolution and or quality to reduce load on your web page, that could be affecting your perceptions as well. Especially when those photos are viewed at larger sizes. To rule this out, create draft post. Load two versions of the same image to that post. One at the normal full size and quality, and one at the reduced size and quality. Send a preview of that post to yourself and see how they look side by side on the same page. Myself I’ve struggled to reduce the file size of my images to what is considered optimal for web page optimization. Because doing so degrades the image quality to the point my images don’t look very good.
Hope this helps.
I tend to use a dark background to process and show my photos so it can’t be that. I think it is a wordpress issue, when you go looking there are lots of people who complain about the same thing all the time. I always resize, for 2 reasons, one because I don’t want to fill the storage that is available for free, and the other reason, you put up big photos then when people steal them they get a large image. I also saw that people recommend changing the colour profile to sRGB, which I do and that resizing helps because it means WP is compressing your images. I resize to 1000 pixels on the longest side and quality around 10. As I said it doesn’t happen all the time, and that makes it even more confusing.
I kind of like working with dark images to see how much detail is still there. But I’m a pixel-peeper. These images are really well done.
As to images looking darker in WP than they were on your desktop, I have the same issue but only with the cover photo (featured).
Not sure what that’s about.
It can be quite interesting to do that, the problem is they look great on my computer, but when I load them to WP they are darker, so annoying. I don’t have it all the time, but these ones are so much darker than they are meant to be. I don’t know either. I tried to google it but the information doesn’t match my site.