Blend mode boosters

James Paterson shares his tricks to enhance your image’s tones and colours with layer blend modes in Affinity Photo

- James Paterson

THE MISSION

Use blend modes and painting tricks to boost skies, trees and buildings in Affinity Photo

Time needed 20 minutes

Skill level Beginner

Kit needed Affinity Photo

Landscapes will often benefit from local adjustments to pull out detail, enhance colours or reveal textures in specific parts of the scene. One way this can be achieved is with layer blend modes. These are often thought of as a means to combine two or more images into one, but blend modes can also be hugely useful for enhancing colours and tones. In this project we’ll look at how to use blend modes in combination with other tools and adjustments to enhance the famous landscape of Meteora in Greece. We’ll break the scene down into different areas – trees, sky, buildings, rocks – and apply tailored edits to each. Whatever landscape you choose to edit, it can usually be divided up in a similar way.