Dorchester — Aug 9th 2022
Euan showed us how to remove an image from its background, highlighting the importance of horses for courses, starting at the basic level using instant alpha included in most Apple standard apps and progressing to features available in Affinity and other high end programs. He demonstrated the flexibility of the selection brush using a wide brush for basic selection and then refining, varying the brush diameter, adding to the selection or subtracting by holding down the Option Key. Euan took the opportunity to show how to improve the shape of, for example a curled photo, using the Mesh tool and altering the perspective with the Perspective tool, advising to keep as much of the un-required surrounding part of the image whilst using both theses feature before final cropping. With the selection brush you can select very fine detail such as wisps of hair by using the refine option. Rather than demonstrate this feature, Euan showed the excellent Affinity Photo Video, one of many free videos available from Affinity which do not even require you to own the software though if you have the app the videos accessed via the help menu.
After the break and Q & A, Mick asked via a KeyNote “Did You Know”, showing us and reminding us of various features of Mail, Contacts, Reminders, Calendar and Notes. The most important lesson being email etiquette and the need to be very disciplined about using the Bcc, Blind Carbon Copy, to email groups of people with out disclosing their addresses to other recipients.
