Creative composites in Serif Affinity Photo

James Paterson gets to grips with key montaging skills and shows you how to craft incredible composite photographs with ease in Affinity

- James Paterson

THE MISSION

Learn how to add a figure to a scene in Affinity Photo

Time needed

20 minutes

Skill level

Intermediate

Kit needed

Affinity Photo

One of the things Affinity Photo does best is allow you to combine two or more photos in creative ways. Like it’s pricier forebear Photoshop, Affinity Photo utilizes layers for photo editing. This means you can cut out different parts of photos and layer them on top of one another, like sheets of paper in a collage, in order to create a composite photograph like this.

In this tutorial we’ll explain how to make a simple composite.

There are three key stages to making a natural-looking composite like this. First we use selections to isolate the subject and a mask to remove the background. Next, we copy in and position the subject against their new backdrop. Finally we use tonal tools and add shadows to match the two images, so that it looks like they belong together.

This last part is where composites often fall down. It can be tricky to match the two images together, but it helps if you master a few key tonal tools. Shadows can also help to sell the effect by grounding the subject in their new scene. It helps too if both images share a similar feel in terms of the lighting. Here both the giraffe and the road scene are softly backlit from behind, giving both images a moody feel that helps them to gel.