Move in the right circles

James Paterson shows you how to create pixel-stretch effects in Affinity

- James Paterson

The Column tool in Affinity Photo lets you take the merest sliver of an image, which can then be stretched out to form a vibrant band of colour. You can specify a number of pixels for the width, so you can go for a single row of pixels or – as we’ve done here – make it a few pixels wide. Once expanded, we get an eclectic mix of colour to match the palette of our portrait.

We’ll show you how to use the technique here to craft a vibrant effect. It may look complicated, but it’s a simple matter of copying and stretching our selections, then using a distorting filter to transform the colourful strips into circles. Along the way we’ll explore key Affinity Photo skills, such as layer masking and outer shadows. As is often the case with an effect like this, the real skill comes not in the basic technique, but in fine-tuning it so that everything works together. We can do so by using subtle shadow effects so that the figure and colours feel more real. Finally, we can add variety to our colourful circles by duplicating and reusing them in different ways around the image.

We’ve supplied the Stretch.jpg start image for you to experiment with here, but why not use your own photo? All you need is a shot of a person on a plain backdrop. A jump or similar action pose can lead to dynamic results.