In this session, portrait photographer Ivan Weiss walks you through a typical workflow for portrait retouching and conversion to black and white using Affinity Photo.
Ivan will be available on YouTube’s Live Chat for this session’s premiere on Thursday, 15 October 2020 at 4pm BST.
As well as shooting full-time for private and corporate clients, Ivan teaches photography and mentors photographers looking to improve their work, their business and their understanding of portraiture.
You can see his work on his website and his Instagram feed
See Ivan’s previous Creative Session, on colour grading here:
Affinity creative sessions
Stay tuned to the official Affinity YouTube channel as every Thursday at 4pm BST we will be premiering inspirational creative sessions throughout September and October. The sessions will be led by top creatives who use Affinity or one of our in-house product experts and give you the chance to follow along as incredible artists, illustrators, designers and photographers work on a project using the apps.
We will be announcing the details of each weekly session on our social channels, so make sure you’re following us on Instagram ( Twitter ( and Facebook ( to stay updated.
You can find out more about the Affinity suite, including getting access to free trials, over on
Comments
21 responses to “Black and white portraiture in Affinity Photo with Ivan Weiss”
Ivan, this is a really great masterclass. With the first portrait, would it be possible to achieve a similar effect with the beauty dish as a main light and a reflector? I'm a hobbyist, but I'd like to get more serious about shaping the lighting, caveat being a limited budget. Also, as a side note, do you ever work with constant artificial lighting sources? I have this thought that flash photography causes the subject to tense up (I could be wrong, since many photographers such as yourself achieve phenomenal results).
Watching year later – still usefull! Well cooked Ivan.
Absolutely, a masterful splendid effort. Well done; the portrait brings out the essence of her beauty and grace.
Fantastic. Brilliant tutorial on face work.
"Back it off a lot" – good advice! Bit of a David Bailey theme, you've pulled it off.
where do u develop the raw file ? and wich tablet?
Any chance you guys will do one of these for darker skin tones? This technique seems best for lighter skin tones. That would help me out a lot. Thanks for this regardless!
You have a great eye for light! The use of inverted curve adjustments screen and multiply blended for non-destructive dodging and burning is brilliant! I am going to copy your workflow of exaggerating adjustments to see the effect location more clearly, then reducing the opacity to the desired effect level. Oh, and tone mapping then changing the blend range to enhance the shadow detail is really effective! I really learned a lot watching you work! Thank you!
Nice
great, very appreciated!!
What do you mean by “flat profile” ? Profiles have zero impact on the raw file, it only affects the jpg preview…
Incredible class I learned a lot.
love your approach and am incorporating some of those tricks (exaggerated BW for blemish removal). Would love for you to post some sections of the final image magnified (I am trying to find a balance between blemish removal and retention as this is what establishes the balance making image look real)
An intensive method for the b&w conversion. Show up the power of this software. Thanks for sharing. Cheers from Italy
Are the luminosity adjustements on the HSL layer based on anything other than personal preference? I know there are luminosity values for RGB and CYM when converting to BW from Color based on Television standards when using a BW adjustement layer.
Splendid work, Ivan. Your tutorials are always a treat. Very classy portrait as well.
Thanks Ivan very informative and thought provoking, I have a couple of portraits that just didn’t seem to cut the mustard but I’ve just found another way to skin a cat ! Can we have more please, your method is easy to follow . 😃
Awesome and inspiring, thank you
absolute top class teaching, thank you Ivan 🙂
Thanks, Ivan. That was so interesting and informative. I love your delivery – it's so clear and understandable which makes me think I can do this! I've learnt so much.
Another great tutorial from Ivan Weiss. We need more!