The perfect blend

Choose from 15 free textures and learn how to blend them with your portraits using clipping skills in Affinity Photo with James Paterson

-  James Paterson

Affinity Photo offers all kinds of tools for blending images together, from layer blending modes to masking and more. In this project, we’ll take advantage of clipping, which allows us to position one layer inside the shape of another. This way, we can break our portrait down into several simple shades of grey then clip textures to each. To begin by using the Posterize effect, which allows us to simplify the image into just a few shades of grey. We’ve chosen to create four levels from white to black. From here, we can select the four areas of brightness using the Magic Wand tool and create separate layers for each.

Now the fun begins, as we can simply copy in different textures and colourful abstract images, then drag them on top of each layer so that the texture is confined to the shape of the layer. It lets us fill in each area of brightness with an image of our choice. We’ve supplied a free set of 15 textures for you to experiment with – see download link on the left. There’s colourful soap bubble images, rusty trays and close-up details. Not only are textures like this useful for this effect, they’re also a fun way to get creative with image blending for all sorts of interesting results. Try copying a texture on top of any photo then simply go to the Layers Panel and experiment with the layer blend modes. The Overlay, Multiply and Screen modes often work well.

STEP BY STEP

SURREAL PORTRAIT EFFECTS

Learn how to clip layers in Affinity Photo to create a striking portrait effect