Image adjustments in Affinity Photo 2

Affinity Photo 2 is a lot like Photoshop in the way it applies regular image adjustments like curves, hue and saturation and so on. Instead of applying these directly to the pixels in the photo (though you can still ‘merge’ adjustments later), it adds them as ‘adjustment layers’ which can be re-edited, removed and re-ordered later. The underlying image remains unaltered.

With these adjustments layers you can also add layer masks to control the areas of the image they apply to. If you use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements you’ll already be familiar with how this works.

However, Affinity Photo 2 has a slightly different approach and terminology, so this article explains exactly how it works and what you can do with these tools.