How to remove an object in a photo in Affinity Photo

Even the most seemingly ideal of shots can be ruined by a garbage can or a random pedestrian right in the middle of your background. Luckily for us, there are a couple of tools you can use in Affinity Photo to remove objects that are standing between you and that perfect shot.

In this Affinity Photo tutorial, you’ll learn how to remove an unwanted object in a photograph using the Clone Brush and the Patch Tool. Then, we’ll create a melancholic ghost girl photo effect.

1. How to use the Patch Tool in Affinity Photo

First, let’s look at both the Clone and Patch tools individually, and we’ll combine them to remove a person from a beach to prepare our background for our ghost girl!

For the first part of this Affinity Photo tutorial, you can use the Winter Beach photo from Envato.

Step 1

The Patch Tool may be the only tool you end up using in some cases, especially if you’re working with an image that has straight lines that easily match up.

Select the Patch Tool and create a selection around the object you’d like removed. Keep the selection reasonably loose—this by no means needs to be perfect.

Step 2

Now move your mouse to an area near the object. Notice how whatever area you go over with your mouse, it becomes duplicated within your selection. You want to choose the area that best fits, making sure all edges, lines, or textures match up the best they can—almost like a puzzle piece.

Step 3

And then click, and the area will become patched. If you need to, you can fine-tune your patch by zooming in and making smaller patches, making sure everything is seamless and organic-looking.

2. How to use the Clone Brush Tool in Affinity Photo

However, the Clone Stamp Tool is my tool of choice for fine-tuning or working in a smaller or zoomed-in section of a photo. 

Step 1

Select the Clone Stamp Tool and adjust the stamp’s brush settings found in the top toolbar. These settings will change as you go, but let’s start with a 100% Opacity and 50% Hardness as the area we are stamping is sharp and in focus.

Experiment with different hardnesses to see what gets the best results as you stamp. 

Step 2

Hold Alt to sample an area you want to stamp. Similar to the Patch Tool, a copy of the area you click will be placed where you paint.  

I will typically sample the area directly below my brush; the sample will then continue to follow my brush, creating a continual stamp.

You will want to avoid things looking too repetitive, so every once in a while sample a different area and paint over any repeating patterns or details.

Step 3

Finish up the background by adding a Brightness/Contrast, Curves, and Color Balance adjustment layer. 

Brightness/Contrast settings

• Brightness: -47%
• Contrast: 58%

Curves settings

Color Balance settings

• Red: -25%
• Green: -15%
• Blue: 22

3. How to create doll faces in Affinity Photo 

With our background all prepped, we can move on to our ghost. I decided to go for a stylistic, doll-like look—which here means big eyes, lips, and head, with a small nose and hands. 

You can use this creepy girl from Envato: Anime Style Blonde Girl.

Step 1

To give a character enlarged features, without any pixelation or blurriness, import the image onto a new canvas and then duplicate it.

Step 2

Now, we’re going to shrink the original image slightly. The more you shrink, the bigger the eyes (and other features) will be. And you can always further shrink it later on!

Step 3

Use Affinity Photo’s Liquify Persona to make any adjustments to the features that will be enlarged. I am just going to bring in the mouth a small amount, so it becomes more rounded. 

Step 4

Next, make a quick selection around the subject’s eyes, nose, and mouth. Then copy and paste that selection onto a new layer. 

Step 5

Piece by piece, copy and paste the larger features over their originals, and blend out the edges using the Erase Brush Tool.

Lower the opacity of the newly copied layer to help align everything. For instance, I like matching up the pupil of the larger eye with the original eye underneath so I know the placement isn’t too far apart or too close together. 

Step 6

As I said earlier, you can shrink the original image further to increase the size of the eyes if needed. Be sure to re-align things after, however!

And once everything is blended, placed and all final adjustments have been made, you can rasterize or merge the layers.

Step 7

To shrink the nose, go back into the Liquefy Persona and push and shape it inward. You can refine the shape of any other part of the face as well, such as rounding out the jawline.

Step 8

For the hands, create a selection around each hand, and copy and paste them separately onto new layers—similarly to what we did with the eyes.

Shrink the hands, making them as small as you want. Use a soft eraser brush tool to feather out the very outer edges of the hands, being mindful of blending where you can.  

Step 9

Remember the Clone and Patch Tools? It’s their time to shine again! Using the same techniques as we used in the beach image, remove the leftover hands. As we are working in close zoomed-in areas, the Stamp Tool should do the trick.

Step 10

Finally, for the things that just can’t be stamped—paint! Zoom in nice and close, and recreate the colors, lines, and textures you see. No painting skills needed! But here’s a tutorial on creating an artistic painting effect in Affinity Photo, in case you need it.

Once you’re happy, merge everything together—and if you want her to look even more doll-like, you can enlarge the head of our ghost using the same method as the eyes and lips.

4. How to quickly extract hair in Affinity Photo

Step 1

Save your image as a PNG or JPG. Drag, drop, and size it onto the cleaned-up beach canvas.

Step 2

Extract the subject’s body using your preferred method; mine is the Pen Tool. Whatever you choose, make sure the edges of your subject are slightly feathered. 

Step 3

If you have a mask on your subject, Right-click > Rasterize the mask to the layer.

Create a quick selection around the subject’s hair using the Freehand Selection Tool, and then create a mask of the subject’s hair.

Step 4

Hover over the layer mask, and Right-click > Refine Mask. Drag the Refine Brush around the edge of the subject’s hair to get a pretty decent mask of the hair and its fly-aways. For this particular image, we don’t need it to be perfect. 

Step 5

Create and clip a new layer into the subject. Fill in the edges of the hair with a solid pale blue color #E7EEFC to create a rim light effect.

5. How to smooth skin in Affinity Photo

Next, let’s smooth out her skin to a powder finish.

Step 1

Rasterize and duplicate your ghost girl, adding a layer mask to the duplicate.

Zoom in close to the skin and go to Filters > Blur > Bilateral Blur.

Play with the settings until you have a good mixture of smooth skin but sharp features and edges, and click OK.

Bilateral Blur settings

• Radius: 9.7
• Tolerance: 9%

Step 2

Fill in the blurred layer’s layer mask with black, and then mask back in the blurred layer over the skin, avoiding the hair, clothes, eyes, nose, and lips. I also opted out of adding blur to the hands.

Finish up the subject by merging her and her now blurred skin together.

6. How to light and color a subject in Affinity Photo

Step 1

Create a new layer set to Overlay, clipping it into the subject. 

Add in strong highlights along the ridges of the nose and face highlights using a small soft round brush set to a very low Flow rate so that you can build up the highlights slowly. 

Step 2

Create a second clipped layer set to Overlay and paint white over the eyes to brighten them.

Step 3

Lower the vibrancy, decrease the contrast, and adjust the color so that it leans more towards blue, all using clipped Vibrance, Brightness/Contrast, and Color Balance adjustment layers. 

Vibrance adjustment settings 

• Vibrance: -53%

Brightness/Contrast adjustment settings 

• Contrast: – 8%

Color Balance settings 

• Red: -28%
• Green: -15%
• Blue: 67%

Step 4

Add that extra bit of doll-like creepiness by adding some soft pink to the little girl’s chin, nose, and cheeks on a clipped Soft Light layer.

Step 5

Add a strong ring of light around her pupils using a clipped layer set to Overlay.

Again, use a very small, soft, round brush with a Flow rate of 5-10%.

Duplicate the layer to create a more intense glow. 

Step 6

Finally, if you want to drive home the fact that she’s a ghost even more, add a Layer Mask to the subject, and then, using a very large brush, mask out parts of the body and face to make her see-through.

7. How to create glowing tears in Affinity Photo

Let’s drive the melancholy mood home by adding some glowing tears.

Step 1

Create and clip a New Layer into the subject. 

The trick to painting watery/teary eyes is to keep the brush set to a very low Flow rate and to build up the light slowly, pressing hard in some areas and light in others. 

Brush settings

• Flow: 10%
• Size: 1–3 px
• Hardness: 0%
• Color: White

Tips for painting tears

Focus the tears in the inner eye ducts and the lower lash line, and remember tears are mostly transparent, so don’t make them look too solid or milky. Think of it like this: we are just painting the light that is reflecting off the water in the eyes, nothing solid.

Step 2

Alternatively, you can use images of water droplets to create tears by selecting some water, preferably on a black background, pasting it onto a new layer, and then setting it to Screen. 

Duplicate the water droplets to make them more visible if needed. 

Step 3

Repeat step 2 as many times as you want to add more tears.

I am also going to finish up the tears by giving them a faint glow using a layer set to Screen and a soft round brush—feel free to add some solid white sparkles as well.

8. How to add depth to a photo

Time for the finishing touches.

Step 1

Grab some grass stock. Here, we’ll use this Tall Moor Grass as this is a 3D stock image. This means you can pick and choose different rotations and angles (remember that you can learn you know how to rotate an image in Affinity Photo in case you need to). Plus, it also comes background free—no extraction needed.

Enlarge the grass and then apply a quick Filters > Field Blur, and you’re done.

Step 2

Finally, finish everything off with some color correction.

First, a slight S Curve to pump up the contrast.

Step 3

Next up, the real heavy lifter, a Selective Color layer adjusting the Reds, Cyans, Blues, Magentas, Whites, and Neutrals. The aim is to bring out the reds and give everything else a wash of blue.

Reds 

• Cyan: -100%
• Yellow: 23%
• Black: 40%

Cyans:

• Cyan: 100%
• Magenta: 28%
• Yellow: 31%
• Black: 34%

Blues

• Cyan: 43%
• Magenta: 18%
• Yellow: 11%
• Black: 36%

Magentas:

• Cyan: -25%
• Magenta: 62%
• Yellow: 50%
• Black: 28%

Whites

• Cyan: 54%
• Yellow: -6%
• Black: 30%

Neutrals

• Cyan: 4%
• Magenta: -5% 
• Yellow: -23%

Step 4

Then add a second Curves layer to pump up the blues in the highlights.

Step 5

And finally, over the top of everything, add a pixel layer filled with a dark purple-brown color #22181D set to Lighten. This will give a very subtle but important effect.  

We’ve done it! We’ve learned to use Affinity Photo to remove objects!

And there you have it! We’re done with this Affinity Photo tutorial. Whether you need to remove small objects, whole people, or maybe just a hand or eyebrow or two, the Clone and Patch tools are sure to be your best friends with both retouches and photo effects.

Follow along with us over on our Envato Tuts+ YouTube channel:

Get it done with ImageEdit from Envato

Sometimes, learning to use Affinity Photo to remove objects is too much to handle. Luckily, Envato has a tool that can do the heavy lifting for you: ImageEdit. This handy AI tool is the perfect AI object remover, and it can also take care of the tweaks, adjustments, and edits you need to make your images perfect. Of course, this means you can use this AI to remove objects from photos (no editing software knowledge required). 

So, next time you’re struggling with editing, remember that you can use this AI to remove a person from a photo. Subscribe to Envato to get access to ImageEdit, other premium AI tools, and millions of digital assets for a low monthly fee. (Disclaimer: this is not available on Enterprise Plans.)

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