Quickly learn Affinity Photo image editing Affinity Photo is the hot photo editing package from Serif. It can compete head on with the latest version of Photoshop. It’s also affordable, incredibly powerful and exceptionally flexible. But all this power and flexibility brings its own challenges. Just like Photoshop, Affinity Photo can be confusing and tricky to learn. Even with a background in Photoshop image editing it’s likely you will miss a lot of its features. And unlike Photoshop you won’t have an endless choice of books to learn from. Which is where “Essential Affinity Photo” comes to the rescue. In this comprehensive yet easy to follow book, Landscape Photographer Robin Whalley explains the core features of Affinity Photo Desktop. Written in his unique, easy to understand style, Robin explains logically the essential techniques you need to know to learn Affinity Photo. Follow this book and its examples and you will soon be editing images as though you have been using the software for years. The book is arranged into a series of lessons that focus in on the essential image editing skills. Each lesson builds on the previous one, minimising repetition and saving you valuable time. You will learn about: - Different Affinity Photo Personas, what these do and how to navigate them. - The Develop Persona, using it to convert a Raw photo file into a high-quality image. - How layers form the backbone of the Photo Persona and how to use them to improve your editing. - Different Adjustment layers, filters and live filters you can apply, to fine tune and improve your photography. - How to convert your images to black and white as well as important techniques such as Dodging and Burning. - Creating and using layer masks to precisely target your adjustments to specific areas of an image. - Harnessing the power of the Export Persona. - And lots more. Throughout the book there are examples and exercises for you to follow. The author provides the images for these on his website, allowing you to follow along on your own computer. You won’t need to wade through hundreds of pages to find answers. This is a comprehensive and concise guide to help you learn Affinity Photo. It doesn’t matter if you are a complete novice or have some experience of Affinity Photo, this book could help improve your Affinity Photo editing.

Written specifically for beginner users of Affinity Photo software, presents newly revised and updated first 10 Affinity Photo skills beginners want to learn and 20 new step-by-step lessons on photograph editing techniques using the Affinity Photo software.

Add Affinity Designer to your creative skillset while creating innovative designs and illustrations, building a solid foundation for your future Key Features Understand Affinity Designer's interface and setup, discover its capabilities, and develop an efficient workflow Harness the power of an easy and flexible vector and pixel workflow in one application Learn practical skills and gain the confidence to power your own creative projects Book DescriptionAffinity Designer is a widely adopted creative application, and in a reasonably short space of time, it has become a leading design and illustration application. Affinity Designer, along with Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher, is part of a suite of award-winning creative software applications developed by Serif Europe. Built on the latest technologies, which make it fast and smooth, Affinity Designer is quickly becoming the go-to professional creative application for vector drawing and pixel-based painting. Up and Running with Affinity Designer is a comprehensive hands-on guide to the Affinity Designer software. Whether you're new to the creative industry, a seasoned professional looking for a proven alternative, or an enthusiastic hobbyist, this book will help you get up to speed in no time. You’ll learn how to create documents and explore workflow best practices while working through practical exercises using the knowledge and skills developed in each chapter to solidify your understanding of the fundamentals. Finally, you’ll bring it all together with real-world practical applications by building a fun logo and professional illustration, forming a base for in-depth exploration in your own projects. By the end of this Affinity Designer book, you'll have gained the knowledge and confidence to use Affinity Designer as part of your creative toolset.What you will learn Explore the interface and unique UX characteristics of Affinity Designer Discover features that allow you to manipulate and transform objects Apply color, shading, and effects to create unique compositions Employ layers to organize and simplify complex projects Use grids, guides, and snapping features as design aids Adapt to Affinity Designer s custom workspaces and keyboard shortcuts Explore the workflow and design best practices for more predictable and successful outcomes Identify potential stumbling blocks in your design process and learn how to avoid them Who this book is forThis Affinity Designer book is for graphic designers, artists, illustrators, and hobbyists. Anyone curious about Affinity Designer's unique toolset and vector and pixel workflows or looking for cost-effective alternatives to the Adobe suite will find this book useful. Experience in working with other similar tools will be helpful, but not necessary.

Vivid color, specially commissioned artisanal pieces, and exquisite midcentury furnishings define the work of interior designer Amy Lau. Inspired by her passion for nature and abstract art, she incorporates elements of both into every space while tailoring each experience to the personalities and lifestyles of her clients. Thirteen residential interiors, from glass-walled city apartments to demure Hamptons cottages, are presented in luscious full-color photography; lifely text peppered with design tips captures the designer’s energy and explains her creative process. Prior to opening her firm in 2001, Lau managed the prestigious Lin/Weinberg Gallery in New York City—specialisits in twentieth-century furniture and decorative objects—and her love of this period permeates her work to this day. Her designs are sophisticated yet exuberant and full of impeccably restored original pieces yet entirely livable. Amy Lau’s belief in curating rather than merely decorating spaces results in collections arranged to complement the most unique feature of each individual object, color schemes that relate to a property’s location or enhance a specific view, and in one-of-a-kind textiles designed to subtly mirror a room’s other artwork or furnishings. A final chapter details the artists, movements, places, and visionaries that have had the largest influence on Lau’s development of her own unique style, and encourages all interested in design to create a similar catalog of admired pieces in order to begin refining and defining their own tastes.

Book Design Made Simple gives DIY authors, small presses, and graphic designers--novices and experts alike--the power to design their own books. It's the first comprehensive book of its kind, explaining every step from installing Adobe(R) InDesign(R) right through to sending the files to press. For those who want to design their own books but have little idea how to proceed, Book Design Made Simple is a semester of book design instruction plus a publishing class rolled into one. Let two experts guide you through the process with easy step-by-step instructions, resulting in a professional-looking top-quality book

'Truly something that's just a beautiful, slick, and very enjoyable little publication' – CreativeBoom "Graphic Design Play Book features a variety of puzzles and challenges, providing a fun and interactive way for young visual thinkers to engage with the world of graphic design" – Eye Understand how graphic design works and develop your visual sensibility through puzzles and activities! An entertaining and highly original introduction to graphic design, the Graphic Design Play Book uses puzzles and visual challenges to demonstrate how typography, signage, logo design, posters and branding work. Through a series of games and activities, including spot the difference, matching games, drawing and dot–to–dot, readers are introduced to graphic art concepts and techniques in an engaging and interactive way. Further explanation and information is provided by solution pages and a glossary, and a loose–leaf section contains stickers, die–cut templates, and coloured paper to help readers complete the activities. Illustrated with typefaces, poster design and pictograms by distinguished designers including Otl Aicher, Pierre Di Sciullo, Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz, the book will be enjoyed both by graphic designers, and anyone interested in finding out more about visual communication. An excerpt from the book: How many ways are there of saying 'hello'? Probably a zillion. And there are surely just as many ways of writing it. In CAPITALS, and with an exclamation mark ! Or with a question mark ? Or maybe both ?! As a tiny black word in the middle of a white page; or with large, multi–coloured, dancing letters ; maybe with a simple shape or an image. Being interested in graphic design means looking at and understanding the world around us. And being aware of the multitude of signs that shape our daily life day after day and freight it with meaning – whether it's a stop sign, a cornflakes packet, a psychedelic album cover, a seductive headline on the cover of a magazine, the more subtle typography of a page in a novel, a flashing pharmacy sign or the credits of a sci–fi film. Thinking about this plethora of signs was what led us to conceive this introduction to graphic design as a collection of beacons and benchmarks – as a toolbox for exploring and learning in a simple and intuitive way through play, alone or with others, whether you're a child or an adult. These are experiments, a series of suggestions, with no right or wrong answers. The four sections of this book – typography, posters, signs, identity – are all invitations to dive in, explore and let your eyes and your hands take you on a voyage of discovery! – Sophie Cure and Aurélien Farina

How can you build unshakable confidence and resilience in a world still filled with ignorance, inequality, and discrimination? The Queer and Transgender Resilience Workbook will teach you how to challenge internalized negative messages, handle stress, build a community of support, and embrace your true self. Resilience is a key ingredient for psychological health and wellness. It’s what gives people the psychological strength to cope with everyday stress, as well as major setbacks. For many people, stressful events may include job loss, financial problems, illness, natural disasters, medical emergencies, divorce, or the death of a loved one. But if you are queer or gender non-conforming, life stresses may also include discrimination in housing and health care, employment barriers, homelessness, family rejection, physical attacks or threats, and general unfair treatment and oppression—all of which lead to overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness. So, how can you gain resilience in a society that is so often toxic and unwelcoming? In this important workbook, you’ll discover how to cultivate the key components of resilience: holding a positive view of yourself and your abilities; knowing your worth and cultivating a strong sense of self-esteem; effectively utilizing resources; being assertive and creating a support community; fostering hope and growth within yourself, and finding the strength to help others. Once you know how to tap into your personal resilience, you’ll have an unlimited well you can draw from to navigate everyday challenges. By learning to challenge internalized negative messages and remove obstacles from your life, you can build the resilience you need to embrace your truest self in an imperfect world.

This book of the bestselling and widely acclaimed Python Machine Learning series is a comprehensive guide to machine and deep learning using PyTorch s simple to code framework. Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free eBook in PDF format. Key Features Learn applied machine learning with a solid foundation in theory Clear, intuitive explanations take you deep into the theory and practice of Python machine learning Fully updated and expanded to cover PyTorch, transformers, XGBoost, graph neural networks, and best practices Book DescriptionMachine Learning with PyTorch and Scikit-Learn is a comprehensive guide to machine learning and deep learning with PyTorch. It acts as both a step-by-step tutorial and a reference you'll keep coming back to as you build your machine learning systems. Packed with clear explanations, visualizations, and examples, the book covers all the essential machine learning techniques in depth. While some books teach you only to follow instructions, with this machine learning book, we teach the principles allowing you to build models and applications for yourself. Why PyTorch? PyTorch is the Pythonic way to learn machine learning, making it easier to learn and simpler to code with. This book explains the essential parts of PyTorch and how to create models using popular libraries, such as PyTorch Lightning and PyTorch Geometric. You will also learn about generative adversarial networks (GANs) for generating new data and training intelligent agents with reinforcement learning. Finally, this new edition is expanded to cover the latest trends in deep learning, including graph neural networks and large-scale transformers used for natural language processing (NLP). This PyTorch book is your companion to machine learning with Python, whether you're a Python developer new to machine learning or want to deepen your knowledge of the latest developments.What you will learn Explore frameworks, models, and techniques for machines to learn from data Use scikit-learn for machine learning and PyTorch for deep learning Train machine learning classifiers on images, text, and more Build and train neural networks, transformers, and boosting algorithms Discover best practices for evaluating and tuning models Predict continuous target outcomes using regression analysis Dig deeper into textual and social media data using sentiment analysis Who this book is for If you have a good grasp of Python basics and want to start learning about machine learning and deep learning, then this is the book for you. This is an essential resource written for developers and data scientists who want to create practical machine learning and deep learning applications using scikit-learn and PyTorch. Before you get started with this book, you’ll need a good understanding of calculus, as well as linear algebra.