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This was a fun project! Last year in June I and my other three sisters found out we had a fourth sister that we did not know existed until she happened to take a DNA test. I took one myself, as well as my other sister that lives in Australia, and sure enough we matched as half-sisters! In August, my Aussie sister came to visit when our new sister came to NC from TX to meet us. I hadn't seen my Aussie sister in 20 years! We also traveled to GA to visit some more family. It was the highlight of my year! The four of us went and got matching tattoos (middle picture)

Here is todays layout. I like learning all the new things, most of which I had forgotten from doing the PSP bootcamps! And once again I struggle with finding the right papers to match my project, so I waste so much time trying different ones, but as a friend said to me, it's all about learning, not perfection. This is a dear cousin of mine who sadly passed away last year 3 months after celebrating her 93rd birthday. The photos are of Estelle and my daughter who she treated like one of her own granddaughters.

Well I'm very happy with what I've learnt from this Bootcamp with you @Cassel. It has been very informative and there are some things I know I'll go back over to try them again. Many thanks.

Project 2, We have a feral cat colony outside and have had them for years. This birdbath, which is heated, used to serve a lot of birds in the winter until the cats moved it! This was in January and they were quite cozy, but I have no idea what they were watching!

Thank you, everyone, who recognized the milkweed that I erroneously labeled thistle. Unable to leave it with a glaring error, I went back and re-did the title.

Here is my Project 1. I am really way behind and just finished the first one. I will try to get caught up. Cassel - how long will we have access to the lessons after the end of the bootcamp?

Day 9, Project 4. I enjoyed this one. For me, it felt easier to do in Affinity than in Paintshop. The photos are from Freepik as are the two png flowers. The papers are from a kit by Meagon Johnson called January.

Project Four - almost a day late. Tried a couple of other things including using a glyph. I used five photos instead of three because I think they tell a better story. One thing I DID try but ended up failing at was bringing in a brush from an image. It looks like gonna work up to a point but then when actually apply it, it only shows part of it...a very small part. Could be because the image file was very large. Gonna have to play with that.

I have been busier than usual with other matters lately so will upload my only project to date.

I was working on Project #3 last night. When I was finished, I saw that Carole had already posted her comments for the day in the forum, so I decided I would wait and take another look at my project today...usually I can see typos and things to change if I step away for a bit. Today I did see some things to adjust, and I'm sure tomorrow I will see more 😆 But posting now anyway! I don't remember who made the comment, but I will agree, Affinity has not crashed on me yet! That is a plus. PSP has made me learn to save often, sometimes every time I added or changed something. It doesn't really seem to matter which version I am working with, it will often just close down. If I have not saved the file, I am starting over. Affinity has not done that for me...I fear I am getting lazy about saving...

Here is my Project#3 The layout is the same as in 2019, and the kit is again from "Kim Broedelet -Seaside Holiday," but I used different papers from then. I added Blend Modes (Multiply and Contrast Negate) to achieve different colors. Font: Canastra

Affinity is not too hard. Just trying to remember the formatting differences.

This is my page for Project 3. As we had to use 3 photos this time, I used actual photos rather than one of my Affinity Photo creations. Up until I was 8 my dad's mum and stepfather lived near Weston-Super-Mare (which is in Somerset in the south west of England) and we spent the first 2 weeks of June there each year. I absolutely love this photo of my mum. She would have been 35 at the time and a 6 year old me thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Our last holiday there was in the summer of 1974 and it was strange going back with my husband after all this time. A lot has changed in 50 years, including the pier which had to be rebuilt after a fire in the 80's, but I had my heart set on recreating the photo my dad had taken of my lovely mum, along with our daughter who travelled up from Devon to join us for a day at the beach. I really enjoyed putting this page together as it has huge sentimental value for me. I used a couple of the scrapbooking sets I bought from Opticillusions on Etsy, Under The Sea and Under The Boardwalk, with the glitter layer, the rope and knots coming from Piixabay.

I'm slowly getting caught up. Here is my Project 3. I did go back and add the missing shadows to Project 2. It was late when I finished and posted it and didn't realize I left those out. Thanks for catching that for me.

Project #5. Love this photo of my grandson and his friend Max. Still very slow at attempting to do these projects but I am getting there and learning along the way. The only problem is that end up forgetting what I have just learnt. Well, I guess I will have to redo things until I can eventually remember. Hard task for me.

Project 5. The photo is one of a woman from my home town who was a real camera buff way back when she was a teen. Thanks to her, we have many candid photos of the village and its folks. I have scanned many of her photo albums to digitize them for her children/grandchildren b/c she's in her 80s now and wants her collection to be easily accessible to them. I used bright colours which I don't normally choose for my layouts, but I was able to find great colours in Di Hiller's kits. She creates really fun stuff. The whole learning experience here has been most useful. I'm not nearly as "fluent" in Affinity as I've become in PSP, but I feel more confident than I did before. Having Carole show the way to the specific methods for digital layouts (tools, shortcuts, etc.) has been most helpful. The Affinity Photo videos I was seeing on YT were mostly about editing images which is great, but I do more than that for the projects I work on. Now, I'm on my way and the learning curve isn't as sharp or as daunting.

Project 5. This has been a great workshop! It has been very informative as well as fun. @Cassel Playing any game with the cats is more fun when played in my imagination. Hide and Seek is my favorite. By the way, The Gremlins send their regards. They stopped by yesterday to wreak havoc on one of my laptops. They couldn't stop talking about how much fun they had at The Campus as they trashed my machine. I didn't ask about their next destination. I just slammed the door behind them.

I actually think I like Affinity Photo better than paint shop pro. I've really enjoyed learning how to use it. I bought the whole Affinity Suite when Version 2 first came out, and up till now had really only used Photo to edit some pdf documents and forms for family history. But, I think I'll use it for a lot more now, so many thanks Carole. As always I enjoy your lessons. This is my granddaughter Bella, photos of her are always lovely, she has definitely perfected the art of selfies, as most girls her age have!

Project 4--This has given me a bit of frustration. I like adding the borders to the photos, but it is a negative that you can't link the layers easily. Feels like it would be easier to add the borders in PSP, it would be easy to resize them. I don't yet have the hang of the color picker tool. For me, it also defaults to red. I wanted to make the 2023 text dark grey or black, but I was not able. As I was playing with the color picker, somehow the top photo became gray scale, which was not my intent! I was not able to undo it. So I have left it that way. I am finished. My patience is exhaused for today. New day tomorrow. Maybe fewer challenges....

Project 4 - I'm sure no one will notice that I left out the "pinking shears" effect on one of the papers. 😛 The dog belongs to a friend (American Retriever, named Duke). They take lots of pix of him and often share them with me. Fonts used are: Concetta (script) and Cracked and Bold. No kit, just bits and pieces from here and there.

Project 4 completed. I have finally found out how to select multiple layers with FX then clicking CTRL and processing the same effects for all layers. I needed to click the plus sign to the right of the Outer Shadow. Once I did that the required effects showed on the right. I am very excited that I have finally found out how to do that. I still have so much to learn and after watching this last tutorial by Carole I realize how much she knows. Thank goodness for her help. The three photos on this project are very old. My eldest daughter is now almost 60, so yes, very old. It was wonderful being able to bring them back to life again.

Well I've done another layout, felt I had to do it again to reinforce the learning. I'm not used to using a lot of embellishments, and feel that this might be a bit over the top!

Project 4 Day 9 Many years ago, in New Zealand, we had a company, Crown Lynn, that created ceramic dinner plates, side plates, and dessert bowls, as well as cups & saucers. I think most households would have a crockery set in their kitchen cupboards, I know we did. These sets have become rather expensive items now, sold in Thrift Shops, online, etc. They also made some beautiful swan vases. I loved the photographs from the gallery and am not so fond of the vases. A couple of years ago my art class went on a tour of art galleries, art studios, and museums. At the Eastern Gallery, in Gore, was an exhibition of the Crown Lynn swan vases. There were some stunning photographs, as well as a few swan vases set around the gallery. I took a few photographs of these exhibits. I have used the kit, suggested by Carole, by Tricia from True Heart Digitals. The swans.

Project 4. Rudy is very bad at Hide & Seek. He forgets his tail or a paw. And when I call him, he peeks out and says, "Shhhhh! I'm hiding!"

Glitter? No, not at a zoo. Besides, I don't have any glitter. So, I cut out a small section of grass from another photo and stretched it to blur and distort it. I put a heavy shadow on the title to make it look more like blocks and to make it stand out.

Project - 3 Because life was interfering the last couple of days I started all over with project 3. I'm getting used to the rasterize command and look at the little icon before I do something. I like the place command and how to make a pattern from a seamless tile. The dropdown list for the fonts is so much easier to read! Some things really are easier in Affinity. All the papers and the flowers are from kits in Digital Scrapbook Blog train of Februari 2023 and the hummingbird is from the September 2024 Homecoming Blog train. The glitters are by cass-BR-03 and the metal flourish is by Chantahlia Design. Title font is Broadway with an innerglow instead of a shadow it is a bit like a bevel and the font for the quote is Lucinda Handwriting. For the background I used 2 papers and played around with the blendmodes and opacity until I got the color I wanted. There are more blendmode options then in PSP, nice because I like to use blendmodes.

Day 3 My first project. Using Jessica Dunn's Behold Autumn and Behold Spring mini kits, Autumn for the gorgeous colour of the background, the strip was colourised to fit the paper used as background. The Behold Spring mini kit had the hearts and the branch. I recently travelled to stay with friends at Mt Hope Station in Roxburgh, Central Otago. On the second day, our friends took us over the hills to the mustering hut about one and a half hours away by truck. The first buildings we saw was this ancient cottage set beside an orchard.

Project 3 features River, Lynda (RIP), and Rudy. The papers and elements are from several places. Carole: Thank you for clarifying the use of the Inner Shadow. Once I zoomed in, I could see the difference.

We have 2 new pandas at the Washington National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Here's one sledding.

Day 5 I kept it simple

Here's my project 2 exercise. I ended up making it 400px as at 600px it said it was too big. Maybe the photo was too large.

Project 5 Thank you to everyone who "LIKE/LOVE" my projects. Much appreciated. I never used Affinity Photo before but now that I have learned the basic features, I plan to use some of the special features in Affinity Photo for post-processing of astrophotography.

I ran into a wall trying to do this one, so it took me awhile. I finally got some inspiration and got it done! The papers are all from Design Bundles, except for the rectangle the writing is on. That is from an old PSP Scrapers Dozen I did back around 2012! The berries in the corner and pine needles are from Jessica Dunn. The photo is mine. The frame is from Marisa Lerin.

Here is Project 2. I like the shortcuts as they save so much time. I'm not a scrapbooker and I don't have the pretty coordinated kits so some of my papers and elements I have collected may not really match my photos.

I stuck to the lesson this time for the most part. The squares gave me a little problem. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V wouldn't work but using the menu commands did. Didn't take the time to figure out why. The kit is by a retired designer and called Military Day. I felt the muted colors fit the photo quite well. I found this bracelet when I was cleaning out the basement in 2018. I had forgotten where it was or if I even had it. I did a little research to find out what happened to the Captain and was quite happy to find out he had been released and has lived a long life and as far as I can tell, he is still alive and lives in Arizona where he moved to when he retired from the Air Force in 1986.

Here is my Project #5. After reading the comments about working in a non-destructive way, I tried a different approach than the one shown in the video to create the squares and the rounded rectangle. Instead of creating them separately, I worked on the layout and used the "Merge Below" option to cut the papers. I liked this option very much. Later, I grouped all the layers. I created a Date Stamp in PSP using Carole's DateStamp#8 script. Fonts: Bastro and Black Butter

My Project-3 again with a shadow under the title, thank you Carole for pointing that out, I thought I had finished this layout after a couple of hours away from the pc and just posted it without checking if everything was as ok. Can happen and can be added.😘

Day 9 - Project 4 Freebie blog train april 2014 mini kit from Elizabeth Minkus

It's been a little while now but after my grandparents passed away, a man contacted one of my aunts and it turns out they had a brother they did not know about. We STILL don't know the whole story but believe that he was reported stillborn to my grandparents (by a shady country doctor), then sold to an adoption ring. He was adopted by wonderful parents in Illinois (my Grandparents, Mom and Siblings grew up on a farm near Jackson, Minnesota). Needless to say, the DNA tests proved they were 100 percent siblings and they all met shortly after. Uncle Ron was welcomed to the family and has been a part of most events since he came on the scene. Since that time, my mom and both my aunts have passed on and he is "the last man standing" for that generation of the Hansen Family. I took an old family photo, found a photo of my uncle Ron at approximately the right age, and added him to the picture, then did my best to colorize it however for best result, I submitted it to an AI type photo enhancer for the final touchups. I am including both of those photos here AND a photo of my Uncle and his sisters before any of them passed away. It will only let me post two of the three here so the last photo will be in the next post.

Project 4 I went with the layout in the video because it fitted my photos so well, but I again didn't use a kit. The background paper is from Sweet Moments gl20 from Marissa Lerin as are the scatters and the other papers are from Digital Scrapbook Blog train december 2024. The mushrooms are from DB Magnolia in the juli Blog train and the leave comes from my stash The font is Fairy Tales, a freebie from Creative Fabrica. With every layout done I'm getting more comfortable and I'm surprised how quick this program works with setting shadows for all the layers, but also with saving and resizing. I understand I'm lucky the program hasn't shut down on me so far, but saving my project regularly has become a second habit after many PSP crashes. When I want to apply a shadow I still look at the spot on my screen where that option was in PSP and it still feels strange that you do not have to apply it after choosing the shadow settings. Carole I didn't found the kerning, only the leading; I'll have another look around tomorrow. When I took a peek at the Affinity website there is a section where you can buy some supplies and the last entry is a free brush pack. Those are now in my Affinity brushes!

Still getting caught up. Here is my project 2. (Layering is easier now with the help of your suggestions and the cheatsheet and putting my elements between the layers as like clipping masks in PS!) Thanks 🙂

I can definitely see the differences between Affinity Photo V1 and the newer V2. I struggled with creating the pinking edges because the tool wouldn't erase from one edge to the next like in the video. I had to carefully erase the edge while keeping the mouse in a straight line. There’s probably an easier way to do it, but I don’t think my scrapbooking style involves using too many fancy edges. Still, it’s great to explore and learn what the software can do!

Project #3. This one I did find hard because the photos I wanted to use were rectangular. It was difficult to align these. I tried so many different ways before I finally got one that looked ok. I am still having problems trying to use the FX on multiple layers using the same effects. I do not get the same effect options as Carole. I will keep trying because obviously I am doing something incorrect. I am definitely finding my way around Affinity Photo 2 now, but I still have a lot to learn. I am finding some things better in Affinity but at the same time, somethings better in PSP.

Only today did I have some time to watch the Affinity Bootcamp videos. So I've done three of them (so far) quickly. The first three layouts appear, with bloopers and omissions. But I wanted to be part of the journey. Carole's lessons are so very helpful for the tools we need to do layouts, which is different from many of the videos on YouTube and elsewhere. I like Affinity so far, but I've got a long way to go before it feels "natural".

Project 3, Day 7: I felt quite comfortable with using Affinity for this project. Yes, things are different to Paintshop Pro but it feels like quite a smooth program and it hasn’t crashed once since I’ve been using it which is definitely in its favour. I appreciate the videos Carole - they are nice quick way into the learning process. Thank you. The photos are from Freepik. The papers and elements are from a mini kit called Dandelion wishes by Jessica Dunn. The glitters are from a kit by Marisa Lerin.

This project took a bit longer than expected! The glitter paper didn’t quite behave the way it was demonstrated in the video, likely because I’m using a different version. Version 2 seems to be much simpler, but I managed to work it out in the end. The glitter might not perfectly match these photos, but I’d already picked out a few to practise with, so I stuck with them. Really enjoying learning how to use Affinity Photo. Thanks.

Project 2. Once again, a very old photo of my 2 daughters and their grandpa and Dad. This is now very precious to our family because both grandpa and dad have passed. I was having a problem trying to get multiple layers together by using Ctrl and FX. For some reason not all the effects were showing so I had to end up applying these effects separately. Not sure what I am doing wrong.

Carole, you may have noticed for Project 1 that my photo is blurry due to resizing/resampling. It was unacceptable for this photo. The default mode in Affinity is "Bilinear". Corel PhotoPaint and PaintShop Pro's help file recommends using "Bicubic". I tried using Bicubic in Affinity, but the photo was still blurry, so I used PhotoPaint to resample Project 2. It's better, but 600x600 is really small.

I had so many issues trying to do lesson 3. When I tried to drag my layers up in my layers panel, they were either merging with another layer or just disappearing altogether. Also, when trying to use the selection tool for the vertical paper, it kept disappearing! I spent so much time trying to figure this out ugh!!!!! I wanted to add more layers but I just couldn't figure out why they kept being hidden when I moved them to the layer where I wanted them. Looking through everyone's work, it doesn't appear that this was happening for others so maybe I am just missing something but you'd think dragging and placing layers would be pretty straight forward, which it just wasn't for me. I guess I just need to keep practicing and playing around with it .

Project #2, using Affinity Photo2 I have been challenged using the color picker to change the text color. I explored some of the photo editing tools, and added a bunch of additional layers. After I had done all my saving and exporting and resizing, I find I can turn each editing layer off! That I kinda like. When I went to add shadows, the blend was set to 'multiply', and I had to do lots of 'undoing' to fix what I did. Now that I am trying to post the 600 pixel image, it is telling me it is too large. Sorry, but I opened PSPX9, resized the jpg image to 600, and there I could change the quality and KNOW what the image size would be....is that cheating 😞 I learned a few things today, but it has been a frustrating evening.