Step 1: Add a Curves Adjustment
To remove shadows in Affinity Photo, begin by applying a Curves Adjustment.
Using this Adjustment, you can brighten the entire image by bringing the “spline” up.
Step 2: Blend Ranges
Brightening the image removed the shadow, but it also made the highlights way too bright! To solve this, you can use Blend Ranges.
To open Blend Ranges, press on the gear icon at the top of the Layers Panel.
To prevent the Curves Adjustment from over-brightening the image’s highlights, bring the 4th node all the way down.
Step 3: Masking
As a final step, you can mask the Curves Adjustment to a specific area of your photo. In this example, I’ll mask the Adjustment onto the woman’s face.
To do this, you first need to invert the Curves Adjustment. You can do this by pressing Ctrl + I (PC) or Command + I (Mac).
This signifies that the Adjustment is not being applied to the photo.
Then select the Paint Brush Tool, and paint over the area you want brightened.
And that’s it! Now you know how to remove shadows in Affinity Photo. 😊