Dòmhnallaich

I quit Adobe a little more that a year ago. When I take just a few pictures Photo does the job for RAW editing. But when I came back with a few hundred RAW pictures I was missing LR. I went to On1 RAW 2019. Not perfect but batch editing is much easier and faster. And you pay once.

Just an update to for @Murfee & @Southwest_Visuals
Tried live filters and they are so much better, at least for shadow and highlight adjustments.  They don't go to the extreme at all and are nowhere near as sensitive as the adjustment layers.  I don't understand why there is a shadow/highlight adjustment layer and live filter. Very confusing for a newbie.
Anyways, thank you very much @Murfee for helping with this query, and to @Dazzleralso, thank you!

You probably CAN successfully use all 7, @//iain but there will be more work involved to mask the overlap properly (another official video: https://player.vimeo.com/video/161038267/ -- I think this is a different one, focuses more on challenging alignments).
Unless you're trying to get the specific benefits of overlaying the multiple exposures (in which case you probably want to look at the stack groups as well), it's generally a benefit to use fewer images as long as you have enough overlap. About 20% is the number thrown about on these forums often.

Finally got back to my laptop.
Thanks @Brad Brighton for assisting with the Pano, and to everyone else who has contributed so far. After playing around with stitching different images together, and not using all 7 (as suggested by Brad), I am able to get a pano stitch with no blemishes. It's a little disappointing that photo wasn't able to do a better job with all 7, as PS and LR have no such issues.  However, it also needs to be taken into consideration that this application is £40 so, this really is not a deal breaker. If I do switch to Affinity, this is something I will be able to adapt to with ease.
I was also able to get the final edits very close to how my LR versions turned out.  It took more work than LR and I hope improvements are made in this regard but again, I think it's simply a matter of getting used to the application.
Very impressed so far and thanks again to everyone who contributed to this discussion.

You are welcome, hopefully you will be joining the Affinity Community on a permanent basis when your trial expires 

Just an update to for @Murfee & @Southwest_Visuals
Tried live filters and they are so much better, at least for shadow and highlight adjustments.  They don't go to the extreme at all and are nowhere near as sensitive as the adjustment layers.  I don't understand why there is a shadow/highlight adjustment layer and live filter. Very confusing for a newbie.
Anyways, thank you very much @Murfee for helping with this query, and to @Dazzleralso, thank you!

So, with @//iain's permission and for the benefit of others, the first pass (to me) looked like too many images with too much overlap. When you have fine detail and slightly varying angles AND lots of overlap, it becomes quite difficult to properly mask for alignment. The original set of images (which I received directly) had 7 images -- selectively choosing 4 of them yielded better results due to fewer conflicts.
The rest, so far, is a matter of adjusting contrast, levels, etc. that I'll let Iain describe when the forum allows his return tomorrow. :-)

Thank you, that is very kind.  I will have a play around with the live filters, to see if that is of any help.  I am having some trouble with panorama also, so that is taking a bit of my time.

First chance I have had to see your screenshot, I was on my mobile earlier, I love the photo.
Hopefully you will find using the live shadow/highlights filter, rather than the adjustment layer shown, will give you more control and achieve the results you want.