David Dessert

This is what I've tried. The alignment of the astrophotography stack does not work well. I think it has to do with the static parts of the image (the ground) that messes up the frame-by-frame alignment algorithms.

I'm trying to astrophotography stack 32 light, dark and bias frames with a mountainous foreground. The alignment software seems confused and the stacked image smears both the ground and the stars as shown in the captured image. The center portion of the starry sky seems well aligned but the edges are quite smeared. I can successfully stack the photos (plain stack, not astrophotography stack) the images without alignment and get the non-rotating landscape in one image. However I can't seem to get a clean sky image using the astrophotography stack. Is there a way to create a mask to mask out the non-moving portion of each image (foreground objects) to exclude it from the astrophotography rotations? FujiFilm X-T5 lossless compressed RAW images. 16mm, f/3.2, ISO8000, 10s.

Affinity Photo: Astrophotography Stack Crashes (Version 1.10.5) Hardware: MacBook Pro 16-inch, 2021, Apple M1 Max, Ventura 13.0.1, 32 GB Memory Camera: FujiFilm X-H2s, Lossless Compressed RAW files. Description: I have tried loading 64 files & 20 files (two separate attempts) while Metal Compute acceleration was enabled. Each crashed within a second after clicking <Open>. Next, I disabled Metal compute acceleration and tried loading 20 files & 1 file (two separate attempts). Each crashed within a second after clicking <Open>. In order to keep it simple, I'm attaching the single RAW which crashed my Affinity Photo. I never got to a position to load any calibration files. Here are the steps I have taken when attempting to load a single file (see attached). Steps: Affinity -> Preferences -> Performance [Uncheck Enable Metal compute acceleration] Click <Close> Restart Affinity Photo File -> New Astrophotography Stack… Type: Light Frames (the default setting) Click <Add New> Select 1 lossless compressed RAW image file (DSCF6433.RAF) Click <Open> Crash Write Bug Report DSCF6433.RAF Affinity Photo-2022-11-27-155402.ips

I wish that the settings I make in each dialog box would be remembered the next time I open that same box. This change would streamline the workflow for anyone not using the default settings and reduce the chances of mistakes by not changing from the defaults. For instance, I'm doing a lot of HDR Merge and none of those settings seem to be remembered when I start the next merge. I always have to navigate to the source directory (for some reason this box remembers some other directory) which adds a lot of work for each photo. I always have to click the other boxes and drop-down settings that are the "default" for my work-flow process. If I forget to change them, a lot of my time can be wasted. This seems to be a feature that could be widely employed. For instance, the "crop tool" never remembers that I want "original ratio" as the default. Although (as a programmer myself) I can imagine that it may make macro processing more difficult.