I would like affinity to support a command line interface to start and save multi-photo merges (HDR, panorama, ect).
These tasks
take a long time
take a lot of CPU and memory
need baby sitting if you are doing mare than one
don't need a lot of settings to configure
the results can be saved for subsequent processing
Ideally I could use the cli to select either a folder of grouped images or explicitly specify each image and save the result as an *.afphoto file. I don't mind if it opens the gui, but would really like it if I could specify a save to file that would save the merge result to a project file for later processing, and then close the affinity tab/window. leaving the GUI open after a long series of merges would cost overhead. Having a CLI would allow me to start affinity with a separate program so I don't have to baby sit a large number of merges. I already have a program to group HDR brackets, this would automate the next step of that process.
The merge command would be able to specify mode (hdr, panoramic, focus stack, etc), take either a directory or an explicit list of files, and would either save the file as a *.afphoto or open affinity directly with the merged frames.
Examples, using 'affinity' as an alias for the CLI executable
> affinity merge focus -d=Path/to/folder/of/frames
would open a new focus stack with every photo in the folder
> affinity merge hdr —save-as=GeneratedStack.afphoto -f=file1.jpg -f=file2.jpg -f=file3.jpg
would start a new hdr stack with the 3 specied files that, once completed, would save to the GeneratedStack.afphoto file and close affinity.
if the merge command returned a file path, you could pipe that onto the normal open command to open the in progressed merge file once the merge is done
> affinity merge panorama -d=Photos/Raws/date/panoramic1 —save-to=photos/WIP/date/panoramic1.afphoto | affinity
3rd party programs would also be able to move or save a reference to that file.
proposed commands:
merge (top level command to enable other operations, like export, in the future)
hdr - equivalent to File -> New HDR Merge..., then specifying the files based on the files an directory arguments and starting the merge
panorama - equivalent to File -> New Panorama...., then specifying the files based on the files an directory arguments and starting the merge
stack - equivalent to File -> New Stack...., then specifying the files based on the files an directory arguments and starting the merge
focus - equivalent to File -> New Focus Merge...., then specifying the files based on the files an directory arguments and starting the merge
arguments and switches:
optional:
-h, --help, -?: Help - show supported commands and switches
-s, --save-to: the file (*.afphoto) to save the merged result to
requires (at least one file from the following):
-f, --file (supports multiple) - the files to include in the merge, call once for each file in a single merge
-d, --directory - the directory with the photos to merge
Other arguments on the merge windows, like perspective align and noise reduction on hdr merges, could be specified as switches on the CLI.
Cursory research says photoshop doesn't support this, so this could be an area to get ahead rather than playing catch up with the titan.