irandar

Hi Callum. Glad to hear James is still on the ball. What about making an astro forum here? Wishful thinking I guess. Well my last wishful thinking led to the start of the Affinity Photo Astrophotography FB group, now with about 300 members. Thanks and regards, Irving

Hi Critter, What do you mean by regular Affinity? I am tempted to make a screenshot of these shots and show you how to clean them up a bit. Would you want me to do that? Regards, Irving

Hi folks, Seestar S50 has become very popular for astro imaging. It features target goto and tracking. Even though is has an az-alt mount, it is able to track over hour long times, using 10, 20 and 30s shots with plate solving in between. Regarding its use with Affinity, I have found that AP2 is very good for editing the automatically stacked jpeg and stacked fits that Seestar produces at the end of a run. SS also produces the individual short images, called subs. Over one hour on a target one might get about 150 10s .fit subs (SS throws many away if not good). AP2 will stack these subs easily. My 7yr old iMac took about a half hour to stack 540 subs. Another feature that SS has is the ability to make a mosaic. This will at least double the FOV, resulting in a maximal image of 2.6x1.5 deg. This is done by automatically making a series of overlapping images, moving in a spiral pattern, usually over 2-3h and making more than 500 light subs. These are automatically stacked and outputted as jpeg and fits. According to my few tries, AP2 will stack subs from the mosaic but produces a result that has only the original 1.3x0.7 size. Does anyone here know anything about stacking mosaic subs from Seestar with Affinity Photo 2? In view of the Seestar popularity it would seem to be a useful development for Affinity to add such a capability. Regards to all and wishing for an astro forum here. Irving

Hi Critter, How are you doing with your Seestar and Affinity? Regards, Irving

I wish Affinity had a separate astro forum. Do you too? Regards, Irving

Hi folks. This comparison of Affinity astro stacking and Siril stacking reached me. Does anyone have any idea here. I sort of thought Affinity would stack anything. Maybe the overlapping necessary with the mosaic files is somehow confusing. Thanks and regards, Irving The Astrophotography stack in Affinity Photo doesn't seem to understand the Seestar mosaic lights (unless there is a trick I don't know about). It produced a stack of the central area only and dropped all the other frames. The Siril mosaic stack in the Files section of this group works really well for me though (OSC_Preprocessing_WithoutDBF_With_Mosaic-2x.ssf)

Hi folks, Sorry I do not follow whether or not Affinity Photo 2 can be used for astro on an iPad. Please advise. Thanks and regards, Irving

Can you also stack on ipad?

Sorry, This happened because I did not select a new project. But anyway that should not occur in this fashion. Suggestion message "Please select a new project first" Thanks, Irving

Hi folks. Last year I made isometric drawings on Designer v1. Now when I click on Basic Advanced or Cube in the Grid and Snapping Axis Panel then Designer shuts down. Is this a sign from the Almighty for me to buy V2? Using 7 year old imac. Thanks and regards.

I think not. The iPad does not work with the astro stuff. It is a complicated business. Have a look at my Youtubes found on the Irandar Channel of YT. Try this workflow Nebula Workflow with Jr Macros After stacking LRGB or SHO. For OSC run the OSC to Mono RGB macro 1. Rename macro 2. Mono Log Stretch macro 3. Data setup composition Use the Enhance Red, Green and Blue macros 4. Reduce Star Intensity or maybe Star Size Reducer 5. Enhance Nebular Structure 6. Highlight Recovery 7. Reduce Backround Luminosity 8. Highlight Protected Tone Lift 9. Weighted Intensity Mixer 10. One of the sharpening macros Possibly finish with some of the normal Adjustment Layers (Brightness and Contrast, HSL) Also try the Post Tone Stretch Denoise macro Notice the order is always as follows: stack, rename, mono log stretch, composition and then edit with various macros and layers. Also I want to remind that moving a layer to the top can often be useful.

Have a look here. https://jamesritson.gumroad.com/l/jr_astrophotography_macros

How about the macros? Do they work on iPad?

Hi Critter, Do you know that the astro features of Affinity Photo do not function with iPad? Regards

Hi folks, Is it possible to transfer an affinity photo document (edited astro file) between computers? I imagine the setup version and macros would have to be the same. Could it be between a Mac and Windows machines? Would the receiver be able to continue with the editing of the file. Thanks and regards, Irving