I'm also a Capture One Pro user and an Affinity Photo 2 user. Since Capture One has no internal capabilities to do focus stacking, I would like to use Affinity Photo 2 for that function, but the workflow to that in Affinity Photo 2 is quite cumbersome. It involves these steps:
Select the RAW images (that may have some common edits such as white balance or highlight adjustments) to focus merge in Capture One
Select export
Find a disk location for the temporary exported files that's not directly in my photo library
Select an appropriate export format (I guess I have to choose 16-bit TIFF with ProPhotoRGB to preserve as much RAW info as possible)
Run the export
Open Affinity Photo 2
Choose to start a Focus Merge
Go find all the exported TIFFs you just created from Capture One and select them all
Do the focus merge in Affinity Photo
When done to your satisfaction, export that again to a 16-bit TIFF in ProPhotoRGB. Pick a location for that file. Pick a name that is based on the last file in the merge so it can be sorted by name and will group with the source files
Delete the temporary TIFF source files
Go back to Capture One
Import the merged TIFF into Capture one
Do any more editing in Capture One
I would like Affinity to create a plug-in for this process that would change the above 14 steps into this:
Select the RAW images to focus merge in Capture One
Choose Image/Edit With/Focus Merge in Affinity Photo 2 (here's where the plug-in adds value)
Do the focus merge in Affinity Photo
When done to your satisfaction, just indicate that you want the result back into Capture One
You are returned back to Capture One with the resulting file already imported into the same location as the source RAW files were (session or catalog)
Do any more editing in Capture One
So, I'd like to see a plug-in developed that reduces the 14 steps to these 6. This includes generating the intermediate files in a high fidelity format, bringing those into Affinity Photo, preconfiguring those into a focus merge in Affinity Photo, letting you complete the focus merge then generating the resulting merged file in a high fidelity format that Capture One can read, then getting Capture One to import the result, then cleaning up the temporary source files.
For reference a focus merge competitor already does this with a Capture One plugin so it certainly seems possible.
P.S. I think there are great opportunities for collaboration between Affinity and Capture One. Lightroom has Photoshop and great integration between the two. Capture One has ??? with generally poor integration. Affinity Photo could be that goto pixel editor for Capture One users and fixing the workflow for focus merging would be one step in that direction. Probably opportunities for some co-marketing/promotion too since there's some overlap in your target customer.
