emmrecs01

You obviously didn't read my original post. I did that for a panorama that involved going through the HDR merge process 250+ times...it took me 2 days and was the most tedious time i've ever spent in front of a computer. Hence me not wanting to repeat that process again. I'd rather create several panoramas and do one huge HDR merge but affinity seems unable to align the panoramas without creating a chaotic mess. 
In fact, it was a member of the Affinity staff that concurred with this method, although he obviously hadn't tried it else he'd have known it would find it impossible. 
I really need the program to do panorama stitching and HDR merge together. That way it could keep everything aligned with everything else.

Looking forward for your updates.
It is possible that other apps may give faster / better results, especially if using AI based methods which are intentionally not offered by Affinity (at least until now).
Never the less, I stand to my advise to invest more into taking less number of images, but better suited for HDR and stitching than to expect everything can be corrected in software by throwing huge numbers of images to it.
Ultimately, I won’t use HDR alt all for manual stitching. You Olympus camera offers enough dynamic range for highlight recovery or push of shadows when correctly exposed to the highlights. I have a Insta360 which can take HDR images in camera, but it struggles with the same principle limitations (moving objects and clouds, unnatural see, changes in lightning).

I've explained my workflow already in my original post.....perhaps you didn't read it correctly. 
Yes, I do seperate pans with each exposure and merge them but i'm getting poor results.  They're not aligning as I expect them to when ticking the "automatically align images" box, so i'm wanting to know if there's a reason that they're not aligning?
Can anyone help?

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums. 
Designer 2 is a separate application which requires a new purchase. You can learn more about that in this FAQ:
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/affinity-2-faq/
 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity Forums, @tperhai.
I think you must mean Designer and Photo! Affinity Publisher was launched in 2019.
Serif have pledged their commitment to the perpetual licence model. I don’t think it would be fair to assume that they’re going to renege on that commitment.

Thanks for the mail from the support. But I'm sorry, I really haven't had a good experience now with buying the affinity software. I also had to file an objection via Paypal and ask Paypal to refund the amount, which they now want to do.
Sorry Serif. Sorry, i will not recommend you any further and will now switch to the competitor's more expensive software. Good bye.

Just to add to what Walt has said, you can also use APh as the abbreviation for Affinity Photo. This makes it instantly clear to the reader that you’re not referring to Affinity Publisher.

By the way: you seem to be using AP as the abbreviation for two applications (Photo, and Publisher). That is confusing
If one must abbreviate, APub and APu are the terms accepted by the forums (as shown by the underlining when used, and the Tooltip explanations for them).

That might be the case. I started drawing, and seriously trying to improve for about 3 decades. First I learnt Photoshop, then Gimp, I tried Krita, Autodesk Sketchbook, and other programs. I settled for Clip Studio Paint.
For desktop publishing, I tried Page maker back in the day, I tried Quark Xpress for a very brief period (when I was a student), then mostly did any small things I needed with Microsoft Publisher, until it wasn't enough anymore. I tried Scribus, but the UI was hellish. I started looking for alternatives, I checked Canva first, but it did look pretty basic and didn't seem to offer much control about the output, save for some pre-made templates I could fill up. I found Affinity Publisher, and I went for it.
For vector, I tried Coreldraw, Illustrator, then Inkscape, then I didn't do anything for years. When I needed it again, since I was already using Affinity Publisher, I tried Designer, and that's where I am.
Each of these steps took time to learn. I do that for everything: For 3D, I started with Real3D and Lightwave in Amiga, went to PC and 3d Studio, 3D Studio Max, and finally Blender. For programming, I've had to learn multiple programming and scripting languages. I may not be the best at any of them, but I can do what I need, mostly.
Sadly, there's a lot of people out there (the ones that cheer in excitement for any of the AI generative stuff that seems to be all the rage despite their blatant disregard for copyright) that consider spending time and effort in learning a new skill like something undesirable, and they feel accomplished if they manage to write a 1-paragraph prompt that produces a half-arsed result, and they write strong statements considering themselves "artists" in social media and telling everyone how much "effort" took for them to get that result.
Probably, the target for pre-made templates, no-fuss desktop publisher programs is this type of user, that does not have or want to invest any time and/or effort to get something done, and are OK with a stereotypical and/or mediocre result as long as it approximates what they were looking for.
For the guys who know EXACTLY what they want, that is never enough, because a generic app will never allow enough customization, and therefore, it will never produce the right result.

Well, I am a hobbyist user, and I don't know much about printing save for cropping margins, RGB/CMYK modes and a few other things that carry from my illustration background, but I found Affinity Publisher/designer easy to use and with an intuitive UI, except for when it came to adding cross-references/links on Publisher, not long ago we still had to use wonky workarounds for something that should have been easy -for the user- to do.
I also remember checking Canva back in the day, I also looked for an app that had an Android version. Canva did, but from what I saw, it was widely inadequate for my purposes, and didn't really offer enough control save for choosing a template and filling it. It may have evolved, but I didn't find much of a documentation about its features to get me interested in their product. Affinity did (having a forum with plenty of nice, helpful people also helps... when in doubt, I always choose the software with the best community).

Well, Adobe are the Borg of design software. They assimilate, nothing is left afterwards.
Anyone could have seen that coming. Same thing happened when they absorbed Macromedia.

That's more or less what Clip Studio Paint does. Subscription version is being constantly updated and patched. One-time payment gets patched but not updated until the next major version (maybe 1-2 updates per year, at most). The new features from the subscription version are added little by little, and some may not arrive until the next big update (that requires another purchase).
That said, they're gracious enough to have their products on sale about 2-3 times per year (that you can buy at a very reasonable price), and they offer discount for updates/upgrades all year round on top of that.
As a hobbyist user of CSP, I think that is not entirely unreasonable: it's cheaper than purchasing a videogame, and gives me many more hours of fun than any videogame, so it's a no brainer.
More or less goes for Affinity: I mostly use their products for my personal projects, and the current pricing model works for me. If they help me realise my ideas at a reasonable cost, I'll keep using them. The moment it becomes too expensive, I'm out.

Thanks for your patience @Granddaddy you'll understand we've had a much higher volume of contacts to respond to since the announcement but to answer your question, things will remain the same i.e the forums and Technical Support will remain free.

I'm disappointed that my simple question about the future of these Affinity forums has not been answered by any forum moderators, Affinity staff, or Canva/Serif principals who might actually know whether Affinity technical support will remain free under Canva ownership.
Sadly, this lack of response is likely to stimulate even more uncertainty and speculation about Affinity's future.
Will there be free user forums for Affinity users? Will Canva/Affinity staff participate in any free forums that might exist? How many of those now paid by Serif to participate in these free forums will still be employed in six months?  How much will Canva charge Affinity users for technical support? 
Responses from knowledgeable people in Canva/Serif would be most helpful.

I doubt very, very much that Canva will try to monetise the forums.  But, let's imagine for a moment that they did.  How long do you think it would take for a free, independent alternative to appear?  My money would be on "not long"…

@billy McGriff
Assuming that that app is one of the Affinity range of products you should do exactly what @StevenS advised in the post directly above yours and email affinityorders@serif.com.

Please read here:
 

Where do you draw the line? I don’t see typesetting as a special case: if you want to read previous posts about typesetting, you can search for it like anything else.

It’s a good idea to make sure the title of a topic about anything is descriptive enough! Far too many people resort to topic titles that are too vague or (at the other extreme) comprise a lengthy description that properly belongs in the body of the first post to the thread.

I agree, but I would like to add that it is a good idea to to make sure the title of any topic you start about typesetting is descriptive enough to let others know what it is about typesetting you are commenting about.

I don't see why we need an extra forum section for questions and problems with typesetting.
The forum area we are currently in is perfectly suited for this.
If you have questions or problems on the iPad, there is also a forum area for this. 

is one I know for sure, they integrated smartmockups in canva and left anyone else who was using them in the dust "use it with our canva or bye".
This is the reason I'm afraid of what the future holds, if they really keep everything separated and the way it is (more or less) I have not a problem and I'm fully committed to support the whole thing, but I'm skeptical for now and only time will tell.

What companies of their 6 prior acquisitions have they shut down?

Yes, I was one of those, but realistically what Affinity needed was going to be substantially more. I've always said Affinity is effectively free. 5+ years for a one time payment that you could probably get less than $100 on sale. Yes that is almost free compared to everything else. Just wasn't sustainable for long term growth.

If people don't understand a company needs more income that 50-150€ per customer every what, 5 years? to compete with Adobe sucking in 50€ every month, well, I won't say what I think of them, but the result is that the nice thing is broken.
However from what I have seen of comments around other places nobody complained about the price, in the contrary they were ready to give more to support the cause. At most some hobbyist might want it for dirt cheap, but they barely count, Affinity was a proper tool.
I'm also angry at all the people too lazy to look around that enables Adobe. Many of them don't really absolutely need Adobe format.
"For now".. just like they where committed to not being sold less than two years ago.. I've seen this happen too many times and it never went well..
I would prefer you where right though, of course..