Mike Hardisty

Would it be possible to start the HDR process from open files. When you choose New HDR Merge and the dialogue box comes up. clickin on Add takes you to Explorer so that you can choose the files you want. I would be nice if you could also add files that are already open in the Develop Persona. My reason for this is I use another program for catalogueing my photographs. It has the ability to send files to external editors, and from this program I also send photographs to social media, etc. So I could choose the files I want to be HDR'ed, work on them in Affinity and then save them back to my original folder. I could then post direct from the cataloguing program to Facebook, Flickr etc... Thank you

Now that's interesting. I don't get that problem. Three TIFF files from DXO load into the HDR module and I can process them. Three attached files show the DXO Export settings, the HDR Merge module in Affinity and the final HDR image.

I couldn't replicate this so it might just have been a one off

Whilst I was trying to crop to a custom ration in the RAW developer Photo crashed. The screen dumps probably give more information than I can.

Have you tried enabling unknown plugins.

If you change to 8Bit working your plugins should work Document, Colour Format, RGB (8 bit)

Although I'm not a Pro tog I have done a lot of beta testing over the years for various software companies. I agree the beta reporting could be better structured as at the moment it is just a free for all.

I asked the same questions. Existing actions don't work due to the way Photoshop works. So I suppose you could infer that Actions are not part of the master plan.

You need to switch to 8 bit working using Document, Colour Format, RGB (8 bit). Also check that in Preferences you have ticked the box "Allow unknown plugins to be used"

I found Viveza crashed every time I tried to use it. As soon as I added a Control Point Viveza would give an "unhandled exception" message and Photo would then shut down

Just a suggestion - it would be nice if we could export direct to Social Media and Popular Photo Sharing sites, i.e Flickr, SmugMug, Facebook, Instagram etc

I've tried it with Olympus Raw Files (15Mb), JPEG (9Mb) and TIFF (91Mb), 3 Exposures, -2, 0, +2 and in each case it has taken not much more than about 1 minute 15 seconds before I'm able to tone-map the HDR Image. So I've not found it particularly slow. What I have found though is that only the Natural and Cool presets are of any use, The others produce a lot of noise. Also the Tone-Mapping tools are not that good. ​Personally, as soon as the HDR Merge is done I press Apply and do all the adjustments in the Photo Persona. It just seems to be more controllable there.

My first impressions of the HDR Module aren't that good and in my opinion there is room for improvement. I appreciate that this is a beta so hopefully it's not the final version for HDR Merge. First of all there's no drag and drop into the HDR dialogue box. Second you cannot use files that are already open in Affinity Photo. Instead you have to open an Explorer Window and find the files you want. Once the merge is done you are presented with the ability to tone-map the image. There are five presets, Natural, Detailed, Dramatic, Cool and High Contrast Black & White. Of these only two are useable, Natural and Cool. The others generate far too much noise. ​I chose the Natural preset and then from there tried to tweekk the settings with the Tone mapping Controls. I struggled to get an image I liked which looked Natural, had some colour and wasn't overly noisy. In the end I decided to take the Natural preset as it was and just apply it. From there I used the Photo Persona to carry on tone-mapping the image. The controls seemed more responsive here than in the HDR Module and I felt as though I was getting a better result.

These are the plugins that I have found to work so far with Affinity Photo. The image must be in 8 bit mode ​From the Google NIK Collection ​Analog Efex Color Efex ​Dfine 2 Sharpener Pro ​Silver Efex HDR Efex ​Viveza crashes Affinity Photo as soon as you add a Control Point. ​From the Topaz Collection ​DeNoise Glow ​Impression Texture Effects Adjust B+W Effects ​Clarity Clean ​Detail Lens Effects ​ReStyle Simplify ​Star Effects ​ReMask gives a message about unlocking transparency first so I need to investigate that more.

Screenshot from my Windows 10 PC with E-M1 ORF thumbnails. So far I've not noticed any problems opening an ORF file. Second screenshot shows the information from the opened file.