Ulysses

SUGGESTIONS Save sharpening as your final step. Otherwise, your image will build up aberrations that will difficult to eliminate later in your workflow. Use a lighter touch on those solar prominences. What you usually would want is retention of fine feathery detail for these transient structures, not harsh areas of solid color. I'm still working on my images. I find that I often spend a lot of time editing and then need to walk away from it for hours or even several days of time. I'm at the "several days" part. You should be VERY PROUD. This was also my first total solar eclipse. Although I'm a professional photographer for many years now, photographing and processing a total solar eclipse is its own sort of beast. Nevertheless, I was fairly happy with my first processing effort—at least my friends say they like it. But I can easily see the problems with it, most likely alignment issues. So I'm going to make another attempt at processing them before posting here. I even caught Bailey's Beads at 3rd contact (they weren't very visible for me at 2nd contact). Even though I knew that I had a 5-7 second window to capture them I was shocked at how quickly the window passed by.

It often takes time and patience to get a reply, especially if the originators of the post provided this information a year or more prior to our questions. I have no doubt that the techniques required actually exist within Affinity Photo, even if the specific tools are located in a different place than in Photoshop. Ultimately the technique might even be easier, as is typically the case with Affinity Photo.

Very well done, particularly with this being your first attempt at it! You also ensured that your approach to gear and the images you wanted to make were doable and well-planned. This eclipse was my first one, also. I now know that I was either TOO ambitious in what I was trying to accomplish, or should have trained some additional hands to help out, or I should simply have rehearsed even more. Still, I accomplished more than I hoped. I will share some of my results when able.

I agree with you there. Although I'm a pro photographer and have plenty of experience with the Affinity products among many others, eclipse photography and processing isn't quite like anything else. At all. And the adrenalin level during the shoot is through the roof—far higher than when I work for any high-end clients. 😅 If you have some input on what led you to success with your images, several of us just now finding this thread would really appreciate it. Fantastic work, particularly with your composites. I didn't have the opportunity to capture the basic sequences necessary to do anything like that. We were still on a very crowded highway attempting to reach our destination when the partial portion of the eclipse began. I can tell you put a lot into this. If you don't mind saying so, what lens focal length did you use to achieve the wide-field shot of the Sun across the sky? I'm also guessing you took one photo every four or five minutes as the Sun moved across the sky? Additionally, Capture One Pro is my raw image editor of choice as a professional photographer. However, on its own, it won't produce on its own what I believe you're looking for. For those sorts of images, the best approach is to stack a series of varying exposures. For a total eclipse of the Sun, this is a challenging art form. That's what I'm attempting to do, but using Affinity Photo 1.10 instead of Photoshop—which I no longer have. I'm hoping some of the good people here will be able to point me in the right direction for optimal results.

@Alfred, my friend, believe me—no one is kicking me harder than I'm kicking myself over this. The cruel irony is that I actually have one in my camera bag!! 😭😅 However, traffic was even more horrendous than we anticipated, and the crowding by other eclipse chasers was over the top. By the time we got to our destination and I got most of my equipment set up for my multiple projects, I completely forgot that I even had a remote shutter release—which I'd actually rehearsed using over and over again. I learned a lot from this first-timer eclipse experience. Everything that can possibly go wrong probably WILL go wrong if you don't have enough time to set up prior to the very brief moments of totality.

Solar prominences are completely visible to the naked eye in white light. They’re visible on the Sun’s limb when the much brighter disk of the Sun is completely obscured by the Moon during a total solar eclipse. In this configuration, the solar prominences aren’t competing against the rest of the Sun’s comparatively brighter disk. No dedicated H-alpha telescope required. With the 2024 total solar eclipse, there were several large prominences easily visible to the naked eye even without the use of a telescope or telephoto lens. My unaided eyesight is poor, so when a nearby 10-year-old child asked, “What are those pink things around the Sun and Moon?” I was thrilled! When my eyes finally focused—much more slowly than the child’s—I could also see these large pink spots. So the prominences this year were unusually large and plentiful. I counted maybe four or five of them. Three are particularly big ones.

I, too, would be greatly interested in this. We were able to experience totality for 3.52 of the fastest minutes of my entire life. A lot of things went wrong, but at the end of the day, I have the raw images I need to produce what I hope will be a satisfying final image. However, Russell Brown’s tips aren’t entirely analogous to what I’d need to do in Affinity Photo v1.10. If someone can be of help with some details, it would be really helpful. In particular, I have zero idea what to do with the Equations portion of the Apply Image tool. And I’m sure I’m missing several other important steps to bring out the detail in the corona. What I have is “pretty” but I’m sure it could become much more. Thanks for any experienced advice that this excellent group can offer this amateur astronomer. ETA: Another issue I’m having is aligning the longer exposures (0.5, 1.0, and 2.0 seconds in particular). I’m pretty sure this misalignment is crushing the potential for detail. My motorized mount had quite a bit of movement due to my needing to manually press the shutter release, but I believe the exposures are usable.

Yep! Exactly where I've always had it in the Adjustment panel of v1.x.

I would have to say "YES, it was always visible and readily available in version 1.x. I don't recall it ever being hidden, which is why I was slightly surprised by your quote from the Help file. But since we have no fewer than four different easy ways to get to it with only a click or two, it's generally been a non-issue. I utilize this panel fairly regularly.

Agreed. Sometimes what is familiar can be confused with what is intuitive. From the same Help topic: "You can also apply an adjustment layer directly from the Layers panel instead of starting from a preset." Applying an HSL layer can be accomplished in any of several ways in both a Mac and in a Windows PC: From the Adjustment panel From within the Layers panel and tapping the Adjustments icon at the bottom of this panel From inside the menu (Layers > New Adjustment Layer > HSL) Keyboard shortcut: Command + U (Windows: Ctrl + U) Here is a screenshot of how to access HSL adjustment from within the Layers panel in Affinity Photo 1.10.8. It's only a click away, and it works essentially the same in Affinity Photo 2.x.

Thank you! @Old Bruce. Is there a way in Affinity Photo to automate the export of individual layers? One more thing unrelated to my original question: Does AP2 have a way to save .AFPHOTO files that are backward compatible with v1?

In Affinity Photo 2 (AP2) can raw development settings be copied from one developed photo to another photo so as to make batch adjustments for photos that have similar exposure and lighting? I watched a really nice YouTube tutorial by James Ritson about bringing multiple raw files into AP2, each raw file in its own layer with the goal of compositing them together to create beautiful star trails. He made one set of development adjustments, and those adjustments were applied to each of the file simultaneously. Would a similar method be used for batch developing raw photos shot with similar lighting and camera settings? Or is there some other way to copy raw development settings and apply them to other files? If AP2 has this capability, then that makes it even more valuable a tool for raw development.

The issue isn’t really your computer, but rather the desire to stick with OS X Mojave, right? I get it. My Mac is on Mojave, too. But the reason I stick with it is because I’m one of the surprisingly common professionals who wants to hang on to Photo$hop C$6 for a few isolated tasks that I can’t do with the Affinity Suite. Upgrading to OS X 10.14 would allow me to also upgrade my latter, but I’d completely lose the ability to use the former. It’s an unpleasant spot to be in. By the way, my otherwise very smoothly running Mac is so old that Catalina is the final OS upgrade I can possibly perform on this machine. 😅😂🤣

I was wondering about that exact thing. Fascinating! There is really NO WAY to force Word to use the font’s built-in superscripts? I’m also guessing Libre Office works differently/better in this regard?

Also… speaking from experience, COVID-19 has had an impact on the pace of development for companies both large and small. Even though progress may be steady, many are finding many things simply take longer. I check every now and then to see if there’s news, but I’m sure Publisher for iPad is still going to happen. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out Designer's awesome mind-bending Contour tool. 😂