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Ulysses

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Everything posted by Ulysses

  1. Ulysses
    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.
  2. Ulysses
    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.
  3. Ulysses
    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.
  4. Ulysses
    @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.
  5. Ulysses
    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.
  6. Ulysses
    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.
  7. Ulysses
    Yep! Exactly where I've always had it in the Adjustment panel of v1.x.
  8. Ulysses
    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.
  9. Ulysses
    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.
  10. Ulysses
    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?
  11. Ulysses
    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.
  12. Ulysses
    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. 😅😂🤣
  13. Ulysses
    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?
  14. Ulysses
    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. 😂
  15. Ulysses
    This partly comes down to culture, for lack of a better word at the moment. There are many who have been here on these forums for years. They discern that threads like this one can be 1) unproductive with respect to expected results, and 2) frustrating especially for new members and new users of the software. Although the mods here are not heavy-handed, requesting a thread lock isn't a bad idea. At the same time, it's important for newer members and newer users to know that this thread's lengthy existence is neither an indicator of how many user requests have been made for this feature nor a reflection of this feature's priority in the eyes of the developers.
  16. Ulysses
    I'm very well versed in the Affinity Suite, but talk to me as if I've never opened Affinity Photo or any of its siblings. Question 1: How, exactly, would you go about producing fractions and ordinal numbers in Affinity Photo? Question 2: In the attached sample, why are all of the characters I selected rendered as fractions, but 4/5 will not? Question 3: Why is it that when I try to create ordinal numbers nothing seems to happen? I've attached screenshots of the selected options in the Character/Typography panel. As far as I researched, I'm not reading about any bugs in version 1.10.1. I thought this would be rather basic, but I'm guessing there's more to creating these sorts of characters than at first meets the eye. Thanks for any insights you might have on this feature. Font: Times New Roman Affinity Photo 1.10.1 macOS Mojave
  17. Ulysses
    Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is not a DAM, at least not in the same sense as Adobe Bridge or even XNViewMP are DAMs; it is not a general asset manager for all sorts of file types. It is simply intended to process, edit, enhance, organize and analyze your raw image files. It can also process JPEG files, but its primary application is to provide the best way to get the most out of your Canon raw files—in a similar sense to using Olympus Workspace to get the most out of your Olympus raw files. DPP can also write Canon-proprietary info to Canon-specific fields in their raw files. There's a lot of debate about whether or not this is "kosher," but I think the only answer to that question is: It depends upon what your goals are. When I shot Canon more regularly, I always enjoyed the results from DPP. It's not as fast as tools such as Capture One Pro, nor as intuitive as Lightroom. But there's no arguing with the image quality it produces. NOTE: I only just realized that Canon also makes a mobile version.
  18. Ulysses
    When you have to contact the company to find out their pricing, it's unlikely the options will be favorable for the single user or for a small business.
  19. Ulysses
    The vast majority of those who enjoy using Affinity Photo—even those of us content with workarounds—absolutely agree that requesting this feature is completely valid. Ignore anyone who directly and specifically says that it is a needless request. With the above in mind, the official process for requesting new features for Affinity Photo is via the forum at Feedback for Affinity Photo on Desktop. A little digging will probably reveal one more threads already requesting this feature, but it's still worth a look. Where this request lands in the developers' priority queue is another matter entirely. I know as a programmer and developer (in a former life), it's not easy to convey to daily users that their requested feature isn't a priority just yet. For some users, the lack of this feature or a combination of other features might be a deal breaker; for others, Affinity Photo natively and easily supplies 95% of what we need, even while we wait for features that would improve our workflow.
  20. Ulysses
    At least in my tests some months ago with v1.8 and 1.9, version 1.8 could not open any v1.9 file even if that file was a simple single-layer .AFPHOTO file none of v1.9 features. It was not only a surprise, but it also made some corporate work more difficult (since at that time their AP installations were all older versions than what I use in my home studio. It's nice to know that (at least for now) there seems to be compatibility between v1.9 and v1.10. I'll keep holding my breath that this remains the case. 🙃
  21. Ulysses
    This may be of interest: I can open Affinity Photo v1.10.0 files on computers with v.1.9.2 installed (Mac and PC). Thus far, I haven't used any features that may be v1.10-specific (and not shared by v1.9), if any exist at all.
  22. Ulysses
    For what it's worth, XNView MP is a rather well-known application, has a very small footprint on your computer and its resources, gets the job done rather well, and is extremely simple to use. Worth giving a try. :)
  23. Ulysses
    CORRECT. This is a long-standing issue that has been known for quite some time. There are couple of workarounds: 1. Download the XnView MP application. This versatile photo viewer will read AFPHOTO and AFDESIGN files; however, it does not currently recognize AFPUB. 2. If you'd rather not use an additional application, you can try this tip. It may not be practical if your OneDrive folder is already rather large, but it's worth a shot if you absolutely need Affinity thumbnails.
  24. Ulysses
    I can't go back, @walt.farrell. I won't! 😂 @GarryP that's a very good suggestion. I'll look into it in the meantime, while still hoping for some sort of backwards compatibility mode in the Affinity apps.
  25. Ulysses
    That's exactly why I thought the TIFF file would work. Interestingly, there's nothing at all unique to this file... just a couple of Shapes and Text layers, with none of the features unique to v1.9. So I expected the native file (or even a layered TIFF) would open just fine, but nope. @GarryP thanks for the input. Unfortunately, while I'm able to keep the software updated on my home office computers, I have no control over those of my corporate colleagues, where updates are much slower in coming along. This makes sharing native files impossible at this point.
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