I'v gone through most of the video tutorials (there is a lot of information here - I might have missed something or not remembered along the way....). My current workflow utilizes Oleno Photoengine, Microsoft ICE and LightRoom 5.5+. Yes, if I were a more advanced user of PhotoShop, Affinity Photo would perhaps be a bit easier - less of a steep learning curve. However, I hate Adobe's approach and the Affinity Photo approach is more aligned to the way I currently work. That said, I realize that my experience, capability and understanding is somewhat limited. Here are several observations.
I should have probably started out with simpler single image processing attempts. But I started out with some of the images my current workflow / toolsets do not support well (lacking masking, blending, compositing, layers, etc.). A video tutorial on Milky Way - Astro processing in general would be great. I think that a lot of this would come with experience and the learning curve here is steep (lots of functionality - that one can get lost in), but a good kick start (an approach to initially follow) would certainly help - a lot!
I usually shoot a single row pano with each frame bracketed - 5 shots (+/- 2ev) that I stack in Oleno, export in Tiff, and then stitch in ICE, export in PNG and/or TIFF and then finish off in Lightroom. I'm finding that the HDR capability here is very basic. I believe that you just added the capability, and over time I hope you will be enhancing its capability (It is extremely difficult/impossible for me to even approach the results from Oleno [very natural processing - not cooked]). I really want to be able to stay in one post processing utility so as to be able to maintain all of my work in the best digital workspace possible - at least 16 bit color so that I do not loose any information in processing. Affinity Photo certainly appears to offer this ability.
I also shoot multi row panos - of AstroLandscapes - one row of the sky (shot with one set of settings) - Milky Way, with a second row of the landscape elements (shot with a very different set of settings). I have been waiting for your Affinity Photo in order to be able to stitch them together (horizontally) with at least 16 bit color (Adobe elements does not cut it and hated PhotoShop [early version]). So a couple of suggestions.... Would you please be able to put together a tutorial video in terms of...Stitching together a sky row (horizontally) and processing it (including straightening up the apparent verticals since the sky was shot with a tilted up elevation), stitching together a landscape row (horizontally) and processing it and then composite the two rows together (vertically). Having stitched two independent horizontal images separately (each with very different post processing), how do you then take the separate images and stitched/composite them together (trying to do it without saving to disk)?
Do you recommend processing individual stacks of HDR images together first, then taking the tone mapped results and stitching them together? Or is there a way to do this in somewhat of a single continuous step (but in different personas)?
I am willing to provide RAW images if you desire some samples.
In general, your toolset is very extensive and rich - so rich, that one can really get lost pretty easily. To this extent, while the video tutorials are excellent in terms of the functional snippets, would you consider...
Doing a tutorial or two on suggested workflows - start to finish, in terms of some of the best approaches to consider using as a starting approach with Affinity Photo, so that we - the new users & customers can have a suggested basis from which to customize from?
Moving from one Persona to another Persona - I have received the informational box "Please either commit or cancel the develop ;operation before switching to another Persona". Ok, what do I need to do - and why?
Thanks for the consideration!!
