John Rostron

I suspect that the problem might result from there only being three images. Most focus stacks would have more. I have not been able to look at your images on my tablet. I will have a go when I get home after the weekend. John

What is the problem with taking the SD card out? Most photographers will do this. It does assume, of course that you have an SD slot (or adaptor) on your computer. If you put the card in the slot in your computer, it should recognize it as a drive. John

If you have a series of photos with the same background, and the jumper in different positions, then I would think that the stacking method would normally be better. However the various blending options would not necessarily be optimal for different parts of the jumper: some parts will be lighter and some will be darker than the sky. It might be possible to do both, and then combine them afterwards, discarding the sky. John.

This is more or less what I got in Autopano. John

I had a try with your images using Autopano which has given me good results in the past. However the overall results have been much like as in Affinity. I also tried some pairings 1/10 and 5/6. In each case I was told 'No panorama detected' implying that it could not find sufficient points of comparison. You might like to try the free stitcher Hugin. I have found that this has been effective in the past. John

I think that your panorama comes out the way it does is because your upper row of images has been taken with your camera pointing upwards, as compared with the bottom row. Thus there is an intrinsic perspective distortion in these images. I downloaded your images and created two panoramas, one with the top row and one with the bottom row. The bottom row generated an approximately rectangular panorama, as expected. The top row produced the same distortion as seen in your image, probably for the reasons I mentioned. I did try and merge these two panoramas into one, but it would not play! There are various possible solutions. One would be to create five small, tall panoramas, each from two images in the same horizontal position. I tried this with your first and sixth images, but I was told it could not find a panorama. I was assuming that the second five images (6-10) matched the first five (1-5). Do they? If not, how do they pair up? If you can create these five images, then you could try to merge them into one panorama. An alternative approach (and I am speculating wildly here) would be to 'correct' the perspective distortion in the top five images using the mesh warp to compress the top part by (say) 20-30%. You could then try to merge all ten. Failing all that, you could use the mesh warp tool to correct your mushroom! John

Could you explain what you mean by ''inserting PNG graphics'? Are you loading them (File > Open), or placing them (File > Place), or Copy and Paste? This can make a difference even if your basic document has Transparent Background' set. I get the impression that you have started with paper images, and then scanned these in. It is these images (in which the background is not necessarily going to be white, or even uniform) that you need to set the background transparent. Did you do that? You may like to apply a Levels or Curves adjustment so that everything above a certain luminance (that is your greyish background) becomes white. John

What I had in mind was that you draw your rectangle directly on top of the existing scale bar. No need to measure anything then. John

You could use either. I would begin with your existing image as background. Then add a layer containing a rectangle scaled to the same size as your current one. Then add a fill, the same as your original white (or different should you wish). Then add a Text item (either Artistic Text or a Text Box) with a suitably-sized font and colour. The font size will probably have to be trial-and-error! You might then like to group the scale bar and the Text item. Having the scale bar as its own layer means that the fill could be changed for a differently coloured image. Similarly for the text. John

If you have your image and your scale both at the correct magnification and, provided you do not resize either of these, then you can crop and edit them as much as you like. I would presume that they are on separate layers. John

There are various panorama-stitching algorithms. Photoshop offers you a range of possibilities. Autopano allows some manipulation of the method, but Affinity Photo does neither. The algorithm it uses is not revealed. It would seem that it does not suit your set of images. Why did you take so many images? I have successfully stitched a set of 12 images in a 4×3 grid which covered the same sort of scope as yours. John

Do you get this when you view your image in Affinity Photo at 100%? I assume the image shown here is the original and has not been through Photo. John

Pardon my combination of ignorance and inattention. I had not registered the word 'image' as being the alternative to 'pixel' when referring to layers. I was unaware that the crop tool did not work on image layers, never having tried it. Good grief indeed. John

What is the tool that I have been using for ages in Photo, with the two crossed right angles? If it isn't a crop tool, then it certainly behaves like one. John

It would help us if you used the standard message interface (as you did in your earlier postings in this thread). In the one above, it is all on one line, forcing the reader to scroll sideways. I am reminded of the Limerick: There was a young man from Japan, Who wrote verses that no-one could scan. When asked why t'was so He replied "I don't know, But I always try to get as many words in the last line as I possibly can". John