John Rostron

In a recent posting in the Questions forum, @SAW asked about translating a Photoshop algorithm for astronomical photos into Affinity procedures. I was able to suggest a suitable translation. I did wonder what the effect of this algorithm would be on an non-astronomical image. I had a photo of a stained-glass church window (a HDR merge of three exposures). This had an interesting effect since the picture on the window shone through onto the wall at the side. Briefly, the procedure was to duplicate the image and blend the top layed using Luminosity, then, in the lower layer, add two adjustment layers to increase the spread of pixel values (Levels) and increase the saturation (HSL). Here are the results, before and after. There is not a great deal of change in the window itself, but the image projected onto the side-wall has had an interesting makeover. The details of the algorithm are in the posting mentioned earlier. The window itself is the East Window of the Church of St James the Less, in Hadleigh, Essex. John

Whenever I visit an old church, I try to take some photographs of the stained glass windows. The challenges they present vary. Most will need some distortion correction. Many will have variable lighting across their face. I usually try to take a bracketed series so that I can include some of the surrounding stonework.Usually I take the photographs with my old Sony A55 DSLR, but sometimes I use my Canon Powershot. This photograph of the Great West Window of Chester Cathedral was taken at my daughters degree ceremony, when she received her PhD. I took it with the PowerShot from near the centre of the cathedral as we were all filing out. I did not have time for any bracketing, but I did take two photographs, one of the lower half and one of the upper half. Later I merged the two in Affinity Photo Merge to Panorama. I often use AP's Perspective control, but I do find that DxO ViewPoint much easier to get the desired result, and used that here. The only other post-processing was some sharpening and curves adjustment. Chester Cathedral Great West Window Comments are welcome. I would also be pleased to see other's photographs of stained glass windows, with any commentary on the post-processing involved. John

These are nice images. You have got much of the architecture well-exposed in the first, and all of it in the second. When trying to photograph large church interiors, I did try focus merging, without a great deal of success as I recall. I mainly try to take photos of the windows now. In the first image (is that the Lady Chapel?), the altar, the sarcophagus and the reredos all seem in focus, but not the window above. In the second, I cannot see any noticeable lack of focus. John

Nicely corrected. John

I do most church windows with autofocus. The one above was taken with my quicky Canon Powershot on auto-almost-everything to snatch the shots. I did adjust the exposure compensation to get the bracketing. I was actually there giving a performance with my Singalong group, so did not bring the DSLR! I would be interested to see a thread on stained-glass windows in this forum. I will show you mine if you will show me yours. John

@Peter069, I have updated my post above to include a screenshot of my SilverFast screen. John

In SilverFast, I suspect that you are confounding Resolution in Samples per Inch (which could well be 2400) and the Photo Quality Dots per Inch, which could well be 300). In this SilverFast screen capture, the Photo Quality is set at 300ppi and the Resolution is set at 2000ppi. My scanner will do 2000 and 4000 but not 2400 ppi. Using the label ppi for the Scanner resolution is not really a good label, which has probably caused your confusion John

Have you tried: Create a new blank document (of the same size as your images) with a single layer, Open the Channels panel and paste your red image into the Background Red channel. Do the same with the green and blue images. If that fails try copy-paste of the red channel of your red image to the red channel of your new blank file. Then the same for the other two. John

Good question. I have often wondered this myself. I usually get it with a newly scanned .png or .tif. I do notice that you (and probably myself) has the box labelled "Warn when assigning working profile to unassigned files" checked. I have found that when I save (export) such a file, I get the same message again when I re-open. There is no difference between a .tif and a .tiff, or a .jpg and a .jpeg. however I have found that Windows will sometimes allow me to have both a filename.tif and filename.tiff, which is not reallyl desirable. This can occur when VueScan exports an image with one, then Affinity loads it and saves it as the other. John

Your Photoshop procedure is for astronomical images, but I thought it might be interesting to apply it to a terrestrial image. I have posted the result in the Share your work forum John

You could always use Stencil Fonts. A web search found several, including free ones. John

I got a similar error message and I sent off a bug report. That is when they told me I was incompatible. Pity really as FF offers some unique effects and it cost a fair amount. I may have to retain my old AP 1.6 when I eventually upgrade to 1.7. John

If your Photoshop action performs a sequence of specific commands, for each of which there is an Affinity equivalent, then it may well be possible to create an Affinity Photo macro to perform the same function. If not, it might still be possible to create an AP macro to achieve the same end result by a different route. However, as has been mentioned above, there is no direct equivalence in many functions. It is just a matter of try it and see! John

@chaleco45, could suggest that you change the title of you posting to something more relevant, such as Filter Forge plugin. It helps those of us who are browsing or are using the search facility. I have FF7 which work OK on my current build of photo, but not the beta of 1.7. FF8 does not work on either. Filter Forge support tells me that Affinity is incompatible. John

I am not asking for the OS to ask the scanner to do anything except load (say) VueScan or SilverFast. Not even to send an image to it (as Lightroom does when asked to 'Edit in Affinity Photo') When VueScan has saved the tiff or jpg image, it will be automatically loaded into AP because I have told Windows that is the default program for this file type. John

@R C-R, I have to agree with what you say. This still does not address my assertion that I still have not seen a satisfactory explanation as to why AP/Windows cannot ask the Operating System to execute a scanner program. John

I do not think that this actually affects the execution of the image presentation. You can drag each adjustment/filter layer onto the target layer (just to the right of the icon and to the left of the layer name) and it will become part of a group with the adjustment/filter nested within it. It does make it easier to see what is going on and to move the layers if needs be. Here is an image with a Black-and-White Adjustment layer in the default position, on top: And here it is dragged onto the Background layer: The image loks just the same. John

That does not really help the end user. It would need the Affinity Photo developers to incorporate this. They have always insisted there is poor 64-bit support for scanners. I still have not seen a satisfactory explanation as to why AP/Windows cannot ask the Operating System to execute a scanner program. John

I tried the procedure with an image similar to yours. Remember the Luminosity Blending Mode "Keeps the luminance of the selected layer and gives it the hue and saturation of the layers below." (The Eager Learner). You can see the effect by switching the visibility of the Luminosity layer on or off (use the tick-box at the right of the layer in the panel). In my case The 'on' image was generally darker then the 'off' image, but still retained the colours introduced by the saturation adjustments. Was this procedure one designed for astronomical images? I ask because moonscapes always seem rather monochrome to me (that is lacking in colour variation rather than being black-and-white). Perhaps you could upload your original image that I could look at. I attach here part of the image and the Layer Panel. I pumped up the saturation quite a lot and it looks too much. With the Luminosity Layer visible: With the Luminosity Layer off: John

I gave you a translation of the procedure into Affinity-speak without looking too hard at what it was doing. Once you have added the top later, then this is the visible later and you won't be able to see what is below except through the Luminosity blending mode. I cannot predict what effect this would have unless I could see your image. Changes to the lower layers would be filtered by this blending. I have a rather crude image of the moon I took some years ago. I will have a go with this procedure on that image and report back. John

I have been exploring what other photo apps can do. I re-instated my old Corel PhotoPaint to try. This has an Acquire command for a Twain scanner, but this just calls up my Vuescan program! Now why can't Affinity do this? (I have asked this question elsewhere and never got a satisfactory answer.) BTW, Twain is supposed to stand for 'Technology Without An Interesting Name'. Believe that if you will. John

How much smaller? Is the size reduction because it gets cropped at the edges? Or just scaled down? Can you view the NEF image in other apps? Is it smaller there? John

The padlock does not prevent you from applying an adjustment. It does prevent you from moving or deleting the layer. John

@SAWThe workflow would be much the same in Affinity Photo. Filters > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask or Layer > New Live Filter Layer > Unsharp Mask Filter. This second option allows you to go back to the filter (double-click on the icon in the Layers panel) and re-adjust any time before you finally flatten the image. Layer > Duplicate or Control/Command-J Re-name new layer 'Luminosity' Keep the newly created layer selected and from the drop down change 'Normal' to 'Luminosity' Once that layer has been changed click back on the original layer to select it Affinity does not have an 'Auto Colour' command. From what I can see from using Photoshop many years ago, this seems to be a Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels Adjustment (or Control/Command-L) applied to each of the three R, G and B channels. You just have to apply the Levels Adjustment to the composite image. Bring the Black Point slider right, to the minimum value on the histogram and bring the White Point slider left, to the maximum value on the histogram. Layer > New Adjustment Layer > HSL Adjustment (or Control/Command-U). Adjust Saturation Repeat the increase in saturation until the colour is revealed. Note that because you have live adjustment layers, you can come back to this adjustment layer (double-click on the icon in the Layers panel) and re-adjust any time before you finally flatten the image. Document > Flatten. File > Save as or File > Export if you want to use a different file format. John

@Xander93, you seem to want to be able to save your image/data in a Photoshop .raw file despite the caveat shown in the image you post. At the right-hand side, under Photoshop Raw options it says: 'The Photoshop Raw file format does not fully encode the image mode and size, amongst other things. The image may not be fully restored when you re-open the file'. Why should you want to do this when you could save it as an .afphoto file, which will preserve all the information and processing you have done? Or you could export as a 16-bit .tiff file which would be readable by other photo apps (even Photoshop). Remember the word raw means '(of data) not analysed, evaluated, or processed for use' (from the OED). Once you have even part-processed your data, it is no longer raw. John