John Rostron

Same here. Works OK for me. John

Which image is which? The first one has some barrel distortion and the second has no obvious distortion. (Glancing from image one to image two quickly makes image two appear to have pincushion distortion!) John

You can read an .svg file into Affinity Designer. This may then allow you to remove the border and export it. I looked at your .svg file and also downloaded it and loaded it into Designer. I can see no evidence of a border! This is what it looks like in AD: John

I used the Clone Tool and selected an area to the left of the keys and painted over the left part of the keys. I then selected an area to the right of the keys and painted over the right part of the keys. I then repeated this till they were gone. Took five minutes. I could have done a bit more tidying up. John

I had to look up what Gouraud shading was. I may be good at these lovely sums, but Gouraud shading looks as if it would require me learning how to create and use gradients. Gradients are a technique that I have read about but have yet to use in earnest. So, I think that I will leave Gouraud shading off my bucket list for now. John

Here is @Dingdong's original image: This has had the Levels Adjustment as shown below: This shows the Levels Adjustment itself: This has had the Curves Adjustment as shown below: This shows the Curves Adjustment itself: John

You are quite right. I was still remembering what I learned as a Scout sixty years ago. It was probably incorrect then! John

Recently, @Dingdong posted some astronomical images, including one of the Carina nebula. I downloaded this and looked at the Curves Adjustment, which looked like this: I brought the black point slider from the left-hand corner to the start of the histogram. I also brought down the white point slider to the right-hand edge of the histogram, as seen in the white line. This had a beneficial effect on the image (which I do not show as it is @Dingdong's). I would suggest you try this on your images. Following the Levels Adjustment did not have such a beneficial effect as this. John

This is an extension of my tutorial on Trigonometrical transformations using Filter > Distort > Equations. This one is focused on simulating flags waving in a light wind. Flags have an advantage in that they have a standard shape (width is twice the height). Edit: I have been told that this is not true. I stand corrected. To get the desired waving, I apply a sine transformation to each of the x and y-axes. The equations to apply are: x=(x+20*sin(360*y/h))/c-100*b y=y+a*(h/10)*sin(2*360*x/w)-(x/w)*h/10 I add a sideways sine wave to the x-axis as a function of the y-position. When the flag waves, the visual width is decreased, so I have added a parameter c which scales the width of the flag. The parameter b is an offset, since the left-hand corners of the flag can otherwise move outside the canvas. The y-axis also has a sine wave, depending on the x-position. The parameter a determines the magnitude of this sine wave. The final expression (-(x/w)*h/10) ensures that the fly (RHS in this case) is below the hoist (LHS here). (Definitions: hoist is the part next to the flagpole; fly is the part flying free.) Here is the UK Union Flag, plus a bit of extra space above and below to create room: And waving in the breeze: And here is a macro that implements these transformations: FlagWaving.afmacro And a macro library containing the single macro: FlagWaving.afmacros The parameters should appear when you run the macro. Parameter a controls the vertical wave; parameter b controls the horizontal offset; parameter c controls the overall horizontal scaling. This macro will not simulate a flag in too strong a wind, where the parts overlap! John

Your first assertion (TIFF is a RAW format) is not true, but your second one (most proprietary RAW formats are TIFF variations) has some truth in it as they will mostly use similar compression methods as the Tiff file, as does the DNG format. Given the whole rationale of RAW formats (including DNG) it is not really logical to export or save files as RAW or DNG, even if theoretically possible. I would have thought that 16-bit tiff export would encompass all the necessary information that was available for almost all purposes. Failing that, for 32-bit images, then EXR would serve (or even .afphoto). The critical element missing for you is the preservation of EXIF information. If Affinity can fix this then this should solve your problems. If you consider it a bug (and I would agree with that), then you should post this in the Bug report forum. John

@newty, I tried to download your video and CR2 file, but both appear to have zero bytes. The html gives: <a href="http://82.253.46.150/share/t3Qmge1oS0beK_qV/M42_LIGHT_750DT6i_1600iso_Tv20s_00092.CR2" rel="external nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">http://82.253.46.150/share/t3Qmge1oS0beK_qV/M42_LIGHT_750DT6i_1600iso_Tv20s_00092.CR2</a> it specifies rel="nofollow noopener" which may be preventing my access. Could you perhaps develop the CR2 with defaults file and export as a jpeg which should download readily. It may not be your definitive image, but it might give us an insight to your problem. John

I was presuming that you have software that does open your FITS files. My suggestion was to help your workflow. To re-iterate: 1. Open Affinity and leave it open. 2. Open your FITS file in suitable software. 3. Save your image as a .tiff file. 4. Your tiff file should now automatically open in Affinity to process as you see fit. 5. Repeat from 2. as desired. Sorry if I did not make this clear. I find that workflows like this are almost as fast and effective as having Affinitty open the file from scratch. I use a similar workflow for scanning images. John

This would be a desireable trait when drawing maps where mutual boundaries are identical. It woukd also be desireable where (say) a road was at the boundary to a wood. I recall seeing that you can coerce two contiguous boundaries to be the same with one lying over the other, using geometry. However, I cannot recall the actual procedure for this. John

In windows at least, you can smooth your workflow by setting Affinity as your default program for tiff, and then, with Affinity open, you process your FITS file to save as a tiff. The saved tiff will then automatically open in Affinity. John

I would guess that for astrophotogaphy, the usual processes for black point (and possibly white point) do not apply, especially if you have light pollution. It woiuld help if you posted a typical astro-image with light pollution, along with a screenshot of the Curves panel. This would give us a better idea of how to deal with your images. John

You would do better to use your scanner software and allow the saved file to automatically load into Affinity. It might seem a more complicated workflow, but in practice it works very smoothly, especially if Affinity is already open. The only disadvantage is that it creates an intermediate saved file which you may or may not want to keep. John

An interesting result. I cannot say it appeals to me, but to each his own. What were the exposure values for the two images? They were clearly very different, much further apart than in typical HRD image spacing. John

On windows, if you save your scanned image as (say) tiff, and if Affinity is the default program for tiffs, then following the save, it will open automatically in Affinity. Not much different from scanning from within Affinity. This also works if you save as jpeg. John

Works for me as well, using either crop and apply, or else selecting the black outer regions, deleting this selection and then Crop Canvas. John

Not silly at all. It is an excellent suggestion. Why didn't I think of that. I have used this method for individual files, though I use Bridge for editing lots of files at once (when I import them). John

Givven the circumstances, I think that the tools have done an excellent job! John

Sorry, using my tablet, I had not realized that there were two alternating images. Seems to work now OK though. John

Surely, for a comparison, you need at least two items to compare! John

You need the Affine (not Affinity) filter Filters > Distort > Affine. This re-arranges the four quadrants so the the sides become the middle. You can then blur the edges, now at the centre, or do some cloning or inpainting work to obscure the seam. For a different approach, see my tutorial here. John

I would certainly support the idea of being able to save an equation as a preset. At present, I do as @firstdefence suggests in maintaining a text file of equations in the folder I am working on. This also allows me to edit the equations without upsetting the equations filter. When I have it working to my satisfaction, I record it as a macro. John