John Rostron

Thanks @MEB. I thought that 'Rasterize to Mask' came into it somewhere, but I could not see where. This now works well. I just moved the rasterized mask onto the top layer and Bingo! If you were wondering, the image is of my wife feeding a Lesser Kestrel chick in a breeding centre for these birds in southern Spain. We were visiting a placement student there. John

I have an image where some parts need sharpening and some parts need denoising or smoothing. The obvious way to do this is to create a mask that divides the image into these two component parts. No problem, I create an edge mask as a new layer and refine it appropriately. I could now duplicate my original image and sharpen one version (using Nik Sharpener) and denoise the other using Nik DFine. The mask should now be able to ensure that what I see is partly sharpened and partly denoised. But I cannot see how I can place the mask I have created to perform this task. I Because sharpening and denoising are fairly subtle, I have been practicing on an an image and a desaturated version, and a layer comprising several vertical black-and-white stripes so that I should be able to see a fairly obvious mask effect. I have tried following various videos and on-line guides typically involving moving the stripy mask into a position on one of the layers, but what I see is always either the stripy mask or no effect at all. The image below shows what I see before trying to place the mask. Any advice gratefully received. John

In a recent post, the OP was asking about wavelets. I was aware that FilterForge did offer wavelet filter and that FF 6 was compatible with Affinity Photo. Some time ago I bought FF6 on a special offer, but I had not really explored it. So I downloaded the wavelet filter for FF. I needed to upgrade to the latest version of FF6 first (not FF7), and it loaded into Affinity. I had loaded and developed a raw image of a prickly shrub first as a suitable subject. After a while it showed a set of images of the various decompositions squashed side-by-side. The rather limited filter documentation tells me to load the six output images into a stack above the residual image. I can work out which these are in the composite image above, but I have no idea what happened to the individual, properly-scaled output images. Does anyone have any experience of this? The FF filter is said to emulate the wavelet filter in GIMP. I saved the composite image from within the FF filter, but I found that it had frozen Affinity. I had to use the Task Manager to close it. I also noticed that Affinity was using over 5Gb of memory as opposed to a more usual 400Mb. I was later able to run FilterForge as a standalone with no problems. I have posed a comment on the Filter Forge Forum, but the link to email the author does not function. John

Yes, I have discovered that. It just seems to go against the stated advantages of using the.afphoto format.

FilterForge offers a wavelet decomposition filter. FF should now work with Affinity. Edit: This filter installs into FilterForge 6 running as a plugin to Affinity. I have not tried it in earnest yet though. John

This looks like a very useful technique. I also like to be able to watch a video with the sound off, so sub-titles suit me well. I did find, however, that I could not see any difference between your before and after shots. Could I suggest that for these, you zoom right in to 100%. John

The Sources panel also seems to get emptied if you save the document. It is not there when you re-load it. I thought that saving as .afphoto was supposed to save all relevant information. John

@R C-R, for a moment I thought that you had applied this filter to Alice and the pig. I must try it! For Alice in Wonderland, a stretch transform seems appropriate. This has a=1, b=0, b=0.9, c=0.35 (all approximate). John

I have corrected this link. John

@Polygonius, I have now tried your equations. Putting /(a*0.5) at the end is algebraically the same as I had with /a at the end and 2* at the beginning. However, I now find that the a parameter still does not cut in at first, but only when it reaches a value of about 0.7-0.8. Curiouser and curiouser! (The link explains the origin of this expression for those unfamiliar with it.) Your use of parameters b and c are interesting. Parameter b just seems to scale along the y-axis, enhancing the value of a - not what I would have expected. Parameter c is more intriguing. It shifts the effective horizontal axis of the effect upwards. If this is used with an enhanced curve-shift (with parameter b), it gives the appearance of a rounded corner. I was applying these parameters to the square grid as in my first posting. Here is the grid with a=0.7, b=0.9 and c=0.3 (all values approximate). I am interested to see these effects on a real image! John

Have you tried browsing to the location of your installation file?

I use VueScan and if I tell it to save as a tiff, it does so; the tiff file is then automatically opened by Affinity with no problem. Try this and see! John

I tried the HDR process in Affinity and also in Photomatix. In Affinity I opted for the Detailed tonemap and in Photomatix, for the Natural map. Photomatix (above) seems to have produced a reasonable map. In Affinity, there is a blue cast, and the moon has one distinct ghost, but looks OK otherwise. I looked at the images in succession, and the moon does seem to move between shots. If you are setting your exposures manually, you will not be able to avoid this. Could I suggest that you go back to your original images, and move the moon so that they are as precisely aligned as possible. You will not have to move it much, and you have some rather ill-defined sky in between which helps. With this kind of shot, with fixed parts to the image and parts which are non-fixed, but are moving, you will always have this problem. There was a recent post of someone trying to merge images of the stars (rotating) against a fixed horizon. Hope this helps, John

@Polygonius, I shall have to work this one on both on paper and in Affinity. Thanks for your interest. John

You were not using Malwarebytes at all, were you? A recent 'upgrade' had rampant memory leaks. The latest version is now OK. John

I have just had a similar problem with a Photo image that was originally taken in portrait mode. AP behaves as if the x and y axes were flipped. There is an icon on the context toolbar for the Selected item (in both AP and AD) called 'Reset'. In AP it reset the axes as I wanted them, but I had to save and reload the image. You might like to give this a try. John

@Polygonius, for a complex equation, a macro is probably the best solution. When I am trying out equations, I do as you suggest. I have a text file, an I cut and paste various versions from there. John

@Polygonius, You seemed to have also seen my tutorial using equations. You can multiply by a factor less than one without problems. The result just becomes less than it was before. It is not division. If you divide a value by another that is less than one, the result is greater than before. Thus: 10*0.5=5 10/0.5=20 The expression A/B/C is equivalent to A/(B×C), but I often find the former more easy to write. John

You don't say what it works in. I have just downloaded it and it works in AP for Windows with no problem. I just need to work out how to use the rather intimidating interface. It is good to find a PS plugin that just works. @MEB, you can add this to your list. John

You could extend the canvas (Document > Resize Canvas) to give more space at the top, then use either the Clone tool or the Inpainting tool to fill it in. John

When the PNG format first became popular, (many years ago), I read somewhere that it did not support Exif data. Certainly the very old PNG files I have do not have this data. I have not updated my memory banks on PNGs since. John

In windows, you could use the Snipping Tool. After sctivation, you can select an area and then save it in a format of your choice. John

As I understand it, PNG files do not contain any metadata. John

So would many others of us! John

I think that my contribution above exhausts what I can usefully advise. However, I suggest that you include a link to your RAW file so that other knowledgeable people can try for themselves. John