davide445

R16 is a single channel format that contains red channel information—it's typically used for height maps in landscape creation software/game engines etc.
Affinity Photo doesn't have any direct R16 export capabilities. However, you could try the following @davide445 :
Flatten your document if you have layer work (Document>Flatten). On the Channels panel, scroll down and right click Pixel Green then choose Clear. Do the same with Pixel Blue. Note that Pixel will be whatever your layer is named (so it might be Background if you haven't flattened your document). Ignore the Composite channels at the top as they won't offer the option to clear the channel data. You should now be left with just red channel information. Go to File>Export and choose the PNG format. Click the More button and find Pixel format. Choose Greyscale 16-bit from the dropdown and then export. Your mileage may vary with this—some people have reported success importing these 16-bit greyscale PNGs into the software they're using.
Alternatively, if you don't specifically need the greyscale bitmap and just wanted to export an RGB image with only the red channel data, ignore the PNG export steps and just use whatever format you wish. Hope that helps!

What type of PDF are you exporting to? Some PDF types don’t allow for various features such as transparency, etc.

This was produced in Substance Alchemist using the Match and Equaliser Filters

I think what you are doing is taking the photo too close, because of this you are creating a "hot spot". I would try taking the image further away and cropping in on the selection needed.

I'd use the PBR workflow(/s) always that you can, because :
a) Is here to stay, is what we need to use for most things now.
b) Even in 3D (after all I believe it comes from Disney) for just rendering, movies, it is used there, (blender has it now in a way, with its "principled shader... couldn't they call it just PBR shader, lol)  as is not something used only for better realism... In a cartoon style, stylized 3D, is also used as gives better materials, more realistic plastics, metal, etc, have advantages in other styles, there are also other advantages.
c) You never know with the job market. Doing things as required for entire fields like games, in a way, also film, and even in VR companies, well, helps to kind of build professional experience, and one never knows when will have to work at certain type of job. (I mean, I've changed fields a number of times)
I was only mentioning to avoid it if you are in a hurry and is just a fast project where is not worth for you the hassle, but seems you are dedicated to it.
About format for the camera. I'm no photographer. There are here people knowing a lot more about it. I know I wouldn't use JPG or any other lossy format for textures, that's for sure. As what I do know is how to make game textures, and you don't want to find color artifacts and blurry details.... Now, if using tiff or raw, I guess will depend on ability with those in your phone to carry the color profile, and things like that.  For height maps, I know we'd better work (and I guess already from the capture) in 16 bits mode, as is all about the smooth gradients. With whatever you are doing the photos, configure the settings to no loss, maximum quality. I would not use flash, and if your camera allow it, to handle all settings in manual, for the ISO thing, to allow photos with more aperture, controlling the exposure time and etc (in a way so you avoid the flash in low light, but...just use great daylight....but not super sunny going direct to the texture, either) . Is only a few photos that you are going to remove soon from the phone, anyway, so, fine if being bulky files. In my very old years, I used to need a macro in the camera for this kind of photo, and a very, very good camera. Otherwise, you'll be better off with even crappy textures on inet depots. ( and I mean way worse than the links I just pasted)
Affinity Photo is of very much use, as you don't have Substance or any other similar tool. So, to actually customize and "evolve" the texture, you can hand edit all those maps in Affinity, and go checking the results in a 3D viewer, be your game engine, or Toolbag 3, or any 3D viewer providing a view almost like the engine.  I'd highly recommend the engine in any case for a 1:1 check, but if toolbag, or Blender , or whatever, gives you a faster preview,  and is quite similar to how it shows in the engine, that's what you use, so to work fast as you edit those albedo (difuse) and etc maps, as needed. The base materials from sources I provided, those are good to go, I wouldn't modify to not loose the accurate values too much... But you definitely will want to apply masks, mix, add corrosion, over paint, etc, so to actually do the textures, as some things will only require a plan basic material, like bare steel; others do require more the kind of work you'd do with Substance painter, but old school, we used to do this by editing those maps, checking in real time how it did look in the engine, as we paint + save.   Of course, is faster to buy substance, for these uses. But even with it,  in the end you work always with a 2D package helper, be it Photoshop, AP or whatever.

Testing a bit ShaderMap appear to be really streamlined in his usage, most forgiving in term of input material than Quixel Mixer, able to autogenerate all what is needed, with good controls for the other parts. It's only a bit slow in applying and preview changes, and this can be a problem for doing experiments such as I'm doing.
About PBR vs non PBR workflow both Unreal and Unigine are using PBR so it's not my choice I suppose (or I can always work on a non-PBR workflow? Pardon my ignorance, I never approached before this question).
What I find anyway Affinity Photo useful it's part of the illumination and lens distortion correction, something more specialized tools didn't consider at all.
Also going to experiment with photo based textures, my smartphone camera is able to shoot in RAW format, for my needs will I have any benefit in starting from this format? 

I don't know how good could be these, haven't checked,, but you really might want to have a look, to have the project up and running fast....
https://freepbr.com/
In the next link, check the "free" field in the search. Maybe purchase some of the best ones you find, for materials that are more "critical" or closes shots in your project.
https://www.poliigon.com/search
Another depot, also with free option :
https://www.cgbookcase.com
Amazed that the following is CC0, so, public domain but better, fully fully free, and even have AO, Roughness, normal and elevation maps...
https://cc0textures.com
Another one here
https://www.blendernation.com/2018/12/22/free-pbr-texture-library/
Which is actually a blendernation link for this place.Also CC0 free textures, with quite some maps per each.
https://www.sharetextures.com
Another one, again CC0, and again containing enough maps each.
https://3dtextures.me/tag/pbr/
Last but not least, another site with CC0 PBR textures, this one even 8k textures!   
https://texturehaven.com/textures/
I mean... I'd start from these, mount the project. Further on if needed, improve the materials and whatever.  But you get the thing fast up and running.  Just learn how to load the stuff well on the engine, all the maps and etc.   

@SrPx next Wednesday will be on the location of a construction I want to map the materials, to develop a version of his simulation with maximum similarity (there will be also other versions more relaxed in term of realism).
Based on current PBR workflow a better way will be use the photos just as reference and use product such as Mixer to achieve the result "mixing" other available Megascan materials and decals, or better use the actual photos and products such as Materialize to create the final material, as from the beginning of the thread.
What do you think about the best option?

I like the procedural approach, and I like to generate textures from scratch, or crazily mixing sources. Today though, unless is for indy games or fast protoyping, I'd say this way is a kind of frowned upon, as is now almost a must (even for small studios using typically Unity and Unreal engines) to use a PBR based workflow. This means using high quality scans of realistic textures, then use a strict set of maps, which are all established, and that tools like Substance Paint/Designer or Quixel, have normalized so that the values stay in the PBR standards. I'm old school, and this has made less fun for me texturing, even  when considering how we'd texture for mods back in Quake 1-2 mods times, the fun has gone decreasing since then, lol. But the PBR arrival was the "fun is over", for me. And I did it as a job, not a hobby... but started as a hobby... is less and less artistic and more and more a matter of replication and using specialized tech ....very rigid procedures.

An example of what Filter Forge can create.
 
Main Image

 
Reflective Occulsion

 
Normal

 
Diffuse

 
Ambient Occulsion

 
Bump

I did it procedurally, I think you'd get more consistent and controllable results this way. You could then create variations or rotate say a tile to give a more authenticate look.

Hi both,
Unfortunately there is no "normalize" filter. Have a look at this tutorial. It will help you understand how to create the texture: 
Thanks,
Gabe. 

Would be much better to make a tile and create the texture from scratch.
This was made in Affinity Photo 1.7 beta using the procedural texture filter and a bit more 

Tiles only opens in 1.7 beta.afphoto (14MB)

Hi @davide445
Not a stupid question at all. Try taking into the Develop persona, go to the Lens panel, and apply the Vignette correction. That's what it looks like is a lens vignette.

Cant you just select the shape with a selection tool and duplicate it ?
 
Such as the seeds below.
 

 
Once it is on a separate layer you can place it (clone it) and resize it and duplicate it where you want, as often as you want.
 

Hi davide445,
 
I can't seem to find Sandstorm as a plugin for PS, but I have found it as an action to import and apply to images within PS. Affinity Photo doesn't support PS actions, it may be a feature added in the future. Use this link to view a list of plugins that have so far been tested with Affinity Photo.

There's 0 way to make a jpeg/png raw - that data has already been lost.
 
However, I think what you are looking for is the photoshop .raw format - I'm assuming affinity doesn't have that. PSRaw is essentially just an array of integers, I am sure they could add it if they wanted. 
 
When you are talking to a bunch of photographers, 'raw' is always going to refer to raw camera data. PSRaw is another animal. 

Ah, in that case then no, it's not the same. Unfortunately there isn't a one-step process for exporting your height map into the format you need for Unity at the moment. I've had a quick look at the documentation and it doesn't look like Unity supports any other formats for height map import? I usually export out of Photo as 16-bit greyscale PNG but it looks like that's not an option.
 
The only alternative I can dig up for now is a community script (HeightmapFromTexture) that will allow you to bypass the need to import a height map as a Photoshop RAW file and use a regular texture instead: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=HeightmapFromTexture- the disadvantage being you're limited to 8-bit depth...
 
Sorry about the limitation, hopefully it's something we can look into for future development.