haraldthi

HDR is good, but could be better. Please.
 
Attached is an example of combination of five images (+/- 2 and 4, taken raw with Sony RX100V):
hdr_affinity: as it comes out hdr_affinity_edited: with a little shadows/highlights (burns around the sun) hdr_lightroom: Lightroom's rather superior result Coupled with LR's better browse and lens corrections, it looks like I'm going to have to use it as a front end. Darn. I'm trying to get away from Adobe!
 
(The forum won't let me upload RAW files. If you want me to put them somewhere you can get to them, please do let me know.)
 

I would like to suggest that the user interface to HDR processing is all wrong.
 
The AF program generously comes with a large bunch of presets.  Thank you very much for those.
 
However, one needs to go back and forth between the tone map and develop personnas to apply more than one to the same HDR merged image.  On my machine (MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, OSX 10.5.5), it takes a considerable amount of time to switch back to tone map after being in develop; the time to do it for several presets is ridiculous.  More importantly, I find that the HDR merged image changes characteristics quite considerably when going back and forth between tone map and develop. This is inexcusable.  If I apply, say, "Summer Glow," change to develop to save it, then change back to tone map, the image looks bizarre.  So basically, I have to repeat the entire merge to get consistent results, which, for RAW images, takes a very long time.
 
The much better approach would be the way the NIK software does it.  Here, one can merge and then successively apply any arbitrary number of preset tone mappings very quickly and without affecting the base merged image.  One can apply a preset, save the result, then apply a different one and save.  This will allow easily viewing several HDR results side by side.  In AF, this is not possible.  I should be able to save to the hard drive in the tone map personna, not just "apply."
 

+1 It would make my life easier as well. I wanted to shoot an HDR panorama and had some 20 perspectives with 5 exposures each. And manually first merge all exposures to HDR and then do the panorama was quite a massive time sink.
 
It would be really great if I could point HDR merge to a folder and it would figure out the matching fotos itself and merge them to HDR with a preset I define. This would safe a ton of work and a lot of manual mouse clicking.
 
I just tried Aurora HDR 2017 demo and it does exactly that. But the HDR result is not better and it feels sluggish to make adjustments, I like Affinity Photo a lot better. It's not worth the $99 price tag for me. But the batch HDR merge is really nice and handy. (see below)
 
 

Seriously, I'm just adding a vote.
If Affinity Photo was released on Linux, of the Debian/Ubuntu variety, I would not be slow to buy it.
Why? Macs are good for many things, but their effort towards simplifying things make them go seriously wrong sometimes. They're also expensive, in a bang per buck perspective.
Which means I'm sometimes stuck with windows, which fails so bad in my perspective that I won't even mention it.
I mainly work in sound and video, and that sometimes also means photo editing, and the free alternatives on Linux are not enough for professional use as far as I see it.
Linux is developing towards a meaningful media platform, but lacks in areas like photo editing. So I hope to one day not have to boot back and forth.
Enough said?