Kodiak_F

Unless I'm missing something on Vimeo, I haven't seen anything from Affinity on developing milky way photos, which I assume is kind of a common task.  It's also something I'm terrible at so far, both with Affinity and Rawtherapee.  So I'd love to see an official video, or even a series on developing milky way shots to bring out the color, and developing astro photos in general.

Unless I'm missing something on Vimeo, I haven't seen anything from Affinity on developing milky way photos, which I assume is kind of a common task.  It's also something I'm terrible at so far, both with Affinity and Rawtherapee.  So I'd love to see an official video, or even a series on developing milky way shots to bring out the color, and developing astro photos in general.

I believe it varies quite a bit Photoshop version to version.  CC2018's page is here, and lists gold-class compatibility, (whereas Affinity Photo 1.5 is listed as 'garbage-class [won't install]).  https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=36206
I'm beginning down the road of troubleshooting Affinity 1.6.5 installation via Wine since I have a license for the Windows version.

Hi, I've made an attempt to run Affinity Designer on Linux via Wine. I managed to run the program myself, but it is not possible to create or edit a document. The problem is probably with Direct3D support in Wine or in my GPU (maybe drivers).
I will describe how to install and run the Designer via Wine. Maybe someone can successfully create or edit a document (eg with a different GPU). The operating system used is Ubuntu 18.04.
What we need?
Windows (yes, I know) - it can be a virtual machine. It will be used to extract the installation of the program because the standard installer does not work under the Wine.
Wine with some patches - we must add MoveFileTransactedA/W stubs to kernel32. The building of Wine is required.
Winetricks.
64-bit mscms.dll library.
Affinity Designer installer and license.
Offline installer of .NET Framework 4.0 and .NET Framework 4.7.2.
Step 1 – build Wine
We must build and install 64-bit and 32-bit Wine with patch. Building of Wine on Ubuntu is very well described on the WineHQ wiki: Building Biarch Wine On Ubuntu. Don't forget to apply the patch from attachment (fix.patch). During the building process I installed additional libraries like libvulkan-dev and libvkd3d.
Step 2 – create MSI installer of Designer
This step must be done on Windows. Open the command line (cmd.exe) and go to the directory where the Affinity Designer installer is located. Run the affinity-designer.exe /extract command (the file name may be different). Complete the required data and create an MSI installer. Transfer the created MSI file to your system with Wine.
Step 3 – install Winetricks
The Winetricks installation is described on the project page: Winetricks. I prefer a manual installation of latest Winetricks instead install outdated version from repo.
Step 4 – create Wine prefix and install .Net framework
Installation of .Net Framework with Winetricks doesn't work for me, that's why I do it manually.
Initialize new Wine prefix:
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wineboot –init Change the system to Windows XP (for correct installation of .Net Framework 4.0) and remove the mono if installed:
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks winxp WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks remove_mono Download and install .NET Framework 4.0:
wget 'http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/5/A/95A9616B-7A37-4AF6-BC36-D6EA96C8DAAE/dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe' WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine ./dotNetFx40_Full_x86_x64.exe /q Change the system to Windows 7 and switch mscoree to native (this is very important):
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks win7 WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winecfg Download and install .NET Framework 4.7.2:
wget 'http://download.microsoft.com/download/D/D/3/DD35CC25-6E9C-484B-A746-C5BE0C923290/NDP47-KB3186497-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe' WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine ./NDP47-KB3186497-x86-x64-AllOS-ENU.exe /q  
Step 5 - run Affinity Designer
Switch system to Windows 8.1 or 10. Designer will not start in Windows 7 mode due to Aero errors.
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks win81 Install Affinity Designer (in my case MSI installer is Affinity.msi)
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine msiexec /passive /i ./Affinity.msi Copy the missing mscms.dll library to Affinity Designer instalation directory. In my case it is ~/Designer/drive_c/Program Files/Affinity/Affinity Designer/. I have found the missing library on dlldownloader.com: mscms.dll.
Start Affinity Designer:
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer wine "C:\Program Files\Affinity\Affinity Designer\Designer.exe" The program should start and you will see the welcome screen.
I can open preferences and change options, but creating a new document causes a crash. In Performance tab my GPU is displayed as Intel(R) HD Graphivs 4000 (I have Intel® UHD Graphics 620).
Crash report:
Attempting to create Direct3D device with adapter Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 c:\buildagent10\work\live\persona\windows\libraries\serif.directx\dxrenderer.cpp(676): error 0x80004001 (Unknown error 0x80004001) In the last step I tried to start the Designer using Vulkan-based D3D10/D3D11 implementation. After this (and install mesa-vulkan-drivers) in Performance tab my GPU is displayed correctly, but the program still crash while creating a new document.
WINEPREFIX=~/Designer winetricks dxvk Crash report:
Attempting to create Direct3D device with adapter Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620 (Kabylake GT2) c:\buildagent10\work\live\persona\windows\libraries\serif.directx\dxrenderer.cpp(676): error 0x80004001 (Unknown error 0x80004001) I know that Serif developers don't provide support for running Affinity programs via Wine. The post is for information purposes only.


fix.patch

The short answer, no
The longer answer, kinda
The installer will run once you have .Net 4/4.5/4.7 installed in your Wine Prefix (used staging 3.13) and completes without any problems. Its starting it up that gets rough.
The windows version of Affinity photo requires the Windows DWM for composition of the application screen and has some custom DLLs that dont seem to happy to hook into the WINE implementation of Windows. The DLLs just straight fail to load at all and while you can get it to attempt to run switching WINE to Windows 8/10 bypassing the Aero not enabled, the application crashes just after opening.
 
I haven't done extensive testing to get it to actually open, but truth be told you likely won't see good results even if you do. It'll likely run very unstable and slow which defeats it's entire purpose. I imagine because WINE doesn't have a complete DX11 implementation, doesn't have Windows DWM, and doesn't have/implement in full/doesn't implement the exact same any number of other necessary Windows parts it's just not going to be enjoyable. I don't know exactly how ingrained in the Windows ecosystem (dlls, etc)  the windows version of Affinity Photo is but my guess is more than WINE can deal with at this time. 
 
Hope this helps anyone on Linux looking for an answer and saves you from wasting your time trying to get an application going in WINE just to have it run awful.
EDIT: some issue could be a combo of it requiring .NET Framework and a 64bit install/Prefix. Wine can be a bit sketchy with .NET in 64bit prefixes and not all functions work running .NET application. Issues could also be arising from the rendering engine not enjoying running in WINE . Ive tried everything i ccan to narrow down exactly what issues are causing the DLLs in the program folder to not load and i have to just chalk it up to "AP needs fully implemented windows"

@Andy Somerfield I've been running AlienSkin Exposure X2 RAW Photo Editor on Linux through WINE ever since it was new. Performance is no different from running it in Windows. I haven't tested X3 because I didn't have a reason to buy the license, but according to WineHQ it runs fine.
Frankly, I haven't used Affinity anymore because it is literally the last thing that needs Windows in my workflow. And although I have the license for Photo and Designer, switching to Windows is too "expensive" for me in terms of productivity.
Observing how some software runs perfectly - I can even play the latest Doom 4 and Tomb Raider (PC games for Windows) on Linux - it is tempting to think that Affinity Designer could swap some library and poof, WINE compatibility.
Would it be an idea to investigate this?

Thanks!  This was exactly what was happening!

Hi Kodiak_F and Welcome to the Forums,
 
With a RAW file open, can you try clicking View>Assitant Manager and then click on the button Develop Assitant and remove the tick from Enable Assitant.  Now close and reopen the RAW file, Affinity should now just open the image as is.  If thats not happening, any chance you could share a test image and i'll look into this further for you.

So I found a free program developed by the ESA (European Space Agency) called FITS Liberator. It basically reads and stretches FITS data and saves it as .tiff files. I've also found some open source images from NASA's Hubble Telescope where they allow you to download their .fits files on some targets for education and experimentation purposes. I've been wanting to know how Affinity Photo would handle an edit like this because one day, I'd like to purchase my own astroimaging camera that can capture narrow band emissions, and so far I am liking the results. I do not however come close to the skill that went into the finished NASA image though so I have a lot of work to get to that point.
The Images here for reference were taken in Hydrogen alpha (Ha), NII and OIII
What was done: Bubble Nebula 3 sets of .fits data brought into FITS Liberator, stretched and saved as .tiff 2x (one minimal stretch to preserve highlights, one stronger stretch to bring out more nebulousness). I then brought these 6 into AP. I brought the 3 minimal stretches into their own window and the 3 stronger stretches into another window. I performed the following edits on each set individually: Selected all three layers, straightened them,and cropped the excess off. As they were all grayscale, I converted them to 16 bit RGB so I could manipulate the layers and create a Hubble false colour image.
I then selected each layer individually and mapped it to a specific colour. This is done in the channels tab at the bottom underneath layers. You select the layer you want, scroll down to the bottom where it says: Pixel Red, Pixel Green, Pixel Blue, Pixel Alpha. To isolate a specific colour, you right click on which ones you don't want and press "clear". For example, for Hydrogen alpha I cleared pixel red and pixel blue, turning the layer green. For NII I cleared pixels green and blue, turning this layer red and for OIII I cleared pixels green and red, turning this layer blue.
I then selected all three, went to the blend options and selected negation.
Once this was done for both sets of the 3 images, I flattened them and copied the stronger stretched version and pasted it into the minimal stretched version. I then made sure they were aligned and used the Blend ranges tool to blend and restore the highlights. This kept the surrounding nebulosity visible but made sure the centre wasn't too white.
I then flattened the image again and did some contrast/shadow adjustments, curves adjustment, clarity adjustment, and a tiny white balance adjustment. Flattened it again and exported out as a tiff and into LR for some more minor adjustments and storage.
All this work, and I fell spectacularly short of the NASA edit, so I have a lot of learning yet to do. I've combined the source images, my finished edit and NASA's finished edit into one image for reference. Same data, so I should be able to get it close to NASA's version with more practice.

I do have a feature request for AP to incorporate .fits files into their fold.

BubbleNebulaHubbleData by Greg Murray, on Flickr

BubbleLessonPoster by Greg Murray, on Flickr

Thinking back about the great paintings of Rothenburg o/d Tauber in the local museum, I got inspired and made my own "painting" of Rothenburg o/d Tauber with Affinity Photo for iPad. I have blended two photos, the one with the bush and the stars was shot with my Canon 80D and the Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8 a couple of weeks ago, not far from where I live. The one with the prison tower of Rothenburg (Der Strafturm) I had shot during an overcast day with my iPhone7, when I was visting this awesome medieval town in Germany last summer. Because the light was rather flat, I knew it was a good photo to do some blending with.
 
 

 

 
This was a great opportunity for me to learn a lot of things about blending with Affinity Photo on my iPad Pro. Love this app!
 
Best regards,
Wetterhoun