DeepDesertPhoto

I did find a bug, however, that I reported. The program crashes when I try to export LUT. Although I don't normally use LUT sometimes I accidentally hit that tab when I try to export to other formats.

I just updated to the 1.9 version of Affinity Photo a couple of days ago and I noticed that when I created a panorama, which is what I specialize in, the pano resolution was 300 PPI, which is the same as the original individual images. In the past the default resolution for panos, stacks, HDR, and focus merge, was 96 PPI. I am glad you finally corrected that little flaw because it was a hassle to have to manually change my panos from 96 to 300 PPI. Now that is a step I no longer have to do. Can I assume that the new resolution will apply to stacks, HDR, and focus merges as long as my original individual images are 300 PPI? Are there other features that were added to the program with this new update? Just wondering because I have not had the chance to check all the drop-down menus for any new features yet.

Yes, this was the kind of answer I was looking for. All I wanted to know was if AP was generating 96 PPI as some kind of default setting when creating Panoramas, HDR Merging, Stacks, and Focus Merge. Most of my work involves creating panoramas and focus merging multiple exposures with different shutter speeds. And yes, having it generate images using the PPI of the source images would suit me just fine. If your development team is working on it hopefully they will have an update for this later. On a side note, I have been recommending the AP program to friends and colleagues of mine who are getting tired of paying the monthly subscription fee for Adobe's Creative Cloud. That's why I got AP to begin with.

I will have to experiment with it. When I first got the AP program it did take me a few months to figure out all the picture development controls because although most functioned like Photoshop there were differences I had to get used to.

Well, since I don't normally do batch work I can just do the resolution changes manually. I originally got AP because my Photoshop quit working when I upgraded my Mac to High Sierra. Photoshop support techs told me that CS5 had not been tested on anything higher than El Capitan. And since I needed a good photo-editing program for my photography work I tried AP and found that most of its features were similar to Photoshop. The resolution issue I posted about is more of an inconvenience than a real problem. Maybe the AP developers will fix it in a later release.

I understand now. I was missing the terminology. Before I got AP I used to use Photoshop CS5 and it had a similar feature, but it was not called Macro. However, it did do the same thing and I did use it to make step by step presets. But I only used it if I needed to do batch work, which I rarely did. I will have to experiment with it and see if I can create my own macro. But if not I will just do it manually like before.

Is a macro anything like a preset? I have created a number of presets for things like RAW adjustments, lens correction, and detail sharpening. But I have not seen anything in AP that says "Macro". Maybe it is the terminology I am missing here.

As I mentioned to @Fixx I can manually change the resolution. All I have to do is go to the document menu, then go to Resize Document in the menu. When the resolution window opens I simply uncheck the resample box and then change the 96 to 300. Then I just click save and that changes it from 96 to 300 PPI.But if AP simply made the panoramas with the same PPI that the original source images were I would not have to do these extra steps.

I can manually change the resolution. All I have to do is go to the document menu, then go to Resize Document in the menu. When the resolution window opens I simply uncheck the resample box and then change the 96 to 300. Then I just click save and that changes it from 96 to 300 PPI. But if AP simply made the panoramas with the same PPI that the original source images were I would not have to do these extra steps.

I've never used one of these macros. I tried to open it and I got an error saying that there is no program on my Mac that can open this file. I tried to open it with AP but it would not recognize the file. I can just manually change the resolution for the finished version before exporting it as TIFs and JPGs.

I usually only work on one at a time.

I have accounts with many stock photo agencies and two Print on Demand websites. All of them have image requirements of 150 to 300 PPI. Here is a blog from Society6, one of the POD sites I sell my work through. In their blog they state that they require that the images be set to 300 DPI in order to produce the best prints. The other sites I sell through have similar requirements. https://blog.society6.com/prepare-art-files-printing-society6-products/

I downloaded your image just to see its specifications. It appears to be the same as my D810 except for the megapixels. Yours is 24MP while mine is 36MP. Yours also developed with a 300PPI resolution. Same as mine. Like I mentioned, the problem I have is that when I merge 2 or more photos together as a panorama, a stack, or a focus merge, the finished image ends up with only 96 PPI. As an experiment I converted the RAWs into TIFs and created a panorama from those and it still ended up with 96 PPI even though the source TIFs were 300 PPI. So this might be some kind of AP resolution default for images created by merging 2 or more together.

I usually don't delve into the metadata that deeply. Most of the time the only metadata that matters to me is the color space, date of creation, and the camera settings such as ISO, aperture, and shutter. But like I said, next time I go out to do some landscape photography I will set the shutter manually instead of leaving it on auto and see if that has an effect on the panorama resolution when processed by AP. If the resulting PPI is still 96 then that probably means it is an AP default and I will just have to remember to manually reset it before I upload the image to a website that requires 300 PPI.

It's just my preference but I like to be more detailed than that when I make a post.

I'm using a Nikon D810. When I check the image quality settings it simple says RAW and the image area covered is set to its max (36 MP), but it does not say a specific PPI. Yet when I open individual RAW images with AP they always open at 300 PPI. Perhaps that is the default of the Nikon PPI setting because the camera does not allow me to change the PPI. Since individual RAW files always open with AP at 300 PPI perhaps it is because of varying metadata when I am doing sequential shots for panoramas. When I do sequential pano shots I use Aperture Priority in which the Aperture is set to a specific F-stop but the shutter speed is left on auto. As a result the shutter speed does vary a little from shot to shot. Next time I will set the shutter manually so that all shots are one shutter speed and see if that has an effect on the panorama PPI created by AP.

I know it does not matter as far as display on the screen. The problem is that the stock photography agencies and Print On Demand Art sites I send my images to for sale require 300 PPI. This means that I have to manually change the 96 PPI to 300 before I can upload the image to these websites. My question is why does AP produce a 96 PPI image when the original source images for the panorama or focus merge are already set at 300 PPI. Why does AP not simply create the final merged image at the same PPI setting of the original source images? It's a simple question about the way the program operates for certain tasks.

I already know about this. I know that PPI is for pixels per inch and DPI is dots per inch for printing. My question was why does AP always make my panoramas or focus merges 96 PPI? The camera raw images are set to 300 PPI out of the camera. When I open individual raw photos with AP they are always what they were out of the camera at 300 PPI. Why would AP change it to 96 PPI when merging multiple images together?

I don't know if this has been covered before here but I have a question about image resolution when creating panoramas, stacks, HDR merging, and Focus merging. Whenever I create a panorama, stack, HDR merge, or do a focus merge, the image resolution of the final image is always 96 PPI. Why does it always produce an image with such low PPI when the original images used were 300 PPI? I have gone through the preferences and cannot find a setting for the resolution when it comes to panorama, stack, HDR merge, and focus merge. Is there a way to make the final image from these tasks come out with the same resolution as the original images that were used for the tasks? Right now I have to manually change the resolution after the task is completed, which is annoying because sometimes I forget to do it and only remember after I try to upload the image to an art site and it gets rejected for low resolution.

If you're converting from 32 bit RGB to 8 bit RGB JPG, like the way I was, it is a limitation of the file format you're converting to, especially if it looks normal in 32 bit color. Like I mentioned in my posting I only encounter this problem when photographing cloudy sky with a lot of bluish grays, and I have also encountered this problem with blue skies that have gradually changing shades from light to dark. I was only able to solve the problem by lightening up the darker areas before converting it to a JPG. However, I always save a master copy in 32 bit color just in case AP releases a newer version in the future that might have better compression when converting.

I decided to rework the image. Since the banding was in areas that were darker with many shades of gray I simply reworked the image with a lighter sky with less gray. It does not have the high contrasts of an HDR image but at least it no longer has the banding issue.

When I work on these type of images I first shoot the scene in Camera RAW, in my case it is a Nikon D810 set to NEF raw. I then open the NEFs with AP and do the development. I have AP set to open the NEFs in 32 bit RGB HDR, which preserves 100% of the original NEF quality while I do the development. When all the development is done I then save the file as an AP document preserving the 32 bit RGB quality. I then use that as the master copy which I use to produce a 16 bit LAB TIF file for printing and an 8 bit RGB JPEG which is for uploading to the stock agencies I sell my work through. I forgot about the 256 shades of gray limitation for JPG images. But I can see the banding to a smaller extent in the 16 bit LAB TIF file, which has not occurred before.

I was working an HDR image that looks perfectly fine in 32 bit HDR but when I convert it to 16 bit LAB or 8 bit RGB I am getting a banding problem. My banding problem is occurring in a storm photo I took in which I combined 3 exposures in 32 bit HDR. The banding appears in the smoother areas of the dark clouds in the photo. Like I said this banding is not visible with the original AP document that is in 32 bit HDR. The banding is only noticeable when converted to a 16 bit LAB color TIF file or an 8 bit RGB JPEG. I did not have this problem with the last version of AP so I am wondering if it is a problem with the way the newer version of AP is converting the image to the other formats I use. I am including the JPG version that has the banding. The only way I have been able to fix this is by lightening the tones of the clouds where the banding occurs, but that ruins the HDR toning, so I hope there is a fix because I do a lot of HDR photography. I am using the latest version of AP (1.8.4)

That is probably more plausible since I have not used Windows since 1995. Patrick Conner told me to post about this because he said that AP may need some tweaking since the JPF support is a recent update for the program. Until Serif fixes the color shifting and scrambled LAB color I will still have to use GIMP and Apple Preview App to convert my JPFs to TIF before using AP to edit them.

As I mentioned in reply to another commenter I am able to open JPF with AP by right clicking on the JPF file directly and in the Mac Finder dropdown menu it does give AP as a program capable of opening it. But AP does not show JPF in its own "Open" dropdown menu. Since JPF support was just added for this version of AP maybe that is why Patrick Conner told me the software does need some tweaking.