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Not too long ago, in a land not very far away, I came across the concept of focus merges to dramatically increase depth-of-field of photos, especially macro ones. This was one of the reasons I bought Affinity Photo, as having learned the technique I had a requirement for affordable software the could do a good job of a focus merge. The focus merges I have done thus far have typically been hand-held and of fairly large 'macro' subjects such as mushrooms and flowers. Generally, these consist of 10-30 shots that Affinity Photo churns through and merges in very short order. Due to the hand-holding, there are often a few ghosting artefacts around some edges, but nothing that a bit of AffinityPhotoShopping can't sort out. Yesterday, I came across an unfortunately-demised beetle which seemed to be a perfect opportunity to try a more technical, tripod based, photo merge. One of the reasons for this post is to showcase the ability of Affinity Photo which coped with a quite staggering amount of data (the other reason is a desire to share what I think is a quite stonking photo!). To achieve the focus merge, I took 270 20-megapixel raw photos, totalling 7.8 GB of data. These I then processed into 16 bit/channel PNGs using RawTherapee which came to 24.7 GB. I then fed them into Affinity Photo's Focus Merge and let it churn away. It took just over 1.5 hours to complete the merge, and I'm very pleased with the results: In case anyone is interested in the hardware involved, here's the list: Camera: Panasonic DC-G9 Lens: Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro Images shot at: 0.5 sec, f/3.5, ISO 200 CPU: AMD Ryzen 1500X RAM: 16 GB DDR4 2666 GPU: nVidia Geforce GTX 970 I largely seemed to be CPU-bound during the various processing stages. Memory usage from RawTherapee and Affinity Photo pottered around the 2-3 GB mark; RawTherapee thrashed all 4 cores / 8 threads in the Raw -> PNG conversion (but still took ages; I left it going over night, so I don't know quite how long...) , whilst Affinity Photo used 1 core / 2 threads for the stack. A lower core count / faster GHz processor would therefore seem to be an advantage during the stacking process in Affinity Photo, whilst RawTherapee clearly liked all the cores it could get it's sticky little paws on. I included my GPU in the list as Affinity Photo does seem to use it a bit: 5-8% GPU activity shows up in Task Manager during Focus Merges; I've no idea if it makes a difference though. In conclusion, I'm very impressed with the ability of Affinity Photo to deal with huge amounts of data without choking. A few more threads might be nice though

I would like to have the ability to drag multiple images onto the Focus Merge window, rather than use the Add button to select the images from a folder. Background: I use an Olympus OM-D camera with built-in focus bracketing to focus stack my jewelry photos. This works very well with the Affinity Photo Focus Merge feature. However, you have to "Add" the bracketed images to the Focus Merge window, which means browsing to the sub-folder that contains the images and selecting the one's you want to add for merging. When I import my camera images to the PC, the Olympus "Viewer" automatically opens and displays my focus bracketed images. It would be much faster to simply select the images in the viewer and drag them onto the AP Focus Merge window rather than browse through sub-folders. I'm able to select multiple Olympus Viewer images and drag them to AP Photo Persona, but this creates multiple individual image tabs. Would it be possible in the future to drag multiple images into the Focus Merge window?

AP Focus merge, Using pentax pixel shift jpegs.

I can see that Focus Merge should work in AP - I've seen the Tutorial. I have a Panasonic TZ 100 which can do Focus Merge in the camera - but I'd prefer to do it in software if possible. AP should do this. The only slight issue I've noticed is that the camera generates MP4 files with a number of frames, so it's not quite in the form required for AP. It's not necessarily a big problem, though it could be a time consuming irritation. I can use either iTunes or FCPX (Final Cut Pro X) to pull out the frames and create individual shots to merge, but it would be a lot quicker if there's a tool which will do this straight off. I recall asking the Panasonic support people about this, but I haven't noticed a reply yet. Has anyone figured this out, or used this? Presumably for best quality it would good to shoot in 4k in burst mode, though getting the different focus settings might not be so easy with this camera. I think the Post Focus feature which generates the MP4 files only works with 1080P HD files. That raises another quesion - is it possible to mix resolutions with the stack functions - which could be a way of getting higher quality in the final result?

Hello & HNY! I have been experimenting with the HDR merge and Focus merge modules and I'm experiencing a problem that Affinity Photo does not align the pictures correct. I can't find a way to align the pictures manually. Maybe I've not found the feature or this is currently not possible. Thanks, Rolf

I really like the focus merge functionality of Affinity Photo but it lacks one essential feature: Saving the current state in order continue later. Currently the sources window that lets you manually blend the different sources (and thus correct ghosts introduced during the focus merging process) disappears if the program is closed. I know I can re-add the sources after loading the file but this is not nearly as intuitive and exact as the dedicated "focus merge mode". To me that's a major drawback as focus merging can be very time consuming work which takes hours. What if I need to take a break and want to continue later? Currently I have to leave Affinity Photo open and hope that the program does not crash while taking a break. What if the program crashes during the process? What if accidentally remove the sources (silly but things like this happen)? Please add either a possibility to save the document and reopen it later with the dedicated "focus merge mode" still active meaning the sources still present in the sources window and the clone tool still working without having to select a source point. Or, even better, give us the possibility to switch the "focus merge mode" on and off at will. This would be a major improvement. By the way: I don't use the HDR merge functionality but I guess that it's ghost removal tool works the same way as the ghost removal in focus merge. It would be great if you could implement the same functionality there too.

Thank you for the 1.6 update. However, I am disappointed that basic drag and drop functionality is not available in the panorama, hdr merge, focus merge, stacking and other file selection dialogs. I usually have a finder window open and I can see the files I want to include in a stack or batch, but then I have to use the add files button and navigate (again) to that folder and select the files. Would love to just drag them from Finder onto the selection dialog list control. This should be a pretty basic code change. After all, drag and drop is coding 101 stuff and shouldn't cause knock on effects or regressions.

Hi, Please compare the first two attached items, which are the final outputs of a focus stack. 1+2+3+4: VS :A+B (i.e. [1+2] + [3+4]) Here's what's going on: 1+2+3+4.png is a focus stacked image from 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg, & 4.jpg >> The result is blurry, so I tried dividing the task to help the alignment algorithm. A (1+2).png is a focus stack using only photo 1 & 2, while B (3+4).png is one using 3 & 4. >> These 2 intermediates, when combined will contain all 4 focus points (as would 1+2+3+4). A+B.png is a focus stack of A (1+2).png and B (3+4).png. >> This result is what I expected initially when merging the 4 photos at one go. This means that the current alignment is not optimal, perhaps you could offer an alternate mode where Photo would proceed by using intermediate image states, as I did above. There are different ways to approach this, perhaps the same result could be obtained by first combining 1 and 2, then the resulting image to 3, and finally the latter combination to 4 to get the final output. Or alternately, use some kind of algorithm/AI to determine the closest set of images to merge sequentially before the final render. Is this logic legit? I tried, it's repeatable. Thanks. 1: 2: 3: 4: A (1+2): B (3+4): Source_Photos.zip

When creating a new Stack, Focus Merge, HDR Merge, or Panorama the user is prompted to add files to the dialog. When add is clicked, the user is brought to a cloud storage file selection. The first issue is that when using these features, there is no way to add images that are already on the iPad. Some way to add images from local storage needs to be added. These features use a lot of images and it is a big time and bandwidth waste to use cloud storage only for these. Second issue, all these features require selecting multiple images, but the dialog only allows selecting one image at a time. This is especially bad because it is cloud storage. A typical usage of these features god like this, "Click add; Select cloud storage service(it always defaults to iCloud); Navigate through a couple folders; Select an image; Wait for the image to load form cloud storage; Get kicked back to the file list dialog; REPEAT 100 MORE TIMES" I could maybe deal with this if it was only the HDR feature that had this behavior since you are only selecting 3-5 images most of the time using that. But the Focus Merge, Stack, and Panorama features are all likely to use 10 or more images. Focus merging I typically have 50-250 images I have to deal with. Adding a select all files, or allowing the user to select folders would greatly help. For instance, the google drive app has a select all command in the top right. I understand that some of these issues might be softened by implementing drag and drop in iOS11, but it will not full solve the problem. Imagine selecting 50 images for a Panorama or Focus Merge with the drag and drop implementation, vs tapping a single button. It is a big difference. I hope these issues get sorted, because otherwise those features appear to work pretty well. Though I haven't been able to test them a lot, because I want to keep my hair ;) -Steve

The focus merge feature is cool in that is generally seems to work and did a good job on the files I tried it with. The interface seems a little rough but I'm hoping maybe I don't know a better way to do what I want. I manage my photos in Lightroom and almost always use the Edit In... menu to get a photo (or in this case, photos) into Affinity. My first issue is that to bring multiple photos in for a focus merge, I can't seem to go straight from the open files to the merge. I have to select a new merge and then browse to my photos in Windows Explorer. Is there a better way to do this so I can go right from multiple open files to making a focus merge of them like we do HDR and panoramas in Lightroom? I hope so! Thanks!

I'm new to Affinity, so your patience is welcome. I have been using Aperture and PS Elements, along with NIK software add-ins, so my learning curve has been lengthly for Affinity. I will have to admit, I am loving Affinity, though....I just repeatedly have to refer to the training videos to remember how to do some things. I know, repetition is the ultimate teacher.... I shoot in raw and usually convert to TIFF to modify after minor adjustments, then to JPEG for any printing or posting. My question to you is: Do you recommend developing all raw images BEFORE adding them into a stack, HDR, Focus Merge, etc.?......OR, can you merge the images in raw and get the same results with processing after the merge? I'm just trying to save a little time, if you know what I mean. Thanks, TommyD

Affinity Photo will not display thumbnails of Sony ARW files when using Focus Merge. I'd like to see the thumbnails so as to determine which batch of files to select and use with Focus Merge. I'm on a Mac and Cover Flow view would help me do this. I cannot use Cover Flow to select the files because Affinity is not generating thumbnails......

Since the Focus Merge process must determine the Z order of the photos and which pixel to use from which image, that means that it is implicitly reconstructing depth information for each pixel anyway. It would be nice to have access to this data, either for further editing (such as enhancing perceived depth by applying color correction), or even to use it, say, as a displacement map in 3D-capable software to generate a textured 3D model from the image. I'd suggest a simple "Generate Depth Map" check box in the Focus Merge dialog box that would then lead to Focus Merge outputting a grayscale depth map as either a separate layer or a channel.

When focus merging a large # of photos -- more than 100 -- Affinity seems to just kinda stop working after a while. The progress bar stays up, but the UI is otherwise completely non-responsive. I let one focus merge job run for 36 hours; no progress beyond 7-8%. Is there a way to get some more feedback on what has gone wrong? Any diagnostics I can grab to help the team address this issue? Specifics: - Canon 7D Mk II RAW images as source (typically ~20MB each) - 120 - 275 images - Select New Photo Merge - Drag and drop images from Finder into Add dialog macOS Sierra on a 2015 MacBook (Yes, this is not really my first choice for machine to do this on -- I'm traveling).

Hello, a Newbie here. I've just bought Affinity Photo and have been playing around with various features. I'm currently trying out focus merge and while the source images merge, the source image panel doesn't pop up automatically. Can somebody tell me what's going on, please?

Sirs, I tried to do Focus Merging (elsewhere known as Focus Stacking) using a set of 12 photos produced using the focus bracketing feature of my Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II. It seemed to do a good job and I was able to save in afphoto format but when I tried to export as JPEG it gave the message: An error occurred while exporting to: C:\Users\...\AffinityFocusMergedToyCars.jpg Metadata could not be embedded. I am running Affinity Photo 1.5.0.35 (Beta) under Windows 7, I also tried to de-fisheye a photo from my Samyang 7.5mm f:3.5 Fisheye lens taken on my Panasonic GF3 (micro four-thirds) using Filters - Distort - Lens Distortion but it seemed incapable of fully removing the barrel distortion even at -100%; Also, it would also be nice to have lens correction data.