Please help: HDR from 5 RAW - How can I fix sun halo?

[RobsonPonte]

Hi,

I'm new to photography and post processing. Yesterday I shot an exposure bracketing (five pictures) of a sunset (handheld, no tripod). I have attached the raw files. After compiling the HDR in Affinity, the sun has multiple halos. I have tried to combine just three pictures as well as trying various HDR settings before and after combining the pictures, nothing has worked. 

Am I missing something obvious here? I could not find any solution here or on google. I am using a PC and my Affinity version is 1.8.2.620

Thank you very much for any tips!

Best regards

Since I could not upload the files ("-200" error) here is a link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YQ5C1Y0Z2vkJ8FrQZuxVPeLgdZIDLhHg

A friend of mine used photoshop and got a decent result. I have included this file in Drive as well.

Edited April 3, 2020 by RobsonPonte

[Lee D]

Part of the issue is that the HDR merge in Photo uses a different method of developing the RAW files to our normal Develop persona. A workaround for this is to use the New Batch Job option to convert the RAW images into TIFF files first. Then use the TIFF files for the HDR Merge, the output isn't exactly the same as PS as it still suffers from some exposure equalisation but is better than using the RAW files.

[Pebal]

Both versions look bad. The Photoshop version look better, but not good. Also has a halo effects. The HDR algorithms should be changed.

This is the HDR without the halo effect.

[IanSG]

4 hours ago, Pebal said:

This is the HDR without the halo effect.

How was it produced?

[Pebal]

23 minutes ago, IanSG said:

How was it produced?

I used SNS-HDR to create this image. I modified only global parameters, I didn't use masking layers.

[IanSG]

18 hours ago, Pebal said:

I used SNS-HDR to create this image. I modified only global parameters, I didn't use masking layers.

Thank you - I'm not familiar with that program, but I agree the result is superior!

[walt.farrell]

On 4/16/2020 at 8:23 AM, Lee D said:

Part of the issue is that the HDR merge in Photo uses a different method of developing the RAW files to our normal Develop persona. A workaround for this is to use the New Batch Job option to convert the RAW images into TIFF files first. Then use the TIFF files for the HDR Merge

A question for Serif, Lee. I think that the New Batch Job processing was "improved" in 1.8.2 or 1.8.3 (I've lost track of exactly when) to handle Raw files better.

Are there any plans to add similar improvements to File > Place (all 3 apps), and the other File functions in Photo that still don't support it?

Is the timeframe for such improvements known?