Landscape foreground & background merging

[indioca]

I have a bunch of landscape photos where I exposed separately for background and foreground as background required longer exposures. How do I combine/merge one background and one foreground image to create a single image. I am not a ex PS user and new to Affinity so looking for some guidance.

Btw, is the right/technical term to do such a thing merge or composting ?

Edited February 9, 2021 by indioca

[Dan C]

Hi @indioca,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

My apologies for the delayed response here, we are extremely busy following our 1.9 update and working from home is unfortunately extending our response window to be longer than normal, many thanks for your continued patience and understanding here.

On 2/9/2021 at 10:58 PM, indioca said:

I have a bunch of landscape photos where I exposed separately for background and foreground as background required longer exposures. How do I combine/merge one background and one foreground image to create a single image.

It sounds to me as though you're looking for either an Image Stack or HDR Merge, depending on the type of image you're looking to produce.

If you simply want to merge your various exposures, then an Image Stack is best - to do this please go to File > New Stack and select your images, you can add as many images of the same scene with different exposures into this dialog, then click OK.

You should no have an Affinity document with a 'Stack' in the layers panel. By default this will be using the x͂ Median operator. You can click on this x͂ to see the other operators available to test which works best for your document.

You can find out more about Stacks here - https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/Stacking/stacks.html?title=Image stacks

If you want to produce a 32bit unbounded HDR image using your multiple exposures, then you should use HDR Merge - this will produce a 32bit image which can contain more tonal information that regular image files.

You can find out more about HDR merging here - https://affinity.help/photo/English.lproj/index.html?page=pages/HDR/hdr_merging.html?title=Merging to 32-bit HDR & https://affinity.serif.com/tutorials/photo/desktop/video/310332886/

 

I hope this helps, should you still have any questions regarding these images please feel free to upload these images here, so that we can test using the same images you have!

[indioca]

Not an HDR merge but instead exactly this https://photonaturalist.com/how-to-merge-two-exposures/ This link talks about how to do it on Photoshop. I will check online Affinity help videos as well but if anybody knows how do this in Affinity and could link a help resource, appreciate that.

[smadell]

What you’re trying to do is best termed an “exposure fusion” and is similar to an HDR merge, but results in a far more natural looking end result. As far as I know, Affinity Photo won’t do exposure fusion automatically. There is separate software that can accomplish this, the most well known (and perhaps best) of which is Photomatix. Their “Essentials” version is free, although probably only temporarily. Download it from the link below, and use the Exposure Fusion option. You can output the result to a 16 bit TIFF, and then finish your editing in Affinity Photo.

https://www.hdrsoft.com/order.php

[indioca]

Already have a Photomatix. Anyway looks like it may not be possible to do this in Affinity

[Dan C]

13 hours ago, indioca said:

exactly this https://photonaturalist.com/how-to-merge-two-exposures/ This link talks about how to do it on Photoshop

This method provided in your link for Photoshop is compatible with Affinity Photo - the same steps can be taken whereby you expose one half of an image, then on a different layer expose the other half and mask the two layers together using a gradient mask - all of this can be done in Affinity Photo.

Another option to merge 2 exposures would be through the Stack function, then you can change the Operators until you are happy with the result.

The third option is a Focus Merge, which will also merge the 2 exposed images into one, however there is somewhat less control over the 'blend' of the images when focus merging.

Have you tried any of these processes in Affinity Photo? If you'd like to provide a sample of your images, I would be more than happy to create an example document using them.

[indioca]

19 hours ago, Dan C said:

This method provided in your link for Photoshop is compatible with Affinity Photo - the same steps can be taken whereby you expose one half of an image, then on a different layer expose the other half and mask the two layers together using a gradient mask - all of this can be done in Affinity Photo.

Another option to merge 2 exposures would be through the Stack function, then you can change the Operators until you are happy with the result.

The third option is a Focus Merge, which will also merge the 2 exposed images into one, however there is somewhat less control over the 'blend' of the images when focus merging.

Have you tried any of these processes in Affinity Photo? If you'd like to provide a sample of your images, I would be more than happy to create an example document using them.

Thank you , I will try this. I haven't taken shots yet. Driving to Death Valley next week. I am planning to image Orion nebula using a wide angle lens and was going to blend/merge that with foreground of either dunes or slat flats.