Focus stacking and using Affinity instead of Photoshop

[jimfastcar]

Hello

While I started my Photo editing learning journey with Affinity, I have since migrated to Lightroom Cloud - long story.

I do however, own an Affinity License and it is installed on both my iPad and MacBook Pro.

I am in the early days of experimenting / learning to Focus stack and have been looking into Photo merge the resulting images.  I could add Photoshop to my Adobe subscription or use Affinity.

My question is workflow - RAW images from Sony (*ARW)  42 MP

Do I first photo merge in Affinity and then process Exposure, etc in Lightroom ?

Will the merged Affinity file still be a RAW Sony file or will it be different in some other way, and if so, is there a workable solution ?

Is there some other potential issue or problem I am not considering ?

Thanks for your advice 

[v_kyr]

43 minutes ago, jimfastcar said:

Will the merged Affinity file still be a RAW Sony file or will it be different in some other way, and if so, is there a workable solution ?

Affinity doesn't write out RAW files, thus there will be no new Sony ARW file as a result! - It just reads your RAWs -if it supports your cam's RAW format- but doesn't alter or create/export new RAW files out of that, instead it can save in it's own Affinity file format or those bitmap files it supports for exports (TIFF, JPG, PNG, GIF etc.).

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

Best practice is to use preprocessed files, e.g. tiff/16 instead of RAW. This gives better results, e.g. wrt lens correction, CA, exposure, noise reduction. And Photo does not support all variants of ARW, e.g. compression. 

Never the less, you could stack directly from RAW.

Focus stacking works pretty well in Affinity Photo.

[jimfastcar]

If I understand then, if say, I have 8 images at various focal lengths, I should process them in Lightroom first, then bring them into Affinity to merge ?

If I stack them first and export them from Affinity as jpg, tiff, whatever and then bring that file into Lightroom I will have lost most of the data that I would have had from having shot RAW in the first place .....

Perhaps I need to buy Photoshop to create the merge ?  Assuming that because they are both Adobe they might marry better ?

I am perplexed best course of action, or perhaps I am just not understanding the advice....

[NotMyFault]

5 hours ago, jimfastcar said:

If I understand then, if say, I have 8 images at various focal lengths, I should process them in Lightroom first, then bring them into Affinity to merge ?

If I stack them first and export them from Affinity as jpg, tiff, whatever and then bring that file into Lightroom I will have lost most of the data that I would have had from having shot RAW in the first place .....

Perhaps I need to buy Photoshop to create the merge ?  Assuming that because they are both Adobe they might marry better ?

I am perplexed best course of action, or perhaps I am just not understanding the advice....

You can probably do everything in Affinity Photo, with some caveats. It depends which actual Sony camera and RAW format you are using if it’s already supported or not, see links below.

Before we continue to hypothesize- why nor simply give it a try?  Affinity Photo is so cheap, and you can even do a trial with full functionality for a certain period.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/#buy

I highly recommend to use the Affinity store, not the Windows/Apple store.

Nothing will be lost with a 2 step approach. All relevant data will be contained in tiff/16 files.

 

Sony

• A1 (ILCE-1)
• A7R-IIIA (ILCE-7RM3A)
• A7R-IVA (ILCE-7RM4A)

Sony ILCE-7
Sony ILCE-7C
Sony ILCE-7M2
Sony ILCE-7M3
Sony ILCE-7R
Sony ILCE-7RM2
Sony ILCE-7RM3
Sony ILCE-7RM4
Sony ILCE-7S

On Apple (Mac, iPad) even more models are supported 

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212821

Serif RAW (Windows and Apple)

 

[John Rostron]

I would support the recommendations above from @NotMyFault. Remember that a RAW file is that (and only that) produced by the camera. Once any processing has been done to the image, it is no longer a raw file, and saving as .afphoto format or exporting as .tiff/16 format would be the most efficient means of preserving your image data without loss. 

John

 

[jimfastcar]

Thanks, I actually already own a copy of Affinity on both my iPad and my MacBook.

I had switched to Lightroom as all my friends use it and I can get help easily plus I like the Cloud feature as my iPad was getting a bit full with af files

Appreciate the input all 

[Ron P.]

18 minutes ago, jimfastcar said:

I had switched to Lightroom

I hope you're getting your money's worth out of them, and chose the Photography plan with Photoshop. 😉 I also have and use Lightroom, the last perpetual version 6.14. I used the Photog plan for a couple of years, purchased the perpetual and dropped the subscription. I didn't care for their cloud, and mobile. However Lightroom is a good app for photographers, well unless your a high-end pro. Then Photo Mechanic beats it seven ways and twice on Sunday! 😄