Dramatically Lower Quality After Affinity Photo HDR Merge

[Tim vanH]

Hi all,

I've started using Affinity Photo on my iPad from editing and HDR merging on the go. So far, it's perfect for the job, except that, after performing an HDR merge of 3 exposures (-2ev, 0ev, +2ev), the image becomes considerably more blurry and less detailed / sharp than any of the source images.

What I've tried so far:

• Shooting all exposures from a sturdy tripod with a 2 second timer and mirror lock-up enabled
• Enabling / disabling noise reduction and automatic alignment in the HDR merge settings

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give me!

[MEB]

Hi @Tim vanH,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Do you mind sharing the 3 exposures + the output you are getting for us to check/test please? I can provide an upload link if you wish to keep the files private - just let me know.

[Tim vanH]

Hi,

Sorry for my late reply, somehow I didn't get a notification that someone replied, my bad. I've attached three exposures (-1.7EV, 0EV, +1.7EV) and the resulting HDR merge (no alignment, no noise reduction and the default "Natural" tone mapping preset without any adjustments exported at 100% quality).

Zooming in to 100%, the HDR image has less detail and sharpness across the board. Detail refinement in the "Develop" helps a little bit, but also increases noise and haloing and ocassionally introduces some artifacts (not visible in this image)

Thanks again for the help!

IMG_7833.CR3 IMG_7834.CR3 IMG_7832.CR3

Edited August 10, 2022 by Tim vanH
Added some more information and an image after sharpening

[Tim vanH]

I've just been playing around with various sharpening, detail recovery and contrast settings and the result I can get is fairly close to the original raw / jpeg. Unfortunately, this does require a fair bit of time and effort. Is there a better way to do it or do I just need to put in the work for each image?

Sorry for the many questions and thanks in advance for your help and understanding!

[jdhreg]

I am using HDR stacking with some very low light early morning shots. I also ran into serious noise and softness issues. The originals were all Nikon raw photos.

The solution I found was to run each photo through noise reduction software BEFORE using Affinity Photo's HDR stack capability. By using the low light setting for my case with Topaz Denoise (imagine similar programs will also help), it completely removed the noise issues with the final stacked image.

I had read somewhere else in this forum about difficulties with ram images and noise which was an accumulation from the multiple source images. So the results by pre-processing out the noise makes sense.

[psitz]

I'd like to piggy back on this chain, even though my problem is a little different. I was doing some HDR for family photos (I know it's a bit of a gamble but the light was pretty harsh). The individual images actually came out about how they should, but every time I try to stack the photos in an Affinity HDR stack a line forms all the way across the image and everything above that line is SUPER noisy. It's not really even noise. All the info is just falling apart. Has anyone else had this issue? I've blurred faces myself, but the line and particle effects are what the software spits out.

Edited October 17, 2022 by psitz
Word Change for Clarity, Add Photo

[NotMyFault]

Hi,

i never had such an issue, except with some older beta versions, and OpenCL issues (on Windows),

Can you try to simply stack (not hdr) the images, does the same issue occour? After stacking (with alignment),

1. crop off transparent areas
2. rasterize & trim layers individually
3. and export the layers individually as tiff16 or png16,
4. then try hdr stack again from pre-processed files. If using a desktop pc, try to disable HW acceleration.

it is really best practice to not stack from RAW files for various reasons.

And a regular stack helps to identify images with quality issues - enable one by one, or deactivate one by one to spot issues. These images must be excluded from stacking.

[NotMyFault]

On 8/10/2022 at 1:45 PM, Tim vanH said:

I've just been playing around with various sharpening, detail recovery and contrast settings and the result I can get is fairly close to the original raw / jpeg. Unfortunately, this does require a fair bit of time and effort. Is there a better way to do it or do I just need to put in the work for each image?

Sorry for the many questions and thanks in advance for your help and understanding!

The “natural” preset is still only a starting point. 
Normally you use HDR mostly for local contrast. The preset after switching to tone map persona is just unusable. Move both sliders to zero, and make the histogram visible. Normally you don't need to compress tones at all, but a bit of local contrast helps. Move sliders very gradually, and inspect result. Save your own preset.

[psitz]

2 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Hi,

i never had such an issue, except with some older beta versions, and OpenCL issues (on Windows),

Can you try to simply stack (not hdr) the images, does the same issue occour? After stacking (with alignment),

1. crop off transparent areas
2. rasterize & trim layers individually
3. and export the layers individually as tiff16 or png16,
4. then try hdr stack again from pre-processed files. If using a desktop pc, try to disable HW acceleration.

it is really best practice to not stack from RAW files for various reasons.

And a regular stack helps to identify images with quality issues - enable one by one, or deactivate one by one to spot issues. These images must be excluded from stacking.

Thanks for the input. I don't do a ton of HDR (or post-processing at all) but thought I'd try it in this situation.

[Tim vanH]

11 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

The “natural” preset is still only a starting point. 
Normally you use HDR mostly for local contrast. The preset after switching to tone map persona is just unusable. Move both sliders to zero, and make the histogram visible. Normally you don't need to compress tones at all, but a bit of local contrast helps. Move sliders very gradually, and inspect result. Save your own preset.

Awesome thank you! I didn't know you could make your own presets. I'll try out some different things and save the best settings as a custom preset.