My adventures with Exposure Blending in Affinity Photo

[Craig Ozancin]

I have been exploring Exposure Blending in Affinity Photo. The addition of embedded/linked raw edit and the new live luminosity range masks has the real potential for setting a new standard in exposure blending.

In the past, Photoshop has been the go-to for exposure blending. Unfortunate, this is a very complex task. A number of panels and plugins have been created to allow Photoshop to ease the difficulty of exposure blending. It still is a very advanced process for Photoshop users.

Affinity Photo 2 substantially improved on the exposure blending experience.

I will highlight some key features that really improve exposure blending in Affinity Photo, as well as some shortcomings.

1)  Creating Luminosity masks for Exposure blending

In Photoshop, creating luminosity masks is very much hit and miss. You create luminosity masks using apply images or the channels, and then see how it looks and repeat until you have a mask you think will work. You may use other adjustments (like levels) to fine tune the mask. As mentioned, there have been a number of panels and plugins created to ease this operation.

Affinity Photo greatly improves this experience. Since luminosity range masks are live, you can watch the mask creation using the preview checkbox or watch the blend in real-time. This greatly improved the accuracy and speed. In addition, since live luminosity masks employ a curve, complex luminosity mask can be created that would be virtually impossible in Photoshop without the use of a third-party panel or a lot of manual mask manipulation.

Unfortunately, I have encountered on issues with current implementation of luminosity range masks.

For a typical workflow, 2-3 exposures and use in an exposure blend (more are occasionally used for special cases). These exposures are placed on separate layers for blending.

The first layer (base) contains the exposure where the midtones are correct. All other exposure layers will be blended on top of this layer.

The second layer is typically the exposure where the shadows are correct. This layer is blended to the base laying using a luminosity mask derived from the shadow area of the base layer.

This is, unfortunately, not possible using luminosity range masks. The mask will always be based on the current layer. There is no way of forcing the live luminosity mask to be created from the base layer.

Note: it is possible to create a valid luminosity mask using the current layer but may be slightly more difficult under conditions where the base and shadow layers exposures are very different. This difficulty can be greatly reduced with exposure matching (discussed next)

The third lay layer, containing accurate highlights is typically blended using a layer mask created based on this (current) layer. This works great.

Note: given the fact that luminosity range masks base the mask on lower layers if the current layer is an adjustment or live filter. It would be very useful to have a checkbox that forces this behavior.

2)  Matching

In exposure blending, it is common to see blending transition issues where the luminosity becomes flat or colors are incorrect. This is typically caused when blending two exposures that are too far apart. This is easily corrected by adjusting the exposure levels of the shadows or highlights exposure to closer match that of the base layer. When done correctly, the dynamic luminosity contrast and colors of the blend vastly improved.

In Photoshop, this is typically done by making the shadow and highlight layers smart objects and then using camera raw to adjust their exposure levels to closer match base. This can be a trial and error where camera ray is called multiple time to tweak the adjustments.

In Affinity Photo, the new raw edit greatly improves this experience. By using the show all layers checkbox, you can see the effects on the blend dynamically as you adjust the exposure levels, It is possible to perfectly match the two layers for the optimal blend. This level of accuracy is not possible without a lot of trial and error in Photoshop,

3) Presets

At the beginning of my explorations in exposure blending I was very excited for this feature of the luminosity range masks. The ability to create a set of presets and export them so that they can be imported on other installations or shared with other users seemed to be a great possibility.

Unfortunately, presets cannot be exported or imported. This makes the usage of presets only marginally useful (for me anyway). I cannot justify spending much time creating presets that will only be available for the current installation. Instead, I can use the predefined presets and then adjust from there.

4) Aligning layers

While it is highly advised to use a tripos when shooting exposure brackets for blending (or HDR), it is still possible that the exposures will need to be aligned. This can be caused by environmental conditions during the shoot (high winds, soft ground where the tripod may be slowly sinking, …) or the type of exposure brackets being created.

Unfortunately, the only way to do automatic layer alignment in Affinity Photo is by using a stack. When using a stack, all raw information is lost. This defeats the advantage of using raw image content when doing matching.

Photoshop also has a similar issue. While they have an align layers option, smart objects are not supported. The raw data is also lost.

It would be a huge win for Affinity Photo is it could preserve raw information when doing stacks. This would greatly improve the user experience over Photoshop.

I also wish there was a passthrough option for stacks. That way, the images could be left in the stack without moving (like a folder).

I am continually evaluating exposure blending in Affinity Photo. Overall, I see it as a substantial improvement over Photoshop.

Craig

 

[NotMyFault]

Hi Craig,

your workflow seems a bit time-consuming. It could be simplified using HDR stacking:

• develop the raw image individually (no adjustments except white balance, lens correction, CA correction, crop)
• save as TIFF/16 in wide gamut profile
• HDR stack those TIFF-files (deactivate tone mapping)
• Affinity does a good job to blend the shadow / midtown / highlights automatically.
• Use clone tool with source panel to manually correct chosen source file if required (mostly for ghost removal)
• You can edit the file further manually or using tone map persona to taste

This is to show an alternative approach, not as critique. 

[Craig Ozancin]

This is not my workflow. It common use amongst a growing number of high-end real estate and landscape photographers and retouches.

Sure, an HDR merge is faster and simpler. It is also considered inferior to what you can achieve with exposure blending. With HDR you are limited by the engine on how the blend is made. Exposure blending gives you full control of the blend including where and what gets blended. You can full control ghosting, color corrections and more during the blend process.

In the case of real estate photographers, HDR is often used for low-end jobs where you go in, do a shoot in 15 - 30 minutes shoot, do a 5-10 minute retouch and send the results to the customer. Higher end jobs for example want the absolute best images. This includes many multi million-dollar listings. The difference you gain with exposure blending can mean the difference when an agent is picking a photographer for a job.

[selenita]

Hello, the type of photography you do is very interesting, I don't know if there is any youtube video that you can recommend to me to deepen the subject.

[Craig Ozancin]

There are a couple channels that come to mind. This first is by Jimmy McIntyre who does a lot of landscape photography and accatioal architectural/Realestate photography. :

https://www.youtube.com/@JimmyMcIntyre

Jimmy also has a number of downloadable courses for sale on Exposure Blending.

 

The second is by Anthony Turnham who has two channels. He is a big Luminar Neo fan. On his architectural photography channel he has a number of videos showing exposure blending for high end realestate clients,

https://www.youtube.com/@archiphoto

 

You can also find additional content by searching for Exaposure blending.

 

Hope this helps.

[NotMyFault]

On 3/21/2023 at 7:23 PM, Craig Ozancin said:

This is, unfortunately, not possible using luminosity range masks. The mask will always be based on the current layer. There is no way of forcing the live luminosity mask to be created from the base layer.

You can achieve this by combining 

• linked layers (a linked copy of the base layer)
• channel mixer adjustment to map a color channel (or a weighted mix) into alpha channel

a simpler method (non-live) is creating a regular mask (or spare channel) from the base channel, and use it as mask nested to the other layers.

[selenita]

On 7/17/2023 at 2:11 PM, Craig Ozancin said:

There are a couple channels that come to mind. This first is by Jimmy McIntyre who does a lot of landscape photography and accatioal architectural/Realestate photography. :

https://www.youtube.com/@JimmyMcIntyre

Jimmy also has a number of downloadable courses for sale on Exposure Blending.

 

The second is by Anthony Turnham who has two channels. He is a big Luminar Neo fan. On his architectural photography channel he has a number of videos showing exposure blending for high end realestate clients,

https://www.youtube.com/@archiphoto

 

You can also find additional content by searching for Exaposure blending.

 

Hope this helps.

Thank you very much, I searched and found a couple that are quite illustrative and now I am going to see the ones that you recommend.