Wide Field Astrophoto Stacking with Foreground

[DETolliver]

The following short video tutorial shows exactly how to do in Photoshop what I want to do

 

http://www.shutterevolve.com/landscape-astrophotography-noise-reduction-with-image-stacking/

 

Please tell me how to do this in Affinity Photo, or point me to a tutorial that tells how.

 

Thanks

[A_B_C]

Hi and welcome here …  :)

 

Maybe this video will be a good starting point:

 

[DETolliver]

A_B_C, unfortunately this does not work for sky (star) images with a silhouetted foreground.  I have tried all possible options offered on the Affinity "stack on load" feature, and none works.  While I don't know what algorithm Affinity uses for alignment, I believe the presence of a large foreground element (relative to the stars in the sky) is what causes the alignment of the stars to fail.  Even if the foreground is completely black-out, the edge between the ground and the sky comprises a large number of pixels.  The video I referenced shows how to mask out the foreground and align only the sky portion.  After stacking and adjusting the composite image the foreground is re-inserted.  The video shows in detail how to do this in Photoshop.  I'm looking for a way to do it in Affinity.  The lack of an Auto-Align tool is what is hampering me.