astrophotography from Pixinsightm (OSC data), how to pickup after pre- and early post-processing?

[gitfiddle]

This is a very specific question, and I'm a newbie with Affinity (still in the trial), so I don't quite know the proper terms to even search for. If there are links to other threads that I have not found, those are certainly appreciated. I am seeing some that are several years old, but am not sure if they apply to v2 as I don't really know either version (I have watched the tutorials, the quickstart, etc. on the Learning page of the affinity website).

I do my preprocessing (calibration file integration etc) and stacking in Pixinsight. I also typically start with some version of this workflow for galaxies/nebulae: Background extraction > Background neutralization > BlurXterminator > NoiseXterminator > Photometric or Spectrographic Color Calibration > ((maybe StarXterminator here)) . . .

What I am trying to experiment with in Affinity is if stretching the image is easier in PI or Affinity . . .in any event, after stretching the above workflow, is there a video or post that addresses how to pick up this late in the processing to bring out color and detail in an easier manner than PI offers? I find that since I'm not a pro the myriad of steps and settings is overwhelming, even with great videos etc. I'm looking for a way to easily get my image to be colorful and crisp without having to figure out so many individual settings, how they interact, etc. I have no experience with Photoshop, so I'm truly a blank slate with this type of interface.

Any help would be much appreciated. . .

Jon

PS I almost wish there was a pre-programmed macro where I could just hit "bring out colors and detail"--almost like the Apple photo editor magic wand--then go tweak the specifics.

[stokerg]

Hi @gitfiddleand Welcome to the Forums,

While i don't know much about this topic in general, i do know James Ritson our in-house Astro Expert has created Macros to help with Astro workflows.  You can get the Macros from his site here: https://jamesritson.gumroad.com/l/jr_astrophotography_macros they are free to download and use.