Paul Creedy Posted January 24 Posted January 24 I'm sure the answer is no because I can't find this answer anywhere but asking anyway in case there is a work around... Is there a way to align two image layers after they have been developed/opened and in their own layers within Affinity? I know you can do New > Stack, but that imports RAW images straight off the disk as they are. It would be good if as with Photoshop the image layers could be worked on, such as white balance, exposure, and particularly lens alignment etc and then aligned in memory without going through a secondary file.. The only work around I've found is to work on each image independently, save it as a Tiff, then New > Stack and bring in both the prepared tiff files. This seems like such a straight forward thing to do with Photoshop. Select layers > Edit > Auto Align If Affinity can align images via New > Stack, why can't it apply the same to one or more layers? Quote
Ldina Posted January 24 Posted January 24 FWIW, even after developing two images, you can still create a Live Stack Group. Select the two layers, then Arrange > Live Stack Group. You can change the group operator the same a when creating a New Stack Group, but the operators are not the greatest for aligning images, at least in my experience. If you are working with two identical versions of the same image, i.e., identical dimensions and content, with different Develop settings, you can turn Snapping on, and snap them both so they are centered, or use the Alignment feature in the Toolbar. I sometimes develop a DNG RAW file (RAW layer Linked), duplicate it so I now have two DNG layers, then re-enter the Develop Persona and apply a different edit to each DNG layer. I usually have snapping turned on, so they are normally aligned from the get go. You can also set the top layer to Difference Blend Mode, zoom in close, and use the Move tool to help align the images. But again, this is for two identical images, one on top of the other. Hope this is helpful. Quote 2024 MacBook Pro M4 Max, 48GB, 1TB SSD, Sequoia OS, Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher v1 & v2, Adobe CS6 Extended, LightRoom v6, Blender, InkScape, Dell 30" Monitor, Canon PRO-100 Printer, i1 Spectrophotometer, i1Publish, Wacom Intuos 4 PTK-640 graphics tablet
Paul Creedy Posted January 24 Author Posted January 24 I didn't know you could do that post Stack. The issue I'm trying to resolve is stacking two almost identical images of the same room, one ambient and one flash taken on a tripod. The lens I have is manual, so lens correction has to be done by manually selecting the lens in the Dev persona because there is no Exif lens data in the RAW file. So if I go into Dev Persona and correct the lens for each image, when back in Photo persona the images are slightly out of alignment. Not much but enough to notice some artifacts around some edges. I've just experimented with bringing the two images into separate layers by using New > Stack Select each image in turn and go to the Dev persona to do the lens correction and Develop it as I did previously. The new step which you suggested is to select the two layers and Arrange > New Live Stack Group Whether it's wishful thinking or not, the result is the two images did appear to now be aligned without obvious artifacts. Thanks for the suggestion. I'm going to experiment with some more images but that may be what I was looking. Quote
Old Bruce Posted January 24 Posted January 24 6 minutes ago, Paul Creedy said: The issue I'm trying to resolve is stacking two almost identical images of the same room, one ambient and one flash taken on a tripod. The lens I have is manual, so lens correction has to be done by manually selecting the lens in the Dev persona because there is no Exif lens data in the RAW file. So if I go into Dev Persona and correct the lens for each image, when back in Photo persona the images are slightly out of alignment. Not much but enough to notice some artifacts around some edges. I would not use the Lens Correction until after I have the images aligned. Then I would use the Develop persona on the finished merged layer. Ldina and Paul Creedy 2 Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.6 Affinity Designer 2.5.7 | Affinity Photo 2.5.7 | Affinity Publisher 2.5.7 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.
Ldina Posted January 24 Posted January 24 12 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: I would not use the Lens Correction until after I have the images aligned. Then I would use the Develop persona on the finished merged layer. I agree with @Old Bruce (as usual 😁). First align your two images without using any lens correction. Since you shot on a tripod, it should be fairly easy. Do whatever you need to do on each layer...blend modes, masks, curves, etc, then you can do a Merge Visible to create a single composite pixel layer on the top of your layer stack. (you can delete the raw images at this point, or save them as backups, if desired). With the Merged Pixel Layer selected, return to the Develop Persona and apply any necessary lens correction on the Merged Layer. This way, you won't have to worry about two different layers being slightly misaligned. You can also use a Destructive Filter in Photo, but the Develop Persona's lens correction tools are more flexible. Paul Creedy 1 Quote 2024 MacBook Pro M4 Max, 48GB, 1TB SSD, Sequoia OS, Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher v1 & v2, Adobe CS6 Extended, LightRoom v6, Blender, InkScape, Dell 30" Monitor, Canon PRO-100 Printer, i1 Spectrophotometer, i1Publish, Wacom Intuos 4 PTK-640 graphics tablet
Paul Creedy Posted January 24 Author Posted January 24 Thank you both Both those techniques are good. I didn't notice the live stack group was also available on the persona menu, which will come in handy if I have to make some changes to each layer independently, and also didn't dawn on me to correct the lens distortion on the final image. Ldina 1 Quote
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