Stacks

[Don - NZ]

Stacks

The window that opens up to select pictures is not showing portrait orientated JPGs correctly. 

They are clipped and are shown as landscape orientated photos. By contrast, the matching RW2 file is displayed correctly.  (By the way, a nice touch to slightly grey out the raw files). See the ringed examples in the following screenshot compared to their raw version. Is this a bug or have I missed a trick?

       Portrait orientated photos also display incorrectly in the following window as well (Another bug?)

 

They then open in a live stack group displayed on the layers studio - but rotated 90 degrees to the right (i.e. on their edge). Yet another bug? Or how do I fix this?

The blend mode is set to “Passthrough” and if taken off that, that particular mode is not in the dropdown list of blend modes and can't be stepped back to. Not yet sure what Passthrough is nor how to actual blend the images together. What is Passthrough mode? Why is it not the "Normal" mode?

I was then expecting to be able to blend the images together either automatically as in PS (or perhaps manually using the AF "blend ranges" function.  However, although the “blend ranges” function is available it does not seem to work no matter which layer I am on).  What have I missed?

How do I stack and blend images automatically?

 

[firstdefence]

This must be a Windows thing because mine display fine on Mac.

They also display correctly when imported in the small stack window, having black bars down the side.

[firstdefence]

6 hours ago, Don - NZ said:

What is Passthrough mode? Why is it not the "Normal" mode?

Any layer or object can have a blend mode assigned. The default blend mode is 'Normal'—no special compositing is applied. For a group, the default is 'Passthrough'. When set, the group itself has no special blend properties of its own, and passes on the blend mode of its parent layer.

 

[carl123]

3 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

This must be a Windows thing because mine display fine on Mac.

Mine display fine on Windows 8

For the OP, is this just for images from your camera?

Do other (non-camera) images display their thumbnails correctly?

 

[firstdefence]

to add to carl123, does Explorer display those images correctly?

Might be worth looking at the EXIF data too, sometimes the orientation info is wrong.

[Don - NZ]

11 hours ago, firstdefence said:

to add to carl123, does Explorer display those images correctly?

Might be worth looking at the EXIF data too, sometimes the orientation info is wrong.

Hello firstdefence

Interesting question, not quite sure what to make of it yet - above my pay grade, but an Affinity program might know what data these programs have to choose from in order to display.

Folder Browsing with: Adobe Bridge CC 2019 & XnViewMP - both display these portrait jpgs thumbnails correctly

Folder Browsing with: Adobe Lightroom Classic 2019 - No display of these truncated portrait jpgs at all

Folder Browsing with: SageThumbs, Adobe Lightroom CC 2019, Microsoft Paint 3D - All truncate these portrait jpgs

File open with: AFPhotos, Adobe Photoshop CS6, Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 - All display a truncated portrait jpg

To further confuse matters these are the first shots coming out of a new camera - A Lumix Gx9.  I can see I need to investigate some further tomorrow, shooting with and without the JPG + Raw option. Will look over the EXIF data tomorrow as well.

Thanks

[Don - NZ]

11 hours ago, carl123 said:

Mine display fine on Windows 8

For the OP, is this just for images from your camera?

Do other (non-camera) images display their thumbnails correctly?

 

Hi Carl123

As far as I can see, this is just for the very first images from my new camera, a Lumix Gx9.  Older portrait orientated images from a very old Olympus C770 and  composited portrait orientated pictures made in PS all display correctly.  Have a look at my other replies - there are quite a few inconsistencies with other programs, some display them okay, some truncate them and one even ignores them.

Might well be a camera issue.... will investigate further tomorrow

[Don - NZ]

12 hours ago, firstdefence said:

Any layer or object can have a blend mode assigned. The default blend mode is 'Normal'—no special compositing is applied. For a group, the default is 'Passthrough'. When set, the group itself has no special blend properties of its own, and passes on the blend mode of its parent layer.

 

Hi Firstdefence

Thanks for the heads up.  There are old posts that indicate that AF does not auto-blend.  Is that still the case?

These shots were handheld and not aligned that well, that may account for why the first two blend modes were terrible.

Does the Blend If option work on a stack? - I couldn't see any effect no matter what layer I was on.

[Don - NZ]

12 hours ago, firstdefence said:

to add to carl123, does Explorer display those images correctly?

Might be worth looking at the EXIF data too, sometimes the orientation info is wrong.

Hi firstdefence

My Windows10 Explorer uses the third party product, SageThumbs to display an actual thumbnail (rather than just an icon of PS and IF files) and no, that particular program is also truncating the image.

[Don - NZ]

On 12/18/2018 at 2:52 PM, Don - NZ said:

Stacks

 

The window that opens up to select pictures is not showing portrait orientated JPGs correctly. 

 

 

 

They are clipped and are shown as landscape orientated photos. By contrast, the matching RW2 file is displayed correctly.  (By the way, a nice touch to slightly grey out the raw files). See the ringed examples in the following screenshot compared to their raw version. Is this a bug or have I missed a trick?

       Portrait orientated photos also display incorrectly in the following window as well (Another bug?)

 

 

 

 

 

They then open in a live stack group displayed on the layers studio - but rotated 90 degrees to the right (i.e. on their edge). Yet another bug? Or how do I fix this?

The blend mode is set to “Passthrough” and if taken off that, that particular mode is not in the dropdown list of blend modes and can't be stepped back to. Not yet sure what Passthrough is nor how to actual blend the images together. What is Passthrough mode? Why is it not the "Normal" mode?

 

I was then expecting to be able to blend the images together either automatically as in PS (or perhaps manually using the AF "blend ranges" function.  However, although the “blend ranges” function is available it does not seem to work no matter which layer I am on).  What have I missed?

How do I stack and blend images automatically?

 

 

Truncated portrait jpgs

I have now got to the bottom of this and the cause of the truncated jpgs lies outside of Affinity and with a program called SageThumbs that generates thumbnails for Windows Explorer in all sorts of formats that Microsoft can no longer be bothered generating, such as the various Raws (in my case, rw2), psd and afphoto. That is really great except that portrait orientated jpgs are shown with an incorrect 1:1 ratio even though the associated raw has the correct proportions.  A few notes on my investigation follow:

Programs such as Affinity Photo, Photoshop CC 2019, and Photoshop CS6 that do not bother to generate their own thumbnails, but use SageThumbs efforts, when using "File open" also display a thumbnail jpg with the incorrect proportions. If SageThumbs is not installed, they show thumbnails for jpgs, but can only show the program icon associated with the file type for Raw files - great effort Microsoft.

Worst of all, programs like Adobe Lightroom Classic 2019 simply ignore these (wrong ratio 1:1) portrait orientated jpgs and display only the raw version.  This can be corrected by going into preferences and making jpgs files to be separate from raw files (no sidecars) OR by removing SageThumbs.

Photo Browser software (DAMS) like Adobe Bridge 2019 and XnViewMP that generate their own thumbnails show a jpg with the correct proportions and ignore SageThumbs's efforts.

It would help if Microsoft had not stopped updating the Codec for Raws (in this case, RW2) - it was last done in 2014.

On balance, I decided to “Untick jpg & raw file associations” in Lightroom classic 2019 and reinstate SageThumbs and hope that it gets fixed - it seems to be a simple fix for the developer. 

It also means that Affinity Photo "File open" will now display thumbnails of both jpgs AND raws - particularly important if you are not using something like the free Adobe Bridge 2019 or the free XnViewMP as photo browsers.

 

 

 

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Don - NZ said:

Programs such as Affinity Photo, Photoshop CC 2019, and Photoshop CS6 that do not bother to generate their own thumbnails, but use SageThumbs efforts, when using "File open" also display a thumbnail jpg with the incorrect proportions. If SageThumbs is not installed, they show thumbnails for jpgs, but can only show the program icon associated with the file type for Raw files - great effort Microsoft.

There are other codecs available, besides SageThumbs.

By the way, I don't fault Affinity Photo, Photoshop CC 2019, Photoshop CS6, or other programs for depending on the OS to display thumbnails in the OS-provided file dialogs. I agree that it would be nice if Microsoft had built that function in for more extensions, but I'm happy to install an additional codec if needed.

[Don - NZ]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

There are other codecs available, besides SageThumbs.

By the way, I don't fault Affinity Photo, Photoshop CC 2019, Photoshop CS6, or other programs for depending on the OS to display thumbnails in the OS-provided file dialogs. I agree that it would be nice if Microsoft had built that function in for more extensions, but I'm happy to install an additional codec if needed.

Hi Walt

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any other up to date codecs.  Microsoft appears to have last updated (my) rw2 type in 2014 and no longer updates them. I tried some, like XnView shell extensions to no avail and took them off again.

However, even better, after all my testing this morning I reinstated SageThumbs and for some strange reason, the portrait orientated jpgs now have the correct ratio and all these programs that make use of SageThumbs efforts now also display them correctly.  I am now a very happy camper!

[v_kyr]

Microsoft‘s own codec is pretty old and outdated, sadly they don‘t update these any longer. Some camera vendors like Nikon, Canon etc. do offer own Windows software codecs for their RAW formats. Other than that there are some third party codec tools which can deal with various RAW formats and show them up as thumbs.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Don - NZ said:

Programs such as Affinity Photo, Photoshop CC 2019, and Photoshop CS6 that do not bother to generate their own thumbnails ...

I don't know about the Windows versions of the Affinity apps but the Mac ones include a preference in the General section to optionally save thumbnails with documents. I think the default is to save them but I am not sure about that.

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, R C-R said:

I don't know about the Windows versions of the Affinity apps but the Mac ones include a preference in the General section to optionally save thumbnails with documents. I think the default is to save them but I am not sure about that.

Windows versions of the Affinity apps have that, too.

[walt.farrell]

12 hours ago, Don - NZ said:

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any other up to date codecs.

I use FastPictureViewer codec pack. It's relatively inexpensive.

[Don - NZ]

10 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I use FastPictureViewer codec pack. It's relatively inexpensive.

Thanks for that and I have bookmarked it. However SageThumbs has settled down after a reinstall.

[Don - NZ]

20 hours ago, R C-R said:

I don't know about the Windows versions of the Affinity apps but the Mac ones include a preference in the General section to optionally save thumbnails with documents. I think the default is to save them but I am not sure about that.

Yes, I see that and thanks, but I wanted something that used, and, if necessary, created thumbnails as soon as you introduced it to a folder, not after opening and saving each photo.  All sorted now.