A quick look around Affinity Photo for astro editing

[@txdave2]

This video is very helpful. You managed to present a lot of information in a reasonable amount of time and in an easy to understand manner. Thank you so much.

[@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246]

Thanks very much for the nice feedback! Glad it was of use. 👍👍

[@fusion-music]

Nicely presented. Great balance in technical terminology that can reduce viewers ability to see that they can do this also. The data in your image was terrific to start with. I've been with Serif since early versions of Serif photo which wasn't a patch on Adobe. I had all of Adobe's & Serifs products and only use the Affinity suite now, even lightroom is almost never touched. V2 is a great improvement. I'm sure your video is going to help a lot of nervous people - especially if they need a quality software at low outlay.

[@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246]

Hi Steve. Thanks for the great feedback! 👍👍 Glad the video was of use. Affinity has some great features for astrophotography that set it apart from the other graphic packages like Photoshop. I use it for all my image processing, along with APP and PixInsight. I think it has some really annoying features that seem to get carried over with each new version that regularly drive me nuts! For the price though it's a really good option for anyone starting out in astrophotography. I hope Serif don't go over to a subscription model in the future though. Thanks again, Nik

[@fusion-music]

@@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246 "annoying features," yes it does. Drove me crazy on V1. I was on the beta and gave feedback, but I'm guessing they didn't want to be a clone of Adobe. Hope they move on, but I'm sticking with them as long as it doesn't go subscription, like yourself.

[@hymanmj]

Thanks for these tutorials Nik, much appreciated. I have been an Affinity Photo convert for a few years now. All the best. :)

[@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246]

Thanks! Affinity keeps getting better and better. Superb value for money too!

[@BigBadLoneWolf]

@@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246 Have you tried james Ritson's astro macro's yet ? if so , can you do a few tutorials ?

[@pei6426]

Nik: There is very little information out there that gives a good explanation of what the various Affinity tools do in regards to astrophotography; thank you. I would like to use Affinity after stacking and cleaning up the image in PixInsight. I stretched the image in PixInsight, exported it as a FITS file and imported it in Affinity. The imported image looked like it over stretched all of the data leaving the image overstretched. Any idea of what I am doing wrong or missing a step? I am not familiar with photo editing software so am not sure where I might be messed up.

[@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246]

Thanks for the feedback. I don't think you are doing anything wrong. For some reason when you scale images in PixInsight, and then open them in Affinity or Photoshop, they always look much brighter. I usually find this when working with TIFF files in Affinity that were earlier scaled in Pix. I spent a lot of time trying to find a solution to this but failed! It's not an ideal solution but I scale the images slightly darker than optimal in Pix and then when they are opened in Affinity make further small adjustments using the Shadows/Highlights tool, mainly to darken the sky background. I've just loaded a pre-scaled FITS file and it seems a lot brighter. It helps to remove the two adjustment layers that Affinity provides and then use Curves to scale the image back. Hope this helps! Cheers, Nik

[@pei6426]

@@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246 Thanks so much for your detailed answer. So, perhaps TIFF might be preferred to FITS for Affinity import. I was thinking FITS in case a direct round trip might be wanted. I did try exporting the FITS image prior to stretching the image and it came in a little less white. So, it appears that I will want to get used to Curves in Affinity for getting a more favorable starting image. Thanks again for your help!

[@hholton7245]

November 2019 remember the 39 people found dead in a refrigerated lorry in Essex who were all Vietnamese? Organised crime should never be allowed to flourish.

[@justtim9767]

Excellent. I'm an novice, what would say the learning curve for this program is. I consider Photo Shop and Gimp to be steep. This video looks not quite as scary.

[@nikszymaneksastronomymusic6246]

Thanks! Affinity is a much more streamlined program compared to Photoshop but it's still remarkably powerful, especially for the price. It should be a bit easier to use. I tend to use the same features for every image now so it all feels very comfortable and intuitive. Please check out my other Affinity videos for specific aspects of image processing.