Thanks. I’m glad it helped you.

Thank you. Very much appreciated.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will add it to the list but it may need to wait until I can get out to take some shots.

Thank you and thank you for purchasing my book. I hope you find it valuable.

Glad it was helpful! Thank you.

Thank you. Hope you enjoy it.

@@RobinWhalley Please, what is the title of the book we are talking about here ?

@@isoria07 It could be my "Essential Affinity Photo" book (now availale as Essential Affinity Photo 2" or it may be my "Affinity Photo How To" book. You can find them on my website lenscraft.co.uk or on Amazon.

@@RobinWhalley Thank you very much for your very quick response !

Thanks. I hope this helped.

You're very welcome!

You are most welcome

You're welcome, and thank you for the support. I hope you enjoy the book. It has much more in it than I can pack into a video.

Glad it was helpful! Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thank you for your support. It's much appreciated.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Great!

The Stack method works but only if you choose one of the blending options for the stack which in this case we don't want to. I'm sure there was another method I've used in the past but I can't seem to find it now. If I come up with it I will do another video. Thanks also for purchasing the book.

Many thanks!

Thanks. Affinity Photo is a great replacement for Photoshop although it doesn't have any support for external maskign panels (currently) like TK Actions. But if you can live with that the price is great.

Thank you.

My pleasure!

You can, but the results will look quite different. The Stack option blends images using an algorithm to determine which pixel to use. In the method I showed, you choose which section of the photo to display to produce the most artistic result. For example, you may decide to leave some areas dark to control how the viewer's attention moves around the image.

Using the channel to create a selection is a bit different to having a pixel selected or not. Think of each pixel having a value of between 0 and 100%. Where a pixel is black it isn't seelcted. Where its white it's selected. Between these two extreemes are shades of grey which create partial selections (best way I can think of describing it). It's a bit like having an Opacity value for the selection. Yes, I am friends with Steve and you sometimes see me in the background on his videos or he will mention we are out on a shoot together. We've known each other for a long time and probably being doing monthly trips for over 10 years. He's a great photographer and his channel is excellent.

@@RobinWhalley Yes that does make sense. Very handy to know

To reveal the darker layer, the mask should be black and you should be painting onto it using white. If the mask is already white then that's why nothing happens. Have you seen this video I published a few days ago (kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gqungrxyxK_ecoU.html). It uses the same technique and might help you.

In my opinion it isn't as good. I've only played around with HDR merge a bit but I couldn't create anything realistic.

Can you give me the time stamp for the point in the video so that I know which part you are refering to? Thanks

To me, the process of blending images of the same scene at different exposures, whether done manually or automatically, is exposure blending. Yes, in this video I've replaced the sky but with an image of the same scene, shot at the same time, just using a different exposure. I could have achieved the same result by starting with the sky and then painting in a lighter exposure of the ground. Would that then be a ground replacement rather than a sky replacement? This technique has been around for a long time. I remember using it in Photoshop in the early 2000's (before HDR or Luminosity Masking took off) and it was always called exposure blending back then. And by HDR, I'm referring to any blending of different exposures that's done automatically by a computer algorithm. In my method, you also need to remember that you can’t see the detail of the selection. If you were to see it fully magnified you would see there are selected pixels across the entre frame, it’s just the bulk are in the sky and on the lake. I’ve chosen not to use those areas by restricting where I paint with the brush. I hope this clarifies my thinking and the reason I call it exposure blending.

@@RobinWhalley exposure bracketing is the term you mean when referring to hdr. Yep... You might be right, i could not necessarily correctly associate the blending term with the blending modes concept.

@@ptst19 No, exposure bracketing to me is the process of capturing the same image but at different exposures. Blending the resulting exposures together is exposure blending. As for Blend Modes, that's applying a mathematical calculation to one layer in an image to determine which of the pixels (that layer or the lower layers) is displayed and how that pixel is adjusted. I think of that as being something separate from HDR. Sorry, I'm probably getting a bit nerdy. I have a background in software and systems development. I much prefer being a photographer.

I use the pixel selection for two reasons: 1. To help separate the sky from the ground which creates a better blend. 2. It improves the blending in the sky because it blends the two exposures to some degree rather than replaces one with the other.

@@RobinWhalley Thank you, Robin! I see your second point but still do not understand the first one, basically because after making the pixel selection you only painted in the sky anyway, so why is it helpful to have this better separation between sky and foreground? Thank you!

Yes, I'm still struggling to understand the purpose of the selection. Great video regardless

The approach to painting is the same as in this video. All you need to do is generate your Luminosity mask to use. Unfortunately that isn't all that easy in Affinity Photo. If you are able to follow my other video, try that approach but just using one of the images in your bracketed exposures. An alternative is to use a combination of Blending Ranges to blend the different exposures together. You can then add layer masks to your layers and paint on those to select where the blended layer is visible.

@@RobinWhalley Thank you for your help. I think I just had to drag my darker layer onto of my brighter one > right click on my red channel > select load pixel selection > hit the mask button and then refine everything from there

Yes. Two RAW files at differet exposures of the same scene.