(Larger version here.)

I've been watching some YouTube videos from Serif on using Affinity Photo 2. I've really been impressed with the value and capability of Affinity Photo, though I mostly only use it for stitching panoramas, which it does really well.

I've never really grasped the concept of "layers" in photo editing. In Aperture, you could brush adjustments in, you didn't have to create a mask in a separate layer and composite it in. In Topaz SharpenAI, you can create masks so that you're only sharpening the subject, but there are no "layers" involved.

Mostly I do global adjustments in Photos, to my own philistine taste, and then run it through Topaz SharpenAI since you can round-trip that right from Photos. I used to use DeNoise AI, but you can no longer do that from within Photos, and Topaz Labs doesn't seem inclined to restore that capability. But SharpenAI includes a nice noise reduction feature as well.

I'm somewhat dissatisfied with all that. Or I feel as though I want to try to do something a little more sophisticated, where I have a bit more control over what's going on. I think you can accomplish a great deal in a good global editor, which I think Photos is; but I often struggle with the sky and color shifts so I think I want to try and figure this layers thing out. (I qualify all this by saying "I think" because I may wind up feeling as though it's more effort than it's worth.)

So I started with something that doesn't really require masking, and usually turns out pretty well in right from Photos with some help from Topaz, the moon.

I take pictures of the moon a lot, just because it still thrills me that I even can. I usually work from the jpeg from the camera. There is a high-res RAW file as well, so I figured I'd try to work on one of those in Affinity Photo 2.

So this was one I took the other day, on the 19th. And what is posted here is a jpeg created from editing the RAW image.

I posted the original jpeg to Flickr after I'd cropped it and made some adjustment in Photos, then ran it through SharpenAI. I liked it, but it seemed a little flat. I probably could have added some additional contrast.

The two images appear sequentially, though the one above appears first in the photo stream. I think the one I processed through SharpenAI does appear sharper, but the newer version seems better to me in terms of the contrast and range of tones.

Anyway, something new to learn.