It seems to me you are wanting to adjust so that you have the same amount of light each day where I am suggesting the whole point is to document how differently 7 a.m. looks in January than July. I might be mis-understanding your overall vision for the project. Of course, regardless of time of day you will have documented the change of seasons, and that will have major visual impact.

My idea will not be seamless because of the time changes, but as an example, think of March 15 (5 days after daylight savings time begins in 2019) through June 22. Every few frames would show a noticeable difference in shadows and light, as each day the sun would have risen a minute or two earlier than the previous day. So March 15 will have longer shadows and quite a bit less light than June 22. And then, if you continued until the time changes again, each day would be darker at that appointed time. The shadows and the angle of the sun are going to be significantly different over several months' time.

Similar to Andy's suggestion, but since I'm a morning person, I think you should do at 7 a.m. throughout the year. That way, you'll begin with blue hour/dawn on Jan 1, and come back round again - even with those hiccups of time change that so many of us have come to hate. If you don't want so many dark images (Nov/Dec), maybe 7:30?

You will see how the landscape changes - not just with the seasons, but the angle and position of the sun (I'm 3 degrees further north than you). Another thought is to do early a.m. until June, then switch to evening for the second half of the year. Whatever you decide, it would be a shame to miss the "golden hour" possibilities of spring and fall. Photography is all about the light!

I hope you'll be able to post to a site where you can provide a link for us to enjoy with you in 2020 - and here's hoping it doesn't rain every morning

Hello Wags,
I'm not Karin, but perhaps I can help with your question. The overall layout of the program hasn't changed (where things are located) since I started using it 4 years ago. However, it updates with new material and effects everytime you open and use it. In my opinion, it's easy to use and has many different effects available to embellish any photo. Along with effects, it has a wide varity of frames for use, you can change backgrounds, enhance or defocus your current background, crop, composite, include text and many other effects. If you're interested in the program, I suggest trying the 30 day free trial. Afterward the one time cost appears to currently be $29.95 US dollars. I personally use this edit extensively and really like what it has to offer.
The photos below are a work in progress using Smart Photo Editor. So far, I've used the eraser tool, crop tool, the special effects tool, the composite tool. Who knows where I'll go from here, but I'm sure Smart Photo Editor will be used for the final edit.

Thanks, Sunny. Great work. I like the idea of the 30-day trial. Gonna give it a try.

Hope this helps,

Sunny

Back in the film/analog/darkroom days theses effects were achieved by the use of texture screens which were sandwiched with the negative in the enlarger or placed in contact with the paper in the enlarger easel. Nowadays the are simulated in digital post processing an various PhotoShop actions and plug in software- my favorite is TOPAZ- the come close to the old Mortensen texture screens. The can be added in various opacities.

Something else that I find lots of fun. There are free apps that you can download to your Android devices- cell phones. tablets and laptops. Theses apps simulate a wide variety of art types and styles such as pencil sketches, watercolor, oil paintings, etchings, crayon drawing, pointillism and other graphic arts styles like woodcuts, block printing etc.

At first, I thought some of this was kind "Mickey Mouse" until my teenage granddaughter asked me to join in with the fun. I found that you can apply the effect and on some 0of the apps you can adjust opacity, stroke length and thickness, saturation, contrast and composition. I can shoot on my phone or load the images into my laptop or tablet and edit away. It's fast and easy. Some apps to look for are Arto-Sketch, Deep Art Effects, Super Photo and Prisma. "Snapseed" and "Toolwiz" Photo are incredible general editing app- surprisingly decent! Don't laugh!

Attached, is a shot (and variations) of my 13 year old granddaughter and technical/IT consultant at her recent birthday party. Wanna get real computer savvy?- just ask a kid

An important point to remember is that although, one can get both a jpeg and raw capture by exposing ETTR, if the camera has the usual one full stop or more (up to two and 2/3 to 3 extra stops) of dynamic range beyond the point at which a jpeg will show clipped highlights, that raw capture at the same exposure is forfeiting half or much more of the tonal spectrum it could deliver at the offered file bit-depth if the full, raw-accessible DR had been used for highest possible quality raw image data capture.“JPEG + RAW” is NOT a great deal, given the diminished raw image data quality that is captured when a stop or more of DR “IS LEFT SITTING ON THE TABLE, unused, disregarded, and wasted.

Dave

Dave