srt101fan

You totally misunderstood Ysarex's post. And the topic of his post most definitely was NOT "how to do it with Affinity".

Now PLEASE, let Ysarex and others continue to explain the Affinity RAW processing issues that have been raised in this thread. Please refrain from dragging the discussion into a dark side alley and depriving us Affinity users of an opportunity to learn more about this photo editing software.

😬

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I think you were intending your response for Wanderer2, not me, but hopefully he will read it anyway.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Opps, my bad! I thought I selected the right post to respond to. Assuming that was not news to you.

Joe

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Hi Mike,

Last one -- HSL. Below is a link to a raw file. It's a photo of cypress vine flowers. (It's an out-take with the DOF misplaced but it will make the point.) Below is a version of the photo processed in Capture One. The flower on your left is in focus and you can see the amount of detail and texture in the flower petals. Now load that raw file into Affinity.

This is a fairly common problem with highly saturated colors -- especially reds. When that file loads into Affinity the red channel will nuke out to oblivion. Look at the histogram. You must get the red channel off the histogram right wall before sending the image to the Photo Persona. The only way Affinity will let you do that in the Develop persona is to darken the entire image. You can process photos like this with Affinity but your only option is to drag everything down with the oversaturated color and then go to work in the Photo Persona effecting repairs. As my old Latin teacher would say "bass ackwards."

In raw converters with an HSL adjustment for the raw files the oversaturation problem can be targeted before the conversion to RGB so that the rest of the image doesn't suffer and have to be fixed.

Joe

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cfd4ucl7g5oqv1u/SAM_1357.dng?dl=0

(Download)

Wanderer2 Loc: Colorado Rocky Mountains

mwsilvers,

In my post now on the Affinty Forum I attempted to describe the points made by yourself and the other posters critical of AP as accurately and objectively as I could, including making clear that the criticisms pertained to the Develop Persona.

My concern about possibly needing a program other than AP refers to the future. I hope I do not remain a low level amateur user forever but can advance to a higher level in the near future. Although I have used, to use the word imprecisely, AP for about a year I have had little time to do processing because of an interstate move and medical issues. I intend to spend much more time doing that from now on and part of that motivation is due to the discussion on this and the other thread on the subject. Thanks for all of you for inspiring me to improve!

Mike

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I am sure that you will enjoy Affinity immensely. It is a very powerful program that can do almost everything, the limitations in the Develop persona aside. You may never outgrow it. But if you do its probably because you've discovered some other software that meets you specific editing needs better.

Wanderer2 Loc: Colorado Rocky Mountains

As I stated in a prior post several days ago I posted on the Affinity Forum about the issues discussed in this thread. I asked about the claims that AP is forced destructive and that it cannot do HSL or highlight reconstruction in the Develop Persona, and included what has been said about the conversion of files from Raw to RGB. I did not receive a large number of replies but most of those that did reply largely agreed with the claims about forced destruction, HSL and highlight reconstruction. There was some disagreement however about the details of AP converting Raw files to RGB resulting in loss of data. One reply is as follows:

"The afphoto file created by a default develop is an RGB 16 bit per channel non compressed file. No information from the raw file (typically 12 or 14 bits) is lost. That implies that HSL can be done just as well in afphoto as in ACR."

And another stated:

"Your RAW files do not change or get converted. When you develop Open a RAW file all that happens is the information in the file (be it Nikon, Fuji, Canon, Sony etc.) is read and displayed in the window your Program provides. Nothing happens to the Raw file's picture information. Some Raw developers may be able to add information to the Header of the file, but the image bits of the file are unaltered."

So that's the result of my posting on Affinity Forum and the criticisms made here are to a substantial degree supported, although in general it seemed the "deficiencies" were not felt to be as severe as described in this thread.

Thanks to all who participated in this debate. It was educational for me to say the least! :o)

srt101fan

Thanks for posting. Every little bit of info about the program helps.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the follow up. The two quotes you brought over from the Affinity Forum warrant a comment or two. Let's do the second (simple) one first.

"Your RAW files do not change or get converted. When you develop Open a RAW file all that happens is the information in the file (be it Nikon, Fuji, Canon, Sony etc.) is read and displayed in the window your Program provides. Nothing happens to the Raw file's picture information. Some Raw developers may be able to add information to the Header of the file, but the image bits of the file are unaltered."

This individual is just stressing that the original data in the original raw file is never overwritten or replaced in any way and that's of course true for all raw processing software. The original raw file and it's data always remain unaltered. Instead the software creates a new RGB image which gets saved as a new file ie. afphoto, TIFF, JPEG, etc. As such Affinity is no different than all other raw processing software.

The first comment you quoted:

"The afphoto file created by a default develop is an RGB 16 bit per channel non compressed file. No information from the raw file (typically 12 or 14 bits) is lost. That implies that HSL can be done just as well in afphoto as in ACR."

This individual seems to have some basic misunderstandings about how it works. The give away is their mention that the afphoto file is 16 bit while a raw file is typically 12 or 14 bit. They're thinking comparison 16 bit compared to 12 or 14 bit. That's a faulty comparison.

Raw data and RGB image data are different and they don't compare. A single pixel in a raw file is either red, green or blue. If it's red it's not green or blue. If it's green it's not red or blue. There are no yellow, orange, magenta, maroon, etc. pixels in a raw file just red ones, green ones and blue ones. A pixel in an RGB image file contains values for all three colors red, green and blue. It's a yellow pixel if for example it has very little blue and lots of both red and green.

So to go from raw data to an RGB image the raw data pixels have to be converted from single color pixels to tri-color pixels. It's a fundamental change that requires a mathematical algorithm to interpolate the color filter array into an image with RGB pixels -- demosaicing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing

None of the original raw data is therefore preserved in the output RGB image. It is fundamentally a conversion/transformation process. Once that conversion is completed changes you make to the new RGB image no longer have access to the raw data. The forum poster said "No information from the raw file is lost." All information from the raw file is transformed into different data. You then have the transformed data. Can you use HSL on the transformed data? Sure. Will it be able to produce the same result as if you used HSL on the raw data? No. The different type of data in the new RGB image will not react in the same way as the raw data reacted. That's proven in my earlier post in this thread: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-605390-10.html#10425606

Joe

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

There are exceptions to this. Canon's DPP program, for instance, writes it's edits directly to the raw file itself where they can be saved. These saved edits are only available for viewing in DPP. Any other software will ignore them. Canon can do this because .cr2 and .cr3 is their file format and DPP is proprietary Canon software. As a result DPP does not have a database or sidecar files. Like other raw software you need to export the edits to an output file to bake them in.

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

Yes, BUT (big BUT) the actual raw data is not altered in any way. DPP will save out a sidecar file if you want one, but yes it otherwise stores the processing recipe in the original raw file. Also worth noting that this will not effect any other raw converter from reading and processing the raw data in those CR2/3 files.

Joe

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Yes. As I said, other raw software will ignore these edits. Edits made to Canon raw files with Canon DPP are only visible and usable in DPP. However, DPP does update the file date when saving edits. I only brought up DPP because the way it works with Canon raw files in general is a bit different than third party software. DPP by default also applies all the in-camera settings, normally applied to jpegs, as a starting point when editing raw images. These differences from other raw converters have caused some confusion in the past.

srt101fan

Joe and mwsilvers - you all are offering some very helpful observations on RAW processing. Much appreciated by this Affinity user.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

Excellent analysis. Thanks.

Mike

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

"Software Survey" - I still use a 20 year old version of the pre-Corel Paintshop Pro program, and Canon's Digital Photo Professional for "development" of CR raw files.

This is a really great thread. Very informative. Thanks to all, especially Ysarex and mwsilvers.

Mike