yes, I agree @mwsilvers and thank you for bringing the app into the discussion. Made me look bit closer into version 1.10 as I thought there would have been already a possible non-destructive part.
But I also found a massive downside, when I re-edited a picture of a forum member from another thread:
Huge afphoto files used to be a major downside for me, but now you can output to “RAW Layer (Linked)” that just writes a small sidecar instead. I don’t know if there are limitations I haven’t run into yet (just started playing), but looks promising so far.
That is certainly a huge file. The truth is there isn’t a commercial post processing program available without some bug, feature, or idiosyncrasy that some users will find intolerable and a showstopper. Sometimes these are major issues that many people can agree on, and other times they only irk a very small subset of the user base. As an example I recall a post from a user here several months ago indicating he would not upgrade to PhotoLab 6 unless it included a flip image feature, probably a very minor omission for the majority of users.
Yes, until I get into film negative/positive repro and discover “ouch, I put the film strip upside down into the negative sheet”. Of course, the full sentence would be “discovered too Iate” . I faced that a couple of times when I was looking for something else than at the time permanently crashing Capture One. There were not many mirrored filmstrips, but redoing them costs time. So usually I don’t need to flip my RAWs but find the wish relatable.
I know what you mean. For me, the show stoppers for PL are “no manufacturers less profiles possible”, one of the weakest DAMs I’ve seen so far and the UI could also benefit on a bit of polish. And the differences between Windows and Mac versions, and maybe also the lack of enough shortcuts to use a midi-controller (not very important). And something like Affinity Photo’s location/GPS panel.
Enlight me on this one. As a musician, I know midi and midi controllers from writing/playing/composing (sheet) music. It the first time I hear about it when it comes to photo editing and I’m genuinely interested to hear how you’re using it
With an application like C1 it has user definable shortcut keys/combinations that can be mapped to the pads and dials of a midi controller using Bome Midi Translator Pro: https://www.bome.com/products/miditranslator
Thus you can edit a photo by turning the Midi dials to adjust Exposure, contrast, gamma, levels etc and push pads to carry out actions like turn on highlight warnings, auto adjust, mask on/off, select white balance picker, add new layer, select by colour, rating etc.
Affinity is now in apps try opening an images from PL into it. There are lots of unhappy users trying to find how to export to it from lots of programs it used to work with.
@IanS already gave a better answer than mine will be. Maybe my wording was not precise, but Loupedeck or tangent devices are sort of midi controllers for image or movie editing. But to make use of them, an app needs an interface like a complete set of shortcuts, which at least PL 5 doesn’t offer.
If you already own midi controllers you can save some money by not buying the specialised ones, especially tangent devices are rather costly.
Affinty fourms are filled with those unable to creat links to export files/imiges to Affinity apps as they are apps and users are locked out of the app folder so unable to creat links to any app there. There are some workrounds, creating a bat files and registry hacks to get it to open. Its an appalling release that apeares not to have undergon a real beta perieod so no one has found the problems of it being a set of apps. Or worse if it has they didn’t care, but we have found there is a 14 day option for a refund which on some fourms some have already got.
It would appear that in testing exporting TO Affinity 2 worked and the .exe file was accessible and something broke. They have a team actively working on a fix for it now.
It’s not so much a sidecar as a full-fledged Affinity file that contains a reference to the RAW file rather than storing a copy within. Any further work you do on the file is stored within it. It’s a system used widely in the Affinity Suite, and particularly in Publisher where you might import lots of images into a document.
So you might, for example, develop a RAW file as a linked resource, then paint all manner of graphics and text on top and everything except the original RAW file is in the Affinity file.
When I saw the price of the Universal License, I bought it very quickly. However, I do not for a moment consider that price to be a “stick” to beat DxO with. Serif have somehow managed to create a world-class suite of products for a price that NO other vendor has been matching. I don’t know how they manage it, but I’m really glad they do, for my own sake. I do not begrudge PhotoLab being as expensive as it is just because Serif manage it for a different set of products aimed at a different market.
The improvements to the Develop persona for RAW files is a step in the right direction, but I stand by my previous assertion that the results aren’t anywhere near as good as PhotoLab for me. Could it do better than Lightroom? Maybe — I’m not the person to judge — but I’m fairly sure any photo edit that can be done in Lightroom will be more easily done in Lightroom.
considering the costs and some “Elite is needed” limitations which blows the shopping basket quite some times more than Affinity does. Sure, it doesn’t help if a tool is cheap when the more expensive one is needed for the job, but what I’ve seen and tried so far doesn’t recommend to relax for LR, C1 or PL.
It all depends if you only want a developed RAW or use it as well in other projects which can be done in Desigenr or Publisher.
while the Raw develop persona in Affinity is more basic and doesn’t come with deep prime noise reduction, Affinity’s workflow is entirely different. DxO needs to dive into transformation, local adjustments and healing brush topics, in Affinity I just do the basic edit in the dev persona and then go on to do more sophisticated pixel edits than DxO ever will be able to deliver, in my opinion and based on the experiences with good feature requests and not even pedestrian delivery of some of them. As an example, I know how to get rid of lens flares in Affinity Photo. If a RAW doesn’t give me more problems to solve, why bother PL first, export a huge file, work in Affinity, save another huge file just to get a tiny JPG without lens flares?.
If Affinity steps up their develop persona and finally offers something as DAM (meaning, ALL possible Affinity files) and also overtakes Adobe’s bridge while they’re at it, then the major RAW developers will face some stiff headwinds.
My first impression remains as it has always been. AP2 is difficult to navigate, with too many different tools in too many different places.
I have said before that, coming from Photoshop CS3 about 6 years ago, I found AP to give me that “uncanny valley” feeling. (seems familiar but, in fact, is quite different)
I just redid @mikemyers trolleybus shot with just the low and high tones tool and a tone curve in the Develop persona and got this…
If I hadn’t used PL for the past 6 versions, I could have been satisfied. But, if I needed to do much more, I get the impression I’m going to have to do an awful lot of Googling and watching of videos - something I have never found necessary with PL.
Interesting. I learnt most about Photoshop by working through a tutorial, but nowadays with all the “smart” this and that, it appears like a mountain full of functions buried all over the place and difficult to find.
Affinity’s Photo and Designer videos are perfect for me. They have one topic, like 3-8 minutes and everything is rather straightforward. Comparing AP and PS in terms of usability and simplicity, AP often wins. And now, with their new RAW (embedded) or (linked) strategy, they came up with an entirely new workflow which I prefer to the old “RAW-development in dedicated tool, Pixel Editor in another tool”-way. I’m really looking forward to their next ideas. Adobe? Boring. Only busy with making more money. 4.3 billions per year should guarantee for nice salaries, though.
Interesting in the trolley shot: the LED display above the red light appears to be shot with a far too short shutter speed, or the refresh rate of the display is slow. Else I think, for not liking AP’s interface the interpretation is not too bad.
Hmm, I need to shift my euphoric gears a bit
. I faced that a couple of times when I was looking for something else than at the time permanently crashing Capture One. There were not many mirrored filmstrips, but redoing them costs time. So usually I don’t need to flip my RAWs but find the wish relatable.
