Since PhotoLab 10 now has the ability to create an .af file for transfer to Affinity, why not use this file format to its fullest? Any edit created in PhotoLab should include all of its masks as alpha channels within the newly created .af file. These should show up as “Spare Channels” in Affinity and allow them to be used to re-create the masks originally created in PhotoLab.
Doing this will allow a more fluid transfer and will let the user continue the editing process easily. I believe that a lot of Affinity users woild be very interested in this feature.
From a financial perspective, the lack of this ability is what keeps me using Capture One (with its ability to export intermediate .psd files with embedded alpha channels).
Sounds like the logical use of the .af format to connect both applications.
Export to affinity would often mean need of masks. And doing twice the same job, can be, euhh, how to say … very irritating ! (as well as being unproductive).
I think (I hope my memory isn’t letting me down on this point) DxO already wrote about layers with .af : processed image + only demosaiced image.
Masks seems so obvious that I am pretty sure this is in their list.
What I noticed in this v10 is that DxO does not seem to create half baked tools anymore.
As with all software, many tools could be improved, but none of the new tools strike me as inadequate or unusable because they’re poorly designed or haven’t been properly thought through (as has often been the case about before v8). I’d even go so far as to say that some tools are particularly well thought out (the colour grading tool, is the best example for me : very well interfaced) – although it would have been nice if all the new tools had also been incorporated into the local adjustments ! ).
Given that, it seems impossible to me that DxO hasn’t planned for the transfer of masks, which shouldn’t be anything complex to develop once the chosen format has been implemented. That would be absurd not to do that.
I trust my crystal ball.
And it would be nice to add this option for tiff files too, which would increase possibilities for integrating photolab into other workflows too. My christal ball is more opaque on this one.