ArieV

I used this feature A LOT in Adobe, before I switched to Serif/Affinity. It saved me a lot of time/mouseclicks. I would love to see something similar implemented in Affinity Photo raw persona. It would really improve my workflow.

Affinity photo, PC version, raw persona, versions 1 and 2, exhibit the following behaviour: I sometimes have multiple tabs open (say, 8 ) and I'll flip back-and-forth between two tabs to look for differences (e.g. several shots in a burst) In the tabs on the right, the image center progressively moves father and farther to the right the more times I flip tabs. After a few flips, the image will start moving behind the slider panels on the right. Left tabs will progressively move to the left. The further the tab is on the left or right, the quicker the image moves between each flip. It seems as if the image center is adjusted each time a tab is selected, and that the amount of adjustment depends on the position along the top row of tabs. I can re-center the image with crtl-0, but it would be nice if the image retained its last position.

Any Lensfun support for Canon RF 24/1.8 and Canon RF 15-30/4.5-6.3 ?

Hold the phone.... I just saw that my camera has the Auto Lighting Optimizer enabled. I'm not sure how that happened. I turned it off, tried a few test shots, and things look better exposure-wise. But that still leaves the funny tint values.

Hi @Ron P., the settings you used are roughly what I end up using. Lots of exposure and a tint of around +43. So yes it is possible to get a good result, and one that matches DPP, but it's weird that suddenly I have to resort to these values. I'm trying to understand what's going on in order to get a better grasp on Affinity and my camera. The funny thing is that until a few weeks ago, the default exposure was just about right (I was using, say -0.5 to 0.5) and the tint values were in the middle of the slider (typically +4 to +6). I'm running Windows 11. @NotMyFault, I shot this photo at 100 iso, f/7.1, 1/250 s, evaluative metering, no exposure compensation. I understand that DPP uses things like picture styles and previous DPP processing parameters. I used a standard picture style. The file I supplied (and others in my catalog) do not have previous DPP processing values in the header. I know this because DPP asks before it saves and overwrites old values. In any case, if those values got out of whack it'd be DPP showing a strange result upon opening, and it's Affinity that shows the underexposure.

.. and

Hi stokerg, Sorry about the delay. I've attached a sample .cr3 file. Preview in Canon DPP Preview in Affinity, with default settings. Note tint slider on bottom right. IMG_4680.CR3

Hi there, I recently noticed some funny behaviour in the develop persona. Most raw files need 1-2 stops of exposure increase, and the tint in white balance needs to be in the +45 range (towards magenta). The same files look and process okay in DPP without drastic adjustments. I get the same behaviour with raw files from Canon 70D, 7D, and 400D (.CR2) and RP (.CR3). When I do apply the strong exposure and tint compensations in Affinity Develop persona I end up with good results, so this funny behaviour is no big deal. But When I first started using Affinity a few months ago these strong compensations weren't needed. Did I change some type of setting somewhere? Or is something else askew? Thanks. Arie

Ah, yes, I remember now. Adobe did have something like this at one point. My idea is to have an Affinity version that creates output compatible with Lensfun.

I suppose I could. But this is one of these things that should just work. Even something as basic as Microsoft Paint can recognize Affinity's compressed tiff files. And Canon's DPP can't. tsk, Canon.

Hi Walt, I tried messing with with the file extensions (upper vs lowercase, tif vs tiff) and none gets DPP to recognize them. I'm pretty sure it's the type of tiff compression that Affinity applies. This is DPP's problem, not Affinity. Affinity's compressed tiff files are clearly valid because they open in other applications and thumbnail correctly in Windows 11 file explorer. This is too bad because DPP also works well as a raw browser (replacing Adobe Bridge in my copy of CS6, which does not recognize .CR3 files) Arie

Hi Stapler, Canon's DPP does a masterful job of raw conversion. The output is sharp, the tonal values are excellent, noise is well-controlled, and the software is intuitive to use. But: 1) DPP only has lens profiles for Canon lenses. Aside from Canon lenses I use Sigma, Tamron, and Tokina gear. Of course, these third-party lenses are not supported by Canon. It'll convert photos taken with these lenses, but distortion, c/a and vignetting remain uncorrected. 2) While DPP produces awesome output, it is slooow. Processing individual images is torture. It's best to set values for a bunch of images, start a batch-convert to tiff, and then walk away to go get a cup of coffee. 3) Switching between software packages results in a less-than-optimal workflow. Also, for some reason, DPP does not recognize tiffs created with Affinity. That's a DPP problem, and not an Affinity problem. 4) Affinity is every bit as good as DPP, which is a major accomplishment by Serif.

Hi everyone, I've been an Affinity user for only a few months, having switched from Photoshop CS6. I've been processing a slew of raw images with Affinity using the develop and photo personas, 1.105.1342. I'm loving Affinity so far! Here are a few minor things I've come across. They are not a big deal and can be worked around, but fixing these would help increase efficiency and improve workflow. 1) In the Develop persona, in the cropping tool, it would be nice to have a reset button. I often try to straighten a horizon while forgetting to press the "straighten" button, and this results in me having to manually reset the crop box. The photo persona already has a reset button. It'd be nice to have the same in the develop persona. 2) In the Photo persona, when adding an exposure layer, the slider goes from -20 to +20 stops. This makes it hard to do minor adjustments with the slider (e.g. in quarter-stop increments). I end up typing in numbers manually. For me, a slider with +/- 4 stops would be plenty, and would give more precise control without having to go to the keyboard. If I ever needed more, I could stack multiple exposure adjustments. 3) In the Develop persona, in the Basic tab, I can create a preset. When I start up a new raw develop, the preset name is showing but default settings are applied. To fix this, I need to flip the preset to Default, and then flip the preset back to my custom-defined preset, when it finally populates the fields. In the Details tab, there is another preset that has the same behaviour. In short, the preset defaults to "default" even though a user-defined name may be showing. 4) This is more of a feature request. Under the Develop persona, under presets, it would be nice to have an automatically-generated "use settings from last photo" preset. Photoshop has this, and I used to use this a lot. These are very minor things. All of them can be worked around, but fixing this would help the workflow. Thanks. Arie

Removing fractional pixels would help me out in my processing flow. They are cumbersome when resizing images for web. I end up with fractional pixels producing a bright line at the edge of the image in most cases, which looks bad on a dark-skin background. To avoid this, when I run "resize document", I set one pixel dimension, uncheck the lock icon, and then manually round down the other pixel dimension. Not a big deal, but it does add time when resizing many images, and it is hard to automate with a macro. On a more theoretical note, IMHO pixels should be represented by integers and anything vector-related can be represented by real numbers. Fractional pixels just don't make sense.

Hi Stapler, Thanks for your reply. I work on a PC. When I fist bought my mirrorless gear, I used Canon's DPP software for raw processing. DPP works well, but for workflow considerations I really like to work fully within Affinity. There are some nice aspects in the Affinity raw persona that are missing in DPP; e.g. straightening (rotation). Affinity has some nice tools for automatic vignetting correction and automatic c/a correction. They work great on some images, but on other scenes these tools produce spurious results. It'd be nice to calculate these corrections on images shot specifically for calibration, and then to be able to store the model for future use. For example, the vignetting model could be estimated from shooting flat frames, and for c/a I could shoot a bunch of images through treebranches against a washed-out sky (before those branches leaf out). More and more, these types of corrections are becoming an essential part of the processing flow. For my lenses, these corrections are not just a nice-to-have; they are as essential as demosaicing. Ideally, the lens manufacturer would supply this data. When I purchase a lens like 24-240, 'm purchasing an imaging system that is partly optics, partly computation. I have no problem with that, as long as the manufacturer enables me to do the computational part. I suppose that in Canon's view, everyone should use DPP, and that's the end of it. I'm not quite on-board with that, and I do feel somewhat short-changed by Canon. Some software solutions are built around lens correction, e.g. DxO. That is nice, but I understand that obtaining and testing lenses is a very expensive proposition for a software company. I don't expect Affinity to do the legwork for me. I think the use of Lensfun, a community database, is the right decision. The problem with Lensfun is that it's really only supported by a few developers on GitHub, and has been losing momentum. I've been keen to run the Python scripts, but I got stuck on loading certain arcane libraries. To me, it would make sense to have lens calibration routines right within Affinity. Affinity is already 90% there - the finish line is in sight. Arie