First of all, I truly am grateful that you reached out.
So, I’ve had to find a way to do tweaks to my raw(ARW) files (via Darktable), before having them populated into AP’s ‘New Stack’ feature. As you might already know, RAW files with any XMP data (referring to edits made outside of AP) cannot be populated into the ‘New Stack’. The new stack only brings in the RAW file, without adjustments. I know this may sound redundant. But, I just want to make sure that I am articulating this in a way that’s understandable.
To continue, I was hoping to load into the stack files that contained a greater amount of information than a JPEG and much less than a TIFF. I tried importing images that were converted to JPEG 2000 files, via Darktable. We’ll, Affinity didn’t seem to like that, much. So, I opted to convert my raw files, with the associated tweaks, into the highest level quality JPEG (again, Darktable). Imported those JPEG‘s into Affinity, using the New Stack feature. And there you have it, my ‘work around’.
All that being said, it sure would be nice if Affinity Photo were able to come up with a new, MUCH more simple, means of doing this. Possibly their own photo management client?
Just another passenger desperately fleeing the titanic (Adobe).