Ferdinand13

As I said though, if you’re dealing with actual .dng files the transition process might be a lot easier. Adobe has updated this file format continuously, so whatever functionality ACR offers at the moment, should be mirrored in the file structure pretty clearly. I never keep my RAW files in their original format, but instead convert them to .dng before making any changes to avoid the whole XMP file business. Having XMP support as well though would be much appreciated of course.

That’s a good question. I’ve heard good things about Capture One, but not sure about the interoperability between ACR. However, given that .dng is an open standard, there’s no secret about what’s being saved in these files and the Serif team should be able to adapt Affinity Photo’s Develop Persona accordingly.

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. I know of this function, however it doesn’t quite do what I need it to. The RAW layer (Embedded) function will open an AF Photo project and add the RAW file as an embedded layer with the settings you’ve set up in the Develop Persona earlier. If you’d like to do changes, you can go back into the layer and change the Develop settings. What I’m after however is to save these changes to the RAW file (i.e. the .DNG, .ARW, or whatever else file format is out there). In the case of .DNG the changes will be stored right inside the file, in the case of other formats a sidecar file will be generated. Either way, my development settings are saved and I don’t have to keep track of another file - the AF Photo project. This is a lot more streamlined and would allow you to switch between RAW develop applications without losing your work.

Yes, I completely agree with this. Let’s hope they’ve got these updates on their road map!

I hear you, but I don’t quite agree, as Adobe Camera RAW is the RAW image gateway into Photoshop, which is like the mother of destructive image editing. They decided to add all of the functionality to ACR for a reason. I’m no technician, but from what I’ve learned from using RAW in my photo and video work is that anything that can be applied to the image at this stage - i.e. made part of the whole debayering-development process will mean no quality is lost. Doing these adjustments after the fact would be destructive. Talking of the “Calibration” functionality I mentioned earlier, this would even influence the debayering process itself, so would be a huge win to improve quality. Lastly, this would be a first step in allowing users to save all of these adjustments back to the RAW file and keep them for later use, instead of having to set up an AF Photo project file for every RAW picture they’re working on. With ACR that works like a charm and AF Photo’s Develop Persona should aim to do the same. Case in point, why would Serif even implement all the Overlay layer functionality to the Develop Persona, if this type of work could easily be done after the fact? I’m pretty sure that staying inside the Develop Persona for as much as possible would be beneficial - and allow for a more streamlined workflow.

Thanks for the hint and I 100% agree with your comments. The whole “Scopes” panel will need a lot more love to become actually useful. Having said that, the Adobe crowd have been asking for a Vectorscope for years and still didn’t get one. So Affinity Photo is already a step ahead. Fingers crossed their devs listen to this.

Oh great, I didn’t know that. Couldn’t find it in the list of panels, but based on the comment below, I should be looking for the “Scopes” panel.

Another useful addition to the Overlay functionality would be able to invert the gradient and brush overlays. Currently you are only able to use the "inside" of your selections (say if you're using a radial gradient). However, a lot of times you might want to affect what's "outside" your selection, so an invert option would be highly appreciated.

Coming from Adobe Camera RAW, I am used to be able to make changes to my RAW images inside the dialog and then have these changes "saved" into the RAW file itself. Using .DNG files this is saved inside the file, using any of the proprietary camera RAW files, this usually generates a sidecar file. Of course this being a RAW file, the original/default state is still kept, so I can always go back to the beginning, if I need to. Either way, in Affinity Photo there is no way to save the changes to my RAW in any other way than to "develop" the RAW and then save the resulting Affinity Photo document (ideally with the RAW file embedded into the project file). This makes for a rather cumbersome process and hides the rather versatile RAW files inside an Affinity project file. I would therefore highly appreciate, if the Serif team would add another functionality next to the "Develop" button that would enable the user to "save" the changes made back to the RAW file, as is possible inside Adobe Camera RAW.

Hey there, Coming from Adobe Camera RAW, there are a couple of settings that are still sorely missed inside of Affinity Photo. Namely the ability to make changes to the Hue, Saturation and Luminance via a "HSL" section, as well as a "Camera Calibration" section that would allow to change the way in which the primaries are interpreted before any of the other settings of the Develop Persona are being applied. This link gives a better idea of what is possible inside ACR: Render Impeccable Skin Tone Easily, Using Camera Raw & A Slider You Didn’t Know Existed Having this functionality would really make a big difference in how RAW pictures could be developed inside Affinity Photo - at the moment things still feel a bit too basic.

Having the Scope/Vectorscope in Affinity Photo's Develop Persona is a really powerful tool and something that even Photoshop's Camera RAW dialog doesn't have as of yet. However in it's current implementation the Vectorscope is a bit useless. First of all, the main use of the Vectorscope in my view is to ensure your skintones are correct, making use of the "I" line at around 11 o'clock. In order to do this, you currently have to crop your image to a suitable area of your subject's skin, make the changes to your WB and Tint settings to have the colour align better to the "I" line, then reset the crop back to where it was before. This process is a bit too convoluted. Instead, it would be great, if the user could marquee select an area of the image which would then be isolated in the Vectorscope. Making changes, one would then be able to see the Vectorscope update (still in isolation mode), before clicking out of the isolation mode once the changes have been made. Another possible way to achieve this would be to be able to link the image zoom to the Vectorscope, so it would sample only the area of the image that's currently visible. This way one could zoom all the way to a suitable area of skin and make changes accordingly. Furthermore - as a takeaway from DaVinci Resolve - it would be a great addition, to have a "circle" appear on the Vectorscope that corresponds with the area of colour that's under the cursor. This way, once again, the user would be able to quickly identify where the colours "live" and if skintones are in the right ballpark. Lastly, if it would be able for the cursor to not just sample a 1x1 pixel area but larger pixel areas that could be user defined, this would also help a lot, as often with the Vectorscope the user is after sampling an averaged area of pixels rather than individual ones. P.S.: Is there a reason why the Vectorscope is only available inside the Develop Persona? It'd be incredibly useful for the standard "Photo" persona as well.

Hi, in Affinity Photo's Develop Persona it would be incredibly useful to add a reset function to the crop tool. As a general quality of life improvement it would be really nice to have in general. However, since I use the crop tool to isolate an area of skintone on my subject to get a clear readout on the Vectorscope (which is a really nice tool to have), being able to reset the crop tool after use is a must. I don't want to have to drag the crop frame back to the edges of my image every time. And while we're at it, it would be useful to just drag out a marquee selection for the crop tool on the image, instead of the current functionality, where you're presented with the crop frame overlaying the entire picture, which then requires you to drag in from the corners to get the crop frame where you want it. This is useful in a lot of scenarios, but in the one I mentioned above - where I just want to isolate skin tones - it would be a lot faster, if I could just drag out the crop frame over the area I want to sample. Thanks for taking this into account 😊

Agreed, being able to save as a preset would be very useful.

Absolutely agree. Just stumbled across this issue today when using Overlays for the first time. It is really frustrating not being able to rename them when you've made half a dozen overlay adjustments and then have to guess which one is which 😅

Dear people at Affinity, you really have to implement this feature. I'm just stuck at the most basic of jobs and can't do it using either of your (otherwise quite stellar) apps. I've now downloaded Gimp to help me turn a text selection (really jagged complex outline) into a path. This is really basic level stuff that must be included in the next update. Thanks!