asharpe

Thanks! I wonder why they aren't available globally, instead of just on layers. It's good to know they are there in levels, though (and not in curves? I always use curves instead of levels, since you can do levels and more with just curves). Can I request a feature enhancement to have them globally available, possibly treated the same as grids, having the ability to easily toggle them on or off?

I know I can show clipping in Develop mode, and the program shows red for highlight clipping, and blue for shadow clipping. How can I enable the same displays for Photo mode?

Well, I appear to have been mistaken. Here is a rather succinct description of what happens between Develop and Photo: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/31866-raw-workflownik-plug-insbw/?p=155176 In a nutshell, apparently the edits during Develop are destructive in the sense that once you are in Photo, you cannot undo them anymore. Affinity claims they never touch the raw file, which is very good for me; it was going to be a deal breaker if they did. However, I might add that the status messages leaving Develop certainly led me to believe that they were writing the raw file. But the modification date of the file didn't change, and there is nothing in the EXIF to indicate that Affinity did anything. So, I will do more experimenting, but it appears that the raw file is untouched, as it should be.

As a matter of reference, I use a Pentax K-3, and produce DNG files out of camera. They are about 30MB. These load into Affinity 1.5.1 in about 8 seconds. I'm using an late-2013 iMac, 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16GB memory, regular hard drive (not SSD).

... what is the appropriate workflow to ensure that my raw files (DNGs, in my case) are not modified by the program, but I allow me to still edit them in the Photo Persona? Is the only way to process them with yet another raw processing program that will not destructively save (by using xml sidecars, etc.) and then exporting as tiff? Is there any way I can open a DNG in Affinity, and immediately go to Photo without saving the file back to the DNG? I know I can turn off "automatic" raw processing options in the Assistant Options, but I'm still concerned that if I save back to the DNG (by leaving Develop), ostensibly not changing anything, Affinity will *still* modify the original DNG. I don't want it to do that, since I always want the untouched, raw file available. What I'm thinking of doing is copying the raw file before I open it in Affinity, but that seems wasteful. How do other folks implement a fully non-destructive workflow starting from a raw file, using only Affinity? An interesting related question is: how does Affinity know not to apply all the auto corrections again to a raw file that has already been through Develop? It can't reapply all the noise reduction, curves and lens correction again, can it? That would be silly. So, perhaps it's writing an EXIF field that says "I've already messed with this file, don't mess with it again"?