Doug B

I should add a side note: The alternative to making the RAW processing algorithms as good as ACR or Capture One Pro 10's is to simply make the workflow non-destructive, so that people can send their work from the iPad to a desktop app such as the previously mentioned apps. Wow, was that or was that not a great way to plug a non-destructive workflow again? Iol

I'm going to be as diplomatic as possible, but I'm also not going to sugar coat or be PC about things. While I absolutely LOVE Affinity Photo for what it does right, I am equally unsatisfied with what it doesn't do right at the same time. There's a real catch .22 I feel, with AP in that so many people have moved away from Adobe, singing praises that it is THE PS killer etc etc.. Especially for two distinct groups of people. The first group, are those who by principle, don't like being told that they don't own the software they paid for, and don't like being held hostage to a monthly subscription fee. Personally speaking, I think that as long as the company you're paying the sub fee to, listens to its user base, and offers an even return on the investment, that it's fine. But Adobe aren't really that great in those areas, IMO. The second group, whom are also a niche group *I happen to be one of them*, but growing in numbers annually, are Fuji Film users. We are dissatisfied with the way that Adobe/ACR does its demosaicing for sharpening, as it can literally ruin a shot. However.. That is not to say that ACR does a poor job in general when it comes to other basic RAW processing, because it doesn't. It actually does a great job with highlight and shadow recovery, kelvin, curves, contrast and noise reduction. It also does a great job with how it resizes and exports. It also has some really amazing tools, right inside of ACR, not even LR that people often overlook. But I digress. My point is coming... And here it is: For all of the things that ACR does right, I feel that Affinity photo has quite a ways to go when trying to match those features. I personally wouldn't touch Affinity for RAW processing with a 50 foot pole right now. It's.. well, not good. (See? Diplomatic) Since I've deleted LR/adobe stuff from my machine, I can't even compare it to the next best thing, which is Capture One Pro 10. Now that.. is software that pretty much gets those things right. I still think that LR does a better job with highlight recovery vs Capture One, but when compared to Affinity or On1 Photo RAW? No comparison, LR is still king, and the latter two stink on ice. Sorry, that was NOT diplomatic. In my ever so humble opinion, I can never ever recommend Affinity Photo to anyone wanting to get away from their current DAM such as LR/Capture One etc in favor of it. I just don't really see the point of even having the develop module in its current state. I know that's harsh, sorry. And while one can make the argument that you should just "get it right in camera", so that you don't have to mess with highlights or shadows or contr... Yeah, that's not very sensible. Those things exist for a reason. I guess that all I'm saying is that Affinity for the iPad will never be great, until AP for the desktop is much improved in those areas. After all, it has to look up to its big brother/sister, no? Concerned, Doug

That said, it is easy enough to send feedback to apple. I'd recommend throwing the request their way.

+1 Might be hard to do though, because of the pixel density vs resolution. This is why an iPad would make a terrible hybrid laptop.

Ya know what's crazy? The new OnePlus 5 phone has an option for 8 gigs of RAM! There's literally no excuse for a company to put a paltry 2 gigs of RAM into a product, and then put the word "Pro" in its name.

I'm curious... Why would anybody want to use such a thing vs. using their desktop with a calibrated monitor and a Wacom or Wacom-esque tablet? Isn't the latency an issue at the very least? Doug.

Yes. RAM could indeed be a limiting factor, unless the Serif team are THAT GOOD with optimizations! I won't say they aren't, and just hope they have as much confidence in themselves as I have for them. lol.

YES. Please. And before the mods and devs get totally sick of me asking for it.. .Non destructive editing to go with said DAM!

I don't agree on the "never" part. With mobile processors getting as powerful as they are, the ability is pretty much there. It has more to do with optimizations as well as business moves. Nobody wants to cannibalize one of their products to make room for a lesser priced one that does the job just as well. But the think that companies like Serif are going to realize at some point, is that people will pay as much for an iOS app as they will a desktop app, so long as the results are fairly equal. So it this one. You are absolutely correct. Fuji cameras do not saturate the market as much as Canikon camera's do... But then again, the same thing can be said about Sony, and they seem to garner a lot of support. And most camera sensors are made by Sony. I own a Nikon D300 *my baby* and so, I will absolutely test out some NEF's. Good observation though, on your part. And yes, I've also come to the conclusion that getting a Macbook varietal, would be better suited to a mobile workflow. Which, I find most unfortunate. To have the ability to carry around something as powerful as a Macbook, but with the form factor and weight of an iPad is a dream... I've thought about the Surface line as well, I just cannot stand Windows. But, I'm not closed to the idea, to be honest. At this point in time, your conclusion is logical. I don't think it's a misunderstanding *at least not on my part* as much as it is a glimmer of hope that the current workflow will change in the near-ish future. I don't think that it would be impossible for an app such as AP to take on attributes of a non-destructive photo editor or smart editor. I think it's also a bit condescending to say that people don't know what the difference is between a DAM and a pixel editor. The only thing that a DAM offers up over a pixel editor, for the most part, is a way to manage/catalog files, and of course, non-destructive editing. But I don't think that the latter has to be synonymous with the definition of a DAM. I also think that it wouldn't take much for Serif to cook up a separate app that would act as a DAM, sort of something like Photo Mechanic, that can round-trip photos non destructively between it and AP. Sure, it would take lots of time and effort, but... That's what money is for. We would all pay well for such a thing. I just find it very counter-productive to have such a powerful app as AP for iOS, while it is so very limited. And while I don't disagree that there are a lot of other features the devs can work on fixing/making better/adding, I don't think that my request is one that should be looked over or ignored. It should at least be a discussion for the future. If not, I see AP for the iPad as just another bloated piece of software that can be pushed in among the myriad ranks of iOS photo editors. Have you seen Polar lately? Best, Doug

To preface, I should state that I use an Fuji XT-1 and XT-2. Also still have but barely use my D300. 
 
 I didn’t start this topic with the intention of picking a fight. I absolutely adore Affinity Photo on my Mac and it has completely taken over PS duties for me. That said, what it has NOT done on the Mac, and I suspect even less so in the case with the iOS version, is take over as my RAW processor. And there's a very good reason for this. The RAW decoding and demosaicing algorithms have a long way to go where RAW processing is concerned. I use AP mainly for things like cloning, skin retouching and a few other things as such. It is excellent for such things, and saves a lot of time compared to messing about in LR or other apps. 
 I stopped using Lightroom about a year or so ago, and at times, am sorry to have done so. I’ve had to though, because the way it renders X-Trans files is quite poor, when compared to other applications on the Mac. I moved over to Capture One Pro 9 and now have 10. It's an excellent piece of software, and I thought I had settled on it, but recently, On1 has released new software that will likely rival Capture One Pro, and in not that long a period of time. 
 Every piece of software has its strengths and weaknesses, and Capture One's biggest weakness/flaw is in how it handles its self as a DAM. The new ON1 Photo RAW is great in that sense, but currently, has issues with file exporting... (Which is being fixed and patched by next week) So I'm not ditching Capture One. Adobe's ACR is great for most users, and is what LR uses inside of its GUI, which again, is great for most, but poor for Fuji users. 
 If Affinity was able to handle RAW processing like On1 or Capture One, it would be the ultimate all-in-one photo editor, IMO. But it doesn't, and so.. It is not. Here's where the problem lies for the mobile version:
 If the intention is to begin editing while on the go, such as at an event/shoot etc, you absolutely MUST have Affinity demosaic and process the RAW file, in order that it sync's up to your desktop version of Affinity Photo *which I don't even think is a feature yet*. The problem with this is that once the file has been made a PSD/TIFF or afphoto, you can no longer get back what was in the RAW file. That's just how it goes. The changes are burned in, with not much more leverage than a jpg file at that point. 
 So then, when I look at how AP handles things like highlight and shadow recovery, contrast and micro contrast and see how utterly terrible they are (and they really are), then there is zero chance that I would ever use the mobile version to do things like skin retouching or cloning before adjusting the RAW values. I can say the same thing for On1 Photo RAW though. When comparing the 3 apps, Capture One comes out well above the rest, without question. Where Affinity Photo WILL work, is obviously after the color correction, sharpening, levels using another app like Capture One etc.. But this really leaves a very large gap in the RAW workflow on the iPad. Also, I’m speaking in terms of what-if’s, since there is no such thing as desktop and mobile sync without iCloud Drive. The issue I have with this, is that iCloud Drive takes up space on ones computer, and there is no dropbox-esque option, where you can access iCloud Drive solely via the web. Anyway, I don’t necessarily regret getting AP for the iPad, but after having thought things through, more than when I got excited to hear it was available and at the $20 price.. I think it’s safe for me to say that it won’t get much use in its current iteration. I’m curious to know if others have thought about this as well, and what conclusions have been drawn as such. I have attached 6 files. 3 are unedited. The other three have highlight recovery and negative exposure values added. I picked this photo specifically, because it was a misfire *finger twitched* and the settings cause the highlights to blow and exposure was hot. You can clearly see how well the three apps handle the amount of highlight recovery, and then highlight recovery with -exposure added to help. Capture One Pro is clearly, without challenge, the winner. Doug


I totally agree with your assessments here. I wonder though, about the new file/folder system in iOS 11. I'm betting that it will be strictly cloud based and not machine local. That, would be like a step forward and two giant steps back, UNLESS they implemented something like Dropbox, where you don't need to store files locally on your desktop machine's drive, and only via the web. Of course, the better solution, as you noted, would be to have an actual physical storage device for these things. But without a non-proprietary way to hook up to such a thing, it's already a dead in the water idea. Apple will NEVER let its users have access to a physical file system. Even if root is hidden. Still too much of as security risk. I've used the Sandisk Media Drive for a while, and it's a pretty cool solution, but at the end of the day, its battery will eventually die, and you also have to make sure that it is charged before really working with it. Not very elegant or practical IMO. Doug

Except I don't recall Cook ever saying such a thing. His words if I recall correctly, were more like "these products can replace a laptop for SOME people". And honestly, until we see physical external storage that doesn't depend on being wireless, creating an ad-hoc network to connect, and needing to recharge a battery, it will NEVER replace a true laptop. Not to mention having a built in keyboard. You cannot call something it is not. The keyboard/mouse/trackpad are very specific tools which are needed to interface with items that require extremely fine and precise pixels on the display. Said pixels which are in greater abundance and are a lot closer together, vs a tablet, where icons are the norm due to space constraints. Two years you say? I will bet you all of my stock options vs yours or your annual salary, that will not happen. Betting man are you? :P Doug

In no way would I ever imply that an iPad could be a desktop/laptop replacement in terms of what robust apps can do on those platforms. In fact, I had a "debate" with one of my best friends last night about this. He's a graphic illustrator. He made the mistake of saying that the iPad is finally going to be able to be a replacement for a "computer", to which I scoffed. My issue with this is that there's no real interoperability between the two systems, and with very good reason. I'd get into it, but have to leave. Suffice it to say, editing on the iPad, IMO.. Should be looked at as an intermediary. I can do a lot of work on files while in transit, and if AP is able to sync the changes I make in its native file format, to my desktop, that means I'm being a lot more efficient with my workflow. I shot an event the other day. If I was able to retouch skin, crop etc while on the train home, imagine... I get home, sit down on the couch, continue to cull and edit, all the while, these files are being uploaded to a server. Then I get to the desktop, and said photos are able to sync, and I finish up there when I'm ready. More later...

It's a beta. No one should ever expect things to work properly or expect support from a beta. Not even Apple supports issues when the beta is installed. This is how it works and there are disclaimers that one must read and agree to when installing said beta. Please do not expect the Serif team to work on bugs with a beta release. That's a pretty pompous and short sighted comment. The fact that YOU don't know any professional artists who utilize an iPad for illustration/graphic work or other image based work, does not speak for the industry on the whole. I guess that might put you, in the minority. Might want to broaden your perspective a bit.

This made me VERY happy to see during the WWDC! Is there going to be an spot for user requests moving forward? Because if so, my numero UNO request would be to have AP on the iPad and desktop talk to one another and sync changes. That would make things amazingly.... amazing! Doug