Hello,
After evaluating Affinity Photo I purchased it, although there are a few points that are slightly unclear to me.
"Issues" I encountered:
Noise reduction is top notch... for the most part. It tends to keep noisy bands along edges, particularly visible on bright subject/dark shadow. Cranking settings up does not help and destroy the image.
Noise reduction "details" seem to do nothing at all for me, and I found myself wanting it to either keep more or keep less at times.
Sharpening is a bit weak inside the RAW develop module, not a big issue as I usually sharpen later using high pass but a bit more punch directly there could be nice.
The exposure compensation in the raw development moduleis a bit weak (-2/+2). I could use more sometimes.
Highlights/Shadows quickly go back/burnt compared to what other RAW engines can do with the dynamic range of my files
Settings do not get along together very well, like they were actually compressing the dynamic range for real so other settings multiply that effect and you quickly get clipped blacks and burnt highlights as well.
Develop output (all settings to 'take no action') to 32-bit does not seem to keep the dynamic range of the file, which is easy to see when changing exposure as an adjustment layer after the fact. I know, like ACR and photoshop (although ACR cannot even output to 32-bit...). Not sure if you can do anything about it.
Noise reduction is less effective on files from a camera with a low pass AA filter (most Canon), as the noise is splotchier, than from a camera without such AA filter.
Wishes:
Output to real 32-bit with intact dynamic range (unless I missed something that doesn't seem to work for me).
Output all your tweaks as a stack of adjustment layers, instead of burning it into the file once developed.
Finer grain control on colors (more individual shades to adjust, I found particularly difficult without painting with a brush to adjust the yellow beack of a bird for example, which is easy in LR and the bunch of different shades you can act on).
Improved noisy areas around edges with NR.
Improved black halos with sharpen and clarity.
Not related to RAW but if DnD a layer onto a new pixel layer icon could duplicate it I know, PS habits die hard...
The great things:
The noise reduction overall.. Amazing how it can kill noise without killing details. And how it can do nothing if there is no noise! Not something frequently seen. Just this annoying edges noise to prevent me to say best NR tool I ever saw.
The Sync before/after for the split and mirror views, well done. An improvement idea would be to let you select the history stack level to compare to, and it would be perfect.
The speed of most editings.
The availability of usually RAW specific tools as filters: Awesome.
Best regards
