DeepDesertPhoto

About a month or so ago I posted a topic asking when APh was going to add JPF (JPEG2000) support. During the discussion I was told by several forum members that they were able to open files with extensions of JP2. However, all of my old JPEG2000 files had the extension of .JPF and I kept getting an error that this file type was not supported. This was most likely due to the JPF extension being only used by Photoshop. A couple of members pointed me in the direction of other programs and online services that would do the job but I found those programs cumbersome to use and I did not like doing online conversions since image theft is rampant on the internet. After much searching I finally found one program that is free and will open older Photoshop JPF files. It is called GIMP. Many of you probably know about it. In the past GIMP only supported 8 bit color depth, but in their newest release, version 2.10.14, they have now added 16 and 32 bit color depth support. They also added support for what they referred to as "Rare Formats". They did not state JPF specifically but I decided to take a chance and download the program. To my relief GIMP was able to open my older JPF files if they were already in RGB mode. Because GIMP does not support LAB color I had to use my Mac's Preview App to convert the JPFs that were in LAB to JP2 RGB. I then opened the JP2s produced by Preview App with GIMP and exported them to 16 bit RGB TIFF. The only thing I had to do before converting the JPF to TIFF was change the display resolution from the GIMP default of 72PPI to 300PPI so that the resulting TIFF would be at 300PPI. After the conversion using GIMP I was then able to open the new TIFF file with Affinity Photo and simply convert it back to LAB color before saving it to replace the original JPF version. Just thought I would alert all of you that there is now a free solution to the conversion of older JPFs in case any of you still have files in that older format. On an additional note about the conversion, if you have to use the Preview App to convert a JPF to JP2 set it for lossless to preserve all the original quality. I know that Affinity Photo can open JP2, but when I tried that the colors displayed were over saturated. I also tried using the Preview App to convert the JPFs that were in LAB color directly to TIFF but the Preview App would not give me a 16 bit option and the result was duller colors. By using GIMP to convert the JP2 to 16 bit TIFF the color saturation stayed original.

Apparently this is an issue that the techs for Affinity Photo will have to answer. It is not causing a problem with processing the photos, it is just an inconvenience when I have to drag the file tabs into their proper order before I begin processing the photos. Maybe someone from Affinity Photo will address this later or perhaps it will be fixed in a later update.

Like I mentioned, if I open the files one at a time they do line up in the tabs in their original order. I can also drag the tabs into their original order, but that takes a little time if I have 8 or 10 files open at the same time. I also mentioned that when opening RAW files in which the file sizes are almost identical the opening order is completely random. I am wondering if this has something to do with the camera metadata because the only thing that varies a lot from image to image is the camera settings for each shot.

I read through that thread and it seems the problem has not been addressed yet by those that write the code for APh, especially since I have the current version 1.7.3 I know it is not a problem with my Mac's Finder App because when I use the finder to select a group and open them with the Preview App they all open in their assigned alphanumeric name order. This random opening of the files seems to be only when I use APh to open them.

If I open the files one at a time they will line up in order in the tabs. The problem starts when I select a group of images to open together. When I am opening RAW files as a group and they are close to the same size or have identical file sizes APh opens them in a totally random order. It seems the date does not matter because when I select a group of RAWs they all have the same date with only the hours and minutes varying. But even then when I select them they are in an order and yet APh opens them randomly. Does anyone have a technical reason APh might be doing this? Could it have something to do with the camera metadata for each file?

I am not sure if this topic has been covered before. I really love Affinity Photo. In my opinion it is superior to photoshop in many aspects, at least when compared to CS5 since that was the last photoshop I used to use before switching to APh. But there is one thing about APh that is kind of annoying. When I highlight a group of images I want to open at the same time APh always opens and orders them in the tabs according to their files sizes and not the order they are arranged in according to their alphanumeric names. This is particularly annoying when it is a group of photos I am processing to be made into a panorama. I went into the preferences and cannot find anything listed for how the files are opened or ordered in the tabs. Is there a way to make a group of files open in their alphanumeric order and not their sizes?

I'm using a MacBook Pro Retina Laptop. I went to a website for testing the accuracy of my LCD screen and even though it is not 100% accurate it is in the "good" range. The only thing that is visibly out of adjustment is the gamma. The site also said that all monitors should be calibrated once every month or two depending upon usage. I checked the date of my last calibration and it is dated January of 2019. So it is overdue for a calibration. I ran a builtin utility for the color profiles in my Mac and out of 65 profiles it only found 3 errors. Since it takes a significant amount of time to do this calibration I will have to get to it another time. But another way I know that my photo colors are accurate, or at least good enough for commercial use, is through the agencies I sell my photography through. They are very harsh critics and if something is visibly wrong with the photos I submit they will reject them and tell me what is wrong with them. I have never gotten any rejects for color problems.

If left on factory default you would be correct. The LCD screen of my Mac would not give me color accuracy straight out of the box because the default setting tends to have a bluer tint. I carefully calibrated my LCD display by running the calibration program built into the Mac. It actually took 15 minutes to properly calibrate because I had to manually select some of the test patterns according to how I perceived the blacks and grays. If white objects looked white on the screen after calibration that is how you know if the colors are correct. If any white objects or white patterns on the screen have any kind of tint then the calibration needs to be redone.

This is the reason I use LAB. Color accuracy. When I print my LAB color images they do come out very close to what I see on the computer screen. RGB and straight CMYK color modes don't always look right when compared to what I see on the screen.

Like I said, I came to my conclusions through experimentation. When I found a setting in my printer that produced the most accurate colors I saved that setting as a separate preset so that I did not have to adjust it every time I tried to print an image. Notice in the screenshots of my prior comment that I have a preset called "Photo-Gloss-13x19". That setting is a preset I created specifically for LAB color mode images being printed on 13x19 inch photo paper. I have similar presets for different sizes and types of images.

I am not an expert on printers. What I know is based on experimentation. I know that printers are inherently CMYK because all printers have at least 4 to 5 ink cartridges. I use a Canon Printer and it has the standard Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black(K). But Canon also has a 2nd Black cartridge that is listed as Pigment Black. All of the other cartridges are made of dye ink. When I open an image that is already set to LAB color mode the print window that pops up has several setting options for color. Here are two settings I tweak to make sure my images in LAB get printed correctly. If I leave these settings in factory default the prints don't turn out right when I try to print LAB color mode images. So it might not be just the LAB color, but also how the printer is set up to handle that color mode.

I used to use Epson printers but I found certain colors just did not come out right and black and white images always had a greenish tint to them. I switched to Canon and the prints had more accurate colors and black and white images came out with more accurate grays with Canon. I am not sure why Canon is better, it might be due to how the printer drivers handle images in LAB color mode. I set this stuff in the printer settings. I do know that if you leave the printer on factory default settings it will print using whatever the factory settings are. I don't think the printer actually prints in LAB color. I think the driver software takes the LAB profile and configures it as close as possible to whatever color gamut the printer is capable of. All I know is that when I open an image in LAB color the resulting print colors seem closer to what I see on the screen. When I try to print images in RGB some color shades of don't look the same as what is displayed on the screen.

I set it up that way by going into the preferences. Here is a screenshot of the preferences I set for color.

Yes, that is true. APh does not have LAB for processing NEF or other RAW camera formats. When I process my NEF files I have APh set to open the NEFs in 32 bit RGBA Wide Gamut. After editing I then develop it and convert to LAB 16 bit for any final editing. I then save the final edited image as a TIFF in LAB 16 bit. I use that TIFF version as my master copy for making any prints and RGB 8 bit JPEGs that I upload to the art sites and stock agencies I deal with. I would send them the TIFF but most of the websites I deal with only accept JPGs.

I've been using LAB color for 17 years. I find it better than straight RGB. Here is an article explaining LAB. http://geraldbakker.nl/psnumbers/lab-explained.html The biggest advantages of LAB are that the Luminance is separate from the colors and LAB has a wider color gamut than either RGB or CMYK. I can adjust colors using LAB in ways that just don't work with RGB. And for me the proof is that way the prints turn out. You can also make adjustments using LAB that you cannot do with RGB. Here is a video about making adjustments using LAB in Affinity Photo.