timlt

FYI, I was talking about On1 vs Lightroom. I don't have any take on C1p, I've never owned or even tried it.

LOL, sorry was way too clever for me. 😂 Was kitty eyes that glow like lasers supposed to help me with solving pet eye in Affinity somehow?

So thanks for the replies! I finally got back to this, my own result is attached. The best, simplest guide I've found to doing this anywhere appeared recently online, and works perfectly in Affinity, here: How to Fix Pet Eye in Your Photos https://www.lifewire.com/photoshop-fix-pet-eye-1702736 Short version of directions: 1. Zoom in, create a layer, use a moderately soft brush (I used about 70%) with black foreground to paint a circle just larger than the problem area. Then, hide this layer. 2. Make a new layer. Set the color foreground to white, use a smaller hard brush (I used 100%) and paint the "glint" in the pupils. 3. Unhide the hidden layer, flatten the 3 layers and save. Note: I had an additional, optional step after (2). I had some blotchy, miscolored spots in the dog's eye that weren't addressed by the above steps to fix the pupils. So, I used the color picker eyedropper tool, matched the surrounding color area that was 'normal', and used that to paint over the bad areas in the eye outside the pupil.

I agree with the previous, esp the bit about sidecar files not being truly compatible across applications. If you create sidecar files in any app other than Adobe, quick, can you name one other app that can read your app's proprietary sidecar files? The only reasons I can see to create sidecar files are (1) To have a portable backup system to the edits/metadata in your app's database, and (2) Makes it easier to have your RAW edits be accessible on different computer systems. As long as you're able to backup your app's DB somehow, and if you have a way to use it across systems without sidecars, than there's no need to use sidecars. I in fact stopped using them with Adobe apps because (1) I can backup the catalog, and (2) I can use it across systems by keeping the catalog and preview files on a flashdrive that I simply move to another computer. Hence, no need for sidecars at all. On your last para: Adobe Bridge does that right?

That HP is a fantastic laptop--I had a 2017 one which is now with my daughter, both loved it. Even has a Thunderbolt port so will work with some very hi-speed storage peripherals that will be compatible with your Macbook. I bet you will you will like that. My eldest daughter just got the new 2020 model, and it actually ups the ante over the earlier ones. They are on a roll with that series. Honestly don't know if there's some specific issue with the Mac version Bridge. Probably I'd ping the adobe forums if you haven't already, sorry I can't help much.

Interesting--sorry to hear about your woes. Just to confirm: are you using this in Mac or Windows? Not sure that matters, but I use Windows and haven't experienced the behavior you describe up to this point. But you are probably a more heavy duty user of it than I am, so maybe I'm not pushing the app up to its capacity and beyond. I'm definitely certain that you can use Bridge for free without an Adobe subscription--I was using it long before I recently got the subscription. It just drops the ACR support. But if one is content to use the Affinity RAW editor, and if you configure Affinity on your system to be the default editor for the jpg/png/tiff/psd other file types, then using it with Bridge works fine. You could be right about them dropping stuff--they've abruptly changed directions before. Not quite as bad as Google about pulling the rug out from under people, but they do it at times. It's hard to know what they'll do next. For example, their public story is they'll continue supporting Lightroom Classic alongside the new lightweight cloud-only version that most don't like too much. But they are pushing the cloud version REALLY hard, and everybody seems to think they will eventually can the classic version. I've been in a research mode lately to find something that would give full CR3 support and my specific camera, since Affinity doesn't. Here's the short list: * Adobe * DXO * Capture One * On1 2020 * Skylum Luminar 4 * Free open source app: Digikam 7.0 beta (uses open source libraw library, just recently added support for CR3, unfortunately the rendering in the software is awful) Of these, I tried all, extensively, except for Capture 1 which I didn't try because I don't want to spend that much. I get the best, most consistent results with CR3 by far with the Adobe apps, either ACR + PS, or just in Lightroom. DXO was a close second, but their DAM functioanlity IMHO is weak and not-yet developed, they are not responsive on support requests, they are quite pricey for what you get, and they also didn't provide RAW support for the DNG's that come from my Samsung Galaxy phone, which is a pretty common phone. If DXO would up their game a little bit, they'd be a serious competitor in my mind. I like the DAM functionality in On1, a lot, they are the closest compettitor to Lightroom IMHO. Unfortunately their RAW rendering is really really subpar.

Now here is a full-size RAW file that does not use C-RAW compression. Like the Pillsbury Dough Boy used to say about their muffins: THEY'RE HUGE! :-) Same result: "The file could not be parsed." IMG_0267.CR3

I've attached an example CR3 file that won't open. Note: this file is using the compressed CR3 or "C-RAW" feature to keep the file size a bit smaller than full RAW. IMG_0255.CR3

For For the record, I have the same camera and same issue. Does it change anything for you if you dial it down and shoot at a slightly lower resolution? Haven't tried that yet and at work now. Just curious.

That is a totally valid point--I'm not a photographer OR a designer. But it's a fair point that Lightroom is 100% about photography. Bridge is a great app though and I do use that for browsing all the digital assets I have including PDFs, and tagging with metadata. Also use it to pull incoming images from my camera, cull those, and convert to DNG using the Adobe DNG converter under the hood. And sometimes if just doing a quick edit, I actually launch the ACR raw editor on a file from there, if that file is not yet in Lightroom for some reason. Bridge is a great app and I read some complaints a few years back they were letting it die. I don't believe that's the case now, if it ever was. They have recently made some updates to it and it runs very smoothly and has a great feature set. I use it almost daily even as a non-graphics-pro user of any type. Considering it's free, even for non-Adobe subscribers, it's worth considering to use as your DAM with Affinity. Although without an Adobe photography plan subscription it won't give you a couple things that I need, and that many would probably want. The main one for me is that is doesn't give you the rich raw editing capabilities of Adobe Camera RAW. But if Affinity handles your cameras RAW files types and you are ok working with their RAW editor, obviously it's not a problem. Honestly, if Affinity gets support added for CR3 + my specific camera and lens, I'm there. I'll be running Affinity, editing CR3's in Affinity, and using Bridge as my DAM. And will probably drop the Adobe subscription and Lightroom.

I have nothing to gain from saying this as I don't use ON1 anyway--but having just recently tried it, it's QUITE similar to lightroom in how it handles the metadata for edited raw and image files. You can optionally enable sidecars, OR (like lightroom) there's a setting that I just went and confirmed, you can turn that off and ON1 will simply store all the settings in its own database. Obviously the advantage there is speed (less files to manage, less reads and writes to disk, and so on) and performance, and a cleaner file system with the appearance of less clutter since all the *.on1 sidecar files are not created. The disadvantage is if you don't create sidecars, as fde101 says, the whole database containing your edits is less portable and harder to move between systems. Interestingly, On1 is now claiming to address that issue as well. They have a new feature they call "On1 sync" that they say is coming first half of 2020, that will address the need to easily share your database among multiple different computers and even mobile devices. They are ambitious for sure, they are adding features to compete head-to-head against Adobe and it's interesting to see. All that said, for a DAM, I still think Lightroom is the one to beat. Ultimately ON1's handling of RAW files was notably inferior to Adobe's, I literally could not get the same results in terms of image quality. You can use Lightroom with Affinity Photo quite easily, so it's a great solution there as we can all use our favorite photo editor. I said it earlier, but if I were a pro photographer, unless just totally on a limited budget, there's no way I'd use any DAM other than Lightroom Classic. I'd suck it up and pay the $10/month, and heck, I'm doing that now even as a rank amateur.

That is good detail. Two thoughts on this, after recently being forced into the Adobe fold myself, since only Adobe supports my new Canon camera and CR3 format. Lightroom: I think Lightroom is really hard to beat. Personally I love LR Classic! Its power, features, and performance are hands down the best I've seen in any DAM. Not trying to tell you what to buy, but if LR is your standard, I think nothing else will do. If you're a pro photographer, personally I wouldn't get anything else, I'd cough up the $10/month for the subscription and consider it cost of doing business. That's 2 or 3 coffees a month, not so bad when you consider all they give you for that. And you can still use LR obviously with Affinity; the Classic version of LR lets you set Affinity as your editor and in fact I'm currently doing that. If you still decide you need to switch but want a Lightroom-like experience at a reasonable cost, the closest thing yet to that I've seen (I've tried a LOT of them recently :-) ), is ON1 2020. You should really check that out. It's not Lightroom, for sure, but it's darn close. It's ambititious and has a lot of great features. On sale in fact right now too. And again, just like Lightroom, you can set Affinity Photo as an export/hand-off application, so you can right-click a photo and send to Affinity for editing.

It seems like the common theme in all this is, once you're outside the Adobe family of apps, interop between apps is really what we need most, and is often lacking. Everybody wants to build a walled garden to keep you in, so you can only use their thing. And that's tolerable if you offer a complete product line covering all needed image handling functionality. But for smaller companies products, they can't possibly do everything, so it'd make more sense to build improved interop capabilities into their apps. For example, what we're talking here, Luminar for Windows should have better options to hand off to an external editor. This was one good thing about the On1 Raw 2020 app I tested recently, they let you configure an external editor of your choice, so you can right-click an image and hand off the file to Affinity Photo for editing, then bring it back into ON1 for DAM functionality. Luminar should totally be doing this. If the RAW processor in ON1 didn't suck so much, I'd be getting that to use with Affinity.

Yeah that's a lot different from mine on Windows. Photoshop plugins do not show up, in fact, my Edit menu looks quite different from yours. And my Export option on an individual photo or selected set of photos is only for actual export to files, it's not for handing off images to another app or plugin. They have always been an Apple-first company, they've only recently added Windows support and it shows in the missing functionality, and sometimes slow performance.

@WMax70, yep I hear you on all of that. I've tried nearly every well known--and some lesser known--graphics editors and/or DAM apps out there recently, where the main goal was to find a solution for two issues I'm having: (1) That AP does not have any DAM functionality (including that it does not have super strong RAW processing options), and (2) That AP doesn't support CR3, nor my Canon camera (EOS M6 Mark ii) and lens (EF-M 18-150). Yet AP remains my favorite standalone graphics editing app, so I keep looking for ways to make it work with other complementary apps to help fill in the gaps. It's conceivable that on my second issue--support for my camera and CR3--that could be resolved fairly soon, maybe even this year. However on my first issue, unless AP is keeping their plans to develop a DAM app under lock and key, I'm not optimistic it's gonna happen. Realistically it's a small company, and they've gotta prioritize doing a great job on their core applications that they are already shipping. Building a quality DAM application is complex and takes time. I've posted this here before in the forum, but I would strongly urge Affinity to just keep doing a great job on their core apps, and for DAM, maybe try to build a partnership with another company that does build an effective DAM. Heck, maybe that partnership could be with Skylum Luminar!! Why? Well consider: both products have a strong core of historical Apple support and user base. Then, look at what each product does. In short, Luminar either does now, or is aspiring to do very soon, all the things that AP either can't do, or isn't good at. Non-destructive RAW editing, including layers support! DAM functionality (limited now, but they explicitly plan to build it out this year). Including organizing files into albums and folders, photo browsing and photo library management, tagging/ratings/metadata (the last item is weak today, but they've acknowledged that and plan to add enhanced metadata tagging, search, filtering, and related support this year). I love what Skylum is doing with Luminar, it's an extremely progressive, forward-thinking design technically, and they are savvy and planning to aggressively jump into Adobe's space that they traditionally owned, and compete as a new player. Wouldn't it be totally cool if....this year..... ....Serif and Skylum would form a partnership to deliver an end-to-end solution that features Luminar as the DAM application and RAW processor, and Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher as graphic editing and layout tools? Luminar could simply keep building out what they already plan to: turn it into a better DAM for photo management, keep adding improved support for XMP metadata, tagging, ratings, etc., and then all the sorting/searching/filtering options that go with that. At the same time, they can keep improving their RAW and photo processing tools and results. To work effectively with Affinity products, they'd simply build in some improved 'hooks' between the apps, so that you'd have simple options like "Edit in Affinity Photo" when you select an image, or "Export to Affinity Photo/Designer/Publisher" with a batch of images. IMHO, this would be a huge win for both companies, and for users. Unless Serif plans to build a competitive DAM app (which would be awesome, but I haven't heard of such plans), the LACK of a DAM app is going to continue to be a limiting factor making it hard for a lot of users to completely get off of the Adobe train. I can't see how Affinity Photo becomes a serious option for a large swath of the pro photographer market unless there's some kind of a smoothly integrated DAM product. And unless Luminar offers more serious, traditional editing functionality along with their other features, then they will struggle to get a foothold in the market, and will remain a minor player only as a plugin to Photoshop or Lightroom. Put the two together, and you'd have an end-to-end photo development platform that offers a real-world, "perpetual license subscription model" alternative to the Adobe subscription-only model. For a lot of users, this would finally be the way to escape Adobe's clutches.

Confirmed, on AP beta 1.8 and Luminar 4, I get the same results. It does work but is a little wonky. I'm using Luminar 4 as my main raw processor, not Affinity. Because AP does not handle Canon CR3 format, and also does not have profiles for my camera and lens yet. Luminar does, so it makes sense to do all my work there for now, using AP mainly for custom work on selected images. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to run Luminar as a plugin of Affinity. I think rather, it'd make sense to run it the other way around. Run Luminar as a primary raw processor, then when you need to do touchups on a file, be able to hand-off from Luminar to AP. I just submitted a feature request to Luminar that they add this functionality, like you have in Lightroom Classic for instance, which lets you specify the .exe of another graphics editor that you can hand off an image to in real-time. I think in the long run, Luminar aspires to be more of a DAM plus raw processor, which could be a very nice complement to AP, if you were to use Luminar as your main photography processor and AP as your custom editor when you need it.

Sounds like we're going thru some similar research. One of my 'requirements' for the CR3 processing software is that it needs to perform reasonably well. Here's a comparative example of how two of the programs I've tested did with a set of 34 RAW files that I had converted from CR3 to DNG. In both cases, the app was converting the 34 files from DNG to a full-quality full-size 300 ppi JPEG with no refinements applied: * Luminar 4: 15 minutes * LR Classic: 1 minute Other apps I tested outside of LR, were similarly slow. DxO produces beautiful output especially on noise reduction of RAWS, no question. But omigosh, it can be SO slow, and it's support of many lenses and cameras is totally lacking. Doesn't even support leading/current cell phones, like Galaxy S10! The performance and feature support on a lot of these apps outside of Adobe is so bad, I'm amazed anyone will pay for them. Another one you hear people talking about a lot is ON1 2020 Photo--my theory is that it's popular for 2 reasons: it's relatively cheap and a perpetual license, AND it essentially does everything in one app. But.....the RAW output is really subpar IMHO. Maybe I'm too particular, or maybe a lot of these other apps are designed for folks who don't process a high volume of photos, I dunno, but most of these other apps I've tested were not very satisfying to me. When I tried the Canon DPP app, I noticed that very similar to DxO, it produces VERY high quality output if you tweak it right, but it is INCREDIBLY slow. I could not believe how long it took DPP to convert a folder full of CR3's from one camera shoot to a set of 16-bit, 300 ppi TIFFs. Also, the UI of that app is incredibly clunky and non-intuitive. Canon knows a thing or two about making imaging hardware, but they sure can't write software! :-) I feel pretty sure where I'm gonna end up at this point is running one of Adobe's DAM apps (LR CC or LR Classic) along with Affinity Photo. The nice thing about LR Classic, as I mentioned, is I can use it to convert and non-destructively edit CR3's, and then hand-off in real time to Affinity for further edits when needed. It's not the cheapest solution, but right now the best I can see for my camera.

I wonder if the support is Camera specific? When I try to load .CR3 files taken with my M6 Mk ii, whether regular RAW or C-RAW, the 1.8.0.526 beta on Windows says "File type not supported." Quick list of apps I've tested here that supported CR3 and my camera: * Digikam 7.0 beta (libraw library) * DxO Photolab 3 * Skylum Luminar 4 * On1 Raw 2020 * Adobe LR/PS Of those apps, I found Lightroom by far the most compelling app in power, features, and results. DxO outputs nice image quality, as does Luminar 4, but neither app is universal in its support and neither has the broader feature set and performance that I am looking for. I think the potential way forward for me is Affinity + Lightroom. Note that with Lightroom classic (but not the cloud-only version), you can actually set it to launch Affinity as the editor on a photo. Only downside is you still have to pay the full $9.99/month subscription just to get LR classic.

I should add here, when trying all the software listed in my last post, I had an interesting idea that I've posted about before on this forum: if Affinity is not planning to develop DAM software themselves (something that almost every reviewer I've seen, and most users here, believe we still need), then maybe they should partner with one of the other software companies to make closer "ties" between affinity and another app that can function as a DAM. For instance, Luminar 4. They are working hard on building improving DAM functionality into their app. Why not partner with them so that images could be passed easily back and forth between Luminar for RAW processing and "beautification using presets", and then be able to do more powerful tweaking in Affinity? Just an idea.

Since this thread, I've tried all the following software packages that could directly recognize the CR3 format, and my camera. I didn't even try Capture One as the price is so high I know I wouldn't buy it. * Digikam 7.0 beta (download at https://files.kde.org/digikam/) * Canon's own DPP software * Adobe Photoshop * DXO Photolab * ON1 Raw 2020 * Skylum Luminar 4 All had various pros/cons. Digikam's RAW image processing was HORRIBLE (in fairness, they use the OSS libraw library, and it's all still in beta). Canon's software: very powerful, but why such limited output formats, and why so horribly slow to output .tif files? Unacceptable. DXO Photolab is the best RAW processor I've ever seen. However, it can't do anything else, definitely a very weak DAM, and I don't want to spend $150 for a RAW processor. ON1 Raw? Ugh, what a steaming file of trendy features, glitzy pushy marketing, and poorly written software, don't get me started. Skylum Luminar 4? A beautiful bit of software for easily enhancing images for non-pros like me, also very nice as a PS/LR plugin, but not ready to be a standalone complete DAM and photo management app. So for now, it's me and my $9/month Adobe subscription. I got some deals from some of the software I tried and wrangled the first 4 months of the Adobe subscription for free. So basically the first year it's only costing me 8 x 9 = $72. Meanwhile: If Affinity in 1.8+ adds CR3 support, and support for my lens listed above, I'll be back to Affinity asap. :-)

The CR3 pics processed by ACR seem to have truer, richer colors. In the converted DNG, it seems to take an extreme amount of fiddling to get the pics to the same natural looking colors that ACR produces immediately upon opening the image. I am sure that this is 'fixable' in a DNG, as it has the same raw data ultimately as the CR3, I'd have to just figure out common settings and create a preset in another app.

Is there any guidance I could check out--tutorials, YT, etc.--on tips for working with RAW .dng files in AP 1.7x/1.8x from a new Canon camera that is unsupported (so is the EF-M 18-150 lens, although some of the other popular EF-M lens are supported such as the 18-55 and the 55-200)? Obviously I can still import the .dng files that I converted from CR3 just fine into AP. And can edit them in the RAW processor, or sometimes I use Digikam or Darktable to work on the RAW files as well. But none of these apps, including or especially AP, yet support the EOS M6 Mk ii camera. (ETA: Digikam 7.0 beta actually does support CR3 and the EOS M6 Mk ii now, as it has incorporated the latest libraw update, but it's not ready for production use yet). I'm pretty confident that AP will eventually add support for the .CR3 Canon format, as well as the camera and lens, since they are all pretty popular mainstream options. But in the meantime, I'm stuck using an Adobe subscription that I don't ideally want to have, because I'm not a pro at working with RAW editing and don't want to spend countless hours messing with my RAW files in order to get them into the software and looking good. Because Adobe recognize the format/camera/lens, it saves a lot of time. If I could find good guidance on how to work with RAW when your camera/lens are unsupported, I might be able to get by in AP without needing Adobe.

Anyway, to update the original Q of the thread, Affinity got back to me and as Walt suggested, it's not allowed to sell the software, per terms of the license. However I can sell the books. I'm actually glad it took a while for them to get back to me. As in my earlier post, I'm rethinking whether to sell. I basically had to get an Adobe subscription due to my choice of a rather new/bleeding-edge Canon camera, they and only a couple other options I wasn't interested in (such as ON1, Capture one), are the only ones I know of that appear to support both the camera and lens right now. I will just keep the AP/AD software, and wait a while, hopefully they'll get my camera/lens combo added. When they do, hopefully I can get out of the Adobe subscription. :-)

@walt.farrell, I have. In fact as recently as yesterday, from the latest 1.8 beta I clicked on a CR3 file and it says this file type is not supported. As for lens, where are you seeing that the 1.8 beta supports the EF-M 18-150? I'm not seeing that in the lens profile dropdown in the RAW editor, or anywhere else. @v_kyr, yep on Libraw, in fact I saw as soon as that added support for CR3 and I pinged the devs who work on the FOSS app, Digikam. They have already patched for the updated libraw so that the latest Digikam 7.0 beta on Windows supports CR3. Which is pretty cool, since a lot of commercial software still doesn't support it yet. But just the fact they got it to work that quickly, with like 1 guy doing the work to integrate it, means it is do-able so I'm hopeful that AP and others are soon able to add it as well.

I would sure like to keep using my copies of AP and AD--they are my fave graphics software. But I realized I made a tactical mistake: bought a new Canon (EOS M6 Mk II) which requires CR3, and neither the camera, nor CR3, nor my specific EF-M 18-150 lens, are supported by Affinity. Yeah, you'd think I would've checked that before I bought, but I didn't, not the world's most experienced RAW processor or digital photographer. Sure, I can use Adobe to convert CR3 to DNG, and the RAW importer will pick up my images fairly well, but it's not the same thing as having real camera, RAW format, and lens support. And I don't want to have to do a zillion manual adjustments every time I import a RAW image. I realized with some research that an Adobe solution of PS + Bridge (or Lightroom), which is basically the $9/month subscription if I buy it off the Big River site, is the only thing that's going to give full, true support of my camera, lens, and format, as of today. Yes on paper, ON1 2020 SAYS they support these, but honestly that app is horrible, unreliable, crashes frequently, and produces subpar image output at least for me. Maybe something like Capture One would work, but honestly at their prices, I'd rather just stick with the tried-and-true option of Adobe. So my short term plan: Adobe CC subscription, but only until Affinity adds support for CR3, and my camera/lens. Then I'm back to Affinity. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later! :-)