timlt

Darktable - best RAW processor (or Rawtherapee) if you just need powerful RAW handling, some basic batch workflow functions. Digikam - can process raw, AND can function as a full DAM much richer feature set than XnViewMP and truly free and open software. ETA: My expectation is Affinity will not have time/resources currently to add a DAM in the near future, as commented earlier in thread. And I'm ok with that. There are such outstanding FOSS tools out there. If you need RAW + batch processing, with very lightweight cataloging features: Darktable or Rawtherapee alone will do it. And these can work nicely with Affinity products, you can specify AP for example as the hand-off editor for processed raw files. If you want a true DAM, I think Digikam is unbeatable and in fact, has some capabilities that even LR does not have. Further, Digikam integrates pretty good raw processing, good enough for most non-pro users although pro users will again, want one of the above specialized raw apps. Personally, a combination of the following apps gives me everything I need, and then some: * AP * AD * Darktable for detailed raw touch-ups and a batch workflow to rename and apply a set of common changes to a folder full of images. * Digikam as a DAM. For creating a highly organized, tagged, searchable database with very powerful full IPTC metadata support, rich batch processing functions, upload to a lot of common cloud sources, and more features than you can shake a stick at. Works great on Windows. Works AWESOME on Linux!

I posted earlier that I'd like an integrated DAM as some others do. And still wouldn't complain if we get one. But the more I read about it and experiment with some 3rd party DAM apps, I see your point and am starting to wonder whether (a) I really NEED an integrated DAM, and (b) Whether it's realistic to expect Affinity's small team can build that in the near future, while also completing their other development priorities. While I agree with your overall point (that some of us may not NEED an integrated RAW + DAM app, and that they are complex and will take serious effort to develop), I'm less sure about this supporting argument. If I follow, you are saying that it took other RAW + DAM app developers X years to build a solid mature product, thus we should expect it'll take Affinity roughly the same amount of time. I'm not sure that this line of reasoning holds, for software development. There are so many factors that go into building software, you cannot assume a simple apples-to-apples comparison on how long it'll take to build a certain type of project. Some examples of these factors include: the effectiveness of the app design and architecture (a simpler, more elegant design from the start can speed development by orders of magnitude), the total amount of man-hours (aka 'resources') they have to devote to the effort, the skill and experience of the devs themselves (a great dev will often complete a project several times faster than a mediocre one, at the same time building it with higher quality), whether they are starting with a 'clean slate' or having to build on some legacy functionality (clean slate is often faster), what kind of design-build-test-deploy pipeline and tools they are using, what awareness they have of existing apps in the same space which can speed the development of their own (example: the AP team had a good awareness of what functionality they needed to build by looking at mature competitor apps--versus having to sit down and invent from scratch all the functionality that AP would need to include), and so on. Basically, given the analogy of the rapid development of AP and AD, it wouldn't surprise me if the Affinity team could build a solid RAW + DAM app fairly quickly if they have good devs, sufficient resources to devote to it, a good design, and so on. I suspect that today, the main thing blocking them is simply the resources. They may be able to grow and add more devs, which would let them eventually tackle this. But for now, I'm moving ahead with a 3rd party app. I tried XNview and liked it for pure DAM, but it is VERY weak in the quality of the output and the "preferences" options you have to change that, when you are processing files and exporting them to other formats. I do not see Xnview as a viable choice for anything other than viewing, sorting, tagging, basic file renaming, stuff like that. I'm experimenting with some commercial apps, ON1 is one that I liked. And some FOSS alternatives. They are all quite good, though for different reasons. My 2 leading FOSS options are DigiKam and DarkTable. Both have good (DK) or excellent (DT) RAW processing that exceeds the basic tools in AP. They both have the ability to do powerful batch processing, plus they are both very good DAM apps for my needs. Not quite as slick and easy as Xnview for simply viewing/tagging/sorting kinds of stuff, but FAR more powerful in bulk graphics processing while still more than adequate for the DAM aspect. Right now I'm torn between which one I like better, but leaning slightly toward DT as it seems to hog less system resources, and has much more powerful RAW processing that gets great results. What I'd really like to see in the near future--and might be more realistic than to expect Affinity to build a full DAM app with their current small team--is if Affinity would simply partner with some viable 3rd party app, and provide smooth integration between it and the Affinity apps. I'm not sure if partnering with a FOSS DAM app is viable, given that Affinity is commercial, there may be some kind of licensing conflict. But the principle is the same, whether you integrate with a FOSS DAM app like DT, or a commercial one like DxO or ON1. GIMP has been doing something like this, partnering with both DT and RawTherapee so that you can open RAW files in GIMP, which pops open the appropriate RAW app, then hands the processed RAW result back to GIMP. I think Affinity could do something like this, and do it much better than it works in GIMP.

What @John Rostron said. To add some other detail, I can confirm that the current version of Topaz Studio (which I downloaded recently as a complete trial version) works as both a standalone app, AND as a plugin in AP (it also works in Paintshop Pro 2019, which I tested as well). I was impressed with Topaz Studio and if I had the $500 at hand to shell out, I'd love to get the whole thing and use it to clean up and beautify my whole photo collection. It even has RAW editing now, though it appeared to be somewhat crippled in the trial version, so I'm unsure how well that works. But I did use the trial version to cleanup and make the best of some crappy old JPEG files where I valued the contents but did not have a better lossless source file to use. I thought Athentech Perfectly Clear was a pretty impressive plugin too as far as cleaning up those photos, but Topaz Studio is even better and having tried both, I'd probably only get Athentech as the 'budget' option. Which I may end up doing anyway, since I'm unlikely to get approval from my, uhm, 'personal finance manager' to shell out $500 for Topaz.

Well an update: used the Designer trial for a few days, and liked it so much I went ahead and bought Designer. I'm loving how easy it makes it to create vector graphics for the web. So I guess I'm an official Affinity fanboi now that I own 2 of their apps. :-)

I guess on the plus side: they're both surprisingly affordable for high-powered graphics apps, so one would hardly go wrong getting both! :-) One more question. With a tool like Designer, is there any big value in buying a bunch of add-on brushes, such as those offered on the Affinity store, or the Corel Particleshop dynamic brushes (I already have a few of the latter) that can run as a plugin to PS, PSP 2019, and Affinity (I confirmed this)? Or do you just use the 'vector brush tool' mentioned above, and kind of roll your own?

I had a similar question, as a new Photo user. I am interested in vector art, and learning to do some digital drawing and painting as an amateur. It looks like you can create vector art and refine it quite a bit even in Photo. Is there any call for me to try out Designer too at this point, if I don't have a specific need for it? Or is Photo really the primary workhorse app, and Designer is more of a niche app for designers?

+1 on using Digikam with Photo. The combined set of cataloging/tagging files, handling metadata, RAW editing, and really powerful-but-simple batch processing, make Digikam a pretty incredible tool considering it's free and open-source software. I like it better than all other FOSS software, and better than most paid software apps of this type. An app with similar features, but much more focused on specialized RAW editing and not nearly as much on the media file cataloging and management features, is RawTherapee. Use that one if you want to edit and batch process a lot of 32-bit RAW files with a lot of nuanced editing features.

Hey @SrPx, thanks that's a good write-up, exactly the feature-level comparisons I was looking for. Interesting to hear this apparently long-running issue about color management in PSP, and the fact that in your usage, AffPhoto does a noticeably better job. Also interested in this comment about using Photo, PS, or even PSP as an all-purpose work horse editor: This is really what I'm looking for as well, though for slightly different reasons. I'm not a pro or even an experienced amateur when it comes to actual photography, or in working with graphics software editors. Goal right now is to learn more, and to build skills working with one primary do-it-all graphics editor that is less than $100 US. I don't mind having a couple of add-on, specialized apps that do certain things I need, it doesn't all have to bundle into the main workhorse app. For example, I don't mind having an app like the free/open-source (aka, "FOSS") Digikam, which is a great tool that combines 3 things I need: (1) Media file management/browsing/metadata, (2) RAW editing, and (3) Powerful but easy-to-use batch processing workflow. I also use a FOSS app named ShareX for advanced screenshot functionality, which gets used in my day job. But in general, I don't need or want to end up with a large set of specialized graphics apps. Ideally, just a work horse as you said--something I can master and keep using for the long haul--and then a couple of specialized apps if needed. For me, best candidates for work horse graphics apps costing < $100, are the 2 listed in the OP (PSP 2019 and AffPhoto). Yo could also throw in FOSS apps like GIMP and Krita. I've tried all of these recently, all are actually pretty impressive and could be valid options. But I've come down on the side off AffPhoto when you consider all the factors listed in the OP. Would really like to hear more comments from experienced graphics users similar to yours, where you look at support around a specific type of graphics functionality that a medium-to-advanced user would need, and how well that feature is implemented in PSP vs AffPhoto.

OK, sorry to hear about your woes on the trial. I don't have my trial edition anymore (installed over a month ago), but to confirm, I IM'd Corel support with the Chat Now option on top of their main site page. They said in the trial installed off that page anytime recently, you should get both 32/64 versions (my trial had them), and should be able to import scans. They suggested if having issues with the trial, ping them via that IM support option, and if possible, take a screen shot of your disabled Import menu. If you have time to get the trial working, as per the OP, I'd be interested to hear any side-by-side evaluation you can offer on features.

That would make sense why it works, and if so, would invalidate Vuescan as an example of a 64-bit app that works with the Canon drivers. I pinged Canon driver support for more info on their x64 drivers, definitely has my curiosity going.

@walt.farrell: Yes, the docs in PSP 2019 also have that blurb about full WIA and TWAIN support in the 32 and the x64 PSP. However...it's also interesting that other 64-bit apps I have on hand seem to recognize the Canon scanner drivers and work (two I just tried are the included Windows 10 x64 Scan and Fax app, and a 3rd party app called Vuescan). This, plus a number of other PSP x64 user complaints about this same issue of not recognizing their scanner, leads me to think that that Corel really has an issue with their TWAIN and WIA implementation in the x64 version. But regardless, it shouldn't be a blocker for anyone who wants to use PSP x64. If you have decent native scanner software (like Canon's), or if you can use a solid x64 app like Vuescan, you can still send your scan output directly to any graphics app including PSP x64. Of course what would really rock though, is if we could get true WIA scanner support in AffPhoto 1.7. :-) @John Rostron: Definitely PSP gives you that true B&W option you're looking for, directly from the scanner and without need of conversion. Agree with you, that aspect doesn't work in AffPhoto. To get the latest version of PSP 2019 for comparison (this should include both 32-bit and x64), I got my free trial here before I purchased it.

@John Rostron, some additional info: My second scenario above, using my scan software with AffPhoto 1.6 for Win10 x64, worked. I was able to do the same thing as with PSP 2019. Using the Canon Pixma 9120 native scan software, when the drivers scan a doc or photo, they will launch AffPhoto and send a scanned JPEG, PNG, or TIFF image directly to it. For my 9120 printer at least, the Canon product drivers page indicates the drivers are providing full x64 support on Win10. So I still suspect that the fault of scanner not being recognized in PSP 2019 x64, is likely due to PSP not using the new model in Windows which is no longer TWAIN, but rather requires a WIA driver model, as here. They likely either have a bug, or they haven't implemented WIA yet in x64. However, the good news is that you don't need to 'acquire' scans from within the application anyway, using the approach above, you can just send your scans from native software to your 64-bit graphics app, whether PSP or AffPhoto.

John: I just checked this out as I have PSP 2019 (note this is latest version, I cannot vouch for 2018) which includes both x64 and 32-bit versions in the package. I also have a Canon Pixma TS9120, a recent multifunction printer model. I found that the PSP x64 version indeed will not recognize the scanner in the Acquire from TWAIN menu options. However, a few interesting workarounds: The 32-bit version works fine and recognized TWAIN input directly from the scanner (as @walt.farrell said). It appears that either PSP 2019 x64, or my Canon TS9120's scanner drivers, are not properly updated to work with x64. Of the two, I'd suspect it's more likely that PSP 2019 x64 is at fault, as I've heard this issue from other users and in reference to using PSP x64 with scanners before. You may be able to use your scanner device's native software to "send" the output directly to PSP 2019 x64. (BTW, I haven't tested this yet, but I assume since you are just sending digital output in a recognized file format, this same approach would work with AffPhoto as well.) This is the solution that worked best for me. I used the Canon's included scan software utility, which let you select various configuration details for the scan, including things like output file format, color options (color, B&W, grayscale), size, and other details. I can also select a "send output to" application, which in this case is PSP x64. This works just fine, including that it addresses your B&W scanning application. I can select PNG, PDF, or TIFF as output file formats that work with B&W. The resulting scan is sent to PSP x64 as a 2-color (B&W, or 1-bit color depth) file. I can run the "Soften" or "Denoise" adjustments on it, which quickly improves readability/quality for an image that is essentially a text document. PNG format really works great for this and keeps file size down too. One other interesting thing I was able to do with my Canon software: I can select PDF as the output format for a document type of scan, and then select an OCR output application as Microsoft Word, which will consume the PDF and instantly on the fly converts to a perfectly formatted, editable Word doc (which can be saved as Word OR as PDF). So, even though it appears to me that PSP have not got their story figured out on scanning in x64, if you use the 32-bit version or use your scanner software to just send the output to PSP x64, you can still get good results.

That's good to hear, so at least it works with the most recent version - 1. I'll be interested to hear if FF replies to my query about v8. Not sure if it's their issue, or mine, but these were clean installs and the only thing I did was point to the installation directory from AP. Note that I did run FF v8 standalone, and it works ok doing that.

I saw on the AP supported plugins page that the Filter Forge plugin v6 was fully supported in AP 1.5. On the FF site, they say their new FF v8 version fully supports AP 1.5. However, I have the latest version of AF 1.6.5 for Win 10 x64, and I cannot get FF v8 plugin working. It does install correctly, shows up in the plugins menu, launches as a plugin (or alternately, as a standalone app), and will then render a preview of your image and their various effects. However, the picture with effects applied is not successfully round-tripped back to AP 1.6 and rendered there. I tried: multiple photo images, multiple file types, multiple color bit depths, didn't matter. The result was always that the plugin and AP 1.6 hang, and both have to manually killed from Windows Task Manager. Has anyone gotten FF v8, or any recent version for that matter, working in AP 1.6? Update: I submitted an issue to FF as well.

I've been using Corel's Particleshop brushes plugin (https://www.painterartist.com/en/product/particleshop/). This is powered by the software in their standalone Painter app, and is an officially supported plugin within Photoshop and Paintshop Pro for dynamic painting effects (see their site for a description, this is a bit different from a static brush). This works great within my copy of Paintshop Pro 2019 Ultimate, plus Corel offers many interesting add-on brush sets for sale. So I was curious to find out if the Particleshop plugin (v 1.5) works in Affinity Photo v1.6 on Windows 10 x64. Verdict: Success. After you install the plugin, in the Affinity Photoshop plugins settings, you can point to the install directory. Then Affinity recognizes it in the Filters | Plugins submenu and will successfully launch photos into the plugin, let you use all the artistic brushes, and round-trip the result to AP without weird behavior, crashing, or side effects that I've yet noticed. Items worth noting: the plugin lets you save the brush strokes only AS brush strokes if working with layers, or you can save it merged with the original photo. Also note: the plugin requires you to convert any image you are working on to 8-bit color depth before adding brush strokes. So this is a limitation, though not a show-stopper for me. I tried a workaround which seemed to work. Open the 16-bit photo (mine was PNG), convert to 8-bit, launch the plugin and add brush strokes, then save as "brush strokes only." Then you can use various approaches to combine the new 8-bit brush stroke layer back with the original 16-bit image.

Just tested the Athentech Perfectly Clear plugin for photo effects. This plugin (https://www.athentech.com/) comes in both a standard "essentials" edition, which is also included with Corel Paintshop Pro 2019 Ultimate edition, and in a Complete edition. This is offered as both a standalone app (you get both if you purchase the complete editions), and as an officially supported plugin to Photoshop, Lightroom, Elements, and Paintshop Pro. It definitely has some neat customizable filters and effects for automating photo improvements. I have used my free Essentials version in Paintshop Pro 2019 Ultimate edition, and liked the results. I decided to install the full trial edition and see if it would work with Affinity Photo v1.6 on Windows 10 x64. Verdict: Fail. I can get Affinity to recognize the plugin in the Plugins submenu, and it'll even launch the plugin when you have a supported picture type and bit depth open. However, the photo data from the Affinity workspace is not correctly transferred or rendered to the plugin workspace, the image looks blank. Tested this with multiple image types and color depths; doesn't matter. So, if you really want to use Athentech Perfectly Clear Complete edition with Affinity, you'd need to buy the current version 8 and use it as a standalone app. Or request the company to provide official support in AP.

Warning: long! TLDR; summary: As an owner and user of both Affinity Photo 1.6, and Corel's Paintshop Pro 2019, I have come to prefer Photo as my primary graphics editor. Super interested to hear the views of anyone who's tried BOTH. Pro or con, I'm interested in objective differences (as in "X supports this feature, Y does not"), and subjective preferences ("I like X because..."). Not interested in any unfriendly or irrational bashing of either one. :-) Some things I've observed, though I haven't done an exhaustive side-by-side comparison: * Purchase cost: Tie. Paintshop Pro 2019 Ultimate (PSPU) costs the same as Photo does currently ($49.99 US), although both go on sale at times and I got Photo for $35 on sale. It's also worth noting you can get a standard version of PSP that has 100% of the same features as PSPU in the app, for typically around $39.99, and it simply omits all the bundled extras. However, given you can periodically get Photo on sale for $35, I see overall they are both in a very close price range no matter how you look at it. Both of these apps are "sub $50 US but very powerful alternatives to Photoshop." Cost is not a deciding factor between them. * Licensing model: Photo wins easily. To the best that I can understand the lawyer-ese in the very complex PSPU user license agreement, they will let you install it on 2 machines (such as 1 home and 1 work, or 1 PC and 1 laptop). Photo is more generous and simpler to keep track of: for the Windows version, you can install it on any Windows machine where you the buyer of Photo, are also the owner or primary controlling user of that machine. I have many machines at home and work, including 2 laptops, and I can install Photo on all of them. Rock! * What comes in the package: Tie (IMO, although some may disagree). PSPU comes with a whole batch of supporting software which Photo does not include. For example, if you want a professional level app for media browsing, tagging, and management, with Photo you'd have to get that elsewhere, while PSPU includes it in the package (Aftershot 3), plus a more basic/limited version right in the app. However the extra software for me was not a compelling factor in PSPU's favor. Most of the add-on software is a crippled version of the real thing (so they start immediately pushing upgrades on you as with Aftershot and Perfectly Clear), or it starts slowly, performs poorly, or lacks basic features I'd expect. Bottom line: while PSPU definitely bundles more stuff in the package--and a few of the plugins are actually useful such as the PicToPainting one, or the Particleshop brush set--there is none of it that make it a clear winner over Photo. Photo also has a lot of painting, brush, filter, and effects features built-in, and it's relatively easy to add in Photoshop brush sets or additional plugins, so the included items with PSPU were not a deciding factor. * Support for Photoshop file formats, brushes, and some plugins: Tie. Both do this, and with varying degrees of success on the plugins. * Support for many file formats: PSPU wins. Again for my use, this is not a deciding factor though because while PSPU clearly does support many more formats, Photo has all the industry standard or essential 'open' formats for input/output that I'd care about. * Support for 32-bit color depth and RAW editing: Photo wins by a mile. First of all, right in the PSPU user manual they indicate it is limited to working with 16-bit color depth. I confirmed this. Taking a raw/dng file from my camera, in Photo I can open in RAW mode as HDR 32-bit RGBA color depth, process it, and then save it in the native format, TIFF, EXR, etc, as 32-bit if I want. PSPU cannot do this, but automatically drops processed RAW photos to 16-bit for working with in any lossless file format, whether TIFF, PNG, or native. Further, Photo has far richer capabilities for RAW file processing than PSPU. The ones in PSPU are more than adequate for casual users, but Photo has pro-level capabilities. * Support for automation including macros, raw scripting, and batch processing: PSPU wins. To be clear, both apps have adequate features for creating, naming, editing, and running macros. Both also have adequate UI for creating and running batch processes, which can also include macros, to process and rename photos. However, PSPU goes a bit farther, a feature that warms my heart: they provide Python scripting both to tweak the existing macros, and to create complete from-scratch macros, or extensive automation processing that gives you a lot of fine-grained control over the whole process. Very, very slick, one of my fave all-time features of PSPU that very few other apps have anything exactly like this. A lot of open-sourcey painting apps will have either the raw programming/scripting ability, but will be skimpy on the ability to quickly/easily record and create macros using the app's menu options. GIMP and Krita are two examples of that. Other apps will give you the macro recording but no or limited scripting. PSPU is fairly unique in offering full support for both. * Support for media file tagging and management: PSPU wins. Even if you ignore that rather poor bundled Aftershot app, PSPU has a built-in tagging and media management. Photo has no equivalent. PSPU creates a fairly fast, searchable media catalog, and provides a nice UI for navigation, searching, and creating of virtual photo collections. Also when it comes to simply tagging metadata with all the core IPTC fields, not to mention keyword tags and ratings, Photo does not permit this, while PSPU does. However, while ok for a casual user, PSPU's media management features are nowhere what I'd really look for. What'd be ideal, if Photo could work together with a combined media management and RAW processing app (whether OSS like Rawtherappe, or commercial like Capture One or ON1), and deliver a much richer, better performing solution. * Performance. Startup times: PSP 2019 is a bit faster to START (typically 8-10 seconds until I get to the Edit screeen) and Photo is typically 12 to 16 seconds), on 3 machines where I've tried it. Common operations: However once you've started, performance on processing, saving, etc., the nod goes to Photo. It can perform certain filter, effects, macros, saving large uncompressed files, etc., a few seconds faster than PSP for the same type of operation. * Footprint on disk: PSPU wins. Win10 installer tool reports an installed size of 499 MB for PSPU, and 710 MB for Photo. Note that if you count all the bundled stuff in PSPU, it swells to over 1 GB, but to keep it simple I just compared footprint of the base installed apps. * RAM memory usage for common large file operations: roughly a tie. Both do a significantly better job of managing and using RAM than say, GIMP 2.10. * App stability: Photo wins. I find even on a modern Win10 x64 clean build with modern hardware and a dedicated NVidia GPU, PSPU is often unstable, hangs, or stops responding altogether. Sometimes it even crashes, requiring system reboots. This happens a lot when loading plugins or running complex file processing. Photo never, ever does this, it always seems to be a good Windows 10 citizen and stays in its lane, doing its work cleanly, indicates progress, does not hang, and does not crash your system. This aspect along inclines me strongly to Photo over PSPU. It's really, really annoying to have a quirky, sluggish, or unstable app, no matter how many cool features it has. * UI: Photo wins this too. This one is highly subjective, and most Photoshop users I'd guess will prefer Photo. Not having previous Photoshop experience, I find Photo and PSPU different in some details, but quite similar in the essentials and therefore to ME, one is not strongly preferable to the other. What tilts the balance is that Photo has a much simpler UI: it's relatively cleaner, more logical and less cluttered. You can usually find stuff! PSPU can get overwhelming at times with lots of disparate menu entries, stuff all over the place and hidden in some unexpected submenus. * Drawing, painting, and image processing features: I honestly don't know. This could take weeks and weeks to go point by point, look at each feature, see how it's implemented in each app, and compare both the usability and the results. One example of a clear difference is that PSPU has a set of automated photo improvement features which Photo does not have (like the "Smart Photo Fixer"). These are slick and maybe save time, but I don't know yet whether these ultimately get you better results versus manual tweaking or creating macros for common operations in Photo. My impression is they both have a LOT of editing functionality in all 3 areas considering both apps are under $50. Both support what many would now consider must-have features, including many types of nuanced layer handling, and non-destructive editing. I don't see any huge, glaring feature omissions in either one for serious photo editing and painting. I have slightly preferred the quality of the output from Photos in high-quality lossless files, but that is subjective at this point and I need to test that for a while. All things considered, I see a lot of good in both these apps, and still evaluating on features and output, but right now I prefer Photo as my go-to graphics editor. Additional Christmas gifts I would ask for in Photo, if we could get at least a rain check for these things sometime soon: :-) Improved in-app metadata editing feature set to including IPTC core fields, tagging, ratings, and keywords. Some kind of media browser/management solution, whether built-in, as a plugin, or in collaboration with an existing great app. I would favor an open-source app like Rawtherapee, but whatever. Enhanced documentation. More tutorials, always. I like the built-in docs for the basics, some of the online tutorials are great, and I've also ordered the new Photo guide book. But more extensive tutorial how-to docs, even if written by trusted users that Affinity reviews/endorses the content, would be so helpful for those of us coming from a non-Photoshop or non-professional graphics background. A frequently updated web page with a set of Affinity-approved Photoshop plugins, brushes, filters, etc., which have been tested and verified to work in the current version. I'm aware of the page on the site that lists Plugins and their testing status. Definitely helps. But we could use something more comprehensive to include more plugins and brush sets, and something maintained more frequently to include current releases of Photo as well as of the plugins in question. Even if you farm the testing work out to a trusted 3rd party, it would be super helpful if Affinity could add this detail to the supported plugins docs.

Geez, I was about to post, but I think you hit a lot of the things I'd want. I'll just say I voted for option 3, and after recently buying Affinity Photo and loving it, this item of having an integrated DAM is high on my list of missing features. Other moderately priced competitors such as Paintshop Pro 2019 have some form of this functionality, so it's a compete issue as well. What I've tried are 3rd party file managers that have a lot of built in scripting and file management capability along wiht some photo management features (Multi-Commander being one of the best I tried), Xnview and a few other photo organizers (Xnview was the best freeware I found), and for adding non-destructive RAW capabilities, I tried both DarkTable and RawTherapee. Of the two, RawTherapee came closest to having everything I wanted. It has non-destructive, very extensive editing of RAW files, plus batch processing, plus ratings, EXIF/IPTC metadata, all that. The integration with Affinity is limited though (you can set Affinity as your external editor). And in large folders containing many photos, performance is slow because it does not create a DB, it works directly with the file system.

I haven't decided which way I'll handle this yet, but thanks for the input, gives some things to consider. Here's an interesting comparison: * Just opened a RAW (.DNG) 24MB file. Did some "develop" steps to clean it up. * Save a copy in .afphoto format (164MB) and then export to TIFF preserving Affinity layers (244MB), and to PNG (61MB). That's a sample of one, so hardly definitive. But in this case, it appears with large/complex working files, the .afphoto format preserves all the info and does it in a more compact file. I know that disk storage is relatively cheap these days, but the TIFF file is nearly 10x larger than the original .DNG file. That is a LOT of consumed space when doing things like opening for editing, storing on disk, backing up to the cloud, etc. And it doesn't seem like you're gaining anything with the TIFF other than POSSIBLE universal access in other graphics apps. Worth considering. For my use, almost wondering if I'd do better to just keep the original RAW .DNG file, plus a working copy in .afphoto in the cases where I add a bunch of complex editing to the RAW file, and then a larger, totally clean output file in a lossless but compact format, such as PNG. This file would be the basis for others to view the 'original' and also for outputting lower quality JPEG files, say for the web.

Hi, new Photo 1.6 user here, love the app and also ordered the new workbook. Have a question about which working file format to use when you have two basic concerns: You want to preserve the full functionality of Photo in your working copy AND you want to preserve it in a long-term universal file format that will be accessible from other graphics tools. Q: For a working file format, what are the key differences between the native .afphoto format, and the .tiff format? In other words, if you want to keep your working copy and long-term storage version in .tiff, do you give up any significant features vs using .afphoto? Thanks, Tim