save RAW adjustments / non-destructive editing

[shootingpandas]

Hi everybody,

 

I just purchased Photo and like it so far! 

 

So as I'm totally new, and the search didn't return any results: is there a way to save all the adjustments I made to a RAW image before developing it? Similar to the .XMP sidecars Adobe creates? I don't want to create presets for every single change I made - I just want to save all the adjustments and changes including overlays, blemish removals, etc. to a file so that I can go back into the RAW file and re-adjust the work I've done without having to do it all over again.

 

Thanks!

[Chris_K]

Hi Shootingpandas

 

Good to see you're enjoying Photo, 

 

If you check out the Affinity Photo roadmap you will see that we are contiunually improving the develop persona and some improved preset management is a great idea.

 

If you look at the top of each tab for the adjustment in the develop persona you will see a preset dropdown that will allows you do add your own presets based on the current settings. The presets currently only belong to each tab rather than globally, but hopefully this will go towards make things slightly easier for you in the meantime

 

Cheers 

[maritan]

My question is similar to the OP's (same but worded differently?):

 

Let's say I make a bunch of edits to my ORF (Olympus RAW) in the Develop persona - particularly noise reduction and detail. I click develop and go into the Photo persona. After making a few edits, I realize that my noise reduction is way too strong for my liking and I want to go back into the Develop persona and minimize the noise reduction I initially dialed in.

 

From what I'm seeing, this is not possible - I click on my background pixel layer, click develop and I see baseline settings on all sliders - including sliders that I originally changed. Is there a way to preserve the original RAW edits - I believe something similar to PS' Smart Objects?

[sinesium]

Develop Persona should work non destructively like in the Adobe Lightroom - I can always develop and change any setting when I need.

[SimonTheSorcerer]

Hello,
I just bought Photo as well, it looks great just as Affinity Designer did.

But the destructive Raw editing is what I first noticed... Basically it doesn't allow us to save our work during raw editing, which is something I wouldn't have expected for a software of Photo's reputation. Changes should be saved in the file, not in the software in the form of Presets.

 

I'm glad the non-destructive Development Layer is in the Roadmap, even though I feel this is overcomplicating things a bit. A simple saving of the Slider Values with the file would do the trick for now.

 

In any case, I'm glad to see the software improving as it goes, 1.5 was the version that convinced me to buy it, but I'm looking forward to having non-destructive Raw editing as well.

Since I'm new I may have misunderstood how to save a raw file with changes, in which case I apologize and feel free to correct me. From the multiple threads I found on the topic, I understood it's not possible.

[Fixx]

There is not much use to nondestructive develop without database component. That is, if there is no catalogue to manage photos, it makes no difference if there are no saved development sets as you cannot access them effectively. Anyway, as you cannot save over RAW you can of course think all RAW development is nondestructive  ^_^

[SimonTheSorcerer]

There is not much use to nondestructive develop without database component. That is, if there is no catalogue to manage photos, it makes no difference if there are no saved development sets as you cannot access them effectively. Anyway, as you cannot save over RAW you can of course think all RAW development is nondestructive  ^_^

Hi Fixx,

it could save an extra file with the slider values with the same name as the raw, in the same folder, and when you load the raw again it will recall all the adjustments. A database would be nice to have, but is it necessary for this basic functionality?

[MEB]

Hi SimonTheSorcerer,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Currently Affinity Photo doesn't support XMP sidecar files so there's no way to do what you are requesting. Feel free to add this to the Feature Requests section for consideration.

[DavidWegs]

I also am coming from years in PS and Lightroom (since they began).

Aside from the need to save non destructive RAW files, with their respective adjustments intact (which IMO is a critical feature), there is also a desperate need to be able to "browse" a folder of raw files. LR accomplished that with an import button/feature set. Then you can skip through the RAW files using a thumbnail view across the bottom or side of your screen... relatively quickly.

Till these things are introduced, I am afraid this program will have to be shelved... Maybe DXO will do what I need.

Thanks for listening...

Edited March 22, 2020 by DavidWegs
repeated some text.