AF Photo: send RAW files straight to HDR merge

[mistergarth]

The last lingering problem with my de-Adobification project is replacing Lightroom. I've been trying  Exposure X5 from Alien Skin. There are quite a few things I like about it but it doesn't do compositing for HDR or panoramas. I thought that would be OK, since AF Photo does these things. But, when I export a stackable RAW file series from EX5 to AF Photo, the RAW images just open in the develop persona. Then I have to develop them, save them, close them, and then do a new HDR merge. There's got to be a better way. I suppose I could use Ex5 to find the exact location and filenames of the RAW files I want to merge and just switch to AF Photo, but that's awfully clunky convoluted workflow, too. Is there a shortcut or two I haven't found/learned yet?  Is there some way to send files straight from the develop persona to HDR merge without developing, saving, and closing them? Plus, are there any indexing apps which can handle .afphoto files?

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, mistergarth said:

I thought that would be OK, since AF Photo does these things. But, when I export a stackable RAW file series from EX5 to AF Photo, the RAW images just open in the develop persona. Then I have to develop them, save them, close them, and then do a new HDR merge. There's got to be a better way. I suppose I could use Ex5 to find the exact location and filenames of the RAW files I want to merge and just switch to AF Photo, but that's awfully clunky convoluted workflow, too. Is there a shortcut or two I haven't found/learned yet?  Is there some way to send files straight from the develop persona to HDR merge without developing, saving, and closing them?

You could build an HDR merge directly from the RAW files, without running them through the Develop Persona first, but you wouldn't be happy with the results. While you can use RAW files in Photo (and Designer, and Publisher) without first Developing them, they are generally darker than one would like and unacceptable without further adjustments. That is because anything except the Develop Persona uses a more basic process to interpret the content of the RAW files, and omits some of the processing steps.

So basically your only good option (that I know of) is to Develop and save them, and then do your HDR merging.